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Campaigning | Labels | Concepts | Debate | Us and them? | Women-only space | Miscellany

"I grew up thinking that the hatred I faced because of my gender expression was simply a by-product of my nature and that it must be my fault that I was a target for such outrage.  I don’t want any young person to ever believe that’s true again … Today, a great deal of “gender theory” is abstracted from human experience.  But if theory is not the crystallized resin of experience, it ceases to be a guide to action."
Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors

[top]Campaigning

[top]Labels and labelling

Why do we label people? And why does it matter?

"The problem with transsexual women is not that we are trapped in the wrong bodies.  The truth is, that is a fairly trivial affair corrected with doctors and sharp scalpels.  The problem is that we are trapped in a society which alternates between hating and ignoring or tolerating and exploiting us and our experience, and more importantly, we are trapped in the wrong minds.  We have, too many of us for too long, been trapped in too much self-hate." Rikki Ann Wilchins

[top]Concepts

  • Re-thinking Sex and Gender? Is it a boy or is it a girl?: postgraduate student Sue Watling wants to move discussion of gender beyond the sterile confines of the nature v. nurture debate … and asks trans people to help her by sharing her experiences.
  • Who’s unnatural now?: the disqualification of a woman athlete for taking HRT raises much wider issues.
  • Different equals normal — thinking of trans people as different misses the point …
  • The Conceptualisation of Transsexualism in matrimonial proceedings  the judges are getting it wrong.
  • Beyond appearances: gendered rationality and the transgendered.  Men and women tend to think differently, and trans people need to be aware of the differences, even if they reject stereotyping.
  • When Sally met Harry: When Sally, a 35 year old trans woman, found herself in a sudden and unplanned relationship with a man she met by accident, she was reminded of the problems which others have with her mere existence – problems of theirs which influenced her own approach to relationships and sex. Sally and Harry are fictional people, but their stories are real – composed from a mosaic of real people’s lives and experiences. UK Trans Rights Campaigner Christine Burns explores the trials of dating and loving when your sex, and the consequent interpretation of your sexuality, is a regarded as a matter of opinion, rather than matter of fact.
  • The Second Transition: Christine Burns looks at the spiritual transition into maturity as a new woman or man.

[top]Debate

  • The Press for Change Debate  Compuserve’s UK Politics on-line forum discussed the campaign issues in 1995
  • Dear Angus : Christine Burns and law lecturer Dr Angus Campbell discuss legal and philosophical issues about the status of trans people (1996)

[top]Us and them? Or all of us?

[top]Women-only space

[top]Miscellany

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