Sex and Gender Diversity: Differences within Diversity

Foundations

Friday 11:00-11:30 TRANSGENDERED COMMUNITIES IN AUSTRALIA: AN OVERVIEW

Robyn Grafkin, A Gender Agenda

Contact: robyn.graf@gmail.com

PRESENTER’S BIO:

Robyn Grafkin is an active member of A Gender Agenda, and a long time transgendered lesbian activist. She has served as Sexuality Officer at ANU, and as an organiser in various campaigns for gay and lesbian rights, including the 2006 campaign for Civil Unions in the ACT. She is an artist and amateur historian, with an interest in sex and gender diverse experience in both Australia and internationally.

ABSTRACT:

Transgendered people in Australia participate in gay, lesbian and bisexual communities, but also have a discrete community of their own. There are a variety of sex and gender diverse communities that interact with gay and lesbian communities to varying extents. This presentation seeks to explore the variety of trans, intersex and other sex and gender diverse communities and their different needs and lifestyles. Participants can expect to learn key identity definitions, key communities, and gain an understanding of the ways in which sex and gender diverse community dynamics vary from gay and lesbian dynamics; this information has practical use for anyone who wishes to contact or provide services to trans communities.

Friday 11:30-12:00 SEX AND GENDER DIVERSE PEOPLE & THE DEATH OF TRANSGENDER AS AN UMBRELLA TERM

Tracie O'Keefe, SAGE (Australia)

Contact: info@tracieokeefe.com; www.tracieokeefe.com

PRESENTER’S BIO:

Dr Tracie OKeefe DCH, ND is a psycho-sexual therapist, sexologist, researcher, author, campaigner, who has worked in the field of sex and gender diversity for nearly 40 years. She is on the steering committee of lobby group Sex And Gender Education (SAGE), which campaigns for the rights of sex and gender diverse people in Australia. She coined the term sex and gender diverse (SGD), which was taken up by the Australian Human Rights Commission in its 2009 report on the subject. She is author and co-editor of several books on sex and gender diversity.

ABSTRACT:

The paper discusses sex and/or gender diverse (SGD) people who are made up from many differing groups including people who are intersex, transexed, transsexual, transgendered, androgynous, without sex and gender identity, and people of SGD culturally specific differences. They are people who experience variations in physical presentation and social behavior that is other than stereotypically male or female. Each group may have its own physical, psychological, social, legal and political issues that may not necessarily relate to any of the other groups.  Historically these separate groups have often had a history of hostility towards each other as differing groups seek to speak out publicly in the others names. This has over the past decade found social construction theorists mistakenly attempting to usher all of them under the umbrella term transgender but the word has failed to satisfy the needs of each individual group within this category of people. We are on the cusp of counter-revolution by many to reassert the individuality of each of these groups and their needs.  Over the past nine years Sex And Gender Education (Australia) has campaigned to the government for the rights of each and every one of these groups and continues to do so under the term sex and gender diverse people. It has, however, become obvious that collective bargaining under the term transgender has failed to work because it alienates too many of the aforementioned groups of people.  The Australian Human Rights Commission in its 2009 report on the legal rights of sex and gender diverse people successfully negotiated its enquiry by using the open language phrase sex and gender diverse while including each groups concerns and issues. The phrase is now becoming more popular by health professionals, government and political campaigners.

Friday 12:00-12:30 INTERSEX HEALTH 101: AN INTRODUCTION TO INTERSEX, OUR SPECIAL HEALTH NEEDS AND THEIR LEGAL ASPECTS

Rosslyn Mayne, Inner City Legal Centre
Gina Wilson, OII Australia

Contact: ros@iclc.org.au

PRESENTERS’ BIO:

Rosslyn Mayne is the Principal Solicitor of Inner City Legal Centre, which operates the Intersex Advice Service.

Gina Wilson is Intersex and an activist for Intersex rights. Gina is a board member of Organisation Intersex International (OII) , the OII  Australasian Human rights spokesperson and president of Organisation Intersex International Australia.

ABSTRACT:

Intersex is a largely misunderstood, if it is understood at all, aspect of differences in human sex. Intersex is physical difference of sex formation, where a person may be seen to have male and female features at once, to have only partial male or female features or to have no features that might be thought of as being exclusively male or female.  This workshop seeks to explore how those differences labour under inflexible medical paradigms. In this presentation, we will look at:  1. What is intersex? 2. What are the medical paradigms around intersex, including the three most common (CAH, AIS, XXY)? 3. What are the difficulties in obtaining patient-appropriate medication (that is, medication that might be thought to be inappropriate for the expected sex predicted by the diagnostic paradigm)? 4. What are the difficulties in accessing sympathetic and knowledgeable medical practitioners who are willing to look outside of sex and gender binaries and accept the sex as reported to them by the client, be that male, female or something else? 5. What kinds of legislative changes are needed to ensure that intersex are treated by the medical profession appropriately to their physical differences, rather than being forced into one side or the other of the sex binary, where those parts of their anatomy that do not conform to male or female expectations are removed or ignored?