Sex & Sexualities

A specialist in early childhood education in Oslo is giving new meaning to the term "sexual games," and stirring widespread debate.

Norwegians woke up Tuesday morning to news that a respected Oslo pre-school teacher, backed by child psychologists, thinks children should be allowed to openly express their own sexuality, not least through sex play and games in the local day care centers known as barnehager, or kindergartens.

But they point out that for the change to take place through amendments, there would have to be political will.

The Act, which was passed on December 13, makes changes to the definition of what constitutes rape and includes a sexual offender register, but child rights groups say the Act has done little to increase protective measures available in the court system.

As students begin to settle in a routine at Columbia-finding their place in campus activities, learning the bureaucracy of the system, and slowly becoming caffeine addicts-a small group of students begins to question where it belongs.

Transgender people, those who choose to identify with the gender opposite to their sex, have a history of not fitting in. Defying their sex, transgender people break away from the gender and sexual binaries, so they fit in as neither women nor men, neither gay nor straight. Rather, they are a combination, a mix-and-match of characteristics that are difficult to define at first glance. For this reason, many find that students at Columbia, as well as the University's general policies, do not know how to deal with transgender students.

Seen for centuries as the "right" rule of conduct, heterosexuality has lost ground to other sexual preferences and behaviors which turn-of-the- century Cuba can no longer deny.

Homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals and transvestites are all an increasingly visible sector, yet to be absorbed by mainstream society but partly tolerated, if not accepted, in academic, university and cultural circles, as well as among people sensitized to this issue.