Jennifer Diane Reitz
Encyclopedia
Jennifer Diane Reitz is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer, webcomic
Webcomic
Webcomics, online comics, or Internet comics are comics published on a website. While many are published exclusively on the web, others are also published in magazines, newspapers or often in self-published books....

 author, and computer programmer, known for creating webcomics such as Unicorn Jelly, Pastel Defender Heliotrope and To Save Her, and computer games such as Boppin'
Boppin'
Boppin is a puzzle game developed by Accursed Toys , originally published for the Amiga by KarmaSoft. The Amiga version only sold 284 copies, according to the developers, and so it was ported to DOS and released as shareware, published by Apogee Software.The primary differences between the Amiga...

. She is also the proprietor of Transsexuality, a website with general information on transsexualism
Transsexualism
Transsexualism is an individual's identification with a gender inconsistent or not culturally associated with their biological sex. Simply put, it defines a person whose biological birth sex conflicts with their psychological gender...

 and the home of the COGIATI gender-identity test.

Reitz has created computer games and anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

-style comics since 1981. Additionally, she writes game review
Review
A review is an evaluation of a publication, a product or a service, such as a movie , video game, musical composition , book ; a piece of hardware like a car, home appliance, or computer; or an event or performance, such as a live music concert, a play, musical theater show or dance show...

s and co-founded a family company
Family business
A family business is a business in which one or more members of one or more families have a significant ownership interest and significant commitments toward the business’ overall well-being....

, Accursed Toys. Her family company originally founded, then sold, the early games website Happy Puppy
Happy Puppy
Happy Puppy was a website dedicated to video games. It offered demos, patches, reviews, cheats, walkthroughs and features.The site was launched on Valentine's Day 1995 by Stephen P. Lepisto, Sandra Woodruff and Jennifer Diane Reitz, all of whom worked for game developer Accused Toys. Within a year,...

, which was, for a brief time, the most visited games site on the internet.

Reitz is also a transsexual woman who underwent sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery
Sex reassignment surgery is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person's physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble...

 in 1982. Since her transition
Transitioning (transgender)
Transitioning is the process of changing one's gender presentation to accord with one's internal sense of one's gender - the idea of what it means to be a man or woman...

, she has lived in a polyamorous relationship with three spouses. She currently lives in Olympia
Olympia, Washington
Olympia is the capital city of the U.S. state of Washington and the county seat of Thurston County. It was incorporated on January 28, 1859. The population was 46,478 at the 2010 census...

, Washington and considers herself agnostic. Reitz identifies as bisexual, leaning toward lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

.

Reitz created the COGIATI (Combined Gender Identity And Transsexuality Inventory), a prototype test for people who think they might qualify as pre-op, pre-transitional male-to-female transsexuals, but feel uncertain. She claims on her Transsexuality website that some medical professionals have adopted her prototype test instead of developing a better version, and she expresses mixed feelings about this. She cautions that the COGIATI has many flaws and is not a reliable test for diagnosing transsexualism/gender identity disorder
Gender identity disorder
Gender identity disorder is the formal diagnosis used by psychologists and physicians to describe persons who experience significant gender dysphoria . It describes the symptoms related to transsexualism, as well as less severe manifestations of gender dysphoria...

.

Controversy

Despite Reitz' insistence that the COGIATI is unfinished and not to be taken seriously, its emphasis on stereotypical gender roles has sparked controversy as some people who have taken the test in the process of exploring their gender identity have later said that the test's results skewed their understanding of themselves.

External links

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