"Born this way" has been the standard defense of queer and trans people for decades. It's useful, as far as political slogans and club anthems go, and it's defensible scientifically. But it's also an incomplete script, one that shapes discourse and impacts how we make sense of ourselves and the world.

Judith Butler argued that gender isn't something we have and then express, but something produced by doing it over and over. We become who we are by being them. We are social animals; most of what we know about ourselves we learn from being seen, and from seeing others see us. One audience can make parts of you impossible to understand, another can make them finally legible.

And it's the sum of these parts that shapes what we can understand about our own genders. This is a ninety-minute open discussion about how gender gets built and performed within and around all the rest of what we're made of: body size, race, class, disability and neurotype, sexuality, culture and place.

I'll bring my stories — trying to diet my way out of gender dysphoria, only being able to name that dysphoria after a pandemic isolated me from everyone I'd been performing for, interviewing other trans people about coming out during COVID. You bring your questions, your curiosities, and your own experiences.

You do not need to be trans or have read any gender theory to participate.

BJ Ferguson (he/they ~ él/elle) is an independent journalist and the founder of Well Beings News, which covers LGBTQ+ science, research, and policy for healthcare and wellness professionals. He is a genderqueer trans Canadian who lives in Oaxaca City.