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41 Hong Kong L.J. 139 (2011-2012)
Transgender Science: How Might It Shape the Way We Think about Transgender Rights

handle is hein.journals/honkon41 and id is 141 raw text is: TRANSGENDER SCIENCE: How MIGHT IT SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT TRANSGENDER RIGHTS?1 Dr. Sam Winter* If people ask me why I used to be a boy and now I'm a girl I would say I have a girl's brain and a boy's body, and I think like a girl but I just have a boy's body, and it's different than you.... It's okay to be different... It's okay to be dif- ferent because it just matters who you are, it doesn't matter if you're different than anybody else, it just matters if you're having a good time and you like who you are (Jazz, six years old, talking about being transgender), z This paper presents some of what we know about transpeople ; individuals iden- tifying and presenting as members of a gender other than the one that matches their assigned sex at birth (a condition often called gender identity variance). In doing so I will address other key terms such as sex, gender, intersex, gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, gender transition, brain sex and gender affirmative healthcare. I will examine transgender stigma and its consequences, arguing that many transpeople get caught in a stream leading from stigma to sickness and early death. A common thread underlying the stigma is the belief that transwomen are not authentically female (and transmen not authentically male). I look at how modern brain sex research is throwing this belief into doubt, suggesting that transwomen may, in an important biological sense, be female (and transmen male). Finally, I suggest what this might mean in terms of legal rights that transpeople could reasonably expect to enjoy in a progressive, liberal society such as most of us wish Hong Kong to be. Sex and Gender The case of W spotlights the fact that sex and gender, both terms referring to maleness and femaleness, are somewhat different.3 Sex is about one's biological maleness or femaleness, as it may be observed in B.Sc., P.G.D.E., M.Ed., Ph.D., Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong. 1 Based on a paper Identity and Expression: Transgender People in Gendered Cultures, pre sentedi at a one-clay symposium 'Challenging Gender: Gender Challenges', 11 December, 2010. 2 Speaking in My Secret Self: A Story of Transgender Children, 20/20, Episode 36, Season 30, 2006-2007, first aired on US ABC Network 27 April 2007. SSee for example M. Diamond Sex and Gender Are Different: Sexual Identity and Gender Identity Are Different, (2002). Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 7, 3: 320-34.

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