1. Stare at people who look vaguely familiar but whom you can’t place. Realize that this is because you’ve seen them in CrashPad and you’re not used to seeing them with clothes on. Repeat three times.
2. Procure a supply of rainbow condoms, a “RECLAIM YOUR GENDER” t-shirt, a “Femme” button, and a children’s book “Dogs Don’t Do Ballet” that not-so-subtlely makes a plug for young male dancers sashaying into the limelight.
3. Challenge your own cynicism about doctors and mental health clinicians that serve trans people as you see them turn out in droves for workshops, earnestly take notes, and rant about their frustration with the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care.
4. Fawn over the babies of queer couples and find the future you want now has a mental image to accompany it.
5. Fawn over the 6-12year old trans kids. Hope that trans identity is biologically related— preferably a heritable trait.
6. Meet queer counselors that share your dream of doing dance-based expressive therapy. Interrogate them over Burmese food and feel startled as you realize that one of your potential career paths would actually support you financially.
7. Realize that a distressingly high percentage of every trans or genderqueer person you’ve ever heard of or messed around with on the East Coast will now be locked in a conference facility with you for three days. Determined to make the best of the intimacy, make friends with S. Bear Bergman, Athens Boys Choir, and the founders of Original Plumbing. Sheepishly admit that while the founders of Original Plumbing are tabling next to you, they clearly hit it off far more with your professor than with you.
8. Overexpose yourself in a workshop about trans survivors of violence, but find that other people reach out and, for the first time, hear someone else speak your story.
9. Squeeze seven members of your queer chosen family into a photo booth to document the adventure. Accept $1 from the femmilicious waiter who bet you couldn’t do it, but tells you that your family’s fabulous. Agree with him.
10. Return home to your family of origin, disoriented by the airport where the heteronormativity hits you after 3days of queer tranny magicland like a glass of water in the face. Reflect on the conference’s community and the kind of affirmation that comes from shared perspective and experience. Then hear your parents say that they’d like to attend the Massachusetts Trans Youth Summit again with you, if you’re interested, and smile, thinking that shared experience is not a prerequisite for family, or connection, or love.
