TRANS-LATE
[tranz-leyt] -noun
Translate Gender is a collective-based consensus-run nonprofit organization that works to generate community accountability for individuals to determine their own genders and gender expressions.
Translate provides workshops, consultation, mediation, and facilitation focused on gender oppression and concerns specific to trans and/or gender non-conforming individuals.
For more information on Translate, visit our website .
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See our curriculum for sample workshops and our project initiatives.
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TRANSLATE COLLECTIVE MEMBERS :
Lani is a queer, bbq-loving, displaced Miamian/resident of Northampton, MA. Lani is a board member of the Pro-Choice Public Education Project, based in New York, and is on their Young Women's Leadership Council. She most recently coordinated the Community Coalition for Teens 17th annual youth conference Spark Thought, Create Change! in Orange, MA. From 2006-2007, she was the Student Conference Coordinator for the Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) Program's annual conference "From Abortion Rights to Social Justice: Building the Movement for Reproductive Freedom" and continues to work for CLPP in program support. On Friday mornings, Lani hangs out with the 2-year old members of the Prison Birth Project. Occasionally, Lani spends time at Hampshire College where she hopes to get a degree. Lani is a Translate Trainer and a Translate Collective Member.
Sarrin List graduated from Smith College in 2002 with a degree in Anthropology and Film and has completed graduate work at Massachusetts College of Art. Sarrin organizes residents in Boston around private and public industry land development projects. Sarrin is a Translate Trainer and a Translate Collective Member. Currently, one of Sarrin's objectives with Translate is to build working policy and language that simultaneously respects and upholds women's spaces/colleges, and that also recognizes the fluidity of gender of the inhabitants of those spaces and of all identified women. Another of Sarrin's objectives is to examine gender oppression in relation to larger societal systems of privilege, acknowledging other forms of oppression.
Shannon Sennott is a co-founder of Translate Gender, Inc., a Translate Trainer, and a Translate Collective Member. Shannon graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1998 with a B.A. in liberal arts, concentrations in creative non-fiction writing, psychology and philosophy. She has a Masters in clinical social work from Smith School for Social Work and is in the process of applying for PhD programs to continue with her academic pursuits. Shannon's current clinical research and therapeutic concentrations are in concerns related to queer, trans, and gender non-conforming individuals and their families and partners. Shannon has been interviewed by The Boston Globe and The New York Times about her work developing educational and experiential group curricula for Translate. Shannon is the co-author of the article "Translating Gender on Women's College Campuses" published in Transgender Tapestry, Issue 114, Spring 2008. She has recently finished an article, "Not just a Tomboy: The double bind theory and Gender Non-Conforming Identity Development", based on the data collected from her masters research thesis at Smith. Shannon is currently working on her first non-fiction book, a collection of multi-media narrative expressions of trans and/or gender non-conforming partnership experiences. To learn more or submit to Shannon's project, please email her .
Hadley Smith , a Translate Collective Member and a Translate Trainer, co-founded Translate Gender Inc. in 2006 with Shannon Sennott and Rebekah Heilman. Hadley graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in history, with a primary focus on postmodern social history and conflict transformation and special attention toward repetition, language, collective memory, and media. Along with speaking on panels surrounding activism, gender and gender expression, Hadley has acted as a consultant for the New York Times article "When Girls Will Be Boys" and they co-authored the article "Translating Gender on Women's College Campuses" in Issue 114 of Transgender Tapestry. Additionally, they've organized and facilitated action sessions focused on alternative organizational structures, existing within and without the nonprofit industrial complex. Hadley's activism stems from an ardent dedication to community accountability.
Tones Smith graduated from Hunter College City University of New York in 2002 with a B.A. in British Literature, a minor in classical mythology, and a strong focus in creative writing. After graduating, his interests and ideas around activism were sparked over the four years he spent working for Blue Moon Fish, a small-scale local fisherman, as a fish monger at the NYC greenmarkets. Ideas and politics around food as connected to body, class and race, as well as the environmental impacts of what we choose to grow, purchase, and consume were the main focuses and concerns of his chosen community which centered on slow and local foods.
Tones spent more then a year volunteering with the New York Aquarium in Brooklyn, NY as an assistant training and caring for seals and sea lions, as well as educating the public around conservation and the distinct role each individual plays in maintaining an ecology that is critical to our survival. While living in Brooklyn he was the bassist of the band Luff. Luff's first album, Blanket Ice, was recorded and released in 2006. In addition, Tones has traveled extensively throughout Southeast Asia, is an avid SCUBA diver, and is currently the guitarist and singer in a new musical project entitled Terrible King.
Tones became involved in Translate in 2007 as a Trainer and Collective Member and has since facilitated and organized numerous workshops and assisted in the making of new curricula. His involvement with Translate provides him with a valuable opportunity to be an activist within his own community and to continue to facilitate awareness and visibility for people who are trans and/or gender non-conforming.
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