May 24, 2017 from 6 to 8 pm
Sophia’s Thai Kitchen – 129 E St – Davis
Veteran advocate Bethany Snyder will lead a discussion on the current state and national legislation that affects the LGBTQ+ community.
Are you feeling powerless about what is happening in DC? Are you concerned about threats to LGBTQ+ equality???
Learn what advocacy is and how to be effective at it.
Bethany Snyder has been advising on, developing and implementing advocacy campaigns for over 15 years and has the inside perspective on how to effectively communicate with a lawmaker’s office. She has been a grassroots advocacy director, a lobbyist and a US Senate staffer. She has sat across from hundreds of lobbyists and advocates, as well as people like you sharing your passion and stories. And as a member of the LGBTQ community, she is passionate about ensuring equality for our families and children.
Event is open to the public, suggested donation on a sliding scale of $15 to $50. Proceeds from this event including a percentage of food and drink sales to go to the Davis Vanguard, 501c3
EVENT Co-hosted by Davis Phoenix Coalition
What exactly is “transgender”? Hormones and surgery change the upper half and the lower half remains the same??
Is this a serious question?
Transgender refers more to gender identity than physical sex characteristics
Are you a psychiatrist or psychologist?
It’s not that odd Liz, you didn’t talk to a policy analyst, you talked to someone answering the phone.
Maybe no one is still reading, but as a gynecologist, I really feel the need to step in at this point.
“Transgender” is as David correctly indicated more a matter of self defined identity than it is medically based at this point in time. However, unlike what anyone who has reached adulthood has been taught, gender is more accurately depicted as a spectrum than as a binary male/female state. I will give a couple of examples from the medical realm.
1. Ambiguous genitalia – this refers to the inability of the responsible medical personnel to be able to determine the newborn’s gender from visual inspection of the genitalia alone. Further evaluation is needed either with chromosomal analysis, imaging studies or both. Known far longer than I have been in medicine.
2. The presence of both ovaries and testes in a single individual. Known for as long as we have had US or previously as a curiosity at autopsy.
3. More recently acknowledged, the strong identification of the individual as a member of the opposite gender than they were assigned by visual inspection at birth. We do not yet know all of the factors that may/may not be associated with this identification. Genetic ? Hormonal ? Environmental ? Combo ? Or none of the above ?
These are true expressions of the individual experience. No treatment is “needed” of the individual as this is not an illness. Rather what is needed is the education of a population that is stuck with an incorrect paradigm ( much like the one that we had when we were “bleeding” people to cure infection). What will help these individuals, just like any other minority, is the acceptance of their full experience as a human, and dismantling of barriers such as arbitrary restroom designations, forms such as drivers licenses which demand an identification as male/female when that may not correspond to the individual’s experience.
With regard to “treatment”, I will take your question seriously.
There are as many forms of “treatment” or lack thereof as there are individuals. I have seen patients who identify as the “opposite” gender, but who only dress and /or style their hair to reflect their identification. I have met those who choose hormonal treatment but decline surgery. I have had several patients who were in the process of transitioning to include both breast and genital surgery. There are many different approaches just as there are many different approaches to birth control in women not desiring pregnancy.