Sam Winter

Who

Dr Sam Winter

What

Associate Professor, University of Hong Kong

Where

Hong Kong

More about me

Sam Winter

Sam Winter has lived and worked in Hong Kong since 1984, and is currently an Associate Professor in the Division of Learning, Development and Diversity in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. Since 2000 Sam has researched, taught and offered counseling in regard to gender identity variance and more broadly in sexual and gender minority issues. More details of the work in sexual and gender diversity follow below.

Sam is (at 2009) a member of the Board of Directors of WPATH (the World Professional Association for Transgender Health), the association which compiles the Standards of Care used to guide, and sometimes regulate, the work of healthcare providers providing services for transpeople. He is part of a group within WPATH actively involved in revising those standards.Sam argues strongly for de-psychopathologisation of gender variance ; ie the removal of gender identity variance and related diagnostic categories from psychiatric manuals.

Sam is Director of the TransgenderASIA centre (http://web.hku.hk/~sjwinter/TransgenderASIA/index.htm), which aims to encourage research in gender identity variance in Asia. He has (at 2009) acted as author / co-author in 15 book chapters and journal articles. The former includes an essay on Hong Kong for an forthcoming international encyclopedia on sexual and gender minorities. The latter include articles in journals such as: International Journal of Transgenderism; Sex Roles; International Journal of Sexual Health; International Journal of Human Rights; Intersections - Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific; and Archives of Sexual Behavior. Several other manuscripts are in varying states of review / revision. He has presented at regional and international conferences, including an invited plenary at the Transgender Pre-Conference at the 2006 ILGA World Conference in Geneva. He has given invited seminars at universities in Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines.

Sam’s most recent research work (at 2009) is a project called ‘Trans Lives: Asian Voices’; a compilation of autobiographies (oral and written, in various languages) by transpeople across Asia. His next project is an examination of post-SRS surgical dissatisfaction and regret among Thai transpeople undergoing surgery in Thailand (where there is evidence that WPATH SOC are less rigidly followed than in some other Western countries).

Since 2003 Sam has organized and taught an undergraduate course on Sexual and Gender Diversity which now draws an enrollment of 500 students a year, and is the most popular single course in the entire University of Hong Kong. He has (at 2009) supervised five higher degree students in the area of sexuality.

Sam was a co-founder of two support groups for transpeople in Hong Kong, and, through the TransgenderASIA Centre has forged links with groups elsewhere in Asia. He offers services to persons (both FtM and MtF) who are gender identity variant or gender conflicted. Sam believes that gender identity variance is an aspect of human diversity, and that the only gender identity disorder worthy of the name is the inability (or unwillingness) of society to accept that difference.