 Expect at least parts of this to be uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable right now. I'm uncomfortable a lot of the time. I'm uncomfortable a lot of the time when I'm around cisgender people because there's a little translation in my head. And most of the day we've been talking about gender expansive and gender nonconforming and gender brilliance and all of these things, children. I'm a gender queer adult. So my lens is different. And I want to be conscious of that. I just want to be aware of that. And so I wanted to start by telling you what I got to do on Tuesday just as a reference point. So on Tuesday I went to Fresno State University, Monday and Tuesday, where I was invited to do an event for their diversity week, their diversity kickoff. And the person who had invited me there, who was excited to have invited me there and was like proud of knowing the gender neutral, gender neutral honorific mix, was all sort of like, hey, look at me how good I am. When I asked where the restroom was, pointed me to the women's room. And then when I came back, told me, you know, we have a gender neutral bathroom, but it's in another room, it's in another building, and just like, I'm sorry about that, but like we have one. So okay, great, you have one. Okay, sure. But given the faulty circumstance that we're in, that the bathrooms are gendered, go ahead and tell me where all the bathrooms are and I can make the decision. She also mispronounced me on stage. And I had to correct her on stage when I was there for diversity week. So there's that. And then I went to a class visit that the teacher had read aloud the book with all of the students. And if you haven't read the book, the word transgender does come up in it. And in fact, several times, people assume that the main character, Melissa, who is titled on the book cover as George, they wonder, you know, so are you gay? And she continually says, I have no idea who I like. So they have all read the story. I go in, we have like a 20 minute Q&A about what it's like to be a writer and all of the things that kids like to ask questions about. And then as I'm wrapping up, she kind of like says to me, so what's transgender? There's a lot of fails there. Part of me is my fail that I didn't like to find anything when I showed up in the room. But also, a teacher had read aloud that book for 200 pages, and there was no actual confirmation that any content was getting in there. Or there was no intention to it. I don't know, I can't make any sense of it other than that it happened to me three times around the room as I was going and signing pieces of paper for them. And so they asked me if I had any final thoughts before I left, and on my way out the door I explained that transgender is about genderqueer and binary trans people. Actually, I just couldn't even go that far. I had like 30 seconds of transgender is who you like. LGBT is who you are. I said, I didn't mess it up then. Transgender is who you are. LGBT is who you like. And it made sense to them. They were like, oh! They didn't have that really big chunk. And maybe some of them were absent one day. Maybe she's a really bad read aloud reader and they all fell asleep. I don't know, but that's what happened. And so we are all enculturated. We are all tainted. We are all coming from a point of view, including me. And that's why I write for the future. That's why I write kids books is so that the next people have more of a range of seeing what's in the world. So that maybe the next trans folks don't have those same experiences. Would you like to go to the next level of uncomfortable? All right. Well, it's not my fault now, because you told me to do it. So, like, hybrid genders and Prius genders and all of these things that were so cute and we were kind of laughing and that laughter might have been nervous and that laughter might have been like, oh, kids say the darkest things or that laughter might have been like, what's that? I've never experienced it. For me, that laughter was the poke on the welt. And I'm not saying that to shame anyone. I'm saying that so that I don't feel shame about it. I'm saying that so that we can address that. That when we're like, oh my God, these kids have these amazing genders. We're beyond the binary. There's nothing wrong with the binary. There are many people for whom the binary works. Okay, there are many things wrong with the binary. There are many things wrong with how it plays out. There's many things wrong with curiosity and all these things. But there are people who were assigned boy at birth, their boys, they grew up to move in. They feel most of the gender roles and that is a way of being. I don't want to prioritize over all the other ways, but I don't want to think about we have these new, exciting things. Look, even 100 years ago, there were bouncing things. Trans people and gender non-conforming people and gender expansive people, whatever language we're all using because the language we're still developing, so we have different dialects. We've been here for thousands of years. We've been here for all the years. So we're already in the room. Even if we're not in that room, transness is part of the people that exist. It's not something that you're doing for someone else. It's something that you're doing to be part of the world. Yeah. Next thing. I just have three pages. I'm done with the first one already, don't you worry. It's going to get to the fun stuff soon. I'm going to, after I say more things that are like, and again, not shame me, just real, then I'm going to read from the book a little bit and then I'm going to do Q&A until they tell me to get off stage. So we're all coming from a limited view because we all only have our own experiences to draw on. We have books and these things that open our windows and more things, but when we are able to be shocked by what happens to a trans person, when a cis person is able to be shocked about what happens to a trans person, the way they are treated all the way in 2014, that's a sign of privilege that you haven't faced that yourself. That is not a bad thing, but it is a thing to notice. It's a thing to be aware of. It's not a thing to change about yourself. We don't change our privileges. We acknowledge them and make the best use of them we can for the people who don't have them. And the ways that our views are limited say a lot about us and it strikes me. And again, we're all good, we're all good. When someone is looking at gender fluidity in the world and trying to find it in the world and that person can see it in Dick Van Dyke and that person sees it in Gene Kelly and I'm thinking about Marlena Dietrich and Bessie Smith, it's a reminder that we're all coming from points of view. Again, it's not bad, it's not wrong, but we're all limited in what we're seeing and there's people that I can't think of, there's people I've never heard of that were more amazing than any of those people or equally amazing to or amazing in different ways. So here we are at the thing that, if I say one thing that you remember or go away with, it's this. More discomfort. As a trans person myself and I don't, clearly I'm speaking for other people here because I'm up here on stage in some ways, I'm speaking in reference to community, someone else is welcome to disagree with me. Me as a trans person, I do not care if cisgender people understand my experience. I actually don't care. I care that cisgender people respect me and who I am and provide space for me whether or not they understand it because understanding it is very systemic. Understanding it is about the person who's doing the understanding. I already understand me. I don't learn anything when I teach you about me other than I learn that I like to deal with people who have to teach. But I don't, it's not all this way sometimes and when someone is marginalized the lines are just that much wonkier. And the way that I think of it that to me I like a good analogy as faulty as it may be, I don't understand people who drink coffee when tea, people who drink tea when coffee is available. I'm goofing up my own jokes here. Luanne, I'm bombing. Like why would you drink leaf water when you can have coffee? But it's actually not my job to insult coffee. I got my job to insult tea. It's not my job to make fun of the tea drinker. It's my job to go hey, I'm glad you like tea, my roommate has some tea to boil some water. Like why is that so hard? Related for a lot of trans and gender-expansive folks it's not about passing. So that's not the benchmark by passing. I mean someone who was assigned male at birth being recognized as female or someone who was assigned female at birth being recognized as male. For some people that is the goal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not for everyone. And neither one of those are better or worse than the other. Just a little, you know, to add to the puzzle that is today. So what do you do instead of trying to understand people? If you are a cisgender librarian, which I imagine there's at least one or two in the audience. Any librarians in the house? So get books with trans content by trans and gender non-conforming authors into your libraries. There's lots of books here. There's books over there at Laura Bookstore. The land did a great job curating like the latest in what's really out there. And a lot of it is by folks who were within the community. I think I said earlier that I don't always write own voices because we aren't all writing autobiographies, but I do deeply believe in near voices. And to read books from within community are different. They're different. Provide space before there are people. I've heard people say, oh absolutely, we would absolutely have a gender neutral bathroom if someone needed one. Some people understand the absurdity of that, right? Who's going to ask for space if the space isn't welcoming? And the road back from shame is long and you don't get out of it unscathed. So it's real. Amplify other voices, whether you're on social media or you're talking, you know, book talking, make sure that you're talking about near voices and make sure that you're talking about trans authors, gender crew authors, people of color authors. There's a very, very, very limited overlap in the moment in terms of what's been published. It is a dearth. So keep looking, keep demanding. Demand it from publishers. We need these stories. Fun kick starters. We're making our own books. Fun small presses. Start a small press. Talk to Maya. Start a small press. Couple things about language. Things that I have said for years, if not decades until all of a sudden I heard them differently and now I can never unhear them. So every time I hear them, I hear what they are. Identifies as. There are times that this is relevant and useful. There are times that this is an implication of difference. This person identifies as a man. Even if their transness is relevant, there are other ways to say it. This person is a man. If it's relevant to say this person is a transgender man, you can say that. But unless we're all saying I identify as and I've never heard it outside of transgender non-conforming contexts. So there's something there. Why are we saying it that way? Same thing with preferred pronouns. My preferred pronoun is me. They are my pronouns. I don't prefer them. I use them. Another thing I also want to add into the limited, all of us are coming from a limited experience in this and that. I was on a list there about 18 years ago that was called the gender sphere. I like the idea of a sphere as opposed to a spectrum. It's kind of like a three-dimensional web going in all the different ways. It doesn't include time. I like the inclusion of time as well. But these things have history. These things have lots of, it's coming from lots of places. If your pronouns are not important to you, if you actually generally use multiple pronouns, this is one thing I'm not talking about you. You have experiences and you know who you are. If your pronouns don't feel important to you because you've never been mispronounced, please do not say you can call me whatever. Because no one's going to. No one's going to, no one's going to. I might, just to mess with you. But no one's going to do that. In fact, I'm not a big fan of the go-round at the beginning where everyone names their genders and their pronouns because what happens is the people with the weird pronouns stand out. Most of the time when we're in conversation, our pronouns are me and you. And if you need to have a situation, right, like, so I was talking to my friend, Leslie, the other day and what's your, what are your pronouns again? She, oh and she was saying there's this great ice cream place, right? Like that, we can do that. We can adjust to that or we could just say they. Like that's fine. We could just practice that and get more used to it. If you need the lecture on that, I will be providing that at some other point. That class will be available in the spring semester. I'm on the third page and I promise. And this next one is just a thing that I wrote. So to be short, five questions. Who are we talking about? Who is here? Who is organizing? Who is on stage? Who is revered? Thing number 10. This stage today has been almost exclusively white. That doesn't match the audience. That doesn't match your readership. This stage has been almost exclusively cis. That doesn't match your readership. It's enough to give a person tonsillitis. And I really actually do mean that. I'm not like calling someone out for not being here because Lord Esriva is not here today. People who have multiple marginalizations get sick because they're overworn and we overwear them and we depend on them. And there's like two or three of them and if we get them here it'll be all better. But it's not as easy as that. Like that's not the answer to it. It is so much deeper and more complex and a lot of it is with sitting with discomfort. Not trying to fix it immediately but going, wow, it is messed up. A lot of things are messed up. And so what I do is I write books for kids to give them tools to talk about the stuff that's messed up because the fact that they're little doesn't mean that the world's messed up and the fact that they're young and don't have a lot of experiences doesn't mean that they don't notice that things are going on and hiding things from people is... It gives us no preparation for dealing with them. So we have adults who don't know how to deal with stuff. That's real helpful. That'll do well. They won't take over the country and we'll all be fine. So I want to tell you about this weird little vision I like to talk about. I'm going to read from the book and then with whatever time left I want to do Q&A but I just had a lot to say and I just wanted to say all of it. So here's my vision. It's 15 years from now. It is Saturday night. It's like over in the Tenderloin. It's dark, right? Because it's nighttime. It's like two in the morning. Kind of like drizzling, you know, for ambiance. And there's this dude, like dude-ro-dude. He's walking up from the stadium trying to stumble his way home and it's like 2 a.m. and that's how far he's gotten in that time. PBR just like... I see you understand what I'm talking about. I am relying on stereotypes here. And in the other direction, he sees someone who he identifies as a trans woman. This might not be the first trans person he's seen today. In fact, if he was at a ball game, I'd promise you it's not. And who knows that that person is actually a trans woman? But he goes in his like... you know, PBR stupor. That is a trans girl. Or woman, right? Yeah, whatever. I'm enlightened, you know. That's a trans... Just like Melissa. And he keeps walking. And she keeps walking. And nothing happens. And like, right silence giving me goosebumps. It wears me out. I'm done. Sort of transition. I do want to read a couple pages from a book. This is the nearest book to me. I already read it from that one. Just want to start at the beginning just to like, if you haven't read it or just now we need a couple minutes to like loosen up from like the bit of a downer speech someone gave from the beginning. Copyright 2015 by Alex, you know. All rights reserved, published by the librarian audience is the best. Chapter one, secrets. George pulled the silver house key out of the smallest pocket of a large red backpack. Mom had sewed the key in so it wouldn't get lost but the yarn wasn't quite long enough to reach the keyhole if the bag rested on the ground. Instead, George had to steady herself awkwardly on one foot while the backpack rested on her other knee. She wiggled the key until it clicked into place. Stumbling inside, she called out, Hello? No lights were on. Still, George needed to be certain the house was empty. The door of Mom's room was open and the bed sheets were flat. Scott's room was unoccupied as well. Sure that she was alone, George went into the third bedroom, opened the closet door and surveyed the pile of stuffed animals and assorted toys inside. They were undisturbed. Mom complained that George hadn't played with any of the toys in years and said they should be donated to needy families. But George knew they were needed here to guard her most prized and secret collection. Fishing beneath the teddy bears and fluffy bunnies, George felt for a flat denim bag. Once she had it in hand, she ran to the bathroom, shut the door and turned the lock. Clutching the bag in tightly wrapped arms, she hid to the ground. As she tipped the denim bag on its side, the silky slippery pages of a dozen magazines fell out onto the tiled bathroom floor. Covers promised how to have perfect skin, twelve fresh summer haircuts, how to tell her how do you like him, and wild winter wardrobes. George was only a few years younger than the girls smiling at her from the glossy pages. She thought of them as her friends. George picked up an issue from last April that she had looked through countless times before. She browsed the busy pages with a crisp flip-flip-flip that stirred up the faint smell of paper. She paused on a photo of four girls at the beach that modeled swimsuits in a line, each striking a pose. A guide on the right-hand side of the page recommended various styles based on body type. The bodies looked the same to George. They were all girls' bodies. On the next page, two girls sat laughing on a blanket, their arms around each other's shoulders. One wore a striped bikini, the other wore a polka dot one piece with cutouts at the hips. If George were there, she would fit right in, giggling and linking her arms in theirs. She would wear a bright pink bikini and she would have long hair that her new friends would love to braid. They would ask her name and she would tell them, my name is Melissa. Questions? Yeah. I'm all about it. I think you may have sparked some discussion. Either that or I scared them all away. They're like, where's the door? Tirely possible as well. Can you talk a little bit more about what you mean by near voices? So there's a, thank you. Own voices is a hashtag or a term that's been coming into popularity within Children's Blood especially, talking about the fact that the person who is writing is someone who is writing from within culture, someone who is part of that culture is best fit to write of that culture or of that group or of that disability or whatever it is. But then there's the critique that I'm not writing my own voice. None of us are, we're not writing autobiographies. And in fact a lot of folks who are marginalized, people of color and stuff, their books get seen as autobiographical. Just by virtue of the fact that it's a brown girl writing about another brown girl, they must be the same brown girl. And for me, I am not like Melissa because she's binary. I am non-binary. And she knows what trans is at 10. I didn't come across the language until I was 19. And I'm also not a trans woman, right? So this is not my own voice. But it's a near voice because I'm in community. And I have trans friends and I have trans women friends and I'm connected within it. Yeah, it was so cool to hear you speak and I just wanted to say that I felt more and more comfortable the more that you spoke and so I just want to invite that feeling in as well to let it expand. Thanks, Maya. I really like the... I'm sorry, I really like the five questions that you asked. I thought they were very pared down and focused and important, so thank you. I've been wondering about different authors' reactions to sensitivity readers and whether you... I don't know. Just some reflections on that. I can see a lot of different perspectives on it and... I'm not asking for one answer, I'm just asking for thoughts. Oh, I can give thoughts. I can give thoughts all day. So a sensitivity reader, again, is a new term but not a new concept called betting in the past. It's the notion of... It's gaining traction in children's literature now. It's the notion of having someone within community read that book if it is not own voices, if it is not near voices, or in the ways in which it is not own voices or near voices. I used four deaf black ASL using Californian sensitivity readers for my second book. I absolutely believe in them. Their job is not to correct my book. Their job is not to put a stamp of approval on my book. Their job is not to do my research. We, Scholastic, and Scholastic did pay them, to read through and find tropes that I might not know are tropes, because I don't leave that experience. To find language that is problematic. There were points where the person was just like, that's not how you describe that sign. That's not visually what happens in that sign. So it's about getting someone on the inside to see where the problems might be that you might want to fix. But it's not about saying the book is right or wrong. And it is not a panacea, but it's also critical. Yes. Yes. I have read books written by cisgender people that have not been vetted. And there's some blight and stuff in there that anyone would have caught. I'm for a couple more questions. Thanks. I acknowledge I've spoken a lot, but I just wanted to follow up on that question. Can I ask, did you specifically request for sensitivity readers for your book? Or was that something Scholastic already provided? For the first book I did not have paid sensitivity readers. All of it was my friends and using lived experience. But for the second book I approached Scholastic and I said yes, we were planning on that. So we were both on page for that. Hi, thank you. You said that people who were surprised about violence against transgender or shocked is the phrase you use. That that was a sign of privilege. If you told me that someone had punched a child in the face I would be shocked. And I know that happens. If you told me that someone black had been beaten up I would be shocked. If shock is not a response that one ought to have what's the response? When something terrible is happening or has happened what's the response? That is a valid point. Yeah. I think in one word that you use that I would actually love to pull from is you said surprise. And I think it's the surprise that is the point of privilege. You're right, because we should be shocked. Yeah, no, thank you for pointing that out. What books stand out from your childhood whether for bad or for good? I guess maybe your top two. Like in terms of gender? No, I think overall I'm just very curious. I read a lot of contemporary at the time contemporary, so I was very into Judy Bloom. I do like the the language of a world doll. But I definitely was kind of using a lot. I read a whole lot of stories about divorce at one point. I read all of the polar Danziger books and all that stuff. And it was about me trying to figure out what's in the world. And so I'm going to turn and use that to say imagine if I had had books that had reflected me that I had found before I was 19 and found the word gender queer and a K-born scene book. And imagine what it means for the kids that you work with or work for to find kids that reflect themselves, that reflect the people they know, that reflect the people they're going to know. The question. Take time for yourself. I loved your talk about and your piece about being uncomfortable and how important that is. And I feel like a lot of times I mean it's uncomfortable, right? People shy away from it. So I was wondering about how you use that feeling of uncomfortableness in your activism and how we can use it to reach people where they are meet them where they are and sort of help nudge them on the path towards being a better ally. This is going to sound so hokey. It's going to sound like I'm playing to my audience in the early books. Because I think about a kid who is non-binary and doesn't know how to bring it up to their parents. Doesn't know what their parents are going to think at all about anything. It is so much lower stakes to say hey, I read this book. Like what do you think of this book? And we can have a conversation about this book where like my identity especially me as a kid in a house where I can't leave like I need to keep myself safe but I can see what it would be like to bring up the topic through this book. Because a lot of times adults don't like to talk about uncomfortable stuff. They don't like to talk about stuff when they're not the experts. So like we can make the book have a little bit of that heft to it. That's what I'd say.