WASHINGTON – The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, is proud to launch a new speaker series titled Equality Talks.  The inaugural event will feature a reading and discussion with renowned developmental and clinical psychologist Diane Ehrensaft, an expert in the field of gender-nonconforming and transgender children.  Dr. Ehrensaft is the author of Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-nonconforming Children. Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a psychiatrist at the Children’s National Medical Center will also be on hand to answer questions.  The event will be moderated by HRC Family Project Director and professional social worker Ellen Kahn.  The event will be webcast live at www.hrc.org/equalitytalks. Books will be available for sale onsite, through a partnership with Politics & Prose bookstore.

“We are proud to launch our new Equality Talks speaker series with a topic as important as gender-nonconforming and transgender children,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese.  “Equality Talks will take a critical thinking approach to issues important to the LGBT community”

The inaugural event will feature a reading and discussion with Diane Ehrensaft, Ph.D.  Dr. Ehrensaft is a developmental and clinical psychologist, and the Director of Mental Health of the newly formed Child and Adolescent Center in the San Francisco Bay Area.  For the past three decades, Dr. Ehrensaft has been working with and writing about gender-nonconforming children and their families.  In the midst of a sea change in attitudes toward gender and expanding options for gender identities and expression, but with ongoing harm still being done to children who transgress traditional gender norms, Dr. Ehrensaft will talk about the pressing need to re-learn gender and listen carefully to the children who live outside traditional binary gender boxes as they teach us about gender creativity and gender expansiveness and guide us toward the responsibilities we have to construct gender-affirmative environments for all our children--at home, at school, in the community, and in the halls of government.  Calling on both her clinical experiences and personal experiences as a mother of a gender-nonconforming child, Dr. Ehrensaft will present her model of the true gender self and the three-dimensional gender web, to be used as tools in building gender resilience in our children and buttressing gender supports in our communities.

WHAT:           Equality Talk Speaker Series Inaugural Event, featuring Dr. Diane Ehrensaft,  
                       Author of Gender Born, Gender Made: Raising Healthy Gender-nonconforming Children.                          

WHEN:          Monday, April 23, 2012. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. Program begins at 6:30 p.m.  

WHERE:        HRC, 1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW, Washington, DC and webcast live at www.hrc.org/equalitytalks

WHO:             Diane Ehrensaft, Developmental and Clinical Psychologist
                        Edgardo Menvielle, Psychiatrist, Children’s National Medical Center
                        HRC Family Project Director Ellen Kahn
                          

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality. By inspiring and engaging all Americans, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBT citizens and realize a nation that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.