gender identity

gender identity

Exploring the private sense and subjective experience of a persons’ own gender. Generally this refers to a person’s innate, deeply felt psychological identification as a man, woman or some other gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned to them at birth.

criticism of a

, and a scientist under siege In academic feuds, as in war, there is no telling how far people will go once the shooting starts.Earlier this month, members of the International Academy of Sex Research, gathering for their annual meeting in Vancouver, informally discussed one of the most contentious and personal social science controversies in recent memory.

The central figure, J. Michael Bailey, a psychologist at Northwestern University, has promoted a theory that his critics think is inaccurate, insulting and potentially damaging to transgender women. In the past few years, several prominent academics who are transgender have made a series of accusations against the psychologist, including that he committed ethics violations. A transgender woman he wrote about has accused him of a sexual impropriety, and Dr. Bailey has become a reviled figure for some in the gay and transgender communities. To many of Dr. Bailey’s peers, his story is a morality play about the corrosive effects of political correctness on academic freedom. Some scientists say that it has become increasingly treacherous to discuss politically sensitive issues. They point to several recent cases, like that of Helmuth Nyborg, a Danish researcher who was fired in 2006 after he caused a furor in the press by reporting a slight difference in average I.Q. test scores between the sexes.

“What happened to Bailey is important, because the harassment was so extraordinarily bad and because it could happen to any researcher in the field,” said Alice Dreger, an ethics scholar and patients’ rights advocate at Northwestern who, after conducting a lengthy investigation of Dr. Bailey’s actions, has concluded that he is essentially blameless. “If we’re going to have research at

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all, then we’re going to have people saying unpopular things, and if this is what happens to them, then we’ve got problems not only for science but free expression itself.” To Dr. Bailey’s critics, his story is a different kind of morality tale. “Nothing we have done, I believe, and certainly nothing I have done, overstepped any boundaries of fair comment on a book and an author who stepped into the public arena with enthusiasm to deliver a false and unscientific and politically damaging opinion,” Deirdre McCloskey, a professor of economics, history, English, and communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and one of Dr. Bailey’s principal critics, said in an e-mail message.

The hostilities began in the spring of 2003, when Dr. Bailey published a book, “The Man Who Would Be Queen,” intended to explain the biology of sexual orientation and gender to a general audience.

“The next two years,” Dr. Bailey said in an interview, “were the hardest of my life.”

Many sex researchers who have worked with Dr. Bailey say that he is a solid scientist and collaborator, who by his own admission enjoys violating intellectual taboos.

In his book, he argued that some people born male who want to cross genders are driven primarily by an erotic fascination with themselves as women. This idea runs counter to the belief, held by many men who decide to live as women, that they are the victims of a biological mistake — in essence, women trapped in men’s bodies.

Dr. Bailey described the alternate theory, which is based on Canadian studies done in the 1980s and 1990s, in part by telling the stories of several transgender women he met through a mutual acquaintance. In the book, he gave them pseudonyms, like “Alma” and “Juanita.” Other scientists praised the book as a compelling explanation of the science. The Lambda Literary Foundation, an organization that promotes gay, bisexual and transgender literature, nominated the book for an award. But days after the book appeared, Lynn Conway, a prominent computer scientist at the University of Michigan, sent out an e-mail message comparing Dr. Bailey’s views to Nazi propaganda. She and

other transgender women found the tone of the book abusive, and the theory of motivation it presented to be a recipe for further discrimination. Dr. Conway did not respond to requests for an interview.

Dr. Ben Barres, a neurobiologist at Stanford, said in reference to Dr. Bailey’s thesis in the book, “Bailey seems to make a living by claiming that the things people hold most deeply true are not true.” At a public meeting of sex researchers shortly after the book’s publication, Dr. John Bancroft, then director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, said to Dr. Bailey, “Michael, I have read your book, and I do not think it is science,” according to accounts of the meeting. Dr. Bancroft confirmed the comment. The backlash soon turned from the book to its author. After consulting with Dr. Conway, four of the transgender women who spoke to Dr. Bailey during his reporting for the book wrote letters to Northwestern, complaining that they had been used as research subjects without having given, or been asked to sign, written consent. One wrote a letter making another accusation against Dr. Bailey: she claimed he had had sex with her. Dr. Conway and Dr. McCloskey also wrote letters to Northwestern, accusing Dr. Bailey of grossly violating scientific standards “by conducting intimate research observations on human subjects without telling them that they were objects of the study.” They also wrote to the Illinois state regulators, requesting that they investigate Dr. Bailey for practicing psychology without a license.

Dr. Bailey, who was not licensed to practice clinical psychology in Illinois, had provided some of those who helped him with the book with brief case evaluation letters, suggesting that they were good candidates for sex-reassignment surgery. A spokesman for the state said that regulators took no action on the complaints. In an interview, Dr. Bailey said that nothing he did was wrong or unethical. “I interviewed people for a book,” he said. “This is a free society, and that should be allowed.” But by the end of 2003, the controversy had a life of its own on the Internet. Dr. Conway, the

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computer scientist, kept a running chronicle of the accusations against Dr. Bailey on her Web site. Any Google search of Dr. Bailey’s name brought up Dr. Conway’s site near the top of the list. The site also included a link to the Web page of another critic of Dr. Bailey’s book, Andrea James, a Los Angeles-based transgender advocate and consultant. Ms. James downloaded images from Dr. Bailey’s Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided. (Dr. Bailey is a divorced father of two.) Ms. James

concluded that the accusations against the psychologist were essentially groundless.

For example, Dr. Dreger found that two of the four women who complained to Northwestern of research violations were not portrayed in the book at all. The two others did know their stories would be used, as they themselves said in their letters to Northwestern. The accusation of sexual misconduct came five years after the fact, and was not possible to refute or confirm, Dr. Dreger said.

It specified a date in 1998 when Dr. Bailey was at his ex-wife’s house, looking after their children, according to dated e-mail messag-

said in an e-mail message that Dr. Bailey’s work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect.

Dr. Dreger is the latest to arrive at the battlefront. She is a longtime advocate for people born with ambiguous sexuality and has been strongly critical of sex researchers in the past. She said she had presumed that Dr. Bailey was guilty and, after meeting him through a mutual friend, had decided to investigate for herself. But in her just-completed account, due to be published next year in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, the field’s premier journal, she

es between the psychologist and his ex-wife, Dr. Dreger found.

The transgender woman who made the complaint said through a friend that she stood by the accusation but did not want to talk about it. Moreover, based on her own reading of federal regulations, Dr. Dreger, whose report can be viewed at www.bioethics.northwestern.edu, argued that the book did not qualify as scientific research. The federal definition describes “a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation.” Dr. Bailey used the people in his book as anecdotes, not as the subjects of a systematic

investigation, she reported. “The bottom line is that they tried to ruin this guy, and they almost succeeded,” Dr. Dreger said. Dr. Dreger’s report began to circulate online last week, and Dr. Bailey’s critics already have attacked it as being biased.

For their part, Northwestern University administrators began an investigation of Dr. Bailey’s research in later 2003 (there is no evidence that they investigated the sex complaint). The inquiry, which lasted almost a year, brought research to a near standstill in Dr. Bailey’s laboratory, and clouded his name among some other researchers, according to people who worked with the psychologist. “That was the worst blow of all, that we didn’t get much support” from Northwestern, said Gerulf Rieger, a graduate student of Dr. Bailey’s at the time, and now a lecturer at Northwestern. “They were quite scared and not very professional, I thought.”

A spokesman for the university declined to comment on the investigation, which concluded in 2004. One collaborator broke with Dr. Bailey over the controversy, Dr. Bailey said. Others who remained loyal said doing so had a cost: two researchers said they were advised by a government grant officer that they should distance themselves from Dr. Bailey to improve their chances of receiving financing.

“He told me it would be better if I played down any association with Bailey,” said Khytam Dawood, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Bailey said that the first weeks of the backlash were the worst. He tried not to think about the accusations, he said, but would wake up in the middle of the night unable to think of anything else. He took anti-anxiety pills for a while. He began to worry about losing his job. He said that friends and family supported him but that some colleagues were afraid to speak up in his defense. “They saw what I was going through, I think, and wanted no part of it,” he said. The fog of war, which can overwhelm the senses of real soldiers, can also descend on academic feuds, and it seems to have done so on this one.

In October 2004, Dr. Bailey stepped down as chairman of the psychology department. He declined to say why, and a spokesman for Northwestern would say only that the change in status had nothing to do with the book. These unknowns seem if anything to have extended the life of the controversy, which still simmers online. “I think for me, for the work I do, honestly, I don’t really care what his theories are,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, of Dr. Bailey. “But I do want to feel like any theories that affect the lives of so many people are based in good science, and that they’re presented responsibly.”

But that, say supporters of Dr. Bailey, is precisely the problem: Who defines responsible? And at what cost is that definition violated? It is perhaps fitting that the history of this conflict, which caught fire online, is being written and revised continually in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which is compiled and corrected by users. The reference site provides a lengthy entry on Dr. Bailey, but a section titled “Research Misconduct,” which posts some of the accusations Dr. Dreger reviewed, includes a prominent warning. It reads: “The neutrality of this section is disputed.”

BY BENEDICT CAREY Science Reporter / New York Times

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the science of human sexuality goes to cour t Today I’d like to discuss one of the first two post-Macy cases being brought by the EEOC, under the able and courageous leadership of P. David Lopez, the commission’s chief counsel, who was just confirmed by the U.S. Senate for another term. This case, in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division, brought by the EEOC under Title VII following the Macy decision, highlights the conflict surrounding the trans-gender condition brilliantly. This case, with RG & GR Harris Funeral Homes, Inc., as the defendant, shows us the state of mind of those Americans who either are profoundly ignorant of science or detest those who don’t fit into their limited conceptions of sexuality. Most importantly, this filing shows the malice behind this defense as well as the profound lack of any scientific awareness of the situation that has developed over the past 20 years.

ical or legal authority that would support him in that assertion. To the contrary, there have been dozens of medical studies that prove that being trans is a physical, scientific reality, beginning famously with the Zhou study of postmortem brains. The critical medical study was done by Professor William Reiner of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in 2004, and it convinced even his colleague and the trans community’s arch-nemesis, Emeritus Professor Paul McHugh, that gender identity exists in the brains of all human beings.

The study wasn’t absolutely necessary, as there are myriad intersex conditions that prove the existence of a brain-based gender identity independent of chromosomes, genes, or genitalia, but it was the Reiner study that took the science of gender variance to the critical mass that forced the medical profession out of the closet.

That malice that drives this business entity is evident in the willful and deliberate mis-gendering of the plaintiff, Aimee Stephens, throughout. I will not speak to the specifics of this case, because I don’t know the plaintiff and the myriad technicalities here that can make or break any legal case, let alone one involving trans persons. Instead I want to focus on the core assertion (p.23) of the defense (emphasis mine):

That study was followed by the publication in 2006 of a meta-analysis of human sexual development, authored and supported by many of the world’s leading researchers in human sexual development, entitled “Atypical Gender Development.” Further studies ultimately led to the American Psychiatric Association’s removal of adult and adolescent gender-identity conditions from classification as a mental illness in the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the DSM 5, published in December 2012.

First, Anthony is not, in fact, a woman. As discussed above, he is biologically, anatomically and legally, a man. He may assert -- against all objective evidence -that he is a woman, but there is no med-

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Today there is little argument in the medical community about the existence of trans persons or their being just an-

other congenital neuro-developmental variation of the human condition.

Only religious-fundamentalist physicians, dwindling in number, argue this issue anymore. While there is still much work that needs to be done to understand the etiology of transsexualism and other gender variances and arrive at a more complete comprehension of human sexual development in general, this is settled medicine. The only real debate left pertains to the process of childhood sex and gender development and how it should be managed; there is no debating the fact that variations do exist and need to be respected.

As for the legal arguments, I’ve gone into great detail in earlier blog posts.

This case’s defense is replete with references from the ancient times, legally speaking, prior to the Smith v. City of Salem case of 2006, and includes highly selective cutting and pasting from subsequent blockbuster cases in favor of the trans community, such as Schroer v. Billington. The significance of this case and its companion case from Florida, which I will discuss in greater detail later, were discussed by Chris Geidner on BuzzFeed a few months ago.

While there are valid arguments relating to religious liberty where it intersects with gender equality, this defense is based, simply and purely, on a refusal to recognize the science and its supportive medical authorities, which have, over the past two decades, contributed to the rapid change in jurisprudence we’ve seen since 2006.

Today’s vote, reconstituting the EEOC with the addition of former Kennedy staffer and Associate Deputy Attorney General Charlotte Burrows and the return of David Lopez as Chief Counsel, presages further progress for us all.

BY DANA BEYER Executive Director, Gender Rights Maryland 6

should a student conceal h lesbian identity in college

Q. Dear Civil Behavior:

Our daughter is a senior in high school and quite comfortable with her lesbian identity. We support her 100 percent, but we know the world is not always so tolerant. As she’s writing her college application essays this fall, she’s “coming out” in them — and we think that’s a bad idea. You just never know who’s reading these essays, so why risk revealing your orientation to someone who might be biased against you? We’ve strongly suggested she think over the ramifications of what she’s doing, but she doesn’t seem to have any doubt about it. Deadlines are approaching and we are at an impasse. How can we persuade her to keep some things private if they might hurt her chances of admission?”

— Anonymous

her essays?

A: I can see why for boomer parents this situation could be an especially tough call, since our own experience colors our point of view. When our generation applied to college, gays and lesbians kept their sexual orientation under wraps — for very good reason.

For example, at Duke University, my alma mater, “the Duke of older times was saturated with homophobia,” its president, Richard H. Brodhead, said in a speech this fall. He acknowledged “evidence of official intolerance and active repression of homosexuality at Duke from the 1960s,” and noted the national context: “It would be hard to describe today how deeply entrenched prejudice on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity was in this country at this time. Homophobic prejudice was everywhere, with its aggressive mockery and crude repression.” Applicants could hardly be faulted for concealing what was then a possible cause for expulsion. But times have changed. It is notable that Dr. Brodhead made his remarks at the opening of a new Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, in the heart of Duke’s campus.

Today’s youth also have different feelings about personal privacy than our generation does. Boomers who understand and accept the many variations in sexual identity may see no need to broadcast it to the world, or to make it the focus of a college application essay. But a high school senior today has come of age amid a torrent of texts and posts that bare everything (sometimes literally). So I find two questions within your question: First, will this affect my child’s chances of admission?

And second, whether or it does or not, what is the best stance for you to take?

For the first, I asked a number of current L.G.B.T. undergrads how they had handled this issue on their college applications. One current student told me: “In the end, I didn’t include any mention of that aspect of my identity in my essays. I didn’t want to have even the slightest chances of affecting my chances of admission.” Others said they believed that coming out in their essays had played a part in their being rejected by schools they should have gotten into. Still others thought that by coming out they could increase the odds of admission at a school committed to a diverse student body.

Continue reading the main story I also called an expert, Christoph Guttentag, who is Duke’s dean of admissions and has read more than 50,000 essays. He replied that if a school has antigay policies or is generally L.G.B.T.–unfriendly (usually religious colleges), then he recommends putting a lid on your sexual orientation or gender identity.

Otherwise, he told me, “When students present themselves as who they are, it’s rewarded in the admissions process. Authenticity is perhaps the attribute we see too rarely.”

On a more practical level, however, whatever your daughter says in her essay it’s not difficult for an admissions officer to learn about her sexuality. According to a 2013 Kaplan Test Prep survey, 31 percent of college admissions officers said they had visited a prospective applicant’s social media page – up 5 percentage points from a year ago. Even a cursory online search could reveal that an applicant has started a straight-gay alliance at their high school or posted a blog about the challenges of coming out, said Seppy Basili, a Kaplan vice president.

Are you confused yet? I don’t blame you — college admissions is a difficult, high-stakes game with rules that are opaque to the players (even more so than in our day). To make things more complicated, it’s the second part of your question that is the one with more profound implications.

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Here’s why: There’s a big difference between sharing too much (which kids today admittedly do), and actively concealing something.

The Common App invites applicants to share “a background or story that is so central to their identity that they believe their application would be incomplete without it.” I can think of several such topics that may feel core to a high school senior. If your daughter had been adopted, had had a life-altering accident, or were biracial, would you discourage her from writing about it? I doubt it. As one gay student told me, “My parents did something similar and it gave me a sense of shame, that there was something wrong with me that needed to be hidden.”

In the end, the strategic question probably can’t be definitely answered — nor may it be the best one to ask. In 20 years will she remember what her essay was about? I doubt it. As one mother wrote me, “In the end it actually matters very little what she decides to write in her application, but it matters a lot if she starts to think that her parents want her to hide who she is from the world.” Clearly you’ve given your daughter a strong sense of self and the confidence to be who she is, even if the world is not as tolerant as we’d all hope. Sure, one of a parent’s jobs is to worry, but after 17 or so years you can’t be there for every important decision in life.

So, please reconsider what message you are sending to her when you ask her to conceal her identity.

BY STEVEN PETROW Civil Behavior / Booming / New York Times 9

a university recognizes a third gender : neutral Rocko Gieselman looked like any other undergraduate at the University of Vermont but perhaps a little prettier, with pale freckles dancing across porcelain skin and bright blue eyes amplifying a broad smile.

Black bra straps poked out from a faded black tank top emblazoned with the logo of the indie band Rubblebucket; a silver necklace with an anchor dangled over ample décolletage.

Gieselman, a 21-year-old senior majoring in gender studies, was chatting cheerfully from a futon, legs tucked sideways, knees forward. In the tidy, poster-filled apartment that Gieselman shares with a roommate near campus, we were discussing the dating landscape. Gieselman, who came out in seventh grade, blushed and smiled shyly: “My partner was born female, feels female. The partners I’m attracted to are usually feminine people.”

Gieselman, too, was born female, has a gentle disposition, and certainly appears feminine (save for a K. D. Lang cut). But Gieselman self-identifies not as a gay woman but as transgender. Unlike men and women who experience a mismatch between their bodies and their gender identities and take steps to align them, Gieselman accepts having a womanly body, and uses the term — along with “genderqueer” — to mean something else: a distinct third gender.

While a freshman at Burlington High School, Gieselman began feeling that the label “girl,” even “lesbian,” didn’t fit. “Every time someone used ‘she’ or ‘her’ to refer to me, it made this little tick in my head. Kind of nails-on-a-chalkboard is another way you can describe it. It just felt wrong. It was like, ‘Who are you talking to?’”

Being a boy didn’t feel right, either: “I had a couple months where I gave it a go. I tried to bind my chest with an Ace bandage every day. I wore some masculine clothes and told my friends to call me Emmett.”

Neither category applied. “It felt not only like I was invisible but, especially at that time when hormones are aflutter, like no one would really know what I was like for the rest of my life.” Gieselman began spending time at Outright Vermont, a trans and queer youth center where the gender lexicon of activists and academe is widely accepted.

“As soon as I learned about a genderqueer identity, I was like, ‘Oh! That’s the one!’” said Gieselman, who frequently ends sentences with a gentle laugh. “Before, it had been really difficult to explain how I was feeling to other people, and even really difficult to explain it in my own head. Suddenly, there was a language for it, and that started the journey.” Gieselman dumped the girlie name bestowed at birth, asked friends and teachers to use Rocko, the tough-sounding nickname friends had come up with, and told people to use “they” instead of “he” or “she.” “They” has become an increasingly popular substitute for “he” or “she” in the transgender community, and the University of Vermont, a public institution of some 12,700 students, has agreed to use it.

While colleges across the country have been grappling with concerns related to students transitioning from one gender to another, Vermont is at the forefront in recognizing the next step in identity politics: the validation of a third gender. The university allows students like Gieselman to select their own identity — a new first name, regardless of whether they’ve legally changed it, as well as a chosen pronoun — and records these details in the campuswide information system so that professors have the correct terminology at their fingertips. For years, writers and academics have argued that gender identity is not a male/female binary but a continuum along which any individual may fall, depending on a variety of factors, including anatomy, chromosomes, hormones and feelings. But the dichotomy is so deeply embedded in our culture that even the most radical activists had been focused mainly on expanding the definitions of the two pre-ex-

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isting categories. Today, a growing number of students are embracing the idea that when it comes to classifying gender, there should be more than two options — something now afforded by the dating website OkCupid and

by Facebook, which last year added a tab for “custom” alongside “male” and “female,” with some 50 options, including “agender,” “androgyne,” “pangender” and “trans person,” as well as an option for controlling who can see the customized version. Activists on campuses as diverse as Penn State, University at Albany, University of Chicago, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and University of California, Riverside, are laying claim to a degree of identity freedom nearly unimaginable when the first L.G.B.T student centers were established. Today’s students, who grew up with Gay-Straight Alliances in their high schools, with transgender people represented in the media and with transgender rights percolating through the courts, arrived on campuses already L.G.B.T.-friendly and, in many cases, equipped with gender-neutral housing and bathrooms.

In hopes of raising consciousness of the biases built into social structures and into the language we use to discuss them, students are organizing identity conferences and inventing new vocabularies, which include pronouns like “ze” and “xe,” and pressing administrations to make changes that validate, in language, the existence of a gender outside the binary. Certainly, there’s a long line of people throughout history whose traits have put them outside norms, and some cultures long ago formalized the existence of a gender that isn’t purely female or purely male, like the American Indian’s two-spirits or India’s hijras. But the binary is a belief system at least as old as Adam and Eve, and most people don’t even realize it’s there. “It’s like a constant coming-out process, educating those around you that there is a gender binary, and this is what it means to identify outside of it,” said Gieselman, who works on campus planning gender-related events.

Identifying as genderqueer is an opportunity to self-invent, unburdened from social expectations about dress and behavior. Occasionally Gieselman wishes for a lower voice and flatter chest, but other times feels O.K. with, even happy about, having a feminine physique.

“Even within the same day or the next day I can suddenly really love how my chest looks in a sundress,” said Gieselman, who wears two small nose rings. In the bedroom closet hang T-shirts, flannels, dresses and a rack of bow ties. It might seem a simple turn of events, but adding gender-neutral options to the University of Vermont’s information system took nearly a decade of lobbying, the creation of a task force of students, faculty members and administrators, and six months and $80,000 in staff time to create a software patch.

One key to the developments is Dorothea Brauer, a plain-spoken, big-hearted mental health counselor known to everyone as Dot. Ms. Brauer spent nine years working at the campus counseling center before becoming, in 2001, the director of what was then called the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning & Ally Center. While in her 20s and living in New Jersey, Ms. Brauer, who wears her hair cut short with a single, long braid down her back in tribute to a Cherokee grandmother, was spending time with a woman when an acquaintance changed the course of her life by inquiring about the relationship, and then pointedly but nonjudgmentally asking, “Honey, are you gay?”

“I said, ‘Well, yeah, but only with Anita,’ ” recalled Ms. Brauer. (Anita would turn out to be her life partner — 32 years and counting.) “That’s how clueless I was,” she said, chuckling over a taco salad lunch at the Penny Cluse Café in downtown Burlington. “I was 24, 25, and scared to death. I came out to my mother, only my mother, because I became physically ill with depression.”

A decade later, as one of the few out women on campus in the 1990s, she treated students with debilitating identity issues, some of whom attempted suicide or faced a psychotic break. (L.G.B.T.Q. youth are more than twice as likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) Ms. Brauer’s first act upon being installed as the center’s director was to assign a graduate student to research and catalog the unmet needs of the transgender community.

Among the difficulties faced by transgender students: inability to use bathrooms marked “men” or “women” for fear of a confrontation with a confused classmate; being accused of using a stolen student ID in the cafeteria because the name printed on it didn’t match someone’s gender appearance; and having the faculty rely on a student-information system that listed only legal names, leading to occasions when a student might be embarrassed or inadvertently outed. Ms. Brauer heard about one distraught transgender freshman whose professor, while calling roll, first read the student’s feminine legal name, then announced the male nickname. Ms. Brauer reached out to the registrar, Keith P. Williams, who worked with the university’s lawyers to allow transgender students to change their first name in the schoolwide system, but doing so required an in-person visit to the dean of students’ office and filling out paperwork. She then set to work waging a

campaign to educate, face to face, members Vermont students have specified a preferred of the faculty, staff and administration on pronoun, with 14 opting for “ze,” 10 for “they” why language sensitivity was so important and another 228 for name only. On campusto a student’s self-respect — and assisted es across the country gender-conscious stustudents in getting school policy amended dents have adopted the earnest, P.C. practice to specifically prohibit discrimination based of starting social interactions by introducing on gender identity. By 2009, faculty mem- themselves by name and “P.G.P.,” or preferred bers themselves began pushing for a broader gender pronoun. (The most semantically obsolution to the identification issue, and Mr. sessed still object to the word “preferred.”)

Williams created a task force to look into how Robyn Ochs, an educator who helped found students could register a preferred first name an early L.G.B.T. faculty and staff group at without having to make a special request. Harvard, believes that Vermont’s changes are The task force realized that the only way to nothing less than lifesaving. “Some people guarantee a professor would properly refer try to reduce this whole topic to kids trying to to a student was to supply the student’s pro- be cool or they’re just acting out or whatevnoun on class rosters and advisee lists. Then er, just trying to be different or new,” said Ms. came the question of which gender-neutral Ochs, who has visited some 500 campuses pronoun to offer. Bowing to the faculty, the to speak on L.G.B.T. issues, and often facilitask force selected “ze” and revised its in- tates a discussion she calls “Beyond Binaformation system, becoming the first school ries.” “But there have always been people who in the nation at which students could se- have felt profoundly uncomfortable in their lect their pronoun. They could also leave assigned gender roles,” she said. “Anything the field blank, we can do to or opt for “name make them saf“there have always only,” indicating er, or make them been people who have felt a preference for feel recognized, being referred to profoundly uncomfortable in heard, seen, unby name instead we their assigned gender roles” derstood, of by pronoun. should do. To validate their identi The change fueled gender-aware- ty and experience could, in fact, save their life.” ness campaigns by students all over the country. So many administrators were receiv- How does one explain to family ing requests that, in 2012, the American As- members what it means to be neither male sociation of Collegiate Registrars and Admis- nor female? Once, at age 15, in conversation sions Officers convened a task force to draft a with an aunt at the kitchen table, Gieselman list of best practices for handling transgender tried unsuccessfully to diagram the constudent records. So far, about 100 schools cepts of gender and sex on a napkin, with now allow students, and sometimes employ- gender referring to the attitudes and behavees, to indicate a moniker other than their le- iors a society associates with a person’s bigal first name, according to the Consortium ological sex, and sex referring to a person’s of Higher Education L.G.B.T Resource Profes- biological status (not to be confused with sionals, and hundreds more have contacted sexual orientation, one’s romantic interVermont on how to implement the pronoun ests). “I don’t even know what it was I was choice. In September, the university’s pronoun trying to show,” Gieselman, an eighth-genoptions were expanded yet again to include eration Vermonter, recounted with a laugh. “they,” as grammarians have reminded nay- Gieselman’s grandmother, too, had a few sayers that the English language is constant- questions about the napkin. “They were very ly evolving. Since 2009, 1,891 University of confused,” Gieselman said, “and still are.”

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Sara Miller, Gieselman’s mother, said that when her teenager first came out to her and offered to provide a pronoun chart for reference, she scoffed. “At the time, it irritated me to no end,” said Ms. Miller, a social worker. “I was like, ‘Really? This is what our struggle is going to be about? Pronouns?’”

But Ms. Miller has learned to accept the person her former little girl has become. “It’s grown out of the process of really seeing how Rocko has grown as an individual and an adult, seeing how Rocko is their own person, and not a child,” Ms. Miller said. “This is how they presents themself to new friends and colleagues and employers and students. That group knows Rocko only that way.” Although Ms. Miller tries her best to always use “they/them” pronouns, she often slips up, but Gieselman isn’t bothered. “Rocko and I have an understanding. She knows I try,” said Ms. Miller, slipping up again.

At last summer’s orientation for new faculty members, Ms. Brauer handed out pocket-size pronoun charts created by the L.G.B.T. Resource Center at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She also gave out her cellphone number and words of support: “If you’re struggling with it, give me a call any time and I’ll walk you through it, and give you time to practice, and walk you through any questions you might have.”

Use of “they/them” is so widely accepted in the politically correct enclave that is Burlington that a colleague at Feldman’s Bagels, where Gieselman works part time, recently asked if it was O.K. to correct a customer who uses the wrong pronoun because she knew Gieselman wouldn’t. “I know if something might be bothering them, they wouldn’t necessarily say something about it,” said Alexa Ciecierski, a morning-shift co-worker.

At the apartment that afternoon, Gieselman talked excitedly about finally receiving documentation of a legal name change, which arrived in the mail that afternoon, and showed off several gig posters brought home by a roommate, who manages local bands. On the coffee table, a collection of Angel Cards filled a small bowl, each billet offering a single word like “discernment” or “balance” or “integrity,” meant to be chosen and read for a daily dose of inspiration.

“Do you want to pick one?” Gieselman asked me. I reached in the bowl and pulled out “strength.” Gieselman leaned forward off the futon, swished the cards around, plucked one from the center, smiled, then read it aloud: “Freedom.”

BY JULIE SCELFO Education Life / New York Times

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[study]

harm mental health Feeling that they're the wrong sex may lead to depression, abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder

New studies show that children struggling with their gender identity also face higher risks for abuse and mental health problems, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Children with gender identity disorder show a strong, persistent discomfort with their biological sex. They identify with and display behaviors usually seen in the opposite sex. One study, from Children's Hospital Boston, looked at the emotional and behavioral problems of children and teens referred to its specialty clinic for evaluation and possible medical treatment. "The study only focuses on kids who experience profound distress or [sadness] with their changing bodies, so the psychiatric manifestations of that distress include much higher risks for self-injurious behavior, depression, suicide attempts and anxiety," said Dr. Scott Leibowitz, a pediatric psychiatrist affiliated with the hospital's Gender Management Service. Ninety-seven patients younger than 21 were included, 43 born as males and 54 as females. Forty-three patients already had psychiatric symptoms, 20 reported self-mutilation and nine had attempted suicide. The studies appear online and in the March issue of the journal Pediatrics.

Dr. Walter Meyer III, author of an accompanying journal editorial, said many problems arise from the reactions these children face at home and in school. “These kids are really normal -- they just want to be the other gender,� said Meyer, a psychiatrist who works with transgender patients at the University of Texas Medical Branch, in Galveston.

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"The ones who are well-adjusted and well-accepted by their families and at school don't have the psychiatric issues." The other study, from the Harvard School of Public Health, looked at long-term data on nearly 10,000 young adults, average age 23. Those who rated high for childhood gender nonconformity were more likely to report physical, psychological and sexual abuse as children. They were almost twice as likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder as young adults. "Gender conformity" relates to how children express themselves -- through their clothes, their interests, their mannerisms -- and how these behaviors mesh with what's typical for their biological sex. One expert said the study is "important," and that it helps tease out why these kids have trouble coping.

It "tests one of the key proposed factors -- childhood abuse," said Stephen Russell, a professor of family studies at the University of Arizona. "There has been concern that parents may react to gender nonconformity in harsh ways. This is perhaps the first study to show evidence of that and of the lasting implications for health."

Fear of the unknown is part of the problem. "We've seen in studies of gender nonconforming LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] youth that what most people think of as abuse comes from a place of concern and fear on the part of parents -- that is, they think they can help their kid by 'toughening them up' or teaching them to 'fit in,' " Russell said. "Many parents literally have no framework for understanding gender nonconformity in children." Meyer, meanwhile, said he sees signs of growing awareness and acceptance, spurred by the media. Once parents are onboard, treatment can begin, sometimes quite early, he said. "At age 5 or 6, treatment is mainly psychotherapy and working with family to help them [kids] adjust," Meyer said. "Sometimes that means reassuring them and letting them dress up at home. Some might start school taking on a new gender."

Pent-up need for treatment appears to exist. Since Children's Hospital Boston established a Gender Management Service in 2007, the population of gender nonconformists seeking treatment quadrupled. "By having clinical services that are specialized and interdisciplinary, you're providing an avenue for parents to come and present for treatment," Leibowitz said. "That brings a lot of people out of their closets, so to speak, and shows this is a less stigmatized issue, so that people can get the appropriate assessments and treatments that they deserve." Some children receive treatment to delay puberty and buy them time while deciding whether to proceed with a gender change.

Puberty blockers, which are not covered by insurance, are expensive. “Injections can cost upwards of $1,000 a month.” Leibowitz said. Newer implants cost about $3,400 for two years. Blocking irreversible changes of puberty has advantages for those who eventually opt for full gender transition, through cross-sex hormones or sexual reassignment surgery, Leibowitz said. “In their bodies and appearance, they will be perceived by society as the gender they affirm and thus have healthier outcomes,” he explained. “We as individuals who do not experience an incongruence between our minds and bodies take for granted how easy life is,” Leibowitz added. “You just need to meet one child and one family to see how this impacts their lives.”

BY LISA ESPOSITO Reporter / HealthDay

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transgender kids show identity across measures

A study with 32 transgender children, ages 5 to 12, indicates that the gender identity of these children is deeply held and is not the result of confusion about gender identity or pretense. The study, led by psychological scientist Kristina Olson of the University of Washington, is one of the first to explore gender identity in transgender children using implicit measures that operate outside conscious awareness and are, therefore, less susceptible to modification than self-report measures. The findings will be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

Olson started the research project, partly out of her interest in how children think about social groups, but also because she’d witnessed the challenges of a close friend with a transgender child. “Seeing how little scientific information there was, basically nothing for parents, was hard to watch,” Olson said. “Doctors were saying, ‘We just don’t know,’ so the parents have to make these really big decisions: Should I let my kid go to school as a girl, or should I make my kid go to school as a boy? Should my child be in therapy to try to change what she says she is, or should she be supported?” The idea that young children, who haven’t gone through puberty, can truly be transgender has met with public skepticism and some experts believe the best approach is to encourage “gender-variant” children to be comfortable with their biological gender.

In recent years, however, more doctors, parents, and mental health professionals have begun to advocate for allowing children to live as their identified gender.

Olson wanted to better understand gender identity in transgender children, taking a scientific approach to investigating whether their gender identity is deeply held, confused, or simply pretense, as some have argued. Olson and co-authors Nicholas Eaton at Stony Brook University and Aidan Key of Gender Diversity, a Seattle organization that provides training and runs support groups for families of gender-nonconforming children, specifically focused their study on transgender children who were living as their identified gender in all aspects of their lives, who came from supportive home environments, and who had not yet reached puberty. The participants and their cisgender (non-transgender) siblings were recruited through support groups, conferences, and word of mouth.

Finally, the researchers recruited cisgender children from a database of families interested in participating in developmental psychology research studies.

These cisgender children were age-matched to the transgender participants for

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analytical comparisons. To get a comprehensive sense of the children’s gender identity, Olson and colleagues used self-report measures that asked children to reflect on aspects of their gender in combination with implicit measures designed to gauge the strength of the children’s more automatic gender associations.

For example, one of the implicit measures, based on the commonly used Implicit Association Test (IAT), assessed the speed with which they associated gender — male and female — with descriptors related to the concepts of “me” and “not me.” The test is based on the theory that people are faster to respond to pairings that are more strongly associated in memory.

The IAT has been used in many studies to investigate implicit attitudes related to various attributes, including gender and race, and brief versions of the IAT that use pictures instead of words have been validated for use with children.

Overall, data from the various measures indicated that transgender children’s responses were indistinguishable from those of two groups of cisgender children On the IAT measuring children’s gender identity, transgender children showed a strong implicit identification with their expressed gender. When the researchers looked at the data according to the children’s expressed gender, they saw that the data from transgender girls showed the same pattern as the data from cisgender girls and the data from transgender boys showed the same pattern as data from cisgender boys. And Olson and colleague saw the exact same pattern of findings when they looked at data from an IAT test that tapped into the children’s gender preferences.

Transgender children also showed the same pattern of results as cisgender children on the explicit measures included in the study. For example, transgender girls, just like cisgender girls, preferred to be friends with other girls and they tended to prefer toys and foods that other girls liked. “While future studies are always needed, our results support the notion that transgender children are not confused, delayed, showing gender-atypical responding, pretending, or oppositional — they instead show responses entirely typical and expected for children with their gender identity,” the researchers write.

“The data reported in this paper should serve as further evidence that transgender children do indeed exist and that this identity is a deeply held one,” they conclude.

Olson hopes to recruit up to 100 additional transgender children and follow them into adulthood to observe how the support they have received influences their development and whether it translates into more positive outcomes than in today’s transgender adults, launching the first large-scale, nationwide, longitudinal study of transgender children in the United States. “We have absolutely no idea what their lives will look like, because there are very few transgender adults today who lived as young kids expressing their gender identity,” Olson said. “That’s all the more reason why this particular generation is important to study.

They’re the pioneers.”

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