into the gender universe
Build your knowledge and collection of tools to be an impactful every-day trans ally in our current political landscape.
Boldly going beyond the binary
10% of the income from this course will be forwarded to Kitenda Taibu Ssejunde, a dear acquaintance of mine who is a member of an LGBTQ+ refugee community currently residing in South Sudan. The funds go to supporting her and her found family in their daily expenses for food, shelter, clothing, toys, medicine and transportation both in South Sudan and in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya.
If you’d like to contribute to her cause directly as well, please check out this fundraiser project.
so, Is this course for you?
It is for everyone who wants to learn more about how to support the trans people in their lives and the community at large.
Are you curious about how we got here and why trans people are a political target?
Do you want to learn more about seemingly controversial issues, like trans people in sports, or gender-affirming care for children?
Do you firmly believe that trans people should be allowed to exist and participate in society?
Are you looking to learn how to better engage with “gender critical” people and mainstream anti-trans arguments?
Do you want to know how to show up as a strong ally to your friends and loved ones?
Do you want to support a trans professional (me) in doing eir work?
If you said yes to any of these…
If you’re a professional or a team interested in participating in the course to further trans inclusion at work, please reach out at emil@initforchange.com.
What to expect?
Four collaborative 90-minute sessions held online, full of discussions, exercises, presentations, digging deep and opening up.
Session 1 - History and Present
15:30-17:00 CET
28th May, Wednesday
We will dig into the various realities of this thing we call gender and biological sex. We will explore how we got where we are today and how it impacts all our lives, trans or otherwise.
Session 2 - Facts and Politics
15:30-17:00 CET
4th June, Wednesday
We will dissect parts of the current western political discourse on transgender people and examine how the facts may or may not support current policy-making in bathroom use, gender-affirming care for adults and children and trans people in sports.
Session 3 - Means and Ends
15:30-17:00 CET
11th June, Wednesday
In this session, we will ask the larger questions of how these politics interconnect with other forms of marginalisation and discrimination. We will also explore the impact of current directions in the narrative on various groups of people apart from transgender people.
Session 4 - Conversations and Futures
15:30-17:00 CET
18th June, Wednesday
A session dedicated to looking at real-life examples of anti-trans discourse. We will do discussion exercises based on the knowledge we’ve built in the previous sessions.
In the last half hour, we direct our gaze to the many potential futures of gender, exploring how we might imagine a gender-liberated society and what that may mean for all of us living in it.
What previous participants are saying…..
Mary Waweru, Founder & CEO at Crest Impact
“One may think some things to be obvious but once you start listening, you realise how much unlearning we all have to do first to even think we are near being actively inclusive people.
I do not think gender inclusion topics can be covered in a few days but I hope we can at least start somewhere. Let us start here.”
Mari Järvinen, Founder & Organizational Psychologist at Profounder
“There were so many stories, and historical connections I had never even considered! Thank you!”
participant safety
As you have seen by now, we will be digging into some deeply upsetting realities of discrimination and violence not only against transgender people, but other marginalised groups as well. It’s important that we can do this work, trusting each other along the way. We will define the principles of the space together at the beginning with a focus on support and safety.
As part of the safety considerations, the cohort size is limited to 12 participants.
about me
I’m a white Hungarian transgender man living in Denmark. The topics I discuss in this course are inevitably filtered through my specific experiences to some degree. However, that doesn’t mean that I shy away from addressing the racist implications and colonial history of our concepts of gender and biological sex. My approach to this topic is deeply informed by my forever ongoing learning about colonialism and coloniality, and while my aim is to provide a nuanced and valuable dive into this topic, I should not be anyone’s sole source on trans advocacy.
This course is an extended version of the first Gender Universe session I gave in early 2024. Thanks to the feedback and questions of the wonderful participants of this first iteration, I was able to grow this course into something more ambitious and much more extensive.
I also want to grab this opportunity to highlight Kitenda Taibu Ssejunde, a dear acquaintance of mine who is a member of an LGBTQ+ refugee community currently residing in South Sudan. I’m donating 10% of my income from this course to support her and her found family in their daily expenses for food, shelter, clothing, toys, medicine etc. If you’d like to contribute to her cause directly as well, please check out this fundraiser project.
pricing
This four-part course is offered at the price of 6500 DKK (incl. VAT).
Payment plans are available. For more detail, please reach out at emil@initforchange.com.