Thursday, July 17, 2008
Sex change treatment should start in adolescence - Czech experts
17 July 2008
Prague- The government working group for sexual minorities wants the bill on special medical services to enable sex-change treatment to start being applied to people under 18, Minister for human rights and ethnic minorities Dzamila Stehlikova (Greens, SZ) told CTK today.
The Health Ministry is to submit the respective bill to the government in August.
The bill regulates the rules for sterilisation, castration, and sex-change operations as well as artificial fertilisation and abortion.
The Czech Sexological Association is pushing for changes in the treatment of adolescent transsexuals.
Its member Ivo Prochazka said this treatment would only be applied to the clear cases of transsexuals. The children's parents would have to approve the treatment.
Prochazka added that the treatment is based on the administration of medicines to inhibit the development of sexual organs. However, the process is still reversible.
Then sexual hormones are being administered before the sex-change operation that can be performed only on patients over 18. . . .Read More
Universities see rising amount of co-ed dorms
By Case Keefer
16 July 2008
Most colleges didn’t allow students of different genders to live in the same dormitory 40 years ago.
After gender-neutral buildings were opened, universities began to allow members of the opposite sex to live on the same floor. Now, there’s a new gender-based issue to debate in student housing.
“We’re at the next phase in the evolution,” Jeffrey Chang, co-founder of the National Student Genderblind Campaign, said. “Why can’t men and women take the next step and live together?”
Chang, a senior at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., started the national campaign for gender-neutral dorm rooms after he was not allowed to share a room with one of his close female friends his freshman year.
It caught on. National news organizations such as USA Today and CNN featured the National Student Genderblind Campaign in stories. Students experiencing rejection like Chang began reaching out to the organization. And Chang said the number of schools allowing gender-neutral rooms doubled, from 15 to 30.
“Whether or not schools are actually doing this is one thing,” Chang said. “But schools are actually talking about it. Students are talking about it. That’s the thing I’m most happy about.” . . .Read More
Transgender People Need Advocacy At Work
July 17, 2008
Two University of Oregon doctoral students dove into issues of transgender identities — in the workplace and professional counseling — and surfaced with a call for psychologists and vocational counselors to not only treat but to act as advocates for their clients — and to help end discrimination in the workplace.
“One of the main points of our paper is that not only do we need to be, as vocational psychologists or career counselors, working with transgender people at an individual level to help them get hired, but we also need to be doing a lot of social advocacy work — working with employers and workplaces — improving antidiscrimination policies and doing legal advocacy,” said lead author Maya Elin O’Neil. . . .Read More
City forces TG woman to dress in men's room
Cleveland--A city swimming pool has told a transgender woman that she must sign in as a man and use the men’s locker room to change into her swimsuit.
Karen Deamons of Cleveland has been swimming at the Cudell Recreation Center on the city’s west side since 2005. She swims there three times a week as part of her rehabilitation from a stroke that year.
Deamons says that there has been tension between her and Cudell management since she started swimming at the facility. But it has escalated in the last month, resulting in her being barred for a week, then being required to sign the men’s registry when she arrives.
She has filed a sex stereotyping complaint against the city of Cleveland. The complaint, filed June 24 with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, will be investigated by Gina Curry of the commission.
Deamons says she complied last year when Cudell told her to use the men’s changing room, but “it’s getting harder and harder” mostly because of the children at the facility. . . .Read More
