An increasing number of parents are choosing to raise their children gender-neutral. What could happen if the movement grows, and we raise whole generations of people who are not assigned a binary gender at birth? What would be the flow-on effects in health and education, and for our institutions of law and citizenship?
Is it possible to shield a child from ideas of gender entirely? Is altogether abolishing gender actually feasible, or desirable?
Presented in partnership with Melbourne Knowledge Week.
Featuring
Son Vivienne
Son Vivienne is a post-doctoral research fellow at RMIT University, working across digital self-representation, online activism, queer identities, and rhetorical strategies/feminist practices for speaking and listening across difference. Their work on digital storytelling is published as Digital Identity and Everyday Activism: Sharing Private Stories with Networked Publics (Palgrave, 2016).
Bobuq Sayed
Bobuq Sayed is a writer, multidisciplinary artist and community organiser of the Afghan diaspora. They coordinate an LGBTIQA+ mentoring program at Queerspace, they are the 2019 guest editor of Un Magazine and, in a former life, they edited the online and print arms of Archer Magazine, Australia’s leading journal of sex, gender and identity. Their work has appeared in numerous publications and festivals and they are a core member of Embittered Swish, an all trans and non-binary performance collective.
Zac Collins-Widders
Zac Collins-Widders is a proud queer Aboriginal person and has been living in Melbourne for four years. Public servant by day, drag queen by night, they describe their drag aesthetic as ‘the Aboriginal Barbie you never asked for’. Zodiac is the intersectional queen of queens, with interstellar looks.