Second Annual Bodies of Knowledge Symposium
Speaker Biographies
Kirk Read lives and works in San Francisco’s Mission district, touring the United States as an author and solo performer. Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap, a memoir about being openly gay in a small Virginia high school. Based on the major components of Kirk Read's youth in the Reagan-era South—Dad: career military, Mom: homemaker, Son: Little League/soccer player, and Baptist youth group member—one would expect a tortured story of a gay teen life. But early on in his life, Read developed a self-confidence and openness that has marked his career as a young queer journalist.
Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, and biologist with a PhD in Biology and Molecular Physics from Columbia University, and she released one of the most groundbreaking works of gender theory in recent years with her 2007 essay collection, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity. This compilation of personal essays reveals the undercurrent of misogyny in some feminist treatments of femininity, a concern shared by many nontrans women around the world. Serano calls this the greatest tactical failure of the women’s movement, and uses her trans-specific viewpoint to revisit and reshape the complex debate over essentialism (we are born feminine/masculine; we are born gay/straight) vs. social constructionism (we are socialized into particular gender roles and sexual orientations by our culture). Serano makes the startling assertion that there may be more to essentialism than most contemporary feminists believe. Based on this theoretical intervention, Serano redresses many of the myths and misconceptions feminists have about transsexual women.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Jennifer Baumgardner is a major figure in the contemporary women’s movement, having essentially jumpstarted the third wave of feminism with her book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (co-authored with Amy Richards) after leaving hometown Fargo, North Dakota for a job in Manhattan at Ms. Magazine. Her most recent book took a more personal turn and explored her own experiences as a bisexual woman after having a serious relationship with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls.