Olympics okays TS athletes

IOC clears transsexuals for competition
Associated Press
Posted: 18 hours ago
LAUSANNE, Switzerland (AP) – Transsexuals have been cleared to compete in the Olympics for the first time.
Under a proposal approved Monday by the IOC executive board, athletes who have undergone sex-change surgery will be eligible for the Olympics if their new gender has been legally recognized and they have gone through a minimum two-year period of postoperative hormone therapy.
The decision, which covers both male-to-female and female-to-male cases, goes into affect starting with this summer’s Athens Olympics.
The IOC had put off a decision on so-called transgender athletes in February, saying more time was needed to consider all the medical issues.
Some members had been concerned whether male-to-female transsexuals would have physical advantages competing against women.
Men have higher levels of testosterone and greater muscle-to-fat ratio and heart and lung capacity. However, doctors say, testosterone levels and muscle mass drop after hormone therapy and sex-change surgery.
IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies said the situation of transsexuals competing in high-level sports was “rare but becoming more common.”
IOC medical director Patrick Schamasch said no specific sports had been singled out by the ruling.
“Any sport may be touched by this problem,” he said. “Until now, we didn’t have any rules or regulations. We needed to establish some sort of policy.”
Until 1999, the IOC conducted gender verification tests at the Olympics but the screenings were dropped before the 2000 Sydney Games.
One of the best known cases of transsexuals in sports involves Renee Richards, formerly Richard Raskind, who played on the women’s tennis tour in the 1970s.
In March, Australia’s Mianne Bagger became the first transsexual to play in a pro golf tournament.
Michelle Dumaresq, formerly Michael, has competed in mountain bike racing for Canada.
Richards, now a New York opthamologist, was surprised by the IOC decision and was against it. She said decisions on transsexuals should be made on an individual basis.
“Basically, I think they’re making a wrong judgment here, although I would have loved to have that judgment made in my case in 1976,” she said.
“They’re probably looking for trouble down the line. There may be a true transsexual – not someone who’s nuts and wants to make money – who will be a very good champion player, and it will be a young person, let’s say a Jimmy Connors or a Tiger Woods, and then they’ll have an unequal playing field.
“In some sports, the physical superiority of men over women is very significant.”
The article can be found at www.foxsports.com

The latest on Eddie Izzard

www.itv.com/news/641203.html
Izzard to star in his own life story
7.02PM, Sun May 16 2004
Comedian Eddie Izzard is making a feature-length documentary about his life.
Cameras have been following cross-dressing Eddie for the past three years in preparation of the documentary, called Diva 51, which will feature footage from his shows, backstage scenes and interviews with family and friends.
It will explore the subject of his transvestism, which he once described as being like “a lesbian trapped in a man’s body”, and follow his rise to fame in the States culminating in two Emmy awards for his stand-up show and a Tony nomination for his performance in A Day In The Death of Joe Egg.
Robin Williams, Tim Roth and Eric Idle also feature in the documentary, paying tribute to Izzard’s talents. Izzard is currently promoting the film at the Cannes
Film Festival which is scheduled for release in 2005. “There’s an element of my wild and large, rollicking ego about doing it, but I want the film to dig deep,”
he said.

Transgender Veterans

The Transgender Americans Veterans Association recently visited DC and laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
Here’s Phyllis Frye’s report from www.texastriangle.com:

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Cry
TG veterans lay wreath at Tomb of Unknown Soldier
By Phyllis Randolph Frye

We met in D.C. as part of an event sponsored by the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) (www.tavausa.org).
In our group that weekend were over forty veterans who are transgendered, including a WWII TG Vet, a TG Korean Vet and two who had been in the Gulf War. The rest of us were of various ages and had served our nation in uniform between those conflicts. Significantly, not all of us were white and not all of us were male to female. Those attending reflected the diversity of our country and of our current military.
On Saturday morning, May 1, we loaded up at the event hotel onto a chartered bus and were escorted with sirens and flashing lights by a D.C. police car driven by a member of the gay liaison in the police department. It was strictly V.I.T. treatment.
We offloaded at the Vietnam Veterans Wall and spent several hours with other tourists at the Wall, at the Korean Memorial and at the newly opened World War II Memorial.
As we initially began to walk along the Wall, one of the transgender veterans that I was walking behind began to falter. I quickly came up to her and said, “you have someone on this wall.” She said yes, a cousin, and that this was her first time here, and she did not know it would affect her so strongly. Another vet and I took her to get the cousin’s name location. When we found the cousin’s name, it was high up on one of the tallest panels. The Park Ranger set up a ladder and took a rubbing off of the wall. This transgendered veteran began to sob, and I held her close for several minutes.
I have been to the Wall six times now, and it is always a powerful experience.
We went to the Korean Memorial and to the World War II Memorial. While at WWII, we sat to rest and a woman approached us, saying that she and her husband had met some in our group and were curious as to the name of our group. We gave them the full story. and they sat down to visit and to learn. They were very proud of our coming that day and said they wanted to attend the placing of our wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier scheduled for 3:05 that afternoon.
Throughout the weekend, our entire TAVA group shared similar stories of ordinary citizens, touring the memorials, and showing respect for our being veterans.
Next we bused to the Iwo Jima Memorial for a short visit and picture taking.
Then we bused to Arlington National Cemetery and walked to the Tomb of the Unknown Solder. If there was ever an appropriate place for transgender veterans to be, it was here. For it is truly unknown as to just how many we are.
We were asked that question by people throughout the day. My answer was ‘many.’ When you think of it, what more masculine occupation would an emerging FTM want to try than the military? Indeed there are documented stories of FTM folks serving and fighting in the American Revolution and the Civil War. And for an MTF who is doing everything possible to deny or trying to kill-off the feminine impulse, what better way to try. That is why so many of us MTFs are Eagle Scouts and veterans as well as police officers, firefighters and paramedics. Yes, lots of us.
We watched a Changing of the Guard (twice each hour on the half-hours) and a Laying of the Wreath (four times each hour at 5, 20, 35 and 50 minutes past the hour) for another group.
We learned later that our wreath had been somehow lost, but members of our Transgender Honor Guard (selected by drawing of names from a hat at the previous night’s reception, sponsored by Mara Keisling’s organization, National Center for Transgender Education, located in D.C.) would have none of that. They went up the chain of command and within five minutes, our wreath was found.
And as it was placed, the Sergeant of the Guard announced in his clear and bold voice, just as he had done for the previous group, ‘This wreath is being placed by the Transgender American Veterans Association.’
I began to cry. Others did too. For those of you who do not know, I began to be an out activist on August 20th of 1974 – almost three decades ago. It is always a struggle to get people to give us the simply human dignity of using our name. I was expecting him to short us by saying TAVA, or tgvets, or something less. But as he stood in his dress blues, at that sacred site and proclaimed the words, ‘This wreath is being placed by the Transgender American Veterans Association,’ I began to cry.
Then there was a salute.
And then there was TAPS.
After the ceremony, I went with two transgender veterans to find the markers of people that were significant to them who were buried there. It was a beautiful thing to do.
That night we had a dinner. Speeches were made. More healing took place. The next morning many of us shared breakfast and then we went our ways to our homes.
As much as I have been through for transgender rights in the past, almost thirty years, this was different. I was changed by it.
I hope that the leaders of TAVA do it again.
I hope that you come with us next time.

Phyllis Randolph Frye is a nationally-acclaimed transgender activist and attorney. She received an Honorable Discharge after serving 1971-72 as 1 LT (Reg.) in the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps in Landstuhl, Germany.
There are pictures of the event online, too, at http://www.sheck.com/gallery2/tavatrip?page=1

'As Nature Made Him'

Gender change victim dies
WINNIPEG – A man who was born a boy but raised as a girl in a famous nurture-versus-nature experiment has died at age 38.
David Reimer, who shared his story about his botched circumcision in the pages of a book and on the Oprah TV show, took his own life last Tuesday.
His mother, Janet Reimer, said she believes her son would still be here today had it not been for the devastating gender study that led to much emotional hardship. “I think he felt he had no options. It just kept building up and building up.”
After the circumcision accident as a toddler, David became the subject of an experiment dubbed the John/Joan case in the ’60s and ’70s. Janet said she still harbours anger toward a Baltimore doctor who convinced her and her husband, Ron, to give female hormones to their son and raise him as a daughter, Brenda.
Kids were cruel to Brenda growing up in Winnipeg.
This gender transformation was widely reported as a success and proof that children are not by nature feminine or masculine but through nurture are socialized to become girls or boys. David’s identical twin brother, Brian, offered researchers a matched control subject.
But when David discovered the truth about his past during his teenage years, he rebelled and resumed his male identity, marrying and becoming a stepfather to three children.
David recently slumped into a depression after losing his job and separating from his wife. He was also still grieving the death of his twin brother two years earlier, their mother said.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1084140608992&call_pageid=968332188774&col=968350116467
Continue reading “'As Nature Made Him'”

Two TV shows this week

On Monday, May 10th, Entertainment Tonight is doing something about crossdressing, although even the participants don’t know exactly what. They stopped by Ina’s Silver Swan to film on May 1st, and also filmed at Fairplay (the transformation salon) in Staten Island. 7:30pm, CBS.
On Wednesday, May 12th, Oprah is doing a show on trans-youth. Here’s the description:
“She’s only 11 years old and wants a sex change. Meet the young girl living as a boy. Then, he’s only 5 years old and wants to be a girl. If this was your son, what would you do? A family torn apart. Meet children who say they were born in the wrong body. “

Mother's Day

‘In the Name of Womanhood and Humanity…’
By Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange.com
May 6, 2004
Last year in this space, I took the occasion of an upcoming Mother’s Day weekend to reprint the 1870 call by American poet and women’s leader Julia Ward Howe for the establishment of the holiday. The response was astonishing; the awareness was nearly nil – even by peace activists – that what is now widely viewed as a sentimental tribute to family was originally a call for women to wage a general strike to end war.
This year – as more and more mothers, in America as well as Iraq, mourn their fallen sons and daughters, lost to the insanity of organized violence – Julia Ward Howe’s call for women to not allow their men to constantly play at war is suddenly back in fashion. Around the country, her original Mother’s Day Proclamation will be the basis this year for parades, remembrances, and other events that try to reclaim the holiday’s original spirit in a year when the United States’ (male-dominated) government talks seriously not of avoiding war, but staying the course on the multiple ones we’re already fighting.
The radical origins of Mother’s Day – as a powerful feminist call against war, penned in the wake of the U.S. Civil War in 1870 – are fully compatible with the universal notion of honoring mothers. Women, even more so now, are the primary sufferers of warfare. In the 20th Century, civilian populations bore 90 percent of war’s casualties around the world; mass and indiscriminate attacks, popularized in WWII by the Holocaust, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Allied firebombings in Japan and Germany, and the rape of Nanjing, are only the most spectacular examples of a phenomenon in which women become the rape and famine victims, the refugees, the forgotten statistics in what are invariably the wars of men.
I admit it; I’ll send my elderly mother flowers this year. She appreciates them. But a greater gift for the world’s mothers still awaits: a day in which the voices of women – now, as then, less inclined to rush to war or bask in its false glory – are an equal part in the foreign policy of countries like the United States. As with so many other aspects of American history – May Day is another – a legacy that is now celebrated around the world is farthest from its original intent in the land of its birth. The generals have written our historical memory, in the Civil War, in most popular narratives of the bloody trail of modernizing “Western Civilization.”
It’s worth remembering that the Civil War, a political division that lasted longer and was considered more intractable than today’s Palestine/Israel conflict or indefinite “War on Terror,” and that killed well over a hundred times more people on American soil than the attacks of September 11, was not unanimously lauded at the time. And that women thought they could do something to prevent such bloodshed in the future.
Here is the original, pre-Hallmark, Mother’s Day Proclamation, penned in Boston by Julia Ward Howe in 1870:
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise all women who have hearts,
Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears
Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We women of one country
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says, “Disarm, Disarm!”
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!
Blood does not wipe out dishonor
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions.
The great and general interests of peace.

Maybe next year.
(Lisa sent me the link from alternet.org – thanks Lisa!)

Rainbow Mountain CD/TG Weekend

I’ll be reading at Rainbow Mountain the weekend of May 21 – 23, and I hope tons of you can come! For those who can’t stay, I’m sure you could come just for the reading (and maybe stay for dinner, or brunch, etc.)
Here’s the description from Rainbow Mountain’s Upcoming Events page:
TG/CD Weekend with a special book reading by Helen Boyd, the author of My Husband Betty (and you can read a review from The Village Voice) plus the Shangri-La-De-Da Show on Friday and Piano Bar with singer/songwriter/musician Michael Ferreri on Saturday. Plus, we’ve got a Fashion Show on the agenda. No, ladies, not just you in your finery this time, but an outside vendor who would like you to see her line. We will be needing models, so contact us if you would like to participate.

Good Article on Intersex

Gender blending
by By Will Evans — Sacramento Bee on 28 April 2004
David Cameron feels neither completely male nor female. Born with male genitalia, Cameron began growing breasts during puberty and didn’t sprout chest hair until testosterone treatment kicked in. Instead of the typical male XY chromosomes or the female XX set, Cameron has XXY.
“I feel sort of like a blend,” says Cameron, 56, of San Francisco.
Some researchers say that’s a reasonable conclusion. Humans don’t always clearly divide into male and female categories. Some are born with abnormalities that challenge the very definition of sex. The term for them is intersex. Julia, a schoolteacher from a small town in central California, didn’t want to be identified to protect her daughter. Now 4, the girl has a condition that caused an enlarged clitoris.
Doctors couldn’t tell Julia her baby’s sex until after several days of testing. They first came to her with a box of tissues, announcing, “We have a problem.”
Julia felt hot from head to toe from the shock. She remembers the hospital bracelet that said only “baby” instead of “boy” or “girl.” She cried at the thought of her child’s future challenges. “Oh, what a hard life,” she told her husband.
The concept of intersex that links Cameron and the little girl is too blurry to yield a definition with which everyone agrees. Many people with XXY chromosomes, for example, consider themselves absolutely male and distance themselves from the intersex world.
But prominent academics and activists define intersex as anyone whose sex chromosomes, external genitalia or internal reproductive system is not considered standard for male or female.
Peter Trinkl, a computer specialist in Berkeley, doesn’t really know how he looked at birth. All he has to work with are his genital scars, evidence of surgery. His parents didn’t tell him much. In school, he was beaten up and called an alien.
Trinkl, 51, considers himself a heterosexual male, but dating brings up difficult issues, and he hasn’t tried for 20 years.
“If I’m a man or a woman, I don’t want to get too much into that,” he says.
Only recently did Trinkl summon the courage, he says, to research the intersex community and hunt for his medical records.
Some infants are born with ambiguous genitalia while others clearly look male or female and may not find out they are different until they reach puberty. Still others bear a visible difference in anatomy – an enlarged clitoris or a tiny penis – but otherwise can be determined male or female. And some have the standard chromosomes of one sex and the external appearance of the other.
Intersex activists decry the shame and secrecy caging their condition. They urge doctors to avoid cosmetic genital surgery on intersex infants until the children themselves can decide if they want it. Cameron is helping to organize a public hearing on intersex issues to be held by San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission next month.
Children frequently are born with wide-ranging genetic and physical abnormalities. Intersex conditions just happen to manifest in an area that gets at the very definition of who we are.
What defines a person’s sex – their chromosomes, their appearance or their psyche? What if they don’t match?
How can you assign a sex to a child when you don’t really know? How can you not?
What if you surgically reconstruct a baby to look like one sex and the child grows up to identify as the other? What does gay or straight mean, then?
And when everything from color-coded baby presents on out is sexually segregated, is it possible to grow up as an alternative to male or female?
The mind-boggling, gender-bending conundrum plays out in people’s lives.
Intersex people might make up as much as 2 percent of live births, with between 0.1 percent and 0.2 percent of all infants receiving genital surgery, according to a scientific journal article co-written by Anne Fausto-Sterling, a professor of biology and gender studies at Brown University.
“If you look at this from the bigger philosophical view of, ‘Are there really only two kinds of people in the world – either men or women?’ – then the answer to that clearly is no,” she says.
Human sexuality, instead, can be seen as a spectrum or continuum, she says.
The medical profession has traditionally viewed an intersex birth as a “social emergency,” pushing to assign a child’s sex immediately and perform corrective surgery as soon as possible, says Celia Kaye, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. Doctors want to avoid traumatizing parents and help the child grow up normally, without confusion or ridicule, she says.
Kaye helped create the American Academy of Pediatrics’ policy statement on intersex newborns along these lines in 2000. But the academy might revise its guidelines because of a growing number in the field who question whether surgery and sex assignment should take place so early in life.
A baby with an enlarged clitoris or minuscule penis, depending on one’s perspective, conventionally has been more likely to be determined a female because it’s surgically easier to make that happen, Kaye says. But it’s not clear, she says, whether that child will grow to be a happy, functioning woman. Some activists call it “genital mutilation.”
Sonoma County resident Cheryl Chase, 47, had surgery on her enlarged clitoris, leaving a “big, flat scar.” But she says the biggest harm doctors caused was “the idea that this was shameful,” telling her parents to keep it a secret.
In the early 1990s, Chase, who identifies herself as an intersex lesbian female, confronted doctors, called the press and founded the Intersex Society of North America, creating today’s intersex movement.
Because of pressure from advocates, doctors are now more open with patients and more likely to present parents with options rather than telling them what to do, says Amy Wisniewski, who does intersex research at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Hospital.
Julia, mother of the 4-year-old girl, says one of her daughter’s doctors “bullied” her into making a surgery appointment. Some surgery is necessary when the toddler hits puberty, but decreasing her clitoris is optional and cosmetic.
Because doctors can’t guarantee a post-surgery clitoris will retain the same sexual sensation, Julia worried her consent may deprive her daughter of a vital part of life. Julia cried every day until she finally canceled the surgery.
“We’re going to leave the decision up to her and talk to her and support her when she’s old enough to make that decision,” Julia says over the phone.
How old is that? If you can delay surgery, can you also put off assigning a sex?
The questions build quickly, but most people are stuck at the first one: “What is intersex?” The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Resource Center at the University of California, Davis, held a talk on exactly that as part of its first Intersex Awareness Week earlier this month.
It’s not clear, Wisniewski says, whether rates of homosexuality are higher among intersex people. But because it shares a battle against the closet, the gay community has embraced the intersex populace, with some organizations adding “I” to the alphabet soup of LGBT.
Still, some with sex chromosome variations keep as far away from both communities as possible.
Those with Klinefelter’s syndrome, or XXY, struggle in a world that glorifies a man’s-man masculinity and sexual prowess, mocking androgynous qualities in men as signs of homosexuality. They’re already marked by that extra “female” chromosome and, for some, breast development and smaller genitalia. The last thing many want is to be aligned with the gay community.
Melissa Aylstock of Loomis is clear: Her XXY son is unambiguously male, and most men with Klinefelter’s syndrome don’t consider themselves intersex. Her son’s doctor, Ronald Swerdloff, chief of endocrinology at Harbor UCLA Medical Center, doesn’t consider Klinefelter’s syndrome intersex, either, because it doesn’t produce ambiguous genitalia.
When her son was diagnosed at age 8, Aylstock was “scared to death.” She wrote to Ann Landers, asking that a post-office box address be published for other parents to get in contact. After the letter ran in 1989, Aylstock received 1,000 letters and hundreds of dollars to start an organization. She founded Klinefelter Syndrome and Associates in Roseville.
Testosterone treatment is the norm for Aylstock’s son, now 23. In the school gym, students asked about his patch. He told them it was for nicotine addiction. “Mind you, we’re Mormon,” says his mother. “That just cracks me up. So he handled it.”
The son declined to talk about his condition in the context of the intersex community.
“So many guys are trying to be just normal,” says Robert Grace of Sonora, who found out at 39 he has XXY chromosomes. When he told people, they thought, “Oh, you’re gay,” he says.
When Grace should have been going through puberty, he watched the other boys whistling at girls and thought, “What jerks.” But he wasn’t gay.
His diagnosis popped up during his premarital physical. “I looked at my (fianc�e) and I said, ‘You don’t have to marry me.’ ”
They did marry and have adopted four children, two of whom also have Klinefelter’s syndrome.
“As a general population, we really would like to be accepted,” says Grace, a “stay-at-home Mr. Mom.” “If I sat next to you, you would have no clue that I was XXY, so why do we need another label?”
Cameron, on the other hand, embraces the other label.
Cameron’s birth certificate and driver’s license declare that “he” is male. With a 6-foot-10 build, a balding head, a deep voice and a beard, Cameron could hardly pass for female yet feels more female than male.
When faced with those annoying little boxes designating “M” or “F” on forms and applications, Cameron might check both or write “intersex.” It somehow seems appropriate that Cameron sometimes goes by the nickname “Iris,” after a favorite flower, the bearded iris.
Cameron got the Klinefelter’s diagnosis at 29 and began testosterone therapy. Where before Cameron had a “really nice smooth body,” now everywhere is hair. “I hate it,” Cameron says. “Quite frankly, I would really like the body I had 27 years ago back.”
Cameron has been with the same male partner for 26 years, though before that Cameron had a girlfriend. Earlier this month, the partner dropped to his knees and presented Cameron a diamond ring.
Cameron wants to wed but first is inquiring with civil rights lawyers because of the radical questions the act could provoke.
After all, would it be a standard marriage, a same-sex marriage or something else entirely?
——————————————————————————–
Misused terms add confusion
The term “intersex,” according to advocates and academics, means anyone with sex chromosomes, external genitalia or an internal reproductive system not considered standard for male or female. Here’s what intersex is not.
Hermaphrodite: The medical definition of a true hermaphrodite is someone with both ovarian and testicular tissue. This is rare and only one of various intersex conditions. Many intersex people consider this term offensive.
Homosexual: Some intersex people are gay, some are not. One doesn’t imply the other.
Transgender: This refers to people who are born one sex but identify as the other. Some choose a sex-change operation.
Eunuch: This refers to a castrated male.
——————————————————————————–
Genetic roots of intersex conditions
Intersex conditions vary in their genetic roots and physical manifestations. Here are details of a few conditions.
Androgen insensitivity syndrome: Patients have male chromosomes (XY) but don’t respond to androgens (male sex hormones, including testosterone). They have undescended testes, normal female external genitalia and breast development. Those with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome have ambiguous genitalia.
Gonadal dysgenesis: Patients have XY chromosomes, but their gonads don’t produce androgens. They have female external genitalia. Those with partial gonadal dysgenesis have ambiguous genitalia.
5-alpha-reductase deficiency: Patients have XY chromosomes but can’t produce the sex hormone dihydrotestosterone. They have testes, a penis resembling a clitoris and a scrotum resembling outer labia. They undergo some masculinizing changes during puberty.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia: Patients have female chromosomes (XX) but produce excess androgens. They have ovaries, an enlarged clitoris and fused labia resembling a scrotum.
Klinefelter’s syndrome: Patients have the sex chromosome variation XXY and are sterile. They have male genitalia, sometimes with smaller sex organs, and sometimes develop breasts at puberty.
Turner syndrome: Patients have the chromosome variation of only one X. They have normal female external genitalia but can have other physical abnormalities. Because they don’t have functioning ovaries, puberty doesn’t cause breast development or menstruation.
Source: The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center
——————————————————————————–
Resources
* Bodies Like Ours support group with online forums: www.bodieslikeours.org, (610) 258-7466.
* Intersex Society of North America: www.isna.org.
* Klinefelter Syndrome and Associates: www.genetic.org, (888) 999-9428.
* The Johns Hopkins Children’s Center guide for patients and parents: www.hopkinsmedicine.org/pediatricendocrinology/intersex.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/story/8971622p-9897782c.html

UCLA Doctor on Sex Identity

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-vilain19apr19,1,4766046.story
COMMENTARY
Gender Blender
Intersexual? Transsexual? Male, female aren’t so easy to define
By Eric Vilain, Eric Vilain is chief of medical genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
This was the moment of truth. The ultimate test before the coronation. A deacon would extend his hand below the robe of the future pope and check for the presence of two testicles. Middle Ages legend has it that this rite was started after Joan, an Englishwoman and a cross-dresser, managed to get elected pope in 855 but was discovered two years later because of an ill-timed childbirth.
Will we soon be witnessing such surreal examinations in our city halls? After all, if the Constitution will allow only marriages between a man and a woman, the county clerks had better make sure that they are issuing licenses legally. Patting down the two male organs would ensure an absolute certainty of sex identification. Or would it?
In reality, sex isn’t so straightforward. Let’s take testicles as a defining characteristic of a man. Are individuals with only one testis “real” men? The “two-testicles rule” would disqualify about 3% of male newborns a year � about 4.5 million Americans total. Does one need to produce active sperm or eggs to be considered a man or woman? Adding a fertility criterion would eliminate millions more from both categories.
If conventional wisdom cannot easily define men and women by just a simple look at the private parts, science should help us distinguish between the sexes. Since 1921, we have known that women have two X chromosomes and men an X and a Y chromosome. This is the fundamental genetic distinction between men and women.
But still, it’s been difficult to find clear-cut answers. Olympic Games officials have struggled with the science of “sexing” individuals for many years � often after high-profile cases of gender confusion. In the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, U.S. runner Helen Stephens beat Polish runner Stella Walsh in the 100-meter sprint, winning a gold medal and breaking Walsh’s 1932 record. The Polish press falsely accused Stephens of being a man. Ironically, after Walsh was killed during a 1980 robbery, her autopsy revealed male genitals. Decades later, Erica Schinegger, who won the women’s downhill skiing world title for Austria in 1966, was two years later found to be chromosomally male and, as such, disqualified for the Olympics. Her case forced the International Olympic Committee to require all athletes to take a test counting the number of X chromosomes.
In 1990, scientists learned that a gene called SRY on the Y chromosome is what makes fetuses become boys and not girls. In 1992, the Olympic test was perfected to detect the presence of the SRY gene.
But even that was insufficient. Any genetics expert knows that there are exceptions to the chromosome rules. There are females with a Y chromosome; there are males with no SRY gene. At the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the IOC decided to “refrain from performing gender tests,” conceding that no single test provided a complete answer.
Identifying the gender of intersex and transsexual individuals poses an even more complex challenge. Intersexuality is defined as the presence of “ambiguous genitalia,” making it impossible to tell easily whether the newborn baby is a boy or a girl. It occurs at a frequency of 1 in 4,000 births. Plastic surgery of the genitals is often performed to conform a typical appearance of one sex or the other, and a male or female legal sex is assigned shortly after birth. Many of these children grow up feeling alienated from their legal sex identity and undergo reconstructive surgery as adults to regain their dominant gender identity. If intersex adults change their legal sex, which sex should be considered when they marry?
Although the validity of marriage of an intersex person has not been tried in court, legal challenges to marriages of transsexuals abound. Transsexuals believe that they have been born in the wrong body and often pursue a difficult and painful process of surgical reassignment. But courts often don’t recognize the change of sex and invalidate spousal rights of transsexuals. In the 1999 landmark case of Littleton vs. Prange, a male-to-female transsexual was denied the right to sue under a wrongful death statute for the death of her husband. The Texas Court of Appeals referred to sex provided by “our creator” as opposed to sex created by physicians and rejected “man-made” sexual organs.
Sex should be easily definable, but it’s not. Our gender identity � our profound sense of being male or female � is independent from our anatomy. A constitutional amendment authorizing marriages only between men and women would not only discriminate against millions of Americans who do not fit easily in the mold of each category, but would simply be flawed and contrary to basic biological realities.

The Gwen Araujo Memorial Fund for Transgender Education

Murder of Gwen Araujo Spurs Philanthropic Fund
Contact: Julie Dorf
Director of Philanthropic Services
415-398-2333 ext. 103 Date: March 8, 2004
For Immediate Release
SAN FRANCISCO – With the Gwen Araujo murder trial set to begin on March 15, Gwen’s family, community activists, and Horizons Foundation have joined forces to create the Gwen Araujo Memorial Fund for Transgender Education. This fund will make small grants to school programs that promote understanding of transgender people and issues among youth.
Gwen’s mother, Sylvia Guerrero, said, “I am so committed to ensuring that what happened to my daughter does not happen to anyone else. The hatred of others because they are different must stop, and this fund will help break the cycle of ignorance and violence – with kids in their schools and with their parents.”
Horizons Foundation is a philanthropic social justice organization that has been serving the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community throughout the Bay Area for more than 20 years. “As a community foundation, Horizons has a special responsibility to pull together all LGBT people in the Bay Area, through a vehicle such as this fund, to help end the kind of violence and hatred that led to Gwen’s death,” said Roger Doughty, Executive Director of Horizons Foundation. “We are proud to be the home of the fund and to work closely with Gwen’s family and other members of our community to have a real impact on youth.”
The Gwen Araujo Memorial Fund for Transgender Education will be advised by a group of transgender and education experts, and will accept donations from the community on-line via the Horizons Foundation website and through the mail. Horizons encourages other community organizations, youth advocates, and communities of faith to consider supporting this fund.
For more information and press photos, see www.horizonsfoundation.org
Horizons Foundation; 870 Market, Suite 728; San Francisco, CA 94102
Telephone 415.398.2333; Fax 415.398.4783; info@horizonsfoundation.org
Horizons Foundation is a social justice philanthropic organization serving the entire spectrum of LGBT communities. To fulfill this mission, Horizons creates strong organizations meeting the needs, advancing the rights, and celebrating the lives of LGBT people and communities; generates a diverse group of informed, generous supporters giving time, energy, and resources to the LGBT community; and educates the public about the nature and impacts of homophobia.