Gender rights, transgender rights, women's rights?

Off Our Backs, Jul 2001 by Mantilla, Karla

Gender Rights, Transgender Rights, Women's Rights?

This was the first national conference on gender sponsored by GenderPAC, a gender equal rights lobbying organization. According to GenderPAC, close to 450 people attended the conference, although the opening plenary appeared to be attended by approximately 100 to 150 people.

The conference was held in a large Washington, DC, hotel, something which some of the attendees expressed discomfort about. GenderPAC received funding for the conference from corporations such as American Airlines and Verizon, as well as some gay groups including HRC, the Advocate, PlanetOut, and Gay.com.

Workshops presented at the conference included "Intersex Genital Mutilation," "Gender Dysphoria/Gender Euphoria: Reforming GID," "Visibly Queer: Gayness, Gender and Hate Crimes," "Beyond Labels: Be Your Own Box," and "Womyn-Born Womyn Only: Camp Trans and MWMF" (covered below). In addition, there was a special three-part Gender Law Institute put on by legal scholars, activists, and practitioners which covered gender jurisprudence and strategies for gender rights lawsuits.

Opening Plenary: The Vision of Gender Equality

Riki Wilchins, Executive Director of GenderPAC spoke first. Wilchins, who was born male, transitioned to female, and now identifies as no gender, declared that "gender rights are not a personal problem, but are the civil rights issue of our time." S/he said that everyone is involved in a web of expectations and demands from the time they are born, from admonitions to love certain kinds of people or to stand certain ways and not others. These expectations range from matters of large magnitude such as rape of male prisoners which Wilchins maintains is about gender, to medium range matters such as when a transgendered person does not get a job, to small things such as the routine comments made by adults to children that "boys don't act that way," or "girls don't act that way."

S/he said that we learn to disown parts of ourselves and that such disowning teaches us that gender is a problem about ourselves not fitting in rather than a problem with the gender system itself. S/he feels that the struggle for gender rights is "revolution of the obvious," that everyone knows gender is a problem, yet no one thinks of it as a human rights issue. S/he asked the audience to envision what the world would be like if we had gender freedom, who we could be, who our children could become.

S/he talked about the history of GenderPAC and their efforts at lobbying on Capitol Hill, how responses from legislators were surprised to even see gender rights as an issue. S/he ended by saying the dream of full gender rights equality must come true, that it is "not our task, but our duty."

Angela Moreno Lippert, from the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) spoke about intersex genital mutilation. The ISNA is devoted to systemic change to end shame, secrecy, and unwanted genital surgeries for people born with atypical sex anatomy. They recommend a model of care that is patient-centered, rather than surgery-centered.

Moreno Lippert said that to improve treatment, secrecy and shame must be dispelled. She stated that she is an intersex person, that when she was 12 years old, her clitoris swelled to a larger than normal size and that she was "quite attached to it." She said that while "it wasn't anticipated, it was mine." She told how parents and other adults became interested in her clitoris, although none of them was concerned with sexual function because a "child's sexual potential was unimportant." She felt that adults were preoccupied with the idea that male and female bodies and behaviors be absolutely distinct. She remarked that such expectations were "an awful lot of baggage for an ounce of flesh that just wants to party."

Moreno Lippert recounted that "today in the United States, 5 children will be subjected to genital mutilation." She reported that 1 in 2000 children are born with genitals that are not normal male or female, saying it is more common than cystic fibrosis or Down's syndrome. She talked of the secrecy surrounding intersex, which furthers the illusion of its being a great rarity. She talked about the medical model concerning the "existence of ambiguous genitalia" and how surgical solutions are ineffective and harmful. She said that people need information on all options and new protocols for handling intersex infants need to be established. The assumptions have been that parents will not tolerate ambiguity regarding genitalia and that the condition of being intersex must be kept secret from children. She said that it is not an easy issue, but that parents need referrals to counselors and need to be encouraged to accept their children's differences. She also said counseling and peer support for children "saves families and lives." She encouraged making all sex assignments of children tentative, thus preserving the child's choice, that the choice should "rest squarely with the individual who lives with the consequences."