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The article reports on the International Olympic Committee's policy regarding transsexual athletes. It mentions that the policy maintains the popular illusion of two, binary gender designations. Moreover, it mentions that the IOC discontinued their practice of sex-testing because the medical experts could not come up with a definition of a genetic female and others.

This article focuses on a media-induced school scandal involving a male to female transsexual teacher, Dana Rivers, who taught for a school board just outside Sacramento, California. Rivers was fired for allegedly talking to students about her sexuality and the importance of gender self-determination. I offer a psychoanalytic reading of the transphobic response on the part of parents lobbying for Rivers' dismissal and appraise the adolescent trauma thesis used to validate concerns about teacher transsexuality. I argue that the panic surrounding the Rivers case is not about adolescent psychological health (as argued by intolerant parents) but a psychic investment in heterosexual bifurcations of gender and an insistence upon sexual difference.

The article presents an introduction to the theoritical works on transgender experiences.