Presenter biographies will be linked below as they become available. Final program subject to change.
On June 25th, 2015 Jennicet Gutiérrez interrupted President Barack Obama’s White House Pride Reception. Gutiérrez demanded immediate release of all transgender detainees. Her protest comes to represent the conflict between the respectability politics of gay marriage and the biopolitics of detention. At the same time, incidences of HIV keep rising among young and elderly, African-American young men and transgender folks. However, the publicity for PreP (truvada one a day regimen as prevention from HIV) promises a break from HIV infection in hopes for a safer sexually active life. PreP promises a potential future that is free from the fear of HIV related illness & death. This latest stride in HIV/AIDS public research, cloaked in the language of prevention, covers over the racial and class disparities involved in its lack of access by communities of color. This roundtable will argue that the gay marriage movement signifies a neoliberal shift within LGBTQ politics, works to center a sanitized vision of life, ultimately rendering certain bodies as abject, relegated to torture and death within the present day United States.
Debanuj DasGupta: “Toward Queer Libertarianism” (full abstract)
Nicholas Flores: “The Racial Politics of PreP” (full abstract)
Pooja Gehi: “National Security and Transgender Detention” (full abstract)
Jaime Grant: “Mapping Desire/Mapping New Spaces for Sexual Liberation” (full abstract)
Jennicet Gutiérrez
Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement
Jennicet Gutiérrez is one of the lead organizers with Familia:TQLM. She has been on the forefront of several direct actions that highlight the tortures faced by transgender detainees. Jennicet is popularly known through her direct action protest at the White House where she interrupted President Barack Obama in order to demand immediate release of all transgender detainees. Jennicet has received several national awards and is currently co-organizing a hunger strike in front of the Santa-Ana detention center in Southern California. Jennicet will speak about the conditions faced by transgender detainees within detention centers and the potentials for a radical transgender & immigrant rights politics.