talk – Han Koehle

This weekend I talked briefly about my work exploring the link between psychiatric policy and the eugenics movement as part of a virtual symposium on the legacy of eugenics today. This symposium was livestreamed onto YouTube and remains available here for any who wish to watch. There are also transcripts of talks available here. Please share these links freely to spread awareness about this important subject. This event provides a fantastic overview of the current state of research on eugenics and its links to the present, and highlights the urgent need for greater understanding of eugenics among clinicians, scientists, educators, policymakers, and the general public.

This event had a number of firsts for me. It was my first time connecting with so many experienced scholars and activists focused explicitly on challenging eugenics, my shortest presentation on my anti-eugenic work, and my first time presenting in front of my former thesis advisor. I was so nervous! It’s remarkable how much EASIER it is to put together a competent one-hour lecture than a competent ten-minute talk. There was so much I meant to say and didn’t get to!

At the same time, it was reassuring to notice that there were few surprises in terms of who major players are, and some of the frameworks leveraged by much more experienced scholars in this field were practically word for word things in my own notes. I’d written something the morning of Saturday’s sessions and then heard almost the exact same concept tentatively proposed by one of the other presenters! It was encouraging to feel on the same page with people who have been working in this area for decades, and it gives me a lot more confidence in terms of my analysis.

Attending narrower conferences that are explicitly oriented to challenging the prison industrial complex and the eugenics movement has also meant connecting with spaces where everyone is committed to anti-oppressive work, versus discipline-based conferences where some sessions are anti-oppressive in their commitments and others are overtly racist and carceral in nature.

My work is largely unpaid. Voluntary support from readers and viewers helps me continue to prioritize creating resources that are free to all. You can support my work monthly on Patreon or make a one-time donation via Ko-Fi.

I was so excited to participate in the UCLA Body Liberation Series and I’m even more excited to be able to share links to both my talk and some of the other amazing talks in this series. This talk gave me an opportunity to zoom in on the way gender norms posit implicit duties of nonfatness for people of all genders, and how that works for people approaching navigating gender transition. If you want to read more about my work on antifatness and transition, there will also be a chapter on this part of my work in the forthcoming volume of Advances in Gender Research which should be out in November of this year.

I’m really pleased that UCLA asked me for permission to record my talk and that they’re making these videos available beyond the UCLA community. It’s really important to me to be able to make my work as available as possible, because a lot of people who need access to research and educational materials don’t have the funding to buy access to it.

If you’d like to support my work and help me make things available as widely as possible, share my work with friends and colleagues! You can also support my work financially by making a one-time donation at ko-fi or (brand new!) by joining my Patreon. There’s reward tiers tailored for individual, clinician, and organizational patrons.

Thanks for being here, and I’d love to know what you think of the UCLA talks!

Tag: talk

Talk: Eugenics in California & the World: Race, Class, Gender/Sexuality, & Disability

UCLA: Gender is the Opposite of Fat