Well, if one job fair weren’t enough for transgender folk, now there’s two. While the Southern Comfort Career Expo focuses on a national theme, the Transgender Career Day in Washington D.C. has a more local flavour and it’s happening on two different days. In the words of the organizers,

The purpose of these events will be to bring together representatives of government agencies, corporations and private businesses with interests in the District together with members of the District’s transgendered community for the expressed purpose of finding jobs and job training opportunities for them.

And what a list of organizers there are. It looks like people are rallying around the concept of getting people jobs. And for those of us in the transgender community this is great news. You can get a job, a new start, a bright future.

So here are the dates for our readers in Washington D.C.:

• August 18th, from 1PM-6PM will be cover topics such as resume writing, interviewing, dressing for job success, and the DC 2000 application.
• September 29th, from 1PM – 5PM will be a job fair with representatives from government, the nonprofit community and corporate employers.

You can get more details on the Washington D.C. Career and Job Fairs by visiting the District of Columbia’s LGBT affairs office at this link HERE.

Fenway Community Health did something similar in Boston in February. You can read about it at this post at Beck’s Cafe here. JobNET Boston led the career part of the Fenway Transgender expo in Boston. So don’t be afraid to contact them here in Boston for some help!

Southern Comfort Conference (SCC) is one of the most important Transgender Conferences in the United States. This year they hope to top 1000 attendees. I’ve had the immense pleasure of meeting some of their organizers such Lola Cola (in person, what a treat!) and CAT (only on the phone, but a delight none-the-less). They are so helpful in fact that both of them were important consultants to First Event 2007. How’s that for being a friend!

Both Lola and CAT are dedicated to making SCC fun, friendly and helpful. And the helpful part is something you don’t hear to much about but they blaze a trail of social justice that every trans-person should take note of and emulate even in some small way.

This year SCC’s innovative approach to helping the transgender community extends to finding a job! The Transgender Career Expo at Southern Comfort Conference. The Career Expo will run from 9:00AM until 4:00PM on Friday, September 14th (closed during lunch). It is an open event sponsored by SCC and The Human Rights Campaign and one need not be registered for the conference to gain value from this function.

The Transgender Career Expo is exemplary on a number of levels, from it being the first of its kind to the type of companies that are exhibiting. Here’s a partial list. Some will have actual HR Recruiting Managers present while others will simply be sending representatives as a show of support and to supply information Its a who’s who of corporate America:

• Alston & Bird LLC
• American Airlines
• Deloitte Ernst & Young
• GLAAD
• Hewlett Packard
• Human Rights Campaign
• Intercontinental Hotel Group
• JPMorganChase
• Lambda Legal
• Microsoft
• NCTE
• New York Life
• NGLCC
• Powell Goldstein LLP
• PriceWaterhouseCoopers
• Sprint / NEXTEL
• The Point Foundation
• The Mosaic Identity
• Turner Broadcasting

How important is the Transgender Career Expo? Let me quote Lola Cola and Kristin Reichman both of SCC:

Please be sure to spread the word to promote and support this extraordinary event. It is critical that we, as a community, step up and create our own place in the world just as these companies have stepped up to the realization that hiring and retaining quality employees is based upon talent and abilities and that being Transgender is irrelevant.

[information courtesy of Lola Cola, Kristin Reichman; Southern Comfort Conference]

Well you know you’ve hit the big time when Harvard falls in line with Transgender Support. Their web page in support of transgender students is well done. You can check out their page by clicking to Harvard’s Transgender Resource Page.

And this is from the university that brought you the controversy on manliness and The New Feminism.

I’ll lift a mug of java to the progress shown I’d say!

Faith in the transgender community is sometimes talked about and sometimes not. But there is an under the surface sense in which many transgender people either struggle with their faith, wondering if they’ve “crossed the line” with God or that they are just fine, that what is happening is a simple issue of genetics and that it’s their response that matters, God is not angry with their gender dilemma. For those who are Jewish though, a new embracing has come.

The Union for Reform Judaism announced on August 7th a major revision to their 10-year old guide on welcoming individuals into the community. They are now including blessings for transgender people in the union’s 500-page resource manual for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender inclusion. The guide includes two blessings authored by Rabbi Elliot Kukla for transitioning genders. You can read the official press release on this announcement by clicking to the Union for Reform Judaism site at this link HERE.

There is some news on the wire on this so here’s some additional resources for you to check out:

• Miami Herald.com coverage of this event
• Something Jewish.com coverage of this announcement

We’ve shared a cup of coffee and conversation together about Christine Daniels here at Beck’s Cafe before. You can catch up with that past talk by skipping back to our May 21st entry about Christine at Beck’s Cafe at this link HERE. But this new article in Alternet, that is fresh on the wire as of August 1st, 2007, is a little different.

Alternet does what alot of other stories have done, covering Gender Identity Disorder and being a Transexual from the medical side and covering some of Ms. Daniels public disclosure. But the author, John Ireland, goes much further in giving an excellent survey history of transexual women in sports, and, the unexamined but very real culture of bigotry that exists in the culture of sport. He goes further to discuss those two areas in the context of Christine’s challenges today as a transexual woman sportswriter. The article is very well written and very informative.

Grab a cup of coffee and jog over to Alternet to read the article at this link HERE.