November 23, 2025 @2pm PT (register here >>)
This session invites participants to reimagine the traditional focus on gender dysphoria and instead center gender euphoria as a pathway toward liberation and wholeness. Moving beyond a deficit-based lens, we will explore frameworks that highlight joy, creativity, and affirmation as essential elements of gender development across the lifespan. Drawing from developmental psychology, community narratives, and lived experience, this conversation challenges pathologizing models and celebrates the expansive, life-affirming potential of authentic gender expression.
Through reflection, dialogue, and shared learning, participants will examine how to foster environments—clinical, educational, familial, and communal—that elicit euphoria, nurture authenticity, and sustain resilience. Together, we will consider what it means to move beyond simply reducing distress to actively cultivating joy as a radical act of gender liberation.
Presenter:
Zak Keith (They/Them) serves as the Program and Data Specialist at The Diversity Center that offers LGBTQ+ services to both Santa Cruz and Monterey County. They lead LGBTQ+ youth programs, community training, and evaluation initiatives that center gender liberation and wellness. They are a PhD candidate in developmental psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, currently hold a masters in developmental psychology, and three bachelor degrees in psychology, sociology, and criminology. Zak integrates community-based research, data storytelling, and creative facilitation to reimagine how gender euphoria can guide healing and growth for all people, and for all ages. Their work bridges research and praxis, blending theory, art, and lived experience to cultivate spaces where authenticity, connection, and joy become the foundations of liberation.
November 23, 2025 @2pm PT (register here >>)
This session invites participants to reimagine the traditional focus on gender dysphoria and instead center gender euphoria as a pathway toward liberation and wholeness. Moving beyond a deficit-based lens, we will explore frameworks that highlight joy, creativity, and affirmation as essential elements of gender development across the lifespan. Drawing from developmental psychology, community narratives, and lived experience, this conversation challenges pathologizing models and celebrates the expansive, life-affirming potential of authentic gender expression.
Through reflection, dialogue, and shared learning, participants will examine how to foster environments—clinical, educational, familial, and communal—that elicit euphoria, nurture authenticity, and sustain resilience. Together, we will consider what it means to move beyond simply reducing distress to actively cultivating joy as a radical act of gender liberation.
Presenter:
Zak Keith (They/Them) serves as the Program and Data Specialist at The Diversity Center that offers LGBTQ+ services to both Santa Cruz and Monterey County. They lead LGBTQ+ youth programs, community training, and evaluation initiatives that center gender liberation and wellness. They are a PhD candidate in developmental psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, currently hold a masters in developmental psychology, and three bachelor degrees in psychology, sociology, and criminology. Zak integrates community-based research, data storytelling, and creative facilitation to reimagine how gender euphoria can guide healing and growth for all people, and for all ages. Their work bridges research and praxis, blending theory, art, and lived experience to cultivate spaces where authenticity, connection, and joy become the foundations of liberation.
