On Sept. 30, Women and Children First presented a book signing and discussion with photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre for their book To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults. The presentation also included a question and answer dialogue with several interviewees from the book, among them Caprice Carthans, Mickey Mahoney, Gloria Allen and Alexis A. Martinez.
Life partners Dugan and Fabbre spent six years chronicling the struggles and joys of growing older in the transgender community within the complex intersections of gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, socioeconomic class and geographic locations.
The authors spoke about the process of finding participants for their project. “We knew there was a lack of representation for older individuals and so many younger trans people have never even seen an older trans person,” said Dugan.
Fabbre added, “What we wanted was to push back a bit that transgender is not a ‘new thing,’ …some younger people think they invented it. Obviously, we’ve had trans people for a long time though it was not called that. We wanted to factor in the language and how that changes with older and younger generations. For some younger people the word ‘queer’ is liberating, but for an older generation it’s very difficult.”