On Tuesday, the UCO chapter of SAFE, a GLBT advocacy group, and the newly-minted Women’s Outreach Center brought transgender author and Oklahoma City police officer Paula Schonauer to read a passage from her short story “Hystericus.”
Schonauer also discussed how she dealt with her transition and status as the first transgender member of the Oklahoma City police force.
The event was billed as part of UCO Women’s History Month, and students and staff packed room 304 in the Nigh University Center to hear Schonauer speak.
“(Hystericus) was published not long before my novel was published,” Schonauer said. “I think it will touch on some of the issues I want to talk about tonight.”
Schonauer was a participant in the Creative Writing Masters program here at UCO when she came up with “Hystericus.”
“We were doing a free-write, and we had to write about something true to life, that happened to us, that was fairly profound,” she said. Hystericus, which is Greek for “of the womb,” detailed the thoughts of a newly-transitioned transgender police officer as she escorted a female prisoner to an OB-GYN appointment.
“It’s a true story in my experience shortly after I transitioned,” Schonauer said. “It felt like, to me at the time, that the police department was sending me on this errand to make a point.”
She said she had doubts about the transition from male to female.
“I don’t know if I’m typical of anybody who is transgendered, but such a huge decision, I think, you have doubts, you wonder if you did the right thing,” she said. “People getting married wonder if they should have gotten married so young, if they should have waited—or maybe they should have married sooner than they did. A gender transition is an even bigger decision, because it alters your body, and your self-perception and public perception of you, and it’s irreversible so far.”
The event was just one in a series of events this week that have the goal of celebrating women and bringing light to women’s issues. The organization responsible for holding these events, the Women’s Outreach Center, was inaugurated on March 1 and falls under the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
Sarah Blackburn, an English graduate student specializing in the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) program, is the student coordinator of the center and as of now the sole employee in an office occupying the space where the old Violence Prevention Project used to be.
“With the help of MeShawn (Conley, Director of the ODI) and the crew in the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, I plan all the programs for Women’s History Month,” Blackburn said. Her job also includes preparing for the YWCA’s V-Week activities in April and, in general, providing a resource for students.
“Basically, everything that the ODI does to celebrate other cultures, we do for women,” she said.
Conley explained how the Women’s Outreach Center came into existence.
“The Office of Diversity and Inclusion was, up until August (2011), the Office of Multicultural Student Services,” she said. “(The name change) better reflects who we are now. Not only are we still a service and support system for underrepresented students of color, we’re also an advocate for equality for all underrepresented students, and some of those large demographics are women.”
According to Conley, the call for the Women’s Outreach Center came from on high, from the Vice President of the Division of Student Affairs Dr. Kathryn Gage following an analysis of several student surveys.
“There’s a student survey, CRP, that indicates student needs and interests,” Conley said. “And many of the women on campus were needing a support system and leadership skills and a need to learn more life balance skills, so (Gage) thought it would be appropriate to open up an office, and it seemed like a natural fit underneath the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.”
So far, Blackburn has seen her activities bear fruit.
“We’re wanting to raise awareness on women’s issues,” Blackburn said. “With the feminism forum, it was to get people talking about what feminism is and its benefits to the entire community. It’s not just a women’s issue; men benefit too if everybody’s equal.”
Another aim Blackburn’s organization has is to tap into a rich history of feminism to better the community.
“We want to celebrate how far we’ve come while still acknowledging that we still have a long way to go as far as reaching equality among the genders,” she said.
There will be an “Inequality Bake Sale” hosted by the Association of Women’s Studies today in the Liberal Arts building at 9 a.m. The goal of the sale is to illustrate the earned wage gap between males and females.
“In the United States, women still make 77 cents on every male dollar that is made for doing the same work,” Blackburn said. “Women are paid less; and to demonstrate this difference, AWS is going to have baked goods, and they’re going to sell them for 75 cents for women and a dollar for men so they can actually see—well, because we make less, we should have to pay less for these things. It’s a physical demonstration of the wage gap.”
Blackburn said that the core of the Center’s mission is simple:
“It’s equality, that’s all.”