INTERSEX CHICAGO - New Group at Center on Halsted

The Center on Halsted now serves Chicago’s intersex people as well as its LGBT community.  “Intersex Chicago” will meet at Center on Halsted on the first Tuesday of every month from 6:30pm to 9pm.  The following show gives more information.

It is gratifying that the impetus for this new intersex group was my June 11th presentation at Center on Halsted, entitled “Intersex People: What You Should Know and Why You Should Care,” that included two intersex spokespersons. Officials from the Center who attended this presentation were so impressed that they offered support for intersex people to meet at the Center.

The first meeting of Intersex Chicago will be on December 6th in Room 201.

Contact us:
intersexchicago@gmail.com
intersexchicago@groups.facebook.com
http://www.meetup.com/Intersex-Chicago

SLIDESHOW - INTERSEX PEOPLE: What You Should Know and Why You Should Care!

Here is the PowerPoint slideshow I created for “Intersex People: What You Should Know and Why You Should Care!” that was presented at Chicago’s Center on Halsted on June 11th, 2011 to an LGBT audience as part of H.E.R. Day.  Some slides were simply lifted from previous presentations, others were modified, lots of old slides left out, and new slides added.

Intersex people

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While my presentation was very well-received, the “stars” were my intersex co-presenters who told their stories, Alex McCorry and Mugsie Pike (pictured left and right below respectively). Alex has previously accompanied me as an "out" intersex representative at several presentations, but this was the first time that either Alex or Mugsie spoke openly about their lives and problems as intersex people.

 

One result of this compelling first-of-its-kind event is that officials at the Center on Halsted now intend to start a group for intersex people!  It is fitting that LGBT people be informed about intersex people, because LGBT people and intersex people share many of the same concerns.

Except for saying David Reimer was intersex (NOT!), the reporter from Windy City Times accurately captured some highlights of my presentation but at best scratched the surface when it comes to Alex's and Mugsie's stories.  I intend to eventually post a transcript or recording of Alex’s and Mugsie’s moving and enlightening stories.

INTERSEX PEOPLE: What You Should Know & Why You Should Care! (A New Presentation)

I am pleased to announce a new collaboratiave effort devoted exclusively to the topic of intersex.  It is appropriate that the first venue will be the LGBT Center on Halsted.  This presentation "INTERSEX PEOPLE: What You Should Know and Why You Should Care!" is a part of Health, Education and Recreation (HER) Day for LBT women.  The complete schedule of events for HER Day follows.


HER (HEALTH, EDUCATION, RECREATION) DAY

DESCRIPTION
H.E.R. Day is an event celebrating health, education, and recreation for women and offers a diverse array of interesting and practical programs (see schedule below). People who register for and participate in H.E.R. Day will also receive free admission to an evening performance by comedian Jessica Halem. Morning coffee and lunch included!

Location: Center on Halsted
3656 North Halsted Street
Chicago, IL 60613

Time: June 11th (Saturday), 2011
10am through evening

HER DAY SCHEDULE:

Registration/coffee
Provided by Calihan Catering (9-10am)

Keynote Speech “What I Learned from Cancer”
Given by Jessica Halem (10-11am)
Five years as the Executive Director of the Lesbian Community Cancer (now Care) Project taught Jessica Halem a few things. How to survive being called a traitor while doing the right thing, how to appreciate being at someone's deathbed and while keeping their secrets until your own, and how to live a healthy life even while closing down the bar.

Sex Ed 101 (for L/B/T/Q Women)
Presented by the Chicago Women’s Health Center (11am-12:30pm)
Learn what was missing in your high school sex ed! Hear about risks, options, and ways to make sex safer and sexier! Bring your questions!

Women, the Media, and Beauty Ideals)
Presented by Renee Engeln-Maddox, Ph.D. (11am-12:30pm)
This talk will explore how women’s self-perceptions are affected by media exposure. In particular, we will examine how feminine beauty ideals are shaped by media portrayals of women as well as research demonstrating how and why these images have such an impact on women’s experience of their own bodies. We will also consider the various ways in which women fight back in the battle to define female beauty and the evidence regarding whether these techniques are effective.

Healthy Cooking Demo/Class
Presented by Chef Toni Rivera (11am-12:30pm)
Toni Rivera has a culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu. She has been cooking for over 15 years, 4 years in a professional capacity. In this class, you will learn how to cook simple and healthy vegetarian pasta dishes. You will also learn the fundamentals of working your kitchen with high energy, safety, and efficiency.

LUNCH (12:30-1:15pm)

Infertility
Provided by IVF (12:30-1:15pm)

Tickle Your Fancy: Female Sexuality, Orgasm & What Toys Can Do for You!
Presented by Searah Deysach from Early to Bed (1:15-2:45pm)
Female sexuality is still a great mystery to many of us. In this workshop a sex educator from Early to Bed will start at the beginning - female anatomy. We’ll dismiss myths you may have heard and talk about the nature of women’s pleasure & orgasm. We will also discuss masturbation and its benefits and give you some great tips for feeling more comfortable in your body. We’ll also touch on some ways to make having sex with women even better for everyone involved and show you a few toys & gadgets that can make sex more fun for anyone. You’ll leave with a wealth of information that will hopefully help you enjoy your/her sexuality even more!

Transgender Health
Presented by Lois Bates from Howard Brown (1:15-2:45pm)
Howard Brown has a whole host of programs specifically designed to serve the needs of the transgender community. Come learn about issues in transgender health and services provided by Howard Brown. You will leave feeling knowledgeable and empowered to be your own healthcare advocate.

Intersex People: What You Should Know and Why You Should Care!
Presented by Dr. Veronica Drantz and intersex spokespersons Alex and Mugsie (1:15-2:45pm)
Who is intersex? What are the types of intersex? Is intersexuality natural? What concerns (sexual, social, medical, and legal) are shared by LGBT people and intersex people? Meet intersex people and hear their stories! Learn why you should care! Questions and discussion will follow presentation.

Veronica Drantz holds a Ph.D. in animal physiology and has taught science to medical professionals most of her life. The more than fifty years of research on the development of core sexuality in mammals, including humans, has been reviewed by Dr. Drantz. She speaks to the public about this research and its societal ramifications.

Alex and Mugsie are brave intersex persons who will tell their stories and answer your questions.

Salsa class
Instructed by Heidi Landgraf (3-4pm)
Heidi Landgraf has an MFA in dance from CalArts. She is currently studying Dance/Movement Therapy on a Follett Fellowship at Columbia College Chicago, and is teaching in the Hubbard Street “Movement as Partnership” Program. She loves bringing people together through dance, and is thrilled to see She-She Salsa thriving in Chicago. You will have a blast while learning salsa basics in this class.

Self Defense class
Instructed by Matt Cowell (3-4pm)
Learn basic moves to protect yourself on the mean streets of Chicago! Taught by Matt Cowell, 3rd Degree Black Belt in Taekwondo, and developed in response to the FBI's nine most common attacks by the American Taekwondo Association, you will learn some strategies to defend yourself, including improvised weaponry, target zones, pressure points, and ground fighting in a safe, fun, and friendly environment. Please wear comfortable clothes.

Yoga class (3-4pm)
(Details to follow)

Have dinner before the show (4-7pm)

Comedy Show, with Jessica Halem (7-8pm)
Bad Feminist (one-woman show)

After Party at Big Chicks (8pm - ?)

PRICE
$15 - includes presentations, morning coffee, lunch, and evening comedy performance! What a deal!!
Purchase Tickets Here.

FOR MORE INFORMATION E-mail lnemani@centeronhalsted.org

RECOVERING THE PAST: A “WESTERN” LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, & QUEER HISTORY (Slideshow)

A PowerPoint Presentation by Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld

Dr. Warren Blumenfeld has created an extensive PowerPoint presentation about LGBTQ history for the Queer Studies course he teaches at Iowa State University, and he has generously consented to posting the link for his presentation here. Blumenfeld’s wonderful slideshow entitled RECOVERING THE PAST: A “WESTERN” LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, TRANSGENDER, & QUEER HISTORY can be viewed and downloaded at http://www.public.iastate.edu/~wblumen. Click on the presentation titled AnLGBTQHistory and allow a few minutes for this huge file of 516 slides to appear. You will learn much from the comprehensive coverage of LGBTQ history in Blumenfeld’s slideshow. 

About the author:  As a college student in 1971, Warren Blumenfeld founded the National Gay Student Center (see slide 302 of presentation). 
Dr. Blumenfeld is Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Iowa State University. http://www.ci.hs.iastate.edu/profiles/warren_blumenfeld.php
Dr. Blumenfeld’s blog: http://www.warrenblumenfeld.com

First Presentation to a Religious Group – Seminar or Sermon?

The only way to get me to go to church is for a protest like last Sunday's Freedom To Marry Protest 2011 at Holy Name Cathedral as a member of Chicago’s Gay Liberation Network.  And now for the first time, just this past Friday, I addressed a religious group: the Changing Conversations program of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago. The presentation (Myth and Science of Sexuality – Disordered or Just Different) was the same talk that I gave to the Ethical Humanists on October 10th 2011 except for one new PowerPoint slide shown below.

The slide is entitled: Protest at “Holy Shame” Cathedral by the “Intrinsically Disordered.” Photos I took during the Freedom To Marry Protest 2011 were used to prepare the collage in the new slide. The slide shows Gay Liberation Network members and supporters, the new blue-shirted “reparative therapy” Catholic bigots who want to give “love” rather than civil rights (GoFirst Ministries), and an out and proud young gay man who spoke to these bigots about the horrors he suffered during four years of “reparative therapy” (lower right photo). Read the story here.

Catholic teaching insists gay and lesbian people are “intrinsically disordered.” The science in my presentation shows that LGBTI people are natural variants and that the cause of our distress is not intrinsic, but extrinsic – due to the cultural prejudice and discrimination stemming primarily from religious ideology.

I added this sarcastically-titled slide to emphasize the damage that organized religion with its implicit Adam and Eve binary-gendered restrictions has done to LGBTI people. I can only wonder if medicine would have ever pathologized LGBTI people if not for the religiously-inspired prejudice that the medical doctors unconsciously entrenched in their respective specialties.

So I wasn’t preaching to the choir this time. As I reminded these churchgoers during the talk, Presbyterians are still among the religious groups that discriminate against LGBTI people. The nonreligious humanists I’ve spoken to in the past do not discriminate against LGBTI people and many actively support LGBTI rights. The science I presented makes it clear that religious anti-LGBTI discrimination is not justified by the facts. The best I can say about these religious “good guys” is:
• They are followers, not leaders, doing “too little, too late” in the LGBTI human rights struggle
• They have been too reluctant to confront the anti-LGBTI bigots in their own and other religious groups
• They share guilt for LGBTI suffering as they continue to enjoy the perks of their religious affiliation, and
• They have a moral imperative to repent and make reparations for their sins against LGBTI people.

Now, if all religious people made such reparations, that would be true "reparative therapy" for LGBTI people that is long overdue.

VIDEO and SLIDES: Myth & Science of Sexuality - Disordered or Just Different?

This video and the slideshow “Myth and Science of Sexuality - Disordered or Just Different?” of my presentation to the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago on October 10, 2010,  explain the development of diverse sexualities (as natural variations of the organization-activation mechanism), and show that LGBTI peoples suffer persecution due to a socio-cultural disorder resulting from the erroneous "gender binary" concept.
Now you can listen to the talk as you look at the slides. The video is in four parts.  The PowerPoint slideshow that I used for this presentation is also posted below.  Click on the PowerPoint slides to see them clearly (the slides are fuzzy in the video) as you listen to the talk.  This presentation was abbreviated more than any previous version of my presentations to fit the venue's limited timeframe.

Part 1 of 4:  The science of core sexuality in mammals is summarized.  Development of internal and external genitalia.  How many sexes are there?  Did Eve come from Adam or did Adam come from Eve?  What is a female?  Male?  Who are John Money and Milton Diamond?

Part 2 of 4:  Who was David Reimer and what does his story tell us about whether sexual identity is innate or learned?  What is intersexuality?  Androgen insensitivity syndrome?  Congenital adrenal hyperplasia?  What can we learn about sexual identity from intersex people?  What has the medical profession been doing to babies with ambiguous genitalia as a result of John Money’s theory?

Part 3 of 4:  The sexual brain.  Is sexual orientation innate or learned? Sexual identity?  Are transsexual people crazy?

Part 4 of 4:

How to explain homosexuality in Darwinian terms? Sex versus gender?  Can males be women?  Can females be men?  Medical quackery and complicity in socio-cultural persecution of LGBTI peoples!

Below is the new abbreviated version of the PowerPoint slideshow used in the above talk to the Ethical Humanists.

Myth and science of sexuality short

View more presentations from drdrantz.

"Disordered or Just Different" Presentation at Chicago's LGBT Center

It’s a pleasure to announce that my next presentation of “Disordered or Just Different” will be at the Center on Halsted, Chicago’s fabulous LGBT center. I’ve been promised the plush Hoover-Leppen Theatre, so I’m hoping for a large turnout. And I’m hoping that the audience reflects the diversity of core sexualities that the Center serves. My previous presentations have been to audiences that were comprised of either secular humanists (primarily cissexual heterosexuals) or women (primarily cissexual lesbians). This is the first presentation intended for an audience composed of the entire LGBTI community. Oh yes, there will be some conventional cis-heterosexual people attending as well. They can’t help it! They were born that way!

Unlike the biblical story that “explains” only the “Adams and Eves,” the scientific story explains everyone: gay and lesbian people, transwomen and transmen, intersex people, … and oh yes, cis-heterosexual people. Everyone has genitalia, a sexual identity, and a sexual orientation - key components of “core sexuality."  At this presentation, I will show you the evidence for the “organization-activation” mechanism responsible for the development of these core sexual components in all mammals. If you live in the Chicago area, why don’t you attend this presentation and find out how “mother nature’ has tweaked this mechanism to produce your particular core sexuality?

Here are the details:

Event Title: Disordered or Just Different? Myth, Science, and Sexuality

Location: Center on Halsted, Hoover-Leppen Theatre
3656 North Halsted Street
Chicago, IL 60613


Date: September 18th (Saturday), 2010
Time: 6 pm

Presentation Description:
What exactly is a Female? Male? Intersexual? Is intersexuality natural? How many sexes are there? Sexual Identity - innate or learned? Sexual Orientation? Sex versus Gender? Religious myth versus science! Cruel and unscientific medical treatment of gay and lesbian people, intersex people, and transsexual people! Fifty years of research on core sexual development from a physiologist’s perspective.
 Questions and discussion to follow presentation.

FREE!

Please plan to join a group of us who will be going to dinner at a nearby restaurant after this event. This will be a Saturday night you will talk about for a long time!

See the slideshow