South Shore Women’s Alliance Announces ‘Gender 101’ Seminar

MERRICK, NY. — As a county, Nassau is no stranger to discussions of transgender rights. County Executive Bruce Blakeman signed a ban on trans athletes competing at county facilities, Massapequa’s board of education has litigated over its bathroom policy that bars trans students from using facilities that align with their gender identity, and the Bellmore-Merrick school district has been subject to federal scrutiny over an alleged trans athlete’s participation in school sports.

And yet, for the speakers at the upcoming “Gender 101” presentation, hosted by the South Shore Women’s Alliance, there’s crucial information about the lives of transgender individuals that has been missing from much of those discussions. Monday night at the Merrick Golf Course’s clubhouse, they’ll try to dispense some of that information, starting with the fundamental question of what it means to be transgender, and how someone comes to identify as such.

“We are not damaged, we are not deranged, we are not all the things that we're hearing. We're just people who want to live authentically,” presenter Juli Grey-Owens told Patch Wednesday. “One of the things that we [will] go into is why people are transgender. And research has shown that a lot of this is occurring before we're even born, in the fetal process…the reality is that a lot of medical associations recognize this condition as what they call ‘gender incongruence.’ It's just the way we're born. That's just the way we're wired.”

Grey-Owens is a Huntington resident, as well as the founder and executive director of nonprofit “Gender Equality New York.” She said the nonprofit has spent the last seven years working on education, letter-writing and public information campaigns, and advocating in Albany, to get more information out about life as a trans person. The goal, Grey-Owens said, is to break an ‘evil cycle’ of misinformation or a lack of information that makes trans people feel afraid of being themselves.

“There's so much discrimination and violence against our community, [so] most of our community members are afraid to be visible, are afraid to be out, are afraid to let people know who they are,” Grey-Owens said. “What we need to do is make members of our community feel safe, and understand that they should tell their story. They should be out, because the more they come out, the more they tell their story, the more likelihood that normalization's going to occur…For us, it's [about] getting the word out and getting people to understand who we are, and know more about us.”

Also presenting Monday night will be Stacy Brief, a licensed social worker who has worked extensively with LGBTQ+-identifying young people and their families. The South Shore Women’s Alliance has advertised Brief’s presentation as pertaining to, “Mental Health Impact on Transgender Youth.”

In a conversation with Patch Wednesday, Brief said her work as a social worker has taught her a few things; namely, that the things young transgender people need to maintain good mental health are pretty similar to the things everyone needs when they're growing up: support, community and acceptance.

“The needs of our trans youth are not different from anyone else. We all have a biological, automatic need for community, to be amongst others. It's biological, it comes back to our hunting and gathering days where it actually was a risk to your safety to be alone. It’s a tribal need to be amongst others, and to be accepted,” Brief said. “So what we need to provide to our trans youth is not anything that the rest of us don't require ourselves. We put the spotlight onto these young people's needs because their ability to access acceptance, their ability to access community and safety out in the world is limited compared to cisgender folks.”

In some of her case work, Brief said she has seen people whose deep-rooted beliefs and identities make it hard to offer that acceptance to young people in the LGBTQ+ community. It’s a process, the licensed social worker said, that sometimes requires parents and loved ones of LGBTQ+ youth to reframe what it means to “accept” them in the first place.

“Acceptance can mean something different for everyone. I was working just last week with a family, and I was talking with the parents whose religious beliefs were standing in the way of feeling comfortable with the way their young person was navigating relationships,” Brief said. “so we had a conversation around, ‘okay, acceptance for me right now may not mean that I'm inviting my young person to have their significant other over, but acceptance for me can be that I'm still going to provide a place to live and food on my young person's plate, so that my young person who I care about is not unhoused and hungry. And that's the way I can show my care right now. And hopefully, over time, my acceptance might span further than that.’”

When asked what they hope audience members take away from Monday night’s presentation, the speakers both highlighted education. For Grey-Owens, that meant answering as many questions as audience members might have.

“Once I’m finished on Monday night, I'm hoping audience members walk out without any questions at all. It really doesn't matter what it is, within the floor walls of that room that we give the presentation at, they're allowed to ask us anything,” Grey-Owens said. “They may have questions that, if they were to see me at the local grocery store and I'm buying a gallon of milk, I'm not going to answer it in the public. But while I'm doing the training, while I'm at that presentation, they can ask me anything…my feeling is, I'll throw as much as I can at them in whatever they take back is a positive.”

For Brief, the hope is slightly different.

“I hope that folks will be left considering what their own sources of joy are…and feeling a sense of connection and commonality with individuals who they may not see as being similar to them,” Brief said. “This conversation…felt really prominent and important to the women’s alliance in response to the critique of the Bellmore-Merrick School District, and their support of trans youth’s access to sports. And when I think about that activating event, I think about how important it is for all youth, including trans youth, to be able to engage in extracurriculars that bring them joy, that bring them a sense of community, being on a team. Without that, we really are increasing the risk for our trans youth to face mental health challenges, and see suicide. And I do believe that the young people, because I work all the time with teenagers and youth, that their readiness to join in this conversation, their readiness to see beyond the labels that make us see one another as different, is far beyond us. So I want folks to leave considering that many youth are prepared to be with one another and see beyond those labels.”

The presentation will take place at the Merrick Golf Course's clubhouse, starting at 6:30 p.m. Monday.