Get experience with all types of learners and their families - part a

On the first weekend of this semester, GSWA (Goshen Student Women's Association) and Advocates offered a short retreat at the College Cabin. Though it was just for a few hours, this "retreat" offered attendees the opportunity to learn more about transgender issues in a relaxed, informal environment. Our time there was moderated by a variety of college students from the hosting clubs and Anne Marie, a transgender individual, provided the topical input. We began by discussing two questions with those who we were sitting with. These questions dealt with the nature of gender: essentially, how much of gender is a social construction and how much is biological? I was sitting with a friend who has studied a great deal of psychology and so it was interesting to hear her perspective on the issue in addition to those of the others around us.

We then discussed several articles related to how transgenderism is presented in the media. One article that we focused in on was an article from ESPN that was about a transgender individual who had a sex reassignment surgery and had just won a long drive championship for golf. Anne Marie called the article out for not even being about the athlete's success; the article is only about the controversy surrounding her win and even the title suggests their bias: "Former male Lawless wins women's title." There were several issues that arose through the discussion of this article. The first was a disbelief of the biased perspective presented by the author of the article through quotes such as this: "However, if a woman has the knees, hands and feet of a man, she has genetic real estate that is more gifted." Secondly, the article seemed to disregard Lawless's transgender identity as not being real and simply to achieve success in golf competitions.

After sharing in a lunch of bread and soup, Anne Marie shared about her own experience of coming to terms with her transgender identity. She shared about her reasons for choosing not to have sex reassignment surgery. Anne Marie is a pastor of a church in Chicago and so her experiences as a transgender pastor and her experiences with the church as a larger entity were also interesting to hear about. Finally, she shared with us some of her work outside of the realm of sexuality. One item that I found to be fascinating was her evaluation of Christian language with the objective of examining how racism and violence have been institutionalized. She discussed the ever present dichotomy of light as good and dark as bad along with violent language that is common in Christian liturgy. I don't agree with all she said, particularly since I know very little about traditional liturgy, but I found her opinions to be quite interesting.

The day ended up being quite informative and enjoyable. Not only did I learn more about transgender issues, I was able to converse with my peers about a variety of issues that don't typically come up in daily conversation. Anne Marie's presence at this event was very influential, not only did she help to us to understand the issue; she helped put a face to it.