Join the LWV of Moscow for a Speaker Series event, The Politics of Raising a Transgender Child - Once a Girl, Always a Boy, on Friday, September 16 at 12:00 p.m. at the 1912 Center's Lecompte Auditorium in Moscow. 

Jo Ivester, LGBTQ and civil rights advocate, will provide a look at what it is like to have a transgender son in a world not quite ready for people like him. Jo describes her son’s experiences going back to early childhood when he first showed signs of being transgender. By sharing these stories, Jo aims to help her audience become more comfortable with transgender individuals and challenges them to recognize the discrimination this community faces. Her current work focuses on addressing the political and legal challenges facing transgender youth and adults. 

Jo was raised in a politically active family. In 1967, when she was ten years old, her father moved their family from Boston, Massachusetts to an all-black town in the Mississippi Delta, where they were drawn into the heart of the civil rights movement. Because of this experience, Jo is committed to advocating for equal rights for all. Her best-selling, award-winning memoir about her family’s time in Mississippi, The Outskirts of Hope (She Writes Press, April 2015), has led to numerous speaking engagements about racial relations. In the last few years, she has broadened her focus to raise awareness about the transgender community, and now serves on the boards of Equality Texas, the Anti-Defamation League of Central Texas, and the Texas chapter of GLSEN. When not involved with family, writing, or social justice, Jo enjoys skiing, walking on the beach, and swing dancing with her husband. She attended classes at Reed College, completed undergraduate work in engineering at MIT, earned an MBA from Stanford, and now lives in Austin, Texas.