Global Pride Warriors

[Shana A]

Global Pride Warriors
In the spirit of widespread change, meet four international gay rights activists from Nepal, Russia, Nigeria, and Chile.
By Fred Kuhr and Rachel Dowd
From The Advocate  June 17, 2008

http://www.advocate.com/issue_story.asp?id=53774&page=3

Andrés Ignacio Rivera Duarte president and founder of the Organization of Transsexuals for Dignity and Diversity Five years ago Maria Georgina Rivera Duarte had a double mastectomy. Two years later she underwent a hysterectomy and began taking hormones. But it wasn't until last year that Maria officially won the legal right from the Chilean courts to become Andrés Ignacio Rivera Duarte.

"Masculine transsexuality was absolutely invisible," Duarte says of the environment in Chile when he began transitioning. "Society wasn't prepared -- well, it never is for something different, but without a doubt it was not prepared for a 38-year-old woman to announce that she was in reality a man. I was an extraterrestrial—too strange for the rational understanding of society."