A Conversation with Vivek Shraya

In honour of Transgender Awareness Week, we invite you to join a powerful conversation with Vivek Shraya, author of ‘People Change’ and ‘The Subtweet.’ Vivek Shraya is a Canadian trans artist of colour whose multidisciplinary work brings together music, literature, visual art, theatre and film.

In Vivek’s best-selling book, I’m Afraid of Men, she explores “how masculinity was imposed on her as a boy and continues to haunt her as a girl—and how we might reimagine gender for the twenty-first century.” This 30-minute keynote will intersect themes from I’m Afraid of Men, give you the chance to participate in a 20 minute Q&A, and will likely end with a song.

Celebrating Femininity

Being forced into masculinity, Vivek has spent most of her life fighting for and reclaiming various parts of her femininity. Using her multi-faceted artwork—poetry, prose and music—Vivek shares her journey to celebrating femininity in herself, her mother, her religious upbringing, and in pop culture, despite her early experiences of misogyny, sexism and homophobia. In addition to inspiring audience members to celebrate their own femininity, this presentation will address the ways we are taught to think about gender and the danger of not recognizing our complicity in the prevalence of misogyny and sexism.

Anytime Vivek speaks on transgender awareness, she chooses to focus on her personal experience rather than speaking for the community.