A culturally diverse panel spoke about being transgendered in today's society and the need for support for the community to SF State students in the School of Social Work last week.
"Transgender is an umbrella term which describes different types of gender identities or roles," according to panel member Kiki Whitlock of the Asian AIDS Project. It can encompass terms such as transsexual or transvestite, or it can describe a person who chooses his or her own gender identity, with or without a sex change operation or hormone therapy, and regardless of their sexual orientation or original biological gender.
The two men and three women on the panel expressed a need for social workers and support in areas such as harassment and rejection by society and loved ones, building self-esteem and confidence, financial support for medical expenses, and legal assistance against housing and employment discrimination.
"As service providers you need to treat us as anyone else," panel member Susan Stryker said. "Give us the information to help us to make the right decisions." Stryker teaches women studies at UC Berkeley.
Job discrimination and lack of support force many transgendered people to find sex work or shoot black market hormones, both of which increase their chances of becoming HIV positive, according to the panel.
The panel also included Jamison Green of Female-To-Male International, Doris Robinson from The Brothers Network, and Michael Hernandez, an attorney.
Organizers of the panel were Greg Merrill, a graduate student in social work, and Rita Takahashi, director of the SF State Institute for Multicultural Research and Social Work Practice. The institute explores cultural issues and awareness, and oppression in social work.
Merrill said the motivation to organize the panel arose after one student mentioned two people who allowed their son to go to preschool or kindergarten dressed in girls' clothing.
"A lot of people reacted with various degrees of disgust," Merrill said. "There was an intense classroom discussion and a definite need to educate on gender as a social/cultural construction."
The social/cultural construction is one of three "models" or "construction theories" that Stryker discussed during the panel.
"Physical factors alone do not cause gender identity," Stryker, who favors the social/cultural construction theory, said. "These theories all have a weakness and that is that there is something wrong with transgender people. Modern western culture always tries to find a medical reason why... ."
All panel members were outspoken in denouncing the criteria for "Gender Identity Disorder," according to the Diagnostic Statistical Manual by the American Psychology Association.
One of the manual's criterion, for example, says GID is a "... disturbance manifested by symptoms such as a stated desire to be the other sex."
"We do not want to provide financial opportunities to (medical providers) to figure out what is wrong with us," said Whitlock. "It is wrong and inappropriate and I denounce it in every way."
It is "mandatory" for a person who wishes to go through gender confirmation surgery, previously known as a sex-change operation, to first be "certified" (as a person with GID), according to Whitlock.
Green said many transgender people simply read all the criteria that the APA defines as GID and then tell the licensed clinical social worker or psychologist what they want to hear.
For female-to-male surgery it can take five to seven years for breast and genital reconstruction, but for male-to-female it can be as quick as six weeks, according to Green and Tamara Ching, an activist in the transgender community.
"For everyone it is different," Ching said. "I started hormone therapy in April of 1977 and had (male-to-female surgery) by August of 1978."
Ching said there are approximately 2,000 to 4,000 transgendered people living in San Francisco, "a conservative estimate," and they have been receiving some social support since the late '80s.
Kim Wright, a graduate student in social work, asked the panel what growth panel members had seen in recent years in the transgender community.
Whitlock responded by talking about the passing of legislation by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and Mayor Jordan that made discrimination against transgenders illegal in San Francisco. The law became effective in January.
According to Green, the administration code was amended to include gender identity in the list of characteristics that one cannot discriminate against.
The law was a direct result of a report done by the Human Rights Commission in San Francisco according to Larry Brinkin, acting coordinator of the Lesbian/Gay and AIDS/ HIV unit.
Green, principal author of the report, titled "Investigation Into Discrimination Against Transgendered People," summarized all the testimony and resource material that a task force found and presented it to HRC in a hearing on May 12, 1994, after eight or nine months of investigation, according to Brinkin.
The task force, The Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Advisory committee, is one of five citizen-volunteer advisory committees that aid the HRC.
This hearing culminated in 30 findings and 30 recommendations, one of which encouraged the board of supervisors to amend the code and another, to help educate several departments in San Francisco on how to handle transgendered clients.
"It was a strong statement on the part of the School of Social Work that they are on the cutting edge of working with people who are really downpushed," Wright said about the panel.
Merrill asked the panel about their overall visions to reshape culture.
"Calling for an end of hatred and persecution," Green said. "(Transgenders) don't want to be something they are not, they want to be who they are."