The Brown & White

A small group of students talked in the Women's Center on Wednesday about issues that transgender people face.

Erin Thorn, '09, and Sara Santos, '13, spoke about what they learned at a conference on Oct. 24 at the University of Vermont called "Translating Identity," which centered on the challenges that transgender people face.

Santos said she went to the conference because she was curious about the transgender culture.

"I learned that [people who identify as transgender] feel imprisoned by their original sex," Santos said.

Thorn, who has worked with a number of organizations dealing with transgender people, described how hard it is to legally change genders.

"Trans people worry everyday if they have to show identification," Thorn said.

Some of the biggest problems transgender people face is having the legal system acknowledge the sex they have transitioned to. This problem arises when transgenders have to show their driver's license, look for work or even when placed in the appropriate prisons based on gender.

Rita Jones, director of the Women's Center, said she never had realized or even thought about all the issues transgender people face.

The transition process for transgender people is very hard, according to Thorn. They are emotionally unstable, medically unstable and sometimes even mentally unstable. Lehigh's policy for transgender people is to put them in a medical suite that includes its own bathroom and kitchen.

"The trans people need a support system, not to be isolated," Thorn said.

She also said that a gender-neutral hall would make it a less stressful process.

Lehigh University is working with the Council for Equity and Community to have an on-campus, gender-neutral housing option.

Not all transgender people decide to go through with medical procedures. For example, women who do not want to take testosterone might bind their breasts.

According to Thorn, many transgender women decide not to get a surgically implanted penis because they are not very effective and are too expensive. The procedure can cost as much as $50,000.

There is more room for women to transition into men than for men to transition into women. For instance, a man's vocal cords are stretched out, giving him a deep voice versus a woman, whose vocal cords are not stretched out, giving her a high-pitched voice. With the use of hormone pills, it is easier to stretch out vocal cords than to make them compact again.

"If you are in a room full of transgender men, they all look like 13-year-old boys," Thorn said.

Transgender women who decide to surgically remove their penises must use a dilator every day for the rest of their lives, or else the surgically placed hole will close, according to susans.org, an online resource for transsexuals and crossdressers.

Many transgender people go to other countries such as Thailand to have their medical procedure carried out because the doctors are more experienced in dealing with trans issues and the procedures are cheaper there.

But sometimes when these patients return to the U.S., health insurance agencies and American doctors can be very hostile.

"They treat trans procedures done in Thailand the same way they treat plastic surgery in Mexico," Thorn said. "They don't acknowledge it as a legit medical procedure."

Thorn said that there is trans-literature out there for children. An example of the way these books depict the issue to children is that everyone is born with a spirit and sometimes their spirits do not match with their outside.

According to Timothy Gardner, director of LGBTQIA services, in the state of Pennsylvania, you can be legally fired for being gay, where it is extremely hard for transgender people to even find a job. He said he has a transgender friend who could not obtain a higher level job simply based on the fact that she was transgender.