qsa workshop #3: (trans)gender

qsa workshop #3: (trans)gender
designed by talia young, talia@sccs.swarthmore.edu, fall 2000

objectives:

to make people think about the gender binary system, to question it and also to understand the problems with breaking it down
to make people think about "how does this apply to me?"
to make people think about "how does this apply to the queer movement?"

materials needed:

icebreaker:

name game:

give your name and a brief story of at least one alter ego that you have or have had

ground rules:

confidentiality: not that you can't talk about what goes on here (on the contrary, please do continue discussions outside of the workshop) but don't go around saying "so-and-so was at the workshop and said such-and-such"
respect: there are probably a lot of us coming from different places; please respect each other. feel free to disagree with each other but please use "i" statements
no stupid questions: on a similar note, there are no stupid questions here; you should feel free to ask everything. i realize this can sometimes be a risky position to take, but i think it's important. if you think a question is offensive, you should say so, but that doesn't mean that it was stupid. anyway, we'll see how this one works.
any others?

activity:

introduce the anthropologist from mars. "it's been stranded on Earth by a faulty starship drive and it wants us to explain gender to it." let the discussion proceed for 15-20 minutes
let's talk about some definitions:

kate thinks sex just an act: the only questions are how you'd like to do it and who you'd like to do it with
others (often biologists) think that sex describes physical/biological differences, like genitalia

gender: is more complicated than we all thought it was. kate divides gender into the following:

how does sexual reassignment surgery work?
do the gendered/transgendered exercise if you have time
have a discussion about:
- how does all this stuff apply to me?
- how does all this stuff apply to the queer movement?
- so we've talked about how binaries can be problematic. can we talk about how breaking it down might be problematic as well?

follow up/wrap up/conclusion:

go around and say something that you've learned or something that you've thought about or share a story