Engineer Helps Chart Mysteries of Sexuality

Mission College instructor Leon A. Risemberg leads a double life.

In his classroom, Risemberg teaches engineering students to work with metal, wood and stone. From his Van Nuys home, he guides others through obscure corridors in the flesh and blood maze of human sexuality.

The Argentine-born Risemberg, 58, single-handedly operates a free, 24-hour telephone help line that lends a sympathetic ear to people with unusual sexual preferences. Risemberg has operated his “Bi-Line” service for nine years, fielding up to 40 calls a week from transsexuals, bisexuals and transvestites. Callers can leave a message on his answering machine if he’s not there to take the call.

“My main concern is to help people who are the brunt of prejudice,” Risemberg said. “Those who are guilty without having to be.”

Risemberg the professor is helping create a state-of-the-art engineering program at Mission College. Using a $200,000 grant, he has equipped the community college’s engineering lab with high-tech equipment so students can learn the latest methods of computer-aided drafting and design.

Last fall, 110 students were enrolled in engineering classes at the college, up from 12 two years ago. “We hope to eventually have 300 students,” said Risemberg, who also does consulting work as a structural engineer.

But engineering alone has not been enough to hold Risemberg’s attention. Risemberg said he yearned to expand his interests when, during the 1960s, he noticed that at parties he ended up talking only to other engineers. So for the next 20 years, Risemberg took classes in psychology and human sexuality.

“I became very interested in those subjects because it was almost the exact opposite of what I was doing,” Risemberg said. “Math, science, engineering has almost nothing to do with people.”

Risemberg said he was surprised when he failed a test in his first class in human sexuality. “I was 30, 35, had a wife and two kids,” he said. “I thought people were either gay or straight and that there was nothing in between. I finally picked this area of study because it is where there is the least help.”

That interest led to the creation of the hot line and to the formation of monthly social groups at his home, which Risemberg once called the Bi-Social Center but now calls the Pan-Social Center. “I wanted it open to all types of people,” he said.

On the first Saturday each month, 15 to 60 people meet at Risemberg’s home to hear his seminar on human sexuality and then make new friends.

Risemberg’s two children, who live at home, say most of the visitors are men dressed as women. Risemberg is divorced.

“They wear lots of makeup and lots of perfume,” said Erin Risemberg, 16. “Dad tells them that they’re OK, and then they eat and socialize.”

On a recent Saturday night, six people attended Risemberg’s seminar. They included a bisexual woman, a woman who has lived eight years as a man, two transvestites and a man who had hidden his homosexuality from his wife and children for more than 40 years. The sixth person, a man, declined to say anything other than give his name when members of the group introduced themselves to one another.

One of the transvestites said his wife recently left him after he told her that he liked dressing in women’s clothing.

Risemberg’s experience as a classroom teacher was apparent during his hourlong talk on human sexuality. He used a chalkboard set up in his living room, passed out an outline and encouraged questions. His message was simple: Your sexual preference is not your fault; it was decided largely before you could talk.

Toward the end of his seminar another 15 to 20 people--mostly men elaborately dressed in women’s clothing--start arriving. They gather in the kitchen to talk and drink coffee, drifting in and out of the living room to sample some of the food Risemberg has made available.

Later, they will sit in groups and talk about what’s on their mind.

Risemberg is careful to point out that he offers only peer counseling, not therapy. Many times parents come to learn how to deal with gay and lesbian children, and wives come to learn about husbands who dress as women, Risemberg said.

Using the smooth, measured voice that he employs with callers to the Bi-Line, Risemberg explains some of the many variations on human sexuality, which he said are only partly determined by a person’s physical anatomy.

For example, Risemberg explained the man who is a lesbian.

“An anatomical male with a female gender identity who is attracted to women may look like a straight man,” Risemberg said. “But he is really a woman in a man’s body who is attracted to other women.”

The woman trapped in a man’s body, or vice versa, is described by Risemberg as a transsexual. Both transvestites and transsexuals can be either gay or straight or bisexual, he said. They can have operations to change their physical organs to match their internal leanings, he said.

More rare is what Risemberg calls intersex, people having both male and female sex organs. “In general, they are mostly bisexual,” he said.

In many cases, bisexuals and transsexuals are depressed over feeling so different from the rest of society. In particular, teen-agers who are ashamed about their sexuality often think suicide is their only answer, Risemberg said. “They are people who feel threatened for who they are,” he said.

Risemberg said his monthly gatherings are especially helpful to parents of gay or transsexual teen-agers. “Sometimes after one of our meetings, it’s the first time a child speaks truthfully with his parents,” he said.

“Too many people are suffering as a result of ignorance,” Risemberg said.