Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Transgressing Gender Conference

(I got an e-mail this evening about a conference in Zagreb, Croatia, this autumn. I'm stunned to see something this progressive coming out of the former Yugoslavia.)

Transgressing Gender Conference:
Two is not enough for gender (e)quality
Zagreb, Croatia ∗ 7 – 9 October 2005

Society's concepts of sex and gender must be challenged. These concepts are more fluid now than they have ever been. However, as the struggle for gender equality and freedom of gender expression intensifies, communities that could be working together are becoming more and more divided. What does it mean for the sisterhood of feminism when someone who was born with testicles, someone who will never menstruate, wants to be accepted as one of their own? Can someone assigned male at birth ever really be a woman? What should be done when a baby is born with "ambiguous" genitalia? Furthermore, is gender socially constructed, or wired into our brains? Can an androgynous person actually exist in a gender-free identity? Can a man with a vagina really call himself a man? And what does all this mean on the larger scale of human rights? Is gender in and of itself a human rights issue? These questions seem to be affecting communities all over the globe and we want some answers. And so, we bring you the Transgressing Gender Conference: Two is not enough for gender (e)quality.
For more information, check the following sites:
Transgressing Gender Conference
Women's Room
CESI [Hrvatska]
Organization Q [Bosnia]
DEVE [Yugoslavia]

"The working language of the conference will be English; however, part of the program will be in local languages."

More on the multiplicity of genders later.