From: glenn@access.digex.com (D. Glenn Arthur Jr.)
Newsgroups: alt.transgendered
Subject: From sci.med.aids:
Date: 29 Dec 1992 16:11:05 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu

A friend just forwarded this to me under the heading "Just something I 
yanked off the net and thought transgen folks would be interested in..."
I think she's right, so I'm forwarding it to the mailing lists and newsgroup.

(Maybe someone should tell the sci.med.aids folks to crosspost things
like this here next time?)


| Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
| From: Billi Goldberg <bigoldberg@igc.apc.org>
| Subject: Transgenderists Form Coalition
| Message-ID: <1992Dec17.194738.26068@cs.ucla.edu>
| Note: Copyright 1992, Dan R. Greening. Non-commercial reproduction allowed.
| Date: Thu, 17 Dec 92 08:13:38 PST
| Lines: 91
| 
| The following article was printed in the San Francisco Sentinel on 
| Thursday, December 17, 1992. It is being posted with the permission of 
| the author, Charles R. Caulfield.
| ************************************************************************
|       New Coalition Addresses AIDS in the Transgender Community.
|                          by Charles Caulfield
| 
| In what may be the first collaborative effort of its kind in the country, 
| representatives of 10 AIDS Service agencies met on Wednesday, December 9, as 
| an ad hoc task force of concerned professionals and activists. The new group 
| having named itself The Transgender HIV Services Coalition, is composed of  
| individuals from a variety of agencies and concerned activists held its first 
| meeting, entitled "AIDS in the Transgender Community."
| 
| The purpose of the forum was to begin the process of identifying and 
| eliminating the barriers to access to testing, education, treatment and 
| services to members of the transgender community. These barriers exist in the 
| form of what are perceived by this community as discrimination and demeaning 
| treatment by service providers due to their lifestyles. Falling into no 
| clearly defined demographic group toward which culturally sensitive services 
| would be targeted, they have been the quintessential underserved minority, 
| feeling excluded from both the mainstream and the lesbian/gay communities.
| 
| The new task force, entitled the Transgender HIV Services Coalition is at this 
| point composed of individuals from a variety of providers, clinicians in 
| private practice and activists who intend to collectively address this glaring 
| gap in services.
| 
| The Organizations represented included U.C. AIDS Health Project, the 
| Tenderloin AIDS Resources Center (TARC), Shanti, 18th Street Services, the 
| Tenderloin Self-Help Program, the San Francisco PWA Coalition, and the Asian 
| AIDS Project. Others included in the dialogue were consumers of services,  
| treatment activists, and health care professionals.
| 
| One problem which was identified and addressed was that of semantics, which in 
| the past has been an impediment to unity in the transgender community. The 
| transgender community, which as defined by the Coalition's newly adopted 
| language, shall include everyone who identifies with the terms,  "she-males", 
| "cross-dresser", "transsexual", "drag-queen", or "transvestite" or 
| "androgyne." In this sense, the Community identifying itself as "Transgender" 
| represents a number of heterogenous and diverse subgroups with some very 
| homogenous needs.
| 
| The meeting, was facilitated by Dominique Leslie, a substance abuse counselor 
| at the Tenderloin AIDS Resources Center. The stated mission of the newly 
| formed Coalition, which will operate by consensus, is to eliminate  the 
| results of society's biases against a clearly large and distinct segment of 
| society, which results in a lack of risk reduction education, testing and 
| treatment. This is compounded by what is perceived as a lack of access by 
| transgenders to the full scope of treatment, services and the entitlements 
| theoretically available to all individuals with HIV in San Francisco without 
| fear of discrimination or demeaning treatment. 
| 
| Among some proposed methods achieving this would be the demand for all AIDS 
| Service agencies and testing sites to require training for their staff and 
| volunteers as to the special needs of their transgender clients. Another would 
| be to press for increased emphasis on targeting this community for increased 
| specific risk reduction education programs. Many of the involved agencies 
| already have culturally sensitive education outreach programs to ethnic 
| minorities.  
| 
| Outreach with consideration of the special needs of this population would slow 
| the spread of AIDS. Yet another would be to petition the California Substance 
| Abuse Services Council (CSAS) to mandate the need for cultural sensitivity 
| training of all clinicians engaged in providing substance abuse services in 
| facilities receiving public money. A similar resolution has already been 
| passes by CSAS regarding required sensitivity to the special needs of.lesbians 
| and gay men who are in substance abuse programs.
| 
| Other needs identified were for the availability to psychosocial support 
| services specifically targeting problems which are unique to the transgender 
| community, community education on medical and alternative treatment resources 
| for those with HIV, and a concrete number of publicly funded beds for 
| substance abuse treatment for members of this community.
| 
| The Coalition is in the process of devising an appropriate HIV risk reduction 
| educational brochure to be distributed to members of the community. The 
| ultimate goal of their efforts is to raise public awareness of the needs of a 
| group who have been underserved and have fallen through the cracks, yet this 
| goes unreported since they generally do not fall into the traditional 
| demographic categories.
| 
| The Coalition will hold its next meeting on January 6, at which time they will 
| adopt a mission statement and begin plans for a coordinated response to the 
| needs identified at their first meeting. 
| 
| It is believed that this is the first time nationally that a multidisciplinary 
| and interagency response to AIDS in the Transgender Community has been 
| undertaken. For further information or input, one may contact Dominique 
| Leslie, of the Tenderloin AIDS Resource Center, 187 Golden Gate Avenue, (415) 
| 431-7476.
| 
| 

Newsgroups: alt.transgendered