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From All Over:
GenderNews
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Posted July 21 1998 |
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A July 9, 1998 press release from The Center for Lesbian and Gay Law and Public Policy in Pennsylvania, via Gender Advocacy Internet News(GAIN), penn45@ma.ultranet.com.
Andrew Park, Executive Director of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Law and Public Policy, said the following of the proposal: "York City is joining other jurisdictions in assuring that all workers and residents have equal rights. Discrimination based on gender identity can be severe and pervasive in the lives of transgender individuals. I am pleased to see this development in Pennsylvania." The York City Council is expected to vote on the proposals in the next few weeks. The Center is in contact with the York City Human Relations Commission and other activists in Pennsylvania to stress the need to battle against discrimination based on gender identity. For further information, call Andrew Park, Executive Director, (215) 731-1338. |
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This item is from InYourFace on-line news. For prior press releases, check the GenderPAC website at: http://www.gpac.org
[Oswego, OR: 9 Jul 98] Transactivist Joanna McNamera took her life on Tuesday, 7 July. She died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She was an attorney who co-founded I'ts Time, Oregon! and was instrumental in gaining protection from discrimination for transexuals under Oregon's disability law. Ms. McNamera is remembered as a generous friend and a tireless worker for the transgender community. Close friends say that she had recently become despondent. She suffered from depression and the after-effects of physical injuries she incurred as a young adult. She left a note that said, in part, "I have run out of hope... I am tired of hurting physcially and emotionally... I have fought and struggled to the best of my ability; I can struggle no more, the pain is too great." |
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This story is from the Wired News web site. It came to our attention from UKPFC-NEWS, http://www.pfc.org.uk/pfclists/.
Guggenheim Goes Digital
The provocative and difficult life of a murdered transsexual has inspired a provocative and difficult Web site: Brandon, the Guggenheim Museum's first major art project to be commissioned specifically for the new medium. The issues raised by the site promise to spark heated dialogues about the creation and archiving of digital art -- and the role of major museums like the Guggenheim in curating it -- that will smolder into the next millennium. The site takes the short life of Teena Renee Brandon as a jumping-off point to probe questions of gender and identity. Until her death, Brandon -- a blue-eyed, clean-cut, 21-year-old Nebraskan -- was more successful in passing as a man in real life than the gender-switchers who pack America Online chat rooms are in posing as horny seductresses. Stabbed and shot dead on New Year's Eve 1994 by the same youths who had raped her on Christmas Day, Brandon was described after the murder by a local teenager as "a lot of girls' dream guy" in the Chicago Tribune. It is believed that Brandon and two witnesses were killed to prevent them from testifying against the alleged rapist, John Lotter, who was sentenced to death for the murders in 1996. The site, launched on 30 June, uses several different interfaces to challenge the viewer's assumptions about gender. A series of questions and answers ponders the fate of someone who was "uncomfortable in her own skin," and a striking array of JavaScript-generated windows juxtaposes images of tattooed bodies, pierced nipples, and medical illustrations of dissected penises. Another section proposes a fictional narrative in which Brandon falls in love with a 19-century hermaphrodite before the two are scooped up by an alien spacecraft. "Genital abduction of a third kind," the text muses. Much of the site is still unfinished; additional text and images will be added in stages over the course of the next year. Guggenheim associate curator Matthew Drutt, who commissioned the project from media artist and filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang, says that the site's examination of the constitution of gender -- and the creation of multiple gender-identities -- made it a perfect choice for the Guggenheim's first major commission in cyberspace. "Brandon has become a celebrated figure for gender activism on the Web," Drutt says, "and the widespread use of disposable personas in the online world raises many questions about the construction of identity." Cheang was chosen, Drutt says, as an artist who creates challenging works that are native to the Web. The site is highly collaborative: Artists Susan Stryker, Jordy Jones, and Pat Cadigan all contributed to Brandon, and the Amsterdam-based Society for Old and New Media will launch a linked project, "Digi Gender Social Body: Under the Knife, Under the Spell of Anesthesia," this fall. "Where would video art be today if the museum had gotten behind it in the '60s and early '70s? We're at a strategic point now where we're seeing a new generation of people who have been schooled in this medium," Drutt observes. Drutt, a regular attendee at SIGGRAPH and other digital showcases, has been a longtime admirer of Cheang's art, he says, because it doesn't "foreground the technology and background the content." Visitors to the site, however, may stumble over technological barriers that make some of the content hard to access. Macintosh users will find that the site crashes their browsers repeatedly. Download times -- even on a T1 line -- are long, and there's a scarcity of navigational tools on the site, which is intentional, says Drutt, somewhat testily. "It takes a lot of patience and perseverance. It's art, it's not a didactic site." Putting nav bars so visitors can hop effortlessly from one section of the site to another would be "like putting explanatory text next to a Van Gogh painting," he contends. Other site glitches -- such as multiple "file not found" messages appearing in the "Panopticon" section -- represent content-to-come, Drutt promises: "This is Brandon 1.0." Cheang was unavailable for comment. Drutt is helping gear up the Guggenheim for a major Web initiative he refers to as "the virtual museum," to be launched next year. By commissioning Brandon and other Web-native projects, Drutt says he is "forcing" the museum to wrestle with difficult considerations about archiving, conservation, and ownership of new art forms in the digital age. "Rather than shy away from those questions, we're embracing them," he says. Copyright © 1993-98 Wired Ventures, Inc.
The Brandon web site is at http://brandon.guggenheim.org. There's more about the site on our July 13th Community Notices page. |
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Send news stories or comments to the editor at iphge@hotmail.com.
GenderNews Headlines GenderNews Index List of Community Notices |
Page prepared by Beth Lewis.
(York City, PA) - The York City Human Relations Commission is proposing to add
"gender identity" to its human relations ordinance. This change, being
proposed along with other changes with are technical in nature, would make
York City the second jurisdiction in Pennsylvania to prohibit discrimination
based on gender identity. The proposal would make gender identity part of the
definition of "sex" which is already a protected class. Currently, the City
of Pittsburgh already includes "gender identity" in the definition of "sex."