Lost in transgression: clinical understandings of sex, gender, and witches. A clinical and cultural conversation

Monday 5^th May    6:45  to 8:45PM

Tuesday 13^th May  6:45 to 8:15PM

When people transgress social norms - especially around gender, sex, and sexuality - our ability to think clearly and compassionately can falter, both as clinicians and as a society. At its most extreme this loss of perspective has led to the pathologisation, persecution and even murder of individuals simply for existing in ways that do not align with dominant cultural expectations.

Nowhere is this dynamic more apparent than in the areas of race, religion, and—at the heart of this talk—gender, sex, and sexuality.

In this presentation, Abby draws on her own lived experience as a transgender woman, alongside historical and cross-cultural perspectives, to explore how these concepts have been understood and contested. She will invite us to think with more openness, nuance, and curiosity—beyond binaries and beyond fear.

Together, we’ll examine:

·       Concepts of gender identity, gender expression, sex, and sexuality

·       How these are constructed and understood within contemporary Western frameworks and how these compare to alternative understandings

·       The strengths and limits of thinking solely within those frameworks

Through clinical examples and thoughtful reflection Abby will argue that regardless of our personal views or identities, we all have a relationship to gender, sex, and sexuality. These elements shape who we are—as people and as clinicians—and affect every therapeutic relationship we hold.

This talk is especially for those who find themselves in the grey areas of this conversation, who want to understand more and think openly and with curiosity about the complexity, nuance and subjectivity within these topics.