Speaking and Media

Laura is a prolific author, activist, and public speaker. She has provided over 300 lectures and workshops on transgender and gender nonbinary issues, LGBTQIA+ issues, BDSM/kink, nonmonogamy, and sex work . She has appeared in/at The New York Times; NPR; CNBC; CBS News; ABCNews.com; MSNBC; SiriusXM; Voice of America; the Tribeca Film Festival; them; CSPAN; TedX; and more. Laura has lectured at countless conferences including the World Professional Association for Transgender Health; the United States Professional Association for Transgender Health; The Philadelphia Trans Wellness Conference; the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists; Psychotherapy Networker; AltSex; the UCSF Trans Health Summit; the American Sociological Association; the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health; the NYC Law Department; the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene; the New York State Society of Clinical Social Workers; Columbia University; Brown University; Sarah Lawrence College; Vanderbilt University; the Mount Sinai School of Medicine; the NYU School of Social Work, the Weill-Cornell Medical College; the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; and countless more events.

Surviving Transphobia: Transgender and Nonbinary Experts on Endurance

Jessica Kingsley Publishers, September October 2023.

An anthology of transgender and gender nonbinary leaders and role models writing on their own experiences of transphobia, their suffering, and strategies for endurance so that members of the community can grow from understanding the private lives and struggles of those in the public eye. These authors also share their reflections on the current climate of politicized, weaponized transphobia.

Recent years have been agonizing, most especially for those of us who might be role models.  After each new assault on trans lives, we model confidence when we are equally traumatized ourselves, we assert our community’s ability to thrive when we are sometimes just as uncertain as our audiences.  How do we balance our internal distresses with our visibility to the public eye?  How do we demonstrate strength each time there is a new anti-trans proclamation?  How do we persevere in our own lives?  And how can we use our stories to teach endurance to others trans and gender nonbinary themselves?  

This book will be an essential record for the future and vital tool to aid a community deeply wounded.  I conceive it as: “Here is a window into the lives of those of us you may see every day… if we can survive, so can you.”