Anne Ogborn | |
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Born | 1959 (age 64–65) Salina, Kansas |
Occupation(s) | Transrights Activist and Software Engineer |
Known for | Founder of Kansas City Gender Society and Transgender Nation. |
Notable work | Coordinated Camp Trans and early participant and organizer of the New Womens Conference |
Anne Ogborn (born 1959) is a transgender rights activist from Salina, Kansas. According to Patrick Califia she "should be credited as a forerunner of transgender direct action groups." [1] She is a software engineer [2] known for her contributions to SWI-Prolog. [3]
Ogborn was an early practitioner of direct action in support of transgender rights. [1] For instance, in 1991, transsexual woman Nancy Burkholder was expelled from the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, a preeminent lesbian event. Ogborn coordinated a direct action, Camp Trans, to protest the transphobia of the festival leaders. [1]
The first transsexual organization that Ogborn founded was KCGS, the Kansas City Gender Society. Ogborn started Transgender Nation, [4] the transgender focus group of Queer Nation in San Francisco which included a new transgender caucus to fight transphobia in local debates. [5] In 1993, Ogborn and Transgender Nation members protested the American Psychiatric Association's listing of transsexualism as a psychiatric disorder, and medical colonization of transsexual people's lives. [6]
Ogborn was an early participant and organizer of the New Womens Conference, a retreat for post-operative transsexual women. She edited its newsletter, "Rights of Passage", which would later become the Transsexual News Telegraph. [7] Her involvement with the New Womens Conference informed much of her later work.
Ogborn joined the Hijra community [8] in 1994, claiming to be the first westerner to join the religious out-group. [9]
She continues her activism for transgender and human rights. [5]