Raising Consciousness
at the Center for Gender Equity

John Graham
Interveiw from UCSF Synapse, May 18, 2000

This week Synapse asked Shane Snowdon, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Resources Coordinator at the Center for Gender Equity, some questions about the focus and mission of her organization’s role on the UCSF campus. During a time in this country when many issues of gender-once widely feared and misunderstood-are gaining wider acceptance, it is important to know that inequity still exists, even at the university-level and in the medical environment. While calls for domestic partner benefits and emphasis on gay and lesbian health specialties seem, for the mainstream, like voices from the periphery, they are instead issues at the core of survival for the individuals and groups which they effect.

Synapse: Tell me about the charter of the UCSF Center for Gender Equity (CGE), what it does, and why it changed its name from the "Women’s Resource Center"?
Shane Snowdon: To quote from the CGE mission statement, the CGE seeks "to achieve an inclusive and equitable campus community." To accomplish this ambitious goal, the CGE has three "resource components": women’s and gender resources, sexual and relationship violence resources, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) resources, which are what I coordinate. When the Center changed its name two years ago from "Women’s Resource Center," it was to reflect the expansion of the second resource area (from a rape prevention program to one also dealing with relationship violence) and the addition of LGBT resources.
Synapse: Is the CGE just a campus entity, or does it serve a purpose outside the campus?
SS: The Center’s primary focus is the campus, but we’re also very interested in linking the campus and community. For example, the CGE just organized a major conference, Women Leaders 2000, that was held off-campus and attracted speakers and attendees from the community as well as UCSF. And as LGBT Resources Coordinator, I’m very interested in mutually educational town-gown linkages. For example, UCSF just co-sponsored a ground-breaking citywide conference on lesbian, bisexual, and transgender women’s health, and over the next year we hope to be very involved in organizing a gay men’s regional health summit, a gathering on queer youth health issues, and a follow-up to the recent transgender care conference at Laurel Heights.
Synapse: Without the expansion of the Center, would things be different on campus?
SS: Well, needless to say, I hope that having a full-time staff member dedicated to providing LGBT resources is making a difference! For example, along with the Student Activity Center, I can offer student groups ongoing, consistent support and an institutional memory. Along with the student-run LGBTSA and the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on LGBT Issues, I can help with efforts like the current drive to ensure that domestic partners receive the same UC benefits as married couples. And, drawing on the CGE’s resources and 20-year history, I can organize a wide variety of LGBT-related programs, for all kinds of audiences, on all kinds of issues.
Synapse: Do you have a particular focus, or does the acronym "LGBT" necessarily mean that the focus is multi-faceted?
SS: The idea is to be multi-faceted: to bring resources to all four constituencies, collectively and (when appropriate) separately, and also to offer general education on all four groups’ experiences and concerns.
Synapse: What are some of the most misunderstood concepts you have to deal with when getting the word out to people-even educated people and health science people? What sensitivities are you trying to teach health care providers?
SS: It’s hard to do justice to those questions in a short interview. But I’ll mention a few issues and then suggest some books that go into more depth.

In general, given the visibility of LGBT people and issues in the Bay Area, some non-LGBT folks don’t realize how persistent anti-LGBT discrimination is in the schools, on the streets, on the job-in fact, wherever people encounter each other. I offer training to general audiences on LGBT experiences and issues, and non-LGBT folks often come up to me afterward and say, "Wow-I guess I thought you came out, people got over it, and that was that. I had no idea you think about things like whether it’s safe to hold hands in public, whether someone new at work is going to have a problem with you, whether your kid is going to have a harder time in school, whether you’re getting treated differently because you’re LGBT. I didn’t realize how much you have to deal with." In a country where adults and kids alike are harassed, beaten, even killed for being LGBT (or even being perceived as LGBT), where huge religious denominations would sooner fall into schism than retain a respected minister who happens to be LGBT, where a TV star’s coming out is front-page news for months on end, where massive statewide coalitions are formed to make sure that LGBT people are not protected by anti-discrimination laws (to give just a few dramatic examples), LGBT-related bias is definitely not "over." People interested in changing this might want to look at the helpful, down-to-earth books of Brian McNaught, Warren Blumenfeld, Una Fahy, and Don Clark.
To give a UC-specific example, something that seems to be widely misunderstood is the domestic partner (DP) benefits situation. Many non-LGBT folks think this was resolved by the Regents’ vote several years ago. They don’t realize that the domestic partners of UCSF staff, students, and faculty still don’t receive the same benefits married spouses do. And practically no one realizes that LGBT employees have to pay taxes on the DP health benefits that the Regents approved, while spouses’ benefits are tax-free.
Non-LGBT students may not realize that their LGBT classmates in domestic partnerships are not eligible for married student housing on campus. And non-LGBT faculty and staff may not realize that, while they can give their spouses legal, disability, and life insurance coverage by checking off little boxes on the UC benefits form, those boxes are literally blacked out for LGBT people who want to give their DPs the same protection. Also, I think the great majority of non-LGBT staff and faculty don’t realize that there is a big difference in the retirement benefits given to married spouses, on the one hand, and domestic partners, on the other. A lot of non-LGBT folks, especially in the Bay Area, are stunned when they realize that this kind of inequity exists-and, when they find out, many want to help end it.
In the health realm, it’s clear that LGBT issues need much more attention. To quote from the authoritative "White Paper" on LGBT health just released by Columbia University and the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association (or GLMA, headquartered in San Francisco):
"Because of stigma and prejudice, and because LGBT people represent a minority of the U.S. population, [LGBT-related] clinical and public health studies and program evaluation have been scarce in all sectors of health care delivery and research. . . . Because of negative attitudes prevalent in the U.S. public as well as among physicians and other medical staff, LGBT individuals are subject to discrimination and bias in medical encounters. Moreover, they are likely to receive substandard care, or remain silent about important health issues they fear may lead to stigmatization. Bias from health care professionals-and perception of such bias-have been identified as personal and cultural barriers to care, leading to reduction in help-seeking and quality of care. In addition, stereotyping and lack of education may lead health care providers to ignore known special preventive care and treatment needs of LGBT people. . . . Medical forms and the format of medical intake and history are often insensitive to the experience of LGBT patients, and likely to discourage disclosure of sexual orientation and behavior. . . Barriers to care for LGBT people include systemic bias in health insurance and public entitlements, which routinely fail to cover gay and lesbian partners or to provide reimbursement for procedures of particular relevance to LGBT populations."
And these are only some of the concerns that have been identified in the growing literature on LGBT health, which now includes a report on lesbian issues from the prestigious Federal Institute of Medicine. (This report, which helped catalyze UCSF’s new Lesbian Health Research Center, is posted on the web, as is the Columbia-GLMA document.) Additional issues include fear on the part of LGBT providers and researchers that they will suffer professionally if they come out, and intense bias toward transgender patients even in settings that are relatively LGBT-friendly.

I believe that very few health care providers truly want to provide substandard care to LGBT people. I think it’s an unintended consequence of ignorance, discomfort, and even fear (though, tragically, some providers actually refuse to treat us and others don’t bother to hide their hostility or prurient curiosity). I believe that, with education and support, most providers will offer LGBT people the care to which we’re entitled. The learning process will require time, energy, faith, and good will on everyone’s part, but I think we’ll all be the better for it.
Synapse: When dealing with someone who is coming out for the first time, do you have any advice or words of wisdom you like to give?
SS: A lot of what I say is specific to the person I’m talking with. But I do offer general thoughts about what can be a scary and risky process. For example, I tell people that there isn’t One Right Way to come out, that each of us needs to do it our own way, at our own pace. I mention that many of us find coming out a bit easier than we feared (if this won’t sound like I’m discounting someone’s concerns about the process). I also affirm that coming out can present unexpected challenges (though, as the saying goes, these sometimes become opportunities). I always suggest that people coming out for the first time line up as much advance support as possible from people who already know, and I suggest they start the coming out process with someone they think is going to be relatively supportive. And I usually mention some of the books and other resources on coming out-the website of the Human Rights Campaign is a good place to start.
Synapse: Would it be right to say that people who are LGBT should think of themselves proudly as part of a great, longstanding human tradition?
SS: It seems clear that, since the dawn of time, humans have had romantic and/or sexual feelings for people of their biological gender, both acted upon and not.
Synapse: So that leads us to the obnoxious question: nature or nurture? Or is it a combination of factors, a genuine part of the "natural order"?
SS: Well, first let me explain why that question is sometimes considered obnoxious. As Jennifer Terry details in her book on "science, medicine, and the place of homosexuality," the extraordinary attention paid in the U.S. to differences among people often reflects a judgment that "different is bad" and a desire to erase the differences under scrutiny. Certainly, many scientific and medical inquiries into "the cause of homosexuality" have been intended to reduce or eliminate LGBT behavior. So LGBT people will occasionally respond to the nature-nurture question by asking, "Why don’t you tell me the cause of heterosexuality?"
I should note that there are LGBT folks who are interested in the nature-nurture question and who feel they know the answer to it. But I think it would be safe to say that-recent finger-length findings notwithstanding-there is no universally or even widely accepted explanation for why some people have romantic and/or sexual feelings for people of their biological gender.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that I suspect many, many people would have those feelings if they lived in a world where they received no messages about how they should think, feel, or behave based on gender. It’s impossible to prove this, of course, in our highly gender-conscious world. But it’s interesting that even under current circumstances so many of us have come to this belief, based on our own experiences, the experiences of people we know, and, increasingly, modern biographies of notable figures. Because biographies are so much more searching and candid these days, to visit the biography section of a library or bookstore is to realize that vast numbers of utterly disparate people have had non-heterosexual feelings at some point in their lives, acted upon or not. This is fascinating, of course-but I look forward to a day when the perceived genderedness of people’s attractions is no more interesting than their favorite ice cream flavors, and receives no greater judgment or punishment.
Synapse: The definitions seems to be changing regarding transgender, transsexual, intersexual. Even those of us with family and friends who identify themselves as these individuals have trouble understanding the proper terminology.
SS: Let me frame my answer by saying that I don’t think it makes any more sense to judge and punish people around gender identity-the concept linked to the terms you’re asking about-than it does to scrutinize and penalize the genderedness of people’s attractions. Just as people should be free to feel attraction regardless of prevailing gender rules, people should be free to view and present themselves without worrying about those rules.
It’s getting harder and harder for me to understand why anyone would say to another person, "Hey-you’re not looking and acting like the gender you seem to be! This is wrong, wrong, wrong!" Lesbians and gay men hear this less than we used to, and women who want to be scientists, pharmacists, dentists, and physicians (or wear pants, for that matter) almost never hear it anymore. But transgender people hear it all the time-even though it’s a classic example of people confusing something unusual (and, at first, a bit unsettling) with something actually wrong.
I’d add that I think transgender folks, like others who have bravely challenged gender rules, make life easier for everyone by helping us off the playground of life where "boys always do x" and "girls never do y." I could go on and on-but I’ll stop and point interested readers to Anne Fausto-Sterling, Judith Butler, Kate Bornstein, Leslie Feinberg, and Riki Anne Wilchins (among many others).
To answer your actual question, yes, as people think more and more about the terms you mention, their meaning is changing. The proper terminology is, basically, whatever people use about themselves and ask you to use about them. But here are the definitions used in the San Francisco Human Rights Commission’s Guidelines to Prohibit Gender Identity Discrimination:

As this suggests, the term "transgender" doesn’t imply any particular romantic or sexual leanings. And I should add that, although I’ve used the term "biological gender" for convenience, it tends to obscure the existence of intersexed people, who are coming forward in growing numbers to talk about their experiences with the health care system, many of them extremely negative. (Check out John Colapinto, Suzanne Kessler, Alice Domurat Dreger, and the website of the Intersex Society of North America.).
Synapse: Acceptance of people outside of the straight male and female has come and gone throughout societies. Where are we now and where do you think we’re headed? I mean, it does seem a lot less like Ozzie and Harriet.
SS: Well, the gender leash is much longer now than it’s ever been in my lifetime, and I think most people feel good about that. I mean, it’s clear that Ozzie and Harriet wanted their kids to eat right, go to school, and play well with others. But did they want them to feel shame and constraint around gender?
I don’t know where we’re headed, of course. But I suppose I wouldn’t be in my job if I didn’t think that, over time, people will embrace the gender-related ideas we’ve been talking about. I was lucky enough to be born in the mid-twentieth century, to see life before and after the civil rights, women’s, and gay liberation movements. I’ve seen how dramatically those movements improved life for everyone. We have a long, long way to go, but I’ve lived long enough to see-and make-some change.
Synapse: Was there ever a "golden era" for LGBT people in America? Is it now? Is it to come?
SS: I think that LGBT people face way too much hostility and discrimination for this to be a golden age-for one thing, we’re still working to achieve basic rights! On the other hand, we may be out of the Bronze Age-in places like San Francisco, anyway. But we’ll slip back into the ooze if we don’t keep working to open minds and hearts.