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Step by step, researcher looks for sexuality clues

• Researcher thinks sexual orientation may be reflected in the way a person walks
• Consistencies in characteristics show orientation is inborn, expert says
• Similar research focuses on speech, hair-growth patterns
• Critics see no gay genetics, point to lack of inherited orientation

By Elizabeth Cohen
CNN

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Can you tell whether someone's gay just by the way he or she walks?

David Sylva wants to know. He straps bright red lights to people's bodies and videotapes them walking in the dark. He then shows the videotape to observers (who won't be biased by clothing or hairstyles since the walker is in the dark) and asks them to guess the walker's sexual orientation.

(Click here for access to videos to see whether you can tell if the walker is gay or straight.)

Sylva's observations focus on the physical characteristics of the individual's stride, such as the closeness of the knees.

Why does Sylva, a graduate student at Northwestern University, care so much about how gay people walk? Because he's one of a growing number of researchers who think sexual orientation may be as basic as how you walk, something inborn that you don't choose.

His premise reflects a growing belief among Americans, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll. (Poll majority: Gays' orientation can't change ) For the first time a majority of respondents -- about 56 percent -- said they don't believe a person can change his or her sexual orientation. In a similar poll in 2001, 45 percent said orientation couldn't change. In 1998, 36 percent held that belief. The sampling error for Wednesday's results is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

A growing number of psychologists and geneticists are working on the "nature versus nurture" question -- a question that's set off a highly charged political debate about whether people choose to be gay, or whether gayness is determined by their DNA.

Take Richard Lippa, a professor of psychology at California State University at Fullerton. His studies show that gay people are twice as likely to be left-handed. He also collects photos of hair whorls -- those circular swirls you see atop a man's head. He says about 10 percent of the general population have whorls that rotate counter-clockwise, but about 20 percent of gay men have counter-clockwise whorls.

Lippa acknowledges that studying hair patterns sounds strange. "It sounds a little like the 'Twilight Zone' or voodoo science," he says. But to Lippa, a link between sexual orientation and something that's clearly inborn (like handedness or the way hair grows) speaks volumes. His theory: You can't choose your whorl, and you can't choose your sexuality, either.

"You're born with either a clockwise or a counter-clockwise hair whorl. It's fixed, it's biologically determined. No one's going to argue that your hair whorl is influenced by learning or culture," he says.

Lippa says his next step is see whether there are specific genes that control sexual orientation. . . .

The Cliks featuring lead singer Lucas Silveira

Trans Spokesman No Good ‘ol Boy

By Jacob Anderson-Minshall
Published: June 28, 2007

Controversy erupted in San Francisco recently, when Frameline’s LGBT Film Festival pulled Gendercator, a short film by lesbian filmmaker Catherine Crouch, which trans activists accused of being transphobic. In response, a number of lesbians protested Frameline’s actions, anti-censorship folk expressed concern and both sides called for dialogue.

Jamison Green doesn’t know if discussion is the answer. The world’s most renowned trans man, Green says that he’s strongly against censorship and he agrees that dialogue—between lesbian and trans communities—is important. But, he argues, “People come [to those discussions] with a huge amount of emotional baggage and investment in the outcome. I don’t see being able to actually have a meaningful theoretical discussion in that environment. I think we’re not at the place where we can go there—not until we actually have some ground rules.”

At the forefront of FTM activism since he transitioned in 1989, Jamison Green has served on the board of a half dozen trans organizations including FTM International (ftmi.org) and Gender Education and Advocacy (gender.org), and has received numerous awards for his activism.

Becoming A Visible Man, Green’s 2004 award-winning memoir has been utilized in universities and colleges programs. He writes a column for PlanetOut.com, lectures at colleges, is a keynote speaker at this year’s London Gay Pride and regularly helps trans people resolve “problems that professionals in the various fields don’t want to address.”

At home with his wife Heidi (who Green calls “a big ol’ lesbian activist and bisexual activist”) in a quiet San Francisco suburb, Green grapples with an issue he sees impacting the broader trans community. “I think one of the most important things that we as a community have to struggle with is balancing people’s need for connection with others who share their experience against people’s need to just live their lives. That has been tricky…especially [for] many of us who come from queer space.”

Although Green is committed to maintaining his ties with queer culture, he insists that not all trans folk need do so. “It should be ok to just live your life without having to be a martyr. Being out as trans is not always an option. And what people choose to tell other people about their lives is their own business. Nobody should have to feel compelled to be out.”

Thrilled about what’s defined as genderqueer, Green says “That’s how I felt in my late teens and early twenties. I didn’t think I was exactly female before and, although I look and am comfortable being perceived as very male, I know I’m not exactly male now.”

Still, Green acknowledges, “For all intensive purposes, I pass. On one hand, it makes me a very good spokesperson; on the other hand, it makes a lot of people angry, which is funny, because I can’t help the way I look. I’m either treated like I’m a good ‘ol boy or I’m not a real man, according to gay male standards.” . . .

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Bias In Workplace Report

By Dennis McMillan
Published: June 28, 2007

The Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy is a think tank dedicated to the field of sexual orientation law and public policy.

Over the last ten years, many researchers have conducted studies to find out whether LGBT people face sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. These studies include surveys of LGBT individuals’ workplace experiences; wage comparisons between LGB and heterosexual persons; analyses of discrimination complaints filed with administrative agencies; and testing studies and controlled experiments. The report summarizes findings from these studies.

When surveyed, 16% to 68% of LGBT people report experiencing employment discrimination. Studies conducted from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s revealed that 16% to 68% of LGB respondents reported experiencing employment discrimination at some point in their lives. Since the mid-1990s, an additional fifteen studies found that 15% to 43% of LGB respondents experienced discrimination in the workplace. When asked more specific questions about the type of discrimination experienced, LGB respondents reported the following experiences that were related to their sexual orientation: 8%-17% were fired or denied employment; 10%-28% were denied a promotion or given negative performance evaluations; 7%-41% were verbally/physically abused or had their workplace vandalized; and 10%-19% reported receiving unequal pay or benefits.

Fifteen to 57% of transgender people also report experiencing employment discrimination. When transgender individuals were surveyed separately, they reported similar or higher levels of employment discrimination. In six studies conducted between 1996 and 2006, 20% to 57% of transgender respondents reported having experienced employment discrimination at some point in their life. More specifically, 13%-56% were fired; 13%-47% were denied employment; 22%-31% were harassed; and 19% were denied a promotion based on their gender identity.

When surveyed, many heterosexual co-workers report witnessing sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. A small number of researchers have also asked heterosexuals whether they have witnessed discrimination against their LGB peers. These studies revealed that 12% to 30% of respondents in certain occupations, such as the legal profession, have witnessed antigay discrimination in employment. In states that currently prohibit sexual orientation discrimination, LGB people file complaints of employment discrimination at similar rates to women and racial minorities. Individual complaints of discrimination filed with government agencies provide another measure of perceived discrimination. The General Accounting Office (or “GAO”, now known as the Government Accountability Office) collected the number of complaints filed in states that outlaw sexual orientation discrimination and found that one percent of all discrimination complaints related to sexual orientation. However, comparisons of data from ten states show that the rate of sexual orientation discrimination complaints per GLB person is 3 per 10,000, which is roughly equivalent to gender-based complaints. . . .

extra: feel like dancin'. . .no time for lunch

http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/

Shawna Virago & The Deadly Nightshades

Trans Rocker’s A Little Bit Country

by Jacob Anderson-Minshall 2007-06-27

Images for this article: (click on the thumbnail to see fullsize)

“If Keith Richards was a tranny that got together with Merle Haggard, I’d be their love child,” declares trans rock ingénue Shawna Virago. “Only a lot better-looking.” Dubbed “the sex symbol laureate” of trans rock, Virago is far more than a pretty face. The singer-songwriter is also an activist, writer, filmmaker and actress. As a filmmaker, Virago’s black-and-white shorts include Hustle, Shut Up, Josephine! and Almost Human. Now working on her fourth film, Virago says, “I have a very DIY aesthetic and—just like my songwriting—I prioritize content above all else.” Having starred in several underground movies, Virago is adamant: “Hollywood could never portray a trans woman like myself, or like most of the trans people I know—hence, the importance of festivals like Tranny Fest.” Every November, the Transgender/Transgenre Film Festival, or Tranny Fest ( www.trannyfest.com ) , offers screenings, performances and visual arts by and for transgender and genderqueer people. When founders Al Austin and Christopher Lee retired recently from the world’s first transgender film festival, Virago took over. She says this year’s Tranny Fest will be smart, sexy, and naughty, “just like it always is.” As an activist, Virago served on San Francisco’s Transgender Human Rights Task Force, co-chaired the Transgender Political Caucus and co-founded TransAction, an organization that aims to expose and end police violence against the transgender community. And, she was the first trans woman to serve on the board of San Francisco Woman Against Rape. “Trans women also deal with misogyny and sexism … and all the other fucked-up shit women have to face. Over the years, I’ve heard lamenting by queer women about trans men ‘leaving’ the community, which I can understand. But I’d also like to see women celebrating the inclusion of trans women into the community.” . . .

CNN Plans Day-Long Coverage of GLBT Issues Wednesday

. . .Special correspondent Thelma Guitierrez's report from Trinidad,
Colo.--the "Sex-Change Capital of the World"--for Paula Zahn Now.
Guitierrez interviews Dr. Marci Bowers, who every week performs about
five vaginoplasties, an operation to transform men into women. Nine
years ago, Bowers was a man herself, and she provides first-person
insights into the physical and emotional journey that her patients
experience. . . .

On prenatal tests: “We can sympathize with the unborn child”

. . .and peddling religion:

Pro-life movement finds support from an unlikely quarter

Steve Cook of San Jose, like most California pro-life advocates, is not surprised when he and his anti-abortion posters attract verbal abuse. After all, "pro-choicers" on the Left Coast have a reputation for intolerance. But after over 25 years of marching, picketing, and speaking out for the unborn, what really hurts, he says, is people screaming, "Traitor!" "Shame!"

[[ProLifeGays.jpg]]This is because Steve represents a group that the Left never expected to find on the anti-abortion side: the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians.

Like most pro-lifers, Cook is convinced that any abortion of any unborn child is murder. But he has another reason to be uneasy with the ideology of "choice". “If prenatal tests could detect a tendency toward homosexuality in the unborn, some mothers would abort their babies because they did not ‘choose’ to have a gay son or daughter,” he explains.

Asks Cook, "Would gay abortion advocates say, ‘OK, it's your choice: go ahead and wipe us out?’

"I was on a medical ethics committee connected to an Episcopal Church," recalled Cook in a phone interview with California Catholic Daily, "and I was amazed at people who said that infants are ‘not necessarily' human beings. I said, 'They're different from you, and maybe you don't want them, but that doesn't make them less human.'

“Yet the gay and lesbian community itself is divided,” said Cook. “Not all gays are against aborting ‘gay’ babies. In the UK in the 1980s [famous British cross-dresser and gay activist] Quentin Crisp told me he’d had a life of rejection and wished he had been aborted.” . . .

What does the hammer throw look like?

Here Russian Tatyana Lysenko, the current world record holder (78.61 meters or 257.91 feet), shows how to throw the hammer.

Keelin Godsey: Transgender All-American, discus and hammer throw

A transgendered track and field star at Bates College is determined to earn a spot on the U.S. national team and compete in the 2008 Olympics.

Godsey, left, poses with teammate Liz Wanless Reprinted from SunJournal.com LEWISTON - Keelin Godsey arrived at Bates College in September 2002 as a young, free-spirited woman named Kelly who planned to play basketball. Long before she decided to exchange the orange ball for a silver shot put and hammer, charting a course to become an 11-time All-American track and field thrower, Godsey decided that the gender side of the equation wasn't a perfect fit, either. Bates' current most-decorated female student-athlete, possibly its best ever, has begun the long, complicated and expensive process of becoming a man. "I knew it in seventh grade, when people really started hassling me about being gay," Godsey said. "I could never really figure that out, because I didn't think of myself as gay. I thought of myself as straight. I liked women, but that was a straight thing for me to do." Now a senior, less than a year away from graduate school and the myriad obligations of life that follow, Godsey has chosen to do something about that confusion, permanently. Bates' current most-decorated female student-athlete, possibly its best ever, has begun the long, complicated and expensive process of becoming a man. Godsey, a native of Parker, Colo., spent last summer and fall "coming out" as transgender to the Bates community and its rival schools in the New England Small College Athletic Conference. After announcing the name change, Godsey requested that professors, coaches and teammates use the male pronoun in athletic department press releases and casual conversation. Most have respected those wishes. When interviewed, coaches and teammates refer to "Keelin" and "he" without fail, and with a straight face. . . .

Review: "Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother"

by Marc Breindel

"People tend to think that everyone's open about every subject and everyone's willing to talk about anything," says Alexis Arquette with a huff at the end of her supposedly revealing self-documentary. "I'm done with the fascination. I'm really just happy to be me at this point."

That odd comment comes as an unwelcome conclusion to a two-hour portrait of a sex-change candidate that ends without revealing whether the subject has actually had gender-reassignment surgery.

"People just have to have a big question mark as to whether I have a vagina or a penis," Arquette declares. "It's nobody's concern but mine."

Well, then, can we have our money back?

Arquette wants to have her breasts and penis, too. As an Us Magazine editor points out in "Alexis Arquette: She's My Brother," the celebrity and her family have benefited mightily from the public's fascination with them. If it weren't for celebrity-obsessed publications like Us, the editor points out, "They'd be working at salt mines now, or something." Yet the actor who basked in the psychedelic spotlight of "The Surreal Life" reality show is now reprimanding viewers of her documentary for wanting to know how her story ends. "People should not be asking me those kind of questions," Arquette scolds. "It's inappropriate." . . .

Inmate's Sex-Change Demand Draws Scrutiny

Murderer's Bid To Have The State Pay For His Sex Change Is Bogged Down In Federal Court

BOSTON, June 26, 2007

---

Robert Kosilek, en route to the county jail following his arraignment on drunken driving charges in New Rochelle, N.Y., 1990. Right: Robert J. Kosilek, now known as Michelle, is seen in this file photo taken in a New Bedford, Mass. courthouse, 1993. (CBS/AP) Fast Fact Kosilek was convicted of strangling his wife in 1990. He claimed he killed her in self-defense after she spilled boiling tea on his genitals.

(AP) A trial that opened more than a year ago has become bogged down in Boston federal court. There have been hundreds of hours of testimony from witnesses, including 10 medical specialists paid tens of thousands of dollars. The judge himself even hired an expert to help him make sense of it all.

The question at the center of the case: Should a murderer serving life in prison get a sex-change operation at taxpayer expense?

The case of Michelle — formerly Robert — Kosilek is being closely watched across the country by advocates for other inmates who want to undergo a sex change. Transgender inmates in other states have sued prison officials, and not one has succeeded in persuading a judge to order a sex-change operation.

The Massachusetts Correction Department is vigorously fighting Kosilek's request for surgery, saying it would create a security nightmare and make Kosilek a target for sexual assault.

An Associated Press review of the case, including figures obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews, found that the Correction Department and its outside health care provider have spent more than $52,000 on experts to testify about an operation that would cost about $20,000.

The duration and expense of the case have outraged some lawmakers who insist that taxpayers should not have to pay for inmates to have surgery that most private insurers reject as elective.

"They are prisoners. They are there because they've broken the law," said Republican state Sen. Scott Brown, who unsuccessfully introduced a bill to ban sex-change surgery for inmates. "Other folks, people who want to get these types of surgeries, they have to go through their insurance carrier or save up for it and do it independently. Yet if you are in prison, you can do it for nothing? That doesn't make a lot of sense."

But advocates say in some cases — such as that of Kosilek, who has twice attempted suicide — sex-change surgery is as much a medical necessity as treatment for diabetes or high blood pressure. . . .

Jim Bailey as Judy Garland (2007), singing "After You've Gone" and "Swannee"

Illusionist Bailey sings all songs in character.

In Profile: Jim Bailey
— By Bruce Vilanch (taken from Advocate Magazine)

I once saw Jim Bailey perform in Las Vegas. The audience was from a plumbers’ convention. When he was introduced as Judy Garland, the illusion was uncannily realistic. One plumber turned to his wife and said, “I thought she was dead.” “She is,” the wife replied, “This is the daughter.”

See Jim Bailey's web site: http://jimbaileyweb.com/index.htm

Jim Bailey as Judy Garland sings for Charles and Diana in London

Illusionist Jim Bailey as Judy Garland, singing "'Ol Man River"

POV: Being Transgender in Taiwan

by Rachel Kronick

Being transgender is tough, but being transgender in Taiwan, where I am, is even harder. Taiwan has a culture which gives little room for self-expression or even self-respect, and allows even less to transgender people.

Taiwan is not really Chinese, though it does share a lot of the cultural mores of China. Some of these include a very strong sense of the division between male and female, and a very different type of moral system than we usually see in the West.

In the US, a person is worth something regardless of their relationship to you. Even if you don’t know someone, you owe them respect as a person. Of course, people don’t always accomplish this, but this is the ideal. In Taiwan, though, the ideal is quite different. In Taiwan, the degree of respect you owe to a person is almost entirely dependent upon the person’s relationship to you. If they’re your grandfather, you owe them more respect than just about anyone else. If they’re a friend, you owe them an entirely different kind of respect, and a different amount. If they’re someone you don’t know, you don’t owe them respect at all, at least not necessarily.

I’m always amused by government ads in Taiwan which try to promote such things as traffic laws or obeying building codes. They often try to show people that doing so will benefit others, and they’re always at pains to demonstrate that doing so will benefit our own selves. However, the proof always seems strained, and I get the feeling that they are struggling uphill. Taiwanese people in general do not feel a need to take strangers into consideration, so much so that I sometimes wonder if they understand other people as people at all.

Another example which comes to mind is the simple example of walking on the sidewalk. Due to the vast amounts of motorscooters, streetside vendors and poorly constructed buildings, the sidewalks are severely limited in size – often only a foot or two wide, even on major streets. To make matters worse, Taiwanese people walking on the sidewalk simply do not take other pedestrians into mind while walking. They meander, hold bags across the entire sidewalk, hold hands and walk abreast with their four-person family even when the sidewalk is narrow, etc. etc. This kind of behavior in New York, for example, would result in either being forced out of the way or a fight or something else. However, Taiwanese people take this as normal, which it is in their culture, and accept it.

In the West, training oneself not to care about others is a pragmatic necessity, but it is not an ideal in any way, at least not in my experience. If you say, “Group X is the object of violence, but they always will be because they are inherently weird and different from the rest of us,” people will label you Machiavellian. This kind of thinking goes on all the time, of course, and is necessary in a world with limited resources and limited time to think about others. However, this kind of thinking is not idealized in the West.

In Taiwan, though, this kind of thinking is the cultural norm. To put someone off to the side of one’s thinking because they are not closely related – in order to pay more attention to the closest relations in one’s life – is the Confucian ideal. Though many Taiwanese people would say that Confucius was a humorless blowhard, they are in fact laboring under his systems and even supporting them.

One of the best examples of how people are pushed off to the side is transgender folks. There is a common myth in the West that Asia is a land of mystery where transgendered people are accepted far more than they are in the West. Many people in the US, for example, seem to imagine some sort of enlightened Shangri-La where transgendered people are seen through enlightened eyes. This is far, far from the truth, though.

Transgender people in Taiwan are accepted in one small way: when they keep to their socially-prescribed niche, and do not try to break out of it in any way – in other words, when they allow themselves to be the objects of disrespect from the culture at large. They are allowed to be club performers or hostesses, but if they try to gain true acceptance or equality, the culture at large quickly labels them freaks and walks away.

Of course, this is not purely a problem experienced by Taiwanese people. Handicapped people, non-Chinese citizens (did you even know there are aborigines in Taiwan?), gay and lesbian folks, women – there are so many groups in Taiwan who are so far from any kind of equality.

But the kind of oppression experienced by transgender people in specific is so strong, so massive, it’s hard to even express it. In Taiwan, it is of course completely legal to fire someone for such things as being transgender or being gay. Even protecting the rights of pregnant women is still far away. Naturally enough, the consciousness of the society at large is far from focused on the harms visited upon TG folks. . . .

Transgender Athletes Get Into The Game

My love of sports also includes me participating in them as well. I played Little League baseball as a kid and was on my high school's varsity tennis team my senior year. I also played basketball pick up games, tennis and bowled until I started transition. After I moved to Louisville I played softball on my church team in 2002 and recently started bowling on a regular basis again.

So as a transgender sports fan I was pleased to hear about the International Olympic Committee's decision to allow transgender athletes to participate in the Olympics starting with the 2004 Athens Games. Under the Stockholm Consensus, the IOC allows transgender athletes to participate in their new gender two years after they've undergone genital surgery. If the operation took place before puberty, the athlete's gender will be respected.

In the case of a post-puberty gender transition, the athlete must undergo complete genital surgery and get their gonads (their ovaries or testes) removed before they can compete. They also have to get legal recognition of their chosen gender, complete hormone therapy to minimize any sex-related advantages and wait two years before they can become eligible to apply for a confidential IOC evaluation.

While most transwomen are okay with the new policy, transmen understandably bristled at the genital reconstruction requirement. Jamison Green in a 2004 CNN.com interview criticized the genital reconstruction completion requirement.

"I don't think that needs to be a criteria," said Green, who sits on the board of directors of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute. "Many female-to-male people can't afford to have genital reconstruction, so I think that's an unreasonable penalty."

That thought is echoed by Keelin Godsey(left in photo), who is a transgender track and field star at Bates College has a goal of making the US Olympic team and competing in Beijing next year. The transman is delaying his transition in order to make it happen.

Transgender athletes are not a new issue. Stella Walsh, the Polish-born 1932 100-meter Olympic gold medallist and 1936 silver medallist dominated women's sprinting during the 30s and 40's. The naturalized American citizen was revealed by an autopsy to have male genitalia and XY chromosomes after she was killed by a stray bullet during an 1980 armed robbery in Cleveland.

Renee Richards battled the USTA during the 70's and filed suit in 1977 for the right to play at the professional level as a woman. Mianne Bagger recently underwent the same struggle in the golfing world. Canadian mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq has been on the receiving end of biowomen complaints, Hateraid and petition drives to bar her from competition after she started winning races.

The IOC, dogged by persistent rumors in the world press of dominant Eastern European athletes such as Irina and Tamara Press of the Soviet Union being men competing as women and fears of women being fed male hormones for competitive advantage like the East German women were during their 70's and 80's runs of international sports dominance, instituted a mandatory gender verification test starting with the 1968 Mexico City Games. It was interesting to note that the Press sisters, despite winning gold medals in Rome and Tokyo and setting a combined 26 world records never again competed for the Soviet Union at the international level once the gender verification test was made mandatory.

The IOC gender test was initially a gynecological exam that evolved into a chromosomal test called the Barr Test. It was invasive, unreliable and was scrapped before the Sydney Games in 2000. It led to some awkward situations such as 1964 Olympic gold medalist sprinter Ewa Klobukowska from Poland being ruled ineligible for the European Cup women's track and field competition in 1967 because of 'ambiguous genitalia'. She was stripped of her Tokyo Games gold and bronze medals by the IAAF but gave birth to a child years later.

A year later 1966 Austrian downhill skiing world champion Erika Schinegger failed it after it revealed she was chromosomally male, making her ineligible for the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France. Erika later transitioned and reemerged on the international skiing scene as Erik Schinegger. In December 2006 at the Asian Games being held in Qatar, 800 meter silver medallist Shanti Sounderajan from India failed a gender test and was stripped of the medal she'd earned.

Some of the issues against transgender athletes stem from ignorance or jealousy. In 1996 a Thai volleyball team made up primarily of gays and transgender people nicknamed the 'Iron Ladies' won the Thai national championship and was immortalized in two Thai films of the same name. Thai governnment officals barred two of the transpeople from joining the national team and competing internationally out of fears and concern for the country's international image. Canadian mountain biker Michelle Dumaresq is constantly accused of having an 'unfair advantage' by biowomen especially afer she began to frequently win events on the Canadian mountain biking circuit.

The 'unfair advantage' argument is actually a bogus one and medical science is increasingly backing that up. Even though a transwomen grows up with testosterone coursing through her body, hormone replacement therapy takes the muscle building advantage away over time. A genetic female skeleton is lighter, so a transwoman has the handicap of lugging around basically a heavier skeleton with FEMALE musculature.

The IOC was followed by the Ladies Golf Union (Great Britain), the Ladies European Golf Tour, Women’s Golf Australia, the United States Golf Association, USA Track and Field, and the Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association in crafting policies governing transgender athletic participation in events sponsored by their organizations. The Women’s Sports Foundation, United Kingdom and the United States-based Women’s Sports Foundation have issued policy statements supporting the inclusion of transgender athletes in sport. Other international governing sporing federations have followed the IOC's lead when it comes to determining eligibility of transgender athletes in their sports. . . .

Sean Dorsey: Dancing on Razor’s Edge

By Jacob Anderson-Minshall
Published: June 14, 2007

When Sean Dorsey confesses, “It’s scary breaking new ground,” it’s hard to believe. After all, Dorsey is a critically-acclaimed dancer and choreographer who has been honing his craft for years. He’s the creator and director of Fresh Meat Productions, an organization whose very name reflects the transgender man’s commitment to showcasing new talent, and the powerhouse behind San Francisco’s annual three day event, which, in its sixth season, promises audiences not one, not two, but nine world premiers.

This is the guy who’s intimidated by trailblazing?

Before Dorsey founded Fresh Meat Productions in 2001 there was nothing else like it, and transgender artists often struggled for years in vain attempts to gain recognition and support from traditional art institutions. Fresh Meat was created to overcome those kind of barriers and it’s been extremely successful in doing so, creating an infrastructure to support transgender artists, promoting unique works and gaining visibility through year-round arts programs that explores the transgender experience.

“This year, over 16,000 people will attend Fresh Meat’s events,” Dorsey boasts. “We are giving an artistic voice to transgender experiences in a way that’s never happened before.”

In addition to producing and commissioning original work for the annual Fresh Meat Festival, the organization sponsors Dorsey’s internationally renown Dance Company, co-presents TrannyFest (San Francisco’s transgender film festival) and curates art exhibits throughout the year.

Promoting trans artists may be the primary function of Fresh Meat Productions, but the impetus behind Dorsey’s work is a commitment to trans activism. “At heart, I’m an activist and an artist—they’re inseparable for me. It’s a political and revolutionary act to stand up for transgender rights and expression—[especially while] we are still being mocked, killed, sexually assaulted, fired, evicted and silenced because of who we are.”

He says Fresh Meat’s work is transformative, arguing, “That’s how real change happens: when we are empowered to bring our voices forward, to speak positively and authentically…about our experiences as transgender.” . . .