Category: Reports

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #101, Spring 2003.

from GENDER.ORG, Gender Education & Advocacy, Inc.

A Multipurpose Gender Educational Tool developed by Jessica Xavier


Why Use This Model?

Transgendered people are the most stigmatized and misunderstood of the larger sexual minorities (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender). Since gender follows physical sex for most people, transgenderism and even transsexualism are almost impossible to understand by those who are not transgendered themselves. Thus, one of the primary challenges facing gender educators is to place transgendered experience into a context by which it can be readily understood. While transgendered people are most familiar with gender-variant expressions and cross-gender identities, there are many other forms of gender-variance exhibited by all kinds of people?regardless of their social or gender identities. Revealing these other forms of gender-variance will show an audience how common it really is?and thus provide the all-important context for them to understand transgendered people.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #101, Spring 2003.

Making a Transition: A Guided Journey

? Have the participants get comfortable and close their eyes.
? After they have gotten settled, read them the following:

Your imagination is the key instrument in this exercise. We will be taking a journey through your mind?s eye of what life might be like if you were transsexual. You may experience a variety of feelings as you take this tour, but try not to let your feelings distract you from participating in the exercise. The goal is to help you understand some of the feelings and experiences of someone who is transsexual. The specific experiences I am about to guide you through are not universal for all transsexuals, but the general themes are representative.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #101, Spring 2003.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #101, Spring 2003.

By Jamie Hunter, Program Director
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy

NYAGRA has a loose speaker?s bureau of board members, members and allies, but most of its TG 101 trainings are given by staff. I have given nearly two dozen on behalf of the organization. I start with NYAGRA?s basic template and alter it a bit to cater each presentation to the audience. For example, training Positive Health Project staff and Kean University?s Medical Ethics course for postgraduate nurses, the emphasis was much more on health and risk factors. In a Bronx high school, I focused more on understanding the gifts and challenges of differently gendered students and hate crimes in the classroom.

Kay H. Mount and Shirley J. Salmon
Audiology and Speech Pathology Service, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Kansas City, Missouri

The vocal characteristics of a 63-year-old individual who underwent male-to -female sex reassignment surgery were evaluated. Treatment was designed to alter inappropriate male voice characteristics. Speech goals were to (1) encourage use of successively higher pitch levels, and (2) modify tongue carriage to change resonance. After 11 months of therapy, average fundamental frequency for /i, a, u/ vowels changed from 110 to 205 Hz. Also, second formant frequency values changed remarkably for each of these vowels, with the greatest frequency change being 291 Hz for /i/. These acoustic differences could account for the perception of femininity in her posttreatment voice. Maintenance of these acoustic features was found five years posttreatment.

Address correspondence to Kay H. Mount, Ph.D. Audiology and Speech Pathology Service (126), Kansas City VA Medical Center, 4801 Linwood Blvd., Kansas City, MO 64128.

THE JOURNAL

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #99, Fall 2002.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #99, Fall 2002.

by Diane Dale
On Saturday May 4, two dozen transgender principals and activists from all over the U.S. met in Atlanta to begin the planning of what promises to be a seminal event in the history of our transgender movement?The March For Gender Rights.

JOAN ACKER
University of Oregon and Arbetslivscentrum, Stockholm

In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the common sense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work. Abstract jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in organizational thinking, assume a disembodied and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodied organizational structures and work relations is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies, which, at least partly, are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Presented at the American Sociological Association Annual Meetings, Chicago, August 1987. I wish to thank Judith Lorber, Pat Martin, and Ronnie Steinberg who contributed a great deal to this article through their careful and insightful comments and suggestions. Conversations with Harriet Holler, Carole Paleman, and Dorothy Smith also helped my thinking.

REPRINT REQUESTS: Joan Acker, Department of Sociology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403.