It is not clear whether discussants at the TEDx inspired Taboo Conversations in Woodbrook were aware of the US Supreme Court ruling to come down on marriage equality in the United States the following day, but the conversation was not short on relevance to the debate that has since tailed the historic judgment.
In a 5-4 majority ruling, the US Supreme Court mandated on June 26 that all 50 American states be now obligated to observe the legality of same-sex marriage.
Student activist and dramatist, Zeleca Julien, and writer, Tivia Collins, did not initially venture into that arena during the session staged at the Big Black Box show venue but opened a lively discussion on the human sexuality and gender rights issues that formed the basis of the US ruling.
It was a well-informed and candid discussion with apologies extended in advance for any likely offence that might be sustained by a packed audience. If anything, restraint from the podium decidedly refrained, for example, from greater elaboration on what Guyana-born Collins described as the "negotiating of (social) spaces" as a gay person in T&T.
"People have to determine and decide which space is safe and which spaces are not safe," she said.
Such use of euphemism was not equally matched by Julien's own account of being first described early in life as a "shim," then later as a "zammy."
She said that only a month before the talk in Chaguanas, she had been involved in a fist fight after not backing down from an open insult on the street.
"How I grew up, I always had to be a man in my family," she said. "I worked from small, I hustled, I kicked my father out when he was acting like an idiot."
According to Julien, who said she came from a Spiritual Baptist and Rastafarian background, the hardest part about "coming out" was telling her family about it.
"Once my family knew I was a lesbian, I didn't care if anybody else knew."
Collins spoke of her "coming out" and the concession by her mother, who was slow to any sign of approval ("don't turn a man," she once said) that if she ever got married to a woman "I would be at the wedding."
She was however warned against making this publicly known, since "prostitutes don't necessarily let people know they are prostitutes."
The popular young Guyanese dramatist said when she first moved to Trinidad as a student she was under the impression that T&T was a much more accommodating place for members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community but encountered more difficult terrain than expected.
She said she found refuge on the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies.
Few in the audience would have generally been shocked by anything described by the hosts as an "off the record conversation now put on the record."
It would perhaps not have been until screening of US paediatric endocrinologist Norman Spack's TEDx 2013 talk on helping transgender teens "become who they want to be" that the tone of the evening's proceedings turned toward the more thought-provoking distinctions involving sex, sexual orientation and gender from the standpoint of science and medicine.
Spack's main thesis is that transgender children can be spared the trauma of problematic puberty, sometimes leading to depression and suicide, through hormonal therapy and surgery–a process described by some as "gender reassignment" at ages as young as ten or 12.
His views have been a lightning rod for detractors who, among other things, point to the fact that such interventions might be irreversible and lead to the very emotional trauma being addressed at the start.
One Black Box audience member, who took the stage during the proceedings, appeared to pick up on the discussion with the view that children are often forced into stereotypical male/female roles from an early age and suffer emotional harm in the process.
Why should boys, the discussant argued, be forced to play with boy toys and girls with girl toys?
There was also a participant who said that as someone who suffered from a bipolar disorder she too had experienced the distress of having to "come out" to friends and colleagues about her condition.
She advised against blanket disclosure and said it should be a selective process since many people would not understand.
Taboo Conversations provided a stimulating introduction to this year's edition of TEDx talks on October 14 under the banner of "Off the Record."
According to organisers, the event which is now in its fifth year will bring "off stage conversations onto our stage."
Taboo Conversations signalled an intention to be frank, open and on the record. (see Page B10)