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Recall Set For German TS Mayor
Contributed by Rachelle Austin
via Associated Press
September 10, 1998
The village council of Quellendorf, Germany on September 10 voted 6 - 2 to approve a referendum to
recall their mayor because of his planned sex reassignment.
Mayor Norbert Michael Lindner was elected in 1996 to a seven-year term, but recently announced that he would
begin dressing as a woman and would later undergo the surgery. Although his wife and four children have
been publicly supportive of him, the council received a recall petition signed by 175 of the village's 1,048
residents. Lindner was not allowed to speak at the meeting, where one local said, "We voted for a man, not
a woman. He should have told us beforehand." The referendum will be held November 29 in the village,
which is in the state of Saxony-Anhalt about 20 miles from Leipzig.
as a civilian.
First Japanese SRS Delayed
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker and Rachelle Austin
via Kyodo News
September 7, 1998
URAWA, Japan, -- Saitama Medical College decided Monday
to postpone Japan's first sex-change operation for some time following
news reports about the facility's unauthorized womb-ovary removal in
1993, college officials said.
The college, located north of Tokyo, had planned to conduct surgery
Friday as the first stage of a sex-change operation that would take
about six months to complete. News reports said Sunday the college in
October 1993 removed the womb and ovaries from a woman in her 30s who
wanted a sex change, without approval from the facility's ethics
committee. The officials said an in-house check has found the 1993
operation was not sex-change surgery, but was to treat endometriosis.
But the planned operation has to be postponed because the school has to
take some time to explain the outcome to its ethics committee and
faculties, the officials said. In May, the college's ethics committee
gave approval for a 30-year-old woman with transsexualism,
gender-identity disorder, in northeastern Japan, to undergo a sex
change on condition complete mental support measures be provided
afterward. The Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology said last
year that sex-change operations should be permitted under certain
conditions, including that the patient undergo psychoanalysis and
hormone therapy following the procedure.
Some 2,200 to 7,000 people in
Japan want to live as a member of the opposite sex, according to one
estimate.
Macho Culture Hurting UK Boys
Contributed by Bobby G
via Reuters
September 9, 1998
CARDIFF - Boys will be boys but it could be
ruining their education and their career chances, a British researcher
said on Wednesday.
Dr Ann Phoenix, of Birkbeck College in London, told the
annual science festival in Cardiff there is mounting concern
about boys underperforming girls in school and much of it could
be to do with their need to appear macho or masculine.
``There is a growing panic about the widening gap in
attainment between boys and girls at school,'' Phoenix told a
news conference.
Last year more women than men went to university in Britain
for the first time ever, she said. And that trend holds good right through
the educational structure.
Last week, the Times newspaper said annual examination
league tables for the last academic year showed in every set of
tests and examinations from the age of seven until 16, girls led
the way. And for ``A level'' examinations, taken at the age of
18, girls' schools now take most of the leading places.
``You can't be masculine and be seen to work hard at
school,'' said Phoenix, who studied 190 schoolboys aged between
11 and 14.
Girls' ways of expressing femininity, on the other hand,
seem more compatible with good educational performance, she
said.
More than 20 years ago, scientific study identified ``lad
culture.'' The difference is that then, boys could loaf around at school
and still walk into a job of some description.
``Now they are much less likely to walk into jobs that will
keep them at all well,'' Phoenix said.
Twenty years ago, educationalists fretted about how to
improve girls' performance in subjects such as mathematics or
physics. In some cases girls were put into separate classes and
lessons were tailored towards them. Now, Phoenix said, a similar
approach may be needed for boys.
``We need to think about ways through for young men,'' she
said.
Men In Drag Rob Gulf Shop
Contributed by and Elizabeth Parker
via Reuters
September 9, 1998
DUBAI - Three men donned traditional "abayas" and veils
worn by Arab women and robbed a foreign exchange bureau in the tiny
Gulf Arab emirate of Ajman, local newspapers reported Wednesday.
Disguised in the long-sleeved black cloak and veil, marks of national
identity, the robbers escaped with the day's receipts from the Ajman
branch of the UAE Exchange Center after threatening the staff at gun
point. "The robbers, dressed as women in abaya and veil covering
their faces ... pointed guns at the staff before decamping with the
day's collection in a rented car," The Gulf Today newspaper reported.
Police in Ajman, the smallest of the seven emirates that make up
oil-rich United Arab Emirates, were investigating the robbery. A
witness said the men, who were described as "very fat and strong,"
had taken advantage of the fact that the currency center was about to
close for lunch.
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