Professor's book changes perceptions

The same name kept appearing.\nAs she researched the history of gender and sexuality during the post World War II era, IU history professor Joanne Meyerowitz kept encountering Christine Jorgensen, a man who with the help of science, became a woman. \n"I kept finding articles about her and interviews with her in The (New York) Times, "True Confessions" magazine, in "Time," "Newsweek," anywhere I looked, and I got intrigued," Meyerowitz said. "I decided to follow up on her story which led me to the larger history on transsexuality."\nMeyerowitz's research resulted in the publication of her third book, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. \n"It traces the emergence of what we now call sex change from the first experiments on animals in Europe in the early 20th century, to the contemporary transgender movement," she said.\nUnder the umbrella term of transgender, one who chooses to live his life as a member of the opposite sex, lies transsexuality. A transsexual is someone who decides to change their sex through surgery and hormones. \nMeyerowitz's book is considered the first serious history on the topic. A history that GLBT assistant Carol Fischer said she believes is long over due. \n"I think that a lot of people in American society believe this whole transsexual thing is just a new phenomenon, just a perversion, or evidence of the moral decay of our society," Fischer said. "And nothing could be further from the truth."\nBecause IU's liberal environment, Fischer said she believes the majority of staff and students are accepting of both transsexual and transgender individuals. \n"Compared to five years ago the community has made giant leaps in acceptance. Part of that is because we have students who are very vocal. And when a student steps up, they have much more power than they think they do," she said. "I'd love to take all the credit, but I only deserve about one percent."\nCaleb Colvard, a female to male transgender junior at IU started Gender CORE last year to battle ignorance on campus and within the Bloomington community. The student organization's main goal is to educate through workshops and events including a transgender awareness week.\n"No matter what (students) think, they come. They listen. And it gives them food for thought," Colvard said. "People try to put you in a box. Everyone feels the need to put you in a box. And when you don't fit in those boxes, people don't know what to do with you."\nColvard said students don't have a chance to be accepting because they know almost nothing about transgender students. Colvard has encountered students who "understand the gay thing," but had never heard of transgender. \n"The sort of images they know of transsexuals are these sort of Jerry Springer images," he said. "It's really, really stereotyped."\nColvard emphasizes the fact that sexual orientation and gender identity are two separate ideas. \n"It's a common assumption that if you have a female body and you identify as a guy, then you must be wanting to be a straight guy," Colvard said. "There are plenty of 'f' to 'm' transsexuals who identify as gay men and plenty of 'm' to 'f' who identify as lesbians."\nFischer said she supports that statement because of her various interactions with transsexual individuals. She said she remembers when she first started working at the GLBT offices and a woman came in.\n"She said, 'I have real breasts, but I also have a penis. I'm engaged to a genetic woman who loves me because she says I'm the best of both worlds.'"\nUntil knowledge about transgender spreads, books like Meyerowitz's play an important role in education and awareness. \n"The history of gender and sexuality are relatively new subfields of history. And topics like transsexuality have been considered off limits in some ways," Meyerowitz said. "It's certainly something we hear about constantly on tabloid TV. So, it's important to have a serious scholarly history that accompanies the popular cultural images." \nColvard said he plans to tell his mother about his transgender identity within the next few weeks and hopes she will be as accepting as his friends and professors have been.\n"There are lots of types of people, and I can be attracted to certain ones. I'm not attracted to everyone, but there are certain people you like and certain people you don't like." Colvard said, pausing for a moment. "Who really cares what's between their legs"