Advocate calls for ‘transgendering’ higher ed

[Shana A]

Advocate calls for 'transgendering' higher ed

By Rosemary Winters
The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Oct 19 2011 04:32PM

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52745663-78/transgender-gender-lgbt-park.html.csp

Offering gender-neutral housing and more single-stall bathrooms are two things the University of Utah and other institutions could do to make their campuses more welcoming to transgender students and employees, a national advocate for transgender rights said Wednesday.

Pauline Park, who herself identifies as transgender, delivered the keynote address at the U.'s Pride Week. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose internal sense of being a man or a woman — or in between — differs from their birth sex. Some people who are transgender may alter their bodies through hormones or surgeries to appear more in line with the gender with which they identify, but most do not, Park noted. Transgender also can describe cross-dressers or people who see themselves as "gender queer," rejecting the binary of female and male gender norms.

"I don't think I have a gender identity disorder. I think society has a gender identity disorder," Park said. "We all have a right to define who we are."

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Transgender Inclusion in Academia (U. of Utah, 10.19.11)

Pauline Park, Ph.D.
Chair New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)

keynote speech

http://www.paulinepark.com/index.php/2011/10/transgender-inclusion-in-academia-u-of-utah-10-19-11/

I would like to begin by thanking Cathy Martinez, the director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Resource Center for inviting me to speak at Pride Week here at the University of Utah. This is my first time in Utah, and I'm really excited to be here, especially for the pride week celebration at the university.

The oft-quoted slogan of the women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s was that "the personal is political," and so I would like to commence by situating myself in the context of my own activism and academic background. After describing my current advocacy work in New York, I will then attempt to articulate a program by which we could advance transgender inclusion in the academy — what I will call 'transgendering' the academy.

[Shana A]

The Moonlight Amid the Mountains (U. of Utah, 10.21.11)

keynote speech
Gay-La University of Utah
Pauline Park

http://www.paulinepark.com/index.php/2011/10/the-moonlight-amid-the-mountains-u-of-utah-10-21-11/

In my keynote speech on Wednesday, I made some suggestions for how to make colleges and universities more transgender-supportive. And I would like us all to fully appreciate the significance of this event itself — something that was inconceivable when I graduated from college way back in the Dark Ages.

When I was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there was no office of LGBT student services on any campus anywhere in the United States.  There was no LGBT studies program at any college or university, and queer theory had no place in the academy or academic discourse. There are now LGBT student services coordinators and resource centers of various sizes and configurations on colleges across the country, and even a professional association for such staff — the Consortium of Higher Education Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Resource Professionals.