For 22 years, the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) has held a yearly conference for transgender people, its allies and the people who treat and help us. The community has come to see the IFGE Conference as a great place to get information on medical issues, political issues, spouse and children’s issues, and presentation issues. People from all over the world gather to share ideas and to network with others in the trans community. The Trinity and Virginia Prince Awards have been given out at these conferences.

For ten of the last 22 years, IFGE has enlisted the assistance of a company known as Trans Events to facilitate the conferences. As time went on, this turned out to not be a very good idea. Trans Events management ruled the conference with an iron fist, causing problems with IFGE’s reputation within the community. Any of the local people who decided to volunteer quickly discovered that the Trans Event management would order them around like personal servants.

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As time went on, the Trans Events management began to strong-arm the IFGE board so they would hold the conference in Philadelphia most of the time, a convenience for Trans Events. Since IFGE has members all over the world, they wanted to have the conference in various cities within the US. Most of the members are Americans. IFGE felt a need to have the conference in places that would make it convenient to different parts of the country during different years. Having the conference in Philadelphia two years out of three did not make it easy for many of the West Coast members.

The other problem IFGE encountered happened to be the hotel Trans Events picked in Philadelphia. This hotel is located a long distance from anything in the city. To get to the historical sites, shopping or restaurants, a person had to take an expensive taxi ride or drive. Being stuck in the hotel did not sit well with the attendees, or the IFGE board.

Stories came out of the conferences from the volunteers that the Trans Events management acted like a task master who penny-pinched every expense so they could make the most profit from the conference, but did not want to help the conference run smoother. At the Tucson Conference in 2008, I asked for a simple item, a wireless mic for the Trinity Awards, but the Trans Events management acted too stingy with the money to ask the hotel to provide us one. They had a horribly harsh attitude that made some of the volunteers cry and angered many attendees. The people in Tucson told IFGE that they didn’t want them to come back as long as Trans Events ran the show.

When it came time for planning the 2009 IFGE Conference, Trans Events had everything set up to return to Philadelphia, but IFGE wanted more variety. The board decided to hold the conference in Washington, DC, to correspond with Lobby Days in April. However, Trans Events threw a monkey wrench in the plans, booking a hotel for the first week in February and telling the board that was all they could get.

The board decided that because of what the people in Tucson told them and all the other things that they had heard and seen over the years, they terminated the contract with Trans Events to run the show themselves. However, they were stuck with the expensive DC hotel in the middle of winter.

Recently, IFGE discovered that Trans Events is indeed putting on a conference at the end of April, in Philadelphia. On the surface, this doesn’t appear to be a bad thing. The more conferences, the better. However, the problem happens to be with what Trans Events did in promoting their event.

Trans Events is promoting this as if they still had a connection with IFGE. They have not indicated that their event is an entirely new conference that has nothing to do with IFGE. In their promotional material, they say they are “back in Philadelphia,” and use photos and promotional items from past IFGE conferences, including the IFGE logo, on their web site. On top of that, they are using IFGE’s mailing list to promote this conference, not telling anyone the entire truth. One doctor signed up for this conference thinking it was for IFGE and became very angry when he found out it wasn’t.

I am highly suspicious on the reason Trans Events negotiated a DC hotel in the wintertime. They stated it was more expensive in April and that they couldn’t find anything. They wanted IFGE to go back to Philadelphia and when they said no, it’s my feeling their management screwed over IFGE so they could still have their Philadelphia conference in April anyway.

There are plenty of open weekends on the calendar to accommodate more trans conferences. However, what Trans Events is doing to promote their event, giving the impression of another IFGE conference, using IFGE’s mailing list and deceiving people in the promotions, is not the right way to go about it. I would hope that people will go to the real IFGE Conference from February 4 to 8, and avoid the Trans Events Conference in April. Don’t be fooled.