Come celebrate International Women's Day with me

[Betsy]

If you are in the NYC area, I am speaking at NYU this evening, 3/8, in honor of International Women's Day. It's at 7pm in the Kimmel Center, in room 904. The Kimmel Center is on Washington Sq South.

Betsy

[Glenn]

how'd it go??

glenn the nosy
:D

[Billie Q.]

Bets, a NYU speaker! That is really cool. Please give us a full report.

J.

[Betsy]

Barring any visits from the grammer police (from the mistress of dropped words)

NYU was a good event. There were about 40 people---undergrads, students involved in the queer organizations, and some medical students there. There were also people from the NYC community there which I was told is really good because it doesn't happen that often.

The med students asked if I would come speak to other med students and hopefully that will come to fruition.

While I expected more people, the organizers were very pleased with the turnout and since they know the crowd sizes and demographics that usually turn out, I will take their word that it was a great success.

This morning I also did a workshop at the 3rd annual Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference.

This was a wonderful event. I was assigned a small classroom (held about 30) but twice that many came.

The conference was held at the Friends Meeting Hall (Quakers meeting hall---a very historic building in Philadelphia). Because so many people came for the workshop, it was moved into the main Friends meeting space. This is a historic space within the building, constructed in 1820. You could feel the history in the room as soon as you entered it.

Much to my surprise, Raven Caldera was in attendance and I asked him if he would join in presenting the workshop. He did and without any prior planning we managed to give a great workshop. We talked about the immediate emergency within the intersex movement---ending intersex genital mutilations, about organizations adding an I, and about trans and IS orgs working together towards a common goal of acceptance. If you are not familiar with Raven, he is a transman with CAH and raised female. He is also an accomplished author of texts in anthologies and his own story about living as an intersexed person in America.

I think the diversity of our community really hit home for many in our workshop when Raven and I stood next to eachother as two people with CAH but with very different manifestations of it.

We ended up going way over our allotted time of 1:15 and several people came up to me later to thank us for the workshop.

Betsy

[uriela]

Betsy,

You and Raven? What a trip!!

[miriam]

I know, I know, I shouldn't speak about politics here. But this is SOOOOOO FUNNY!

For International Women's Day several officials praised the efforts of women for a better world. At the website

http://www.state.gov/g/wi/

you can read how Laura Bush, Charlotte Ponticelli, Paula J. Dobriansky and Colin Powell think about women. There is also a link to a speech George W. Bush held, but that is a dead link now:

http://www.state.gov/g/wi/rls/14573.htm

Why? Well George was telling the world about Fathi al-Jahmi from Libya. According to mr. Bush she is the mother of seven children, arrested on or around 26 October 2002, and sentenced by a People's Court to five years' imprisonment after she reportedly stated during a session of the People's Conference in Bin Ashour (a suburb of Tripoli), that reform within Libya would never take place in the absence of a constitution, pluralism and democracy.

Good speech, but there was a problem: Fathi al-Jahmi is a MAN. Reason enough to take Bush's speech off-line! (And no, Fathi Al-Jahmi was not born with ambiguous genitalia and he also isn't a transsexual...)

Ehhhh, mr. president, how do you think you can forbid same-sex marriages when you can't tell the difference between a man and a woman?

Groeten, Miriam

[Meresa]

Originally posted by Betsy

I think the diversity of our community really hit home for many in our workshop when Raven and I stood next to each other as two people with CAH but with very different manifestations of it.


We ended up going way over our allotted time of 1:15 and several people came up to me later to thank us for the workshop.

Betsy

Way to go Betsy! I wish I could have been there. Sounds like you did a great job. Kudos to Raven as well.

Like you and Raven, I also have a "counterpart" with whom I comprise a "matched pair". He is a PAIS living as male in Melbourne, Victoria AUS. Our histories are almost an exact inverse of each other. He is very active in the Australian AIS group. We correspond often, and I hope to visit him someday if I can scare up enough money for airfare.

[uriela]

Betsy,

I'm a bit surprised too, that Raven Kaldera would have shown up, thinking that he might want to avoid women's spaces. Not that I think he wasn't welcome. Did he say?

Another question: Since I am rather caught up in the feminist movement--A sort of anthropological cum cultural question: Who got the most attention? (Hope I am not skating on thin ice!--It's all gone here, BTW, so the term should be, "walking on water"? *shiver*)

Wishing I was there,

Dawn

[Betsy]

Back-up...two different events are being discussed. The first was NYU which was part of Women's History month. That event was a full-blown podium speech. It was me and myself.

The other event which I talked about in the this thread was the 3rd annual Philadelphia Trans-Health conference. It was in Philly where Raven and I presented together. It was a workshop so there was a ton of flexibility which enabled a quick change in plans.


Betsy

[Jules]

I'm not suprised:)

[ptrinkl108]

I am a member of the yahoo intersex forum. So, imagine my surprise when I received an email from that discussion group a couple of days ago with Miriam's post "Mr. Bush and International Women's Day" included. I checked the email to see if Miriam's name was mentioned anywhere, but I could not find it. Did Miriam post the material, or did someone else take it? I am curious as to what the rules are for using on-line material. Are postings on this "Bodies" forum protected material?

Peter

[Betsy]

Word for word? LOL... we'll have to wait for Miriam to tell us.

Bodies Like Ours is deliberately an open forum so that anyone can read it. It's deliberately left open for several reasons, but mostly to make us less of "a secret".

Unfortunately, because it is open it is also real easy to cut and paste postings. There's a way to stop that but it would seriously hamper the functionality of the site.

If Miriam didn't make the post, consider outing the poster in that community for the transgression.

Betsy

[miriam]

LOL! The only other place where I’ve posted an almost similar message was at AISPeople. Copyright, copyleft, as long as other people understand WHY I wrote that text it is ok to me.

© Miriam :)