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TG MD Fired: Transitioning On Job
Contributed by Claire Howell
via IYF Newsletter
December 20, 1998
THE NEW JERSEY TIMES REPORTS
that Dr. Carla Enriquez, a pediatrician, has filed a suit
against West Jersey Health System (WJHS) alleging that they
failed to renew her contract last year because she was
transitioning from male to female. Enriquez, a trustee of
The College of New Jersey since 1984, was 'terminated' on
22 Oct 97. Said her attorney, Lee Fiederer, "We brought the
case under the New Jersey law against discrimination which
protects individuals from discrimination based on sexual
orientation or affectation."
The suit alleges that officials at WJHS were openly
critical of Enriquez throughout her transition, and that
WJHS denied her employment based on their disapproval,
rather than any measure of ability. She began transitioning
in Sep 96. She legally changed her name from Carlos to Carla
and made the change in her physical appearance from male to
female over that winter and the spring of the next year.
The complaint alleges that in 1997 Dr. John Cossa, Vice
President of WJHS, told her to "stop all this and go back
to your previous appearance." After Enriquez refused to
comply with these demands, WJHS took action to deny her
employment. "We have a brilliant doctor, recognized
nationally in her field, who was terminated solely based
on her sexual affectation and orientation," said Fiederer.
Riki Anne Wilchins, GenderPAC Executive Director,
commented on this case on Court TV. She said, "That such
blatant discrimination can happen to a fine doctor emphasizes
the urgent need for employment protection at the local and
state level and especially within the context of ENDA. The
experience of this woman is echoed in the scores of responses
we are receiving from people across the country to our National
Survey on Gender and Sexual Orientation in the Workplace."
Students Protest Transgender Deaths
Contributed by W. Snow
via Associated Press
December 15, 1998
Members and supporters of the Harvard queer community gathered last night
to draw chalk body outlines on footpaths in the Yards, symbolizing
transgendered people slain in hate crimes.
About ten people gathered to
participate in the event, which came in the wake of the Nov. 28 murder of
Rita (originally William) Hester, a transgendered man to woman, stabbed
over 20 times in her Allston apartment. Next to the chalk outlines (which
number about 40), flyers were taped to the ground with the names of
Deborah Forte, Rita Hester, Tyra Hunter, Brandon Teena, Rufus Turner,
Kristen Page and Chanelle Picket. Each were trans-people killed in recent
crimes of hate.
Under the name of the individual killed, the flyers read,
Remembered because of (his/her) gender identity. TransLiberation NOW."
Anna M. Baldwin '00, who borrowed the idea of chalk outlines from the
group Transexual Menace, an international transgender advocacy group, said
she organized the event to give more attention to crimes that go unnoticed
by the media.
"I think that hate crimes against transgendered people have
been generally ignored by the press," Baldwin said. "I felt that Rita
Hester's murder was also given less attention because not only was she
transgendered, she was also African-American and working class, and those
biases also come into play." Ari M. Lipman '00, who helped draw outlines
and tape flyers last night, said the media attention given to Hester paled
in contrast to Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who
was murdered in October.
"The parallel that comes to mind is the huge
public outcry after Matthew Shepard's death versus the virtual silence
after Rita Hester's equally brutal murder," he said. Nikki L. DeBlosi '99,
co-chair of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters'
Alliance (BGLTSA), said that although her organization did not sponsor
last night's event, it advocates for the ransgendered. "I want to reassert
that the BGLTSA thinks it's definitely important to speak against violence
and prejudice against transgendered people, because they are definitely
part of the queer community," she said.
Both DeBlosi and Baldwin said that
some people have used Hester's occupation to justify her murder. "She was
a sex worker, which some people think invited her killing, because of
prejudice against sex workers," Baldwin said. BGLTSA is tabling outside
the Science Center today to raise awareness of Hester's murder.
TG Chosen As St. Paul Deputy Mayor
Contributed by Jodie Miller and Linda Fitzpatrick
via Associated Press
December 15, 1998
Susan Kimberly, a former St. Paul, Minn., city council president and a
transgendered woman, was appointed Monday by St. Paul mayor Norm Coleman
to be the city's deputy mayor effective January 4, the St. Paul Pioneer
Press reported. The appointment surprised many because Coleman has
supported the repeal of human rights protections for gays and lesbians.
Kimberly, who was known as Bob Sylvester before undergoing
sex-reassignment surgery 15 years ago, also worked for Coleman's opponent
in the 1993 campaign. "Liberals believe in handouts and proclamations,"
the Republican mayor said, explaining the appointment. "I believe in
recognizing people for their talent and competency. Susan Kimberly is a
very able and talented public servant. She's smart, she's tough, and she
shares my vision."
Toledo, OH Adopts TG Rights
Contributed by Jodie Miller
via News Planet
December 12, 1998
Months of hard work by activists yielded a unanimous vote by the Ohio
city's council to recognize L/G/B/Ts as human under the law.
The Toledo, Ohio City Council on December 8 unanimously (with one absence)
added sexual orientation as a protected category under the local human
rights law. Transgender people are also protected, since the measure
defines sexual orientation as "real or perceived heterosexuality,
homosexuality, bisexuality, or gender identity." The existing ordinance
made it a first-degree misdemeanor to discriminate in areas of employment,
housing and public accommodations on the basis race, religious creed,
color, national origin, ancestry, sex, handicap, and age. The new
amendment added a section to also prohibit "intimidation" based on any of
the categories, defined as a crime committed against a person or group
because of bias. Mayor Carleton Finkbeiner is expected to sign the bill
into law, which will make Toledo the eleventh Ohio municipality to ban
anti-gay discrimination.
Although the unanimous vote and the unanimous applause that followed it
made passage look easy, it was actually the culmination of months of
groundwork by members of Gays and Lesbians United and others before openly
gay first-year Councilmember Louis Escobar formally introduced the measure
early last month. Just the day before, some residents had expressed
serious reservations about the bill during two hours of testimony at a
public hearing attended by 140 people. However, among those testifying in
support of the measure were Toledo's police chief, fire chief, state
Representative, and three clergymembers; nine City Councilors co-sponsored
Escobar's measure.
The city joins a growing list in the U.S. that have adopted TG rights laws including San Francisco, Cambridge, Mass., Seattle, and the entire state of Minnesota.
That Sly Don't-Come-Hither Stare
Contributed by Jodie Miller
via New York Times
December8, 1998
It sounds like a catalog from the nightmare side of the collective male
memory: The woman yawns, frowns, sneers, cleans her nails, picks at her
teeth, stares at the ceiling and makes an excruciatingly minute
examination of her hair's split ends. "Sorry, what were you saying?"
These are weapons in the battle of the sexes, or, to use their scientific
name, female nonverbal courtship-rejection behaviors.
According to a new study, they work -- except with some real jerks or when
the lighting's too dim.
Dr. Monica Moore, a professor of psychology at Webster University in St.
Louis, has been hanging around natural observation posts for courtship
behavior -- singles bars -- for 20 years, one of a growing number of
researchers applying ethnological techniques to the study of what she
described recently in a telephone interview as "how people decide where to
end the night."
A substantial body of research has been compiled on courtship techniques
-- flirting -- and on the role played by gestures like the quick glance
and the casual touch of the arm.
It became clear in the course of these studies that there was a nonverbal
vocabulary for the opposite message as well, and Dr. Moore, in research
published last month in the journal Semiotica, set out to categorize such
rejection behaviors and gauge their role in courtship encounters.
Back to the singles bar. Dr. Moore and research assistants posing as
boring, ignorable couples took tables in a local pub, where they randomly
selected, in visits spaced over more than two years, 210 single females
for observation.
What they found was a relatively consistent array of 17 behaviors that Dr.
Moore broke down into facial and head patterns, gestures and posture
patterns.
They also found that the silent brushoffs were generally effective, at
least if used enough. "Across the sample, these behaviors did serve to
cause a man to lose interest" and break off the courtship attempt, Dr.
Moore said, although, she added, "sometimes it took several behaviors."
On the other hand, Dr. Moore noted: "There are those guys whose feelings
get hurt easily and who give up too soon. What I tell men is that if
somebody looks like she's blowing you off, give it one more try -- in a
polite, respectful way -- and then, if it doesn't work, give it up."
All in all, she added, "It's a tough world out there for singles."
Couple Face Charge In Child's Forced Crossdressing
Contributed by Jodie Miller
via Associated Press
December 10, 1998
CARLSBAD, N.M. -- A man and woman face child abuse charges after allegedly
putting an adhesive bandage on a 4-year-old boy's privates and making him
dress as a girl as punishment for striking a girl at school.
The defendants, the child's mother and the man whose home she shared,
allegedly told the boy his genitals had been cut off. And the boy's father
in Maine said his son asked him: "Am I a boy or a girl today?"
Defendants Beulah Melvin and Frank Salazar are due in Eddy County
Magistrate Court on Jan. 13, Carlsbad police Sgt. David Edmondson said
Tuesday. They face charges of child abuse and conspiracy.
The father in Bangor, Maine, told police he spoke to his son by phone Nov.
4 and learned of the punishment then. Edmondson said the father's and
son's names were being withheld.
The defendants allegedly held the child down, placed the adhesive bandage
on his genitals and made him wear a dress and girl's panties.
Edmondson said police were notified Nov. 23, and he met on Nov. 24 with
the boy, the father and the boy's grandfather, a Carlsbad resident. The
boy told Edmondson that his mother and her friend had put the adhesive
bandage on his "wee wee" and told him they had cut it off.
"The child was ashamed. He was ashamed of what happened to him, and he was
ashamed to tell me about it. He didn't want to talk about what they did to
him," Edmondson said Tuesday night.
While the child was not physically harmed, he said: "This is just a
different form of child abuse. It's more emotional than it is physical or
sexual." But he added: "It's still abuse."
The mother told Edmondson her son had struck a girl at school a couple
weeks earlier, probably in the first few days of November, Edmondson said.
He didn't know what that incident was all about.
Salazar allegedly provided the bandage used in the punishment and the
girl's clothing, which belonged to his daughter who lives with her mother
in Albuquerque.
Police said the defendants, both of Carlsbad, describe their relationship
as landlord and tenant, not boyfriend-girlfriend. Ms. Melvin is in her 20s
and Salazar in his 30s, Edmondson said.
Body Scanners Offer The Perfect Fit
Contributed by Jodie Miller
via Reuters
December 7, 1998
LONDON (Reuters) - British computer scientists have developed a
sophisticated bodyscanner which provides shoppers with a ``virtual
changing room'' where 300,000 points all over your body can be measured
with perfect precision.
``It will be the biggest revolution in shopping for a generation,'' said
Philip Treleaven, project leader at University College, London on the
fashion scanner awarded a 3.4 million pound government research grant.
``Going to the shops and trying on clothes could become a thing of the
past. You could do it all from home, never go into a changing room again
if you don't want to,'' he told Saturday's Mirror newspaper.
The scanner is shaped like a photo booth. Infra-red lights act as an
electronic tailor to provide the perfect identikit picture of the
shopper's every contour.
``I expect within 12-18 months, we'll have what the manufacturers want and
our first users will be in place,'' Treleaven said of the scheme that has
been warmly welcomed by the leading clothes retail chains.
Weak Bones Among Men Are Linked to Estrogen
Contributed by Jodie Miller
via Reuters
December 8, 1998
New research is challenging the medical textbook view of osteoporosis as
largely a women's disease linked to the singularly female experience of
menopause. It now seems that osteoporosis is more prevalent in men than
was previously thought, and that although men do not go through menopause,
the main cause of the degenerative bone disorder is the same in men and
women: an age-related drop in estrogen.
Several recent studies show that men's levels of this sex hormone decline
with age and that the decline leads to a loss of bone mass, the signature
symptom of osteoporosis. Some of these studies were presented last week at
a meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and the
International Bone and Mineral Society in San Francisco.
"This is surprising," said Dr. B. Lawrence Riggs, a professor of medical
research at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who has found that
estrogen naturally falls in men after about age 65. "Three years ago, none
of us would have thought that estrogen loss was a factor in male
osteoporosis." Although men and women have estrogen, it is more abundant
in women and plays a central role in female reproduction.
The National Osteoporosis Foundation in Washington estimates that of the
10 million Americans who have osteoporosis, more than 1.5 million are men,
and that half of women and one in eight men over 50 will have an
osteoporosis- related fracture. But because osteoporosis is underdiagnosed
in men, the numbers for men are probably higher, the organization's
literature says.
Medical textbooks describe osteoporosis differently for men and for women.
In women it is linked mainly to the sharp drop in estrogen after
menopause, because estrogen is known to slow the natural process of bone
loss that occurs with age. In men, however, osteoporosis is said to result
from abnormally low levels of testosterone, a sex hormone more plentiful
in males. The cause of low testosterone is usually a rare condition called
hypogonadism, in which the testicles are underactive.
Two studies presented at last week's meeting indicate that estrogen plays
a more central role than testosterone in osteoporosis in men. Researchers
following residents of Framingham, Mass., over five decades studied 382
elderly white men for eight years, tracking bone density, estrogen levels
and signs of hypogonadism. Men with the highest bone density also had the
highest estrogen levels; the connection with hypogonadism was negligible.
In another study, doctors in Germany measured bone density as well as
estrogen and testosterone levels of 300 men with osteoporosis for five
years. Forty percent of the men had low estrogen; 20 percent had low
testosterone.
"We didn't see a pronounced effect of testosterone on the males'
bone-mineral density," said Dr. Peter Kaps, an orthopedic surgeon and the
lead author.
Dr. Pamela Taxel, assistant professor of medicine at the University of
Connecticut Health Center in Farmington, said: "These are suggestive
findings, but larger studies are needed to understand the mechanism of
estrogen and testosterone on bone health in men."
Dr. Taxel is studying the use of estrogen supplements to treat men with
osteoporosis. She said research was needed to develop a form of estrogen
that helps men without causing side effects like prostate disease or
impotence.
Thais Promise Sympathetic Gender Tests
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
via Reuters
December 7, 1998
BANGKOK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Tolerant Thailand on Monday promised more
sensitive and sympathetic gender testing of Asian Games athletes than if
the event was held elsewhere.
Dr Chintana Sirinavin, head of the medical and health services
sub-committee responsible for genetic verification at the December 6-20
Games, said her unit would not evade its responsbilities.
But, she added: "We will do our utmost to ensure that athletes are
spared the shame and stigmatisation of a positive test.
"In Thailand I think we have an open mind and accept the difference
between people better," she added.
Counselling would be part of any conclusive finding on gender
bending,
she said.
Dr Chintana said she anticipated "quite a few" initial positive tests
from first examinations mainly based on hair follicles.
But a positive test at the prelimnary stage does not lead to
automatic
and immediate diqualification of an athlete.
"Athletes that test positive can still compete as long as they don't
have any obvious advantages," she said.
The most common factors in initial positive tests are Androgen
Insensitivity Syndrome and Testicular Feminisation Syndrome. These are
"normal" conditions, she said.
An athlete with these genetic defects will have a feminine appearance
and normal hormone levels because the male gene is unable to act.
At the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, about one in every 400 women
athletes
tested male but all were cleared in subsequent physical examinations.
Gender testing has been a hotly debated issue among world sports
organisations ever since it was first introduced at the Mexico Olympics in
1968.
The International Amateur Athletics Federation abandoned gender
testing
in 1992 and the Commonwealth and World University Games followed suit,
arguing the tests are an invasion of privacy, unethical and unreliable.
The Olympic organisation of which the Asian Games is a part still
conducts the tests.
Concern that sex cheats hold unfair advantages in sports first arose
in
1932 when 100 metres Olympic gold medallist, Stanislawa Walasiewicz, died
and was found to have been a man.
But in Thailand, a largely tolerant attitude exists towards
"gender-bending," both in society and in the sporting arena.
The country has a transsexual volleyball team and earlier this year,
a
16-year-old transvestite Thai kickboxer, complete with lipstick and
eyeshadow, stepped into the ring.
Fearsome fighter Prinya Kiatbusba showed opponents no mercy, but
broke
down in tears when officials ordered him to strip to be weighed.
Dr Chintana works in the genetics department at Bangkok's Sirirat
Hospital, a leading institution for sex change operations in Asia.
"We are well aware of these particular conditions and the sex problem
in the general population. From our experience we get quite a few cases,"
she said.
She insisted positive tests would be treated as purely medical.
"I don't want people to mix up physical and psychological sex
testing.
This will only lead to the humiliation of the athlete," she said.
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