This Is HOW engages in several efforts throughout the year to provide workshops and seminars to the general community, both Trans and Cis, that seek to further understanding of Trans people, their lives, and their needs.

The workshops are open to the general public, with a donation request to attend of 10.00 per person.

Each workshop or seminar comes with a workbook that allows the participants to carry with them what they learn and improve their ability to understand themselves, reconnect with themselves and other, and to find a sense of peace in a world that often seems hostile.

Current Workshops and Seminars

TransHistory

An overview of signficant developments and historical persons, places, events, and ideas that shape and form the knowledge of the lives of Trans people today, focusing on 1850 to the present.  Typically a two full day event, a four session half day event, this event includes food and  beverages and is updated frequently to reflect recent information and developments.

TransFeminism

An exploration of the intersection and ideas behind feminism as it involves trans people.  This is not the “man hating” kind of feminism, this explores the nature of what it means to be a woman or a man or someone in between, and how feminism relates to it and it relates to feminism.

TransHealth

One of our most popular workshops, this one explores the various aspects of what it means to be healthy, and what particular needs of trans people are involved.  This workshop ncorporates our standalone Self care, Informed Consent, Negotiating Healthcare systems, STD and safe sex approaches, self harm reduction, boundaries, relationships, and intimacy courseware approaches into a weekend long retreat that includes food and beverages.

Know Thyself

One of the keys to a successful life, and a princole asoect to reconnecting with one’s self and others, is knowing one’s self.  This series of courses explores aspects of one’s personal self, the ways in which you involve the wider world, yur own ideas about things and how they are.  A key principle for thousands of years, this workshop incorporates aspects of personality types, values and ethics, Boundaries, Decision Making, Agency, and Self Awareness.

Entrepreneurship

Relying on materials provided by and occasional support from past and present members of SCORE, TIH helps people to come to understand the sometimes seemingly complex aspects of what it takes to start your own business and the skills related to running that business.  This involves adapting particulars of doing this to challenges and issues that are faced by trans people when negotiating systems and determining approaches to starting and running a business.  Participation in this series of workshops emerge with a business plan and the understanding of what it takes to create one and understand one.

Goal Based Living

Having a plan and sticking to it, and making sure that plan and your daily actions lead you towards success and happiness.  This is what Goal based living is about, and in this seminar we talk about how to focus your energies over the short, medium, and long term in order to get what you seek out of life without being hemmed in by the boxes we create for ourselves and the forces that surround us.

Relationships & Intimacy

Trans folk often have many challenges to overcome in relationships, and their partners often have many questions and challenges to face as well.  Here we explore all the aspects of what it means to be in a relationship — from lovers to friends to family — and aspects of intimacy, from disclosure to stealth, from sex to abstinence, from personal boundaries to private self talk

Values & Principles

Exploration of what Values and Principles are, what each individual’s values and principles mean to them, and how one finds a center and a way of living that enables them to be authentic, without being condemning or judging.  A workshop unlike any you’ve ever seen, this explores ways of creating a personal value system while examining historic and traditional values system that are intertwined within the overall culture.

Personal Agency & Self Care

A key part of what TIH seeks to help people understand, Personal Agency is a core feature of our efforts, and it one of the three things that our HOW It Is system is built on. Here we look at what it means in a longer form approach and with food and beverages.

Drag & performance

Drag & Performance are not part of Trans, but Trans are often part of Drag and performance. Learn what this means, and also learn what is involved in becoming a Drag Performer and how nearly every stereotype you know about them is not only wrong, it’s very wrong.

Understanding Gender

Gender, as approached by TIH, is both more complex and also simpler than people often realize, especially in the often semantic arguments one encounters online.  In this workshop, we explore what it means, and how it impacts people well outside the trans community, and what it means to change the way Gender is ingrained in our society, as well as how this affects and often harms children.

Understanding Trans

Our version of a Trans 101.

Cultural Competency

What is Trans? What is Gender? What does it mean to ask a trans person if they fall into the area of MSM for outreach?  What is “right”, what is “wrong”, and how can I help to speak out and understand Trans Lives better?  These are just a few of the questions that we answer in our seminar on Cultural Competency, where we focus on key ideas about Trans centric culture.

Negotiating Healthcare Sys

Negotiating the complex maze of healthcare systems is often frustrating and challenging, ans many of the ideas about how this stuff works seem to be hidden from sight.  With the recent approval of the ACA, this course becomes even more important as Trans people learn how to negotiate the challenges of health plans, formularies, and the odds and ends of various options relating to their health care, including surgery,.  Whenever possible, we also bring in one of more surgeons to discuss their particular approaches.

Personal Comportment

Comportment is the basics of “carrying one’s self” — a topic of some interest to some trans people and one of our more popular workshops.  Posture, manners, walk, physical presence, the litany of qualities that are culturally associated with gendered behavior.The seminar version of this workshop includes Voice work, shopping and personal style, personal grooming, self care, and advice from local professionals in the aesthetic arts.

Informed Consent

In accordance with the Standards of Care, V&, This is HOW teaches a workshop that involves coming to understand what Informed Consent really is.  Working to dispel persistent ideas about the power of hormones and related items and what they do while giving current, accurate, and good information, our informed consent class enables us to provide attendees with a certificate that establishes to healthcare providers that they do, indeed, understand the nature and risks of hormones and hormone therapy. This workshop also includes a brief overview of the Standards f Care, and what the various aspects of it mean and why certain decisions were made and the implications of such on Trans lives and the way the interact with their providers.

Registration for Seminars & Workshops

As of July, 2012, many of our Workshops and Seminars are on hold pending the success of our Annual Campaign and the opening of the Arizona Trans Center.

In the interim, whenever a seminar or workshop is offered, it will be available for registration here, through the Events tab above.

Please donate today!