28th First Event to take place Jan. 16-20

Long Island activist Juli Owens, keynote speaker for the 28th annual First Event conference, said she plans to talk about the choices that transgender people are forced to make to balance their transgender identity and the need to survive in an often hostile world. Owens speaks from experience; she is openly transgender, but in some parts of her life she presents herself as male, her biological gender, and in other parts she presents herself as female. First Event, organized by the Tiffany Club, is one of the largest transgender conferences in the country, and it runs from Jan. 16-20 at the Boston Marriott Peabody.

"From a definition standpoint I'm called bi-gendered, which means I have two separate lives running at the same time," said Owens, who has been a First Event regular since 2003. "There's a work and family life I carry on in male mode if you will, and there's the work I carry out as an activist and an advocate that I carry out in my Juli life. ... One of my choices was I'll continue to live this double life until I don't have to anymore."

Owens, who has worked as a manufacturing manager for 30 years, said that presenting herself as male at work has allowed her to maintain a rewarding career and to put her daughter through college. But when she is off the clock she has a second life as a transgender activist, working as co-chair of Gay and Lesbian Democrats of Suffolk County and working with a number of transgender support and advocacy groups in the Long Island area.

As part of her activist life Owens has worked to increase awareness about transgender issues within Long Island's gay and lesbian community. She said she began that work by going to LGBT meetings and events, and before long she found herself the go-to trans person within the local activist community. By being active in politics she said she has raised the profile of transgender people in Suffolk County, a relatively conservative part of the state. Earlier this week she attended a swearing-in ceremony for an out lesbian judge for whom Gay and Lesbian Democrats of Suffolk County had actively campaigned.

"We were invited to this swearing in and what they called a robing ceremony. And here I was as Juli, with judges and family and everyone else," said Owens.

While Owens lives as male when at home with her wife and daughter, she said they support the work she does in her activist life as Juli. She said she has been out to her wife for decades, and she told her daughter, now a college sophomore, when she was 13.

"I think [my daughter's] proud of me, to be perfectly honest with you," said Owens.

Rebecca Aine, a member of the Tiffany Club board of directors and one of the organizers of First Event 2008, said the club chose Owens because her story and life experience are likely to resonate with attendees who are cross-dressers or who fall somewhere on the transgender spectrum outside the category of transsexual. In the past much of the conference, both in terms of keynote speakers and workshops, has been geared toward transsexuals, but Aine said transsexuals make up only about 20 percent of attendees. While some of New England's most prominent transgender activists are transsexual, Aine said Owens sends an important message that cross-dressers and other members of the transgender community can also become politically active.

"It's okay also to use your life in a way to do some other things that are honorable for the community as a whole. You don't have to stay behind the closet," said Aine.

The year's First Event, so named because it is the first major transgender event each calendar year, could top all past years in terms of attendance, said Aine. Last year's event drew a crowd of about 600 people, but Aine said this year First Event is on track to bring in 700 attendees. She said the social activities, workshops, and the chance to meet with the country's top gender reassignment surgeons are all major draws for the conference. In addition to the Jan. 19 keynote banquet the event also features a costume ball, a fashion show, a pool party, and a wide range of vendors with products aimed at the trans community.

For many attendees Aine said First Event also represents a safe space to inch out of the closet for the first time. Back in 2006 Aine attended her first First Event, and it marked one of the first times she presented as female in public.

"I got involved with First Event because my therapist recommended I go. She said it was very unhealthy for you to stay in the closet. ... For me First Event represented my first time out of the closet and realizing I wasn't alone," said Aine.

To purchase tickets or for more information on First Event visit www.tcne.org.