Walking home from a neighborhood bar Peter Hermann, “1 Killed, 12 Robbed in Violent City Spree,” Baltimore Sun, November 24, 1999; Michael Ollove, “Tacy’s Story,” Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1999. Downloaded from SunSpot.net January 10, 2001.
Baron-Cohen proposes an explanation for these and other differences See Simon Baron-Cohen, The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
gender is what’s above the neck See for example Virginia Prince, “Sex vs. Gender,” in “Transsexualism: A Perspective” in Proceedings of the Second Interdisciplinary Symposium on Gender Dysphoria Syndrome, Donald R. Laub, M.D., and Patrick S. Candy, M.S., eds., Stanford University Medical Center, February 2-4,1973. “For those of you who do not know me, I am a male. I was born one and I will die one. I am not a homosexual. I am not a transsexual, but I have lived the last five years as a woman. There is not one thing that any doctor or any surgeon at this symposium could possibly do to improve my gender. Any kind of carving that you might do on me might change my sex, but it would not change my gender, because my gender, my self-identity is between my ears, not between my legs,” 21.
one cheeky irony of life Lindsey Berkson, Hormone Deception (Chicago: Contemporary Books, 2000), 43.
In 2002 alone, twenty-three people in the United States were slain National Transgender Advocacy Coalition interview with Gwen Smith, creator of “Remembering Our Dead” website, http://www.gender.org/remember/index.html. “I think 2002 is only the ‘deadliest year’ we have statistics for because of three factors. The media is more willing to report on these cases, we have more avenues to find these stories via the world wide web, and we are more sensitive to these cases within our own community. … Rather than thinking of 2002 as being part of an upward trend of murder cases, I paint a somewhat more disturbing picture: maybe 2002 is much closer to the actual per-year number of cases.”
seventeen-year-old Gwen Araujo was dragged into a garage On June 22, 2004, Judge Harry Sheppard declared a mistrial in the Araujo murder case after the jury foreman informed him that the eight-man, four-woman jury was “hopelessly deadlocked.” The jury had deliberated for ten days. Defense attorneys had used a “gay panic” strategy, arguing that their clients (twenty-four-year old Jason Cazares, Michael Magid-son, and Jose Merel) were inspired by “passionate rage” when they discovered that Araujo, with whom all three had previously had sex, was biologically male. After bludgeoning Araujo with a can, frying pans, and a shovel, and strangling her, the defendants buried her in the Sierra foothills, and then went out to McDonald’s for breakfast.
Tyra’s story is surprisingly commonplace Sarah D. Fox, Ph.D., “$2.8 million Award in Tyra Hunter Wrongful Death Suit,” Quill, December 12, 1998. Retrieved from http://www.gendernet.org/quill/pr000004.htm, February 12, 2003.
Nature loves variety Milton Diamond, plenary lecture at the International Foundation for Gender Education annual meeting, March 21, 2003, Philadelphia, Pa.
I certify that Chevalier d’Eon Quoted in Magnus Hirschfeld, Transvestites: The Erotic Urge to Cross Dress, trans, by Michael A. Lombardi-Nash (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1991), 341-42.
far from being a product of the modern world See, for example, Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture, Gilbert Herdt, ed. (New York: Zone Books 1994); “Mythological, Historical, and Cross-Cultural Aspects of Transsexualism,” in Transsexualism and Sex Reassignment, ed. Richard Green, M.D., and John Money, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), chap. 1; Part I, “Cultural and Historical Background” in Vern L. Bullough and Bonnie Bullough, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993); and Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
gender crossing is so ubiquitous Bullough and Bullough, Cross Dressing, Sex, and Gender, 5.
You have served me just as well Letter quoted in ibid., 337.
The London Stock Exchange took bets on his gender Marjorie Garber, Vested
Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York: Routledge, 1992), 260. 5 I am what the hands of God have made me Letter to the Count de Broglio, February 10,1775, quoted in Garber, Vested Interests, 264.
has always been a reward for bravery on the battlefield Letter quoted in Hirschfeld, Transvestites, 339.
His hand was already slipping under my sheet Herculine Barbin, Herculine Barbin: Being the Recently Discovered Memoirs of a Nineteenth- Century French Hermaphrodite, trans. Richard McDougall (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 68-69.
condemned Abel to “abandonment, to cold isolation” Ibid., 87.
When that day comes a few doctors will make a little stir Ibid., 103.
Variety is Nature’s way Milton Diamond, at the annual meeting of the International Foundation for Gender Education, March 21,2003, Philadelphia, Pa.
The most famous such case Hart underwent analysis with a Portland, Oregon, psychiatrist, J. Allen Gilbert, who, in 1917, helped Hart obtain a hysterectomy and begin living as a man. In Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (New York: Thomas Y Crowell Company, 1976), historian Jonathan Ned Katz identifies Hart on the basis of a paper Gilbert wrote about the case, hails Hart as a lesbian foremother, and harshly criticizes Gilbert for the course of treatment he recommended. In Sex Changes: The Politics of Transgenderism (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1997), Pat Califia takes Katz and other gay historians to task for their tendency to view early transmen such as Hart as self- hating lesbians. “Unfortunately, since Katz’s work has appeared in print, other gay and lesbian historians have also promoted the myth that all ‘passing women’ are lesbian elders…. The task of sorting out the dykes from the transgendered men, or at least the task of recognizing that both tendencies are present in the histories of ‘passing women,’ still remains to be done” (Califia, 155).
gender identity is subject to scrutiny Julian Todd Weiss, “The Gender Caste System: Identity, Privacy, and Heteronormativity,” Law and Sexuality 10 (2002): 131.
Ordinarily, the purpose of scientific investigation Harry Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenomenon (New York: Ace Books, 1966), 5.
I’m not a girl, I’m not a girl Author interview with “Brad” [source requested anonymity for family reasons], San Francisco, Calif., August 31, 2001.
first employees of the city of San Francisco to take advantage of the new policy of insurance reimbursement On Monday, April 30, 2001, the Board of Supervisors passed a measure making the city the first in the nation to pay for its transgendered employees’ surgical and medical needs related to sex correction. The coverage does not extend to cosmetic procedures, only to hormones, genital reconstruction, and hysterectomies and mastectomies for FTMs. Employees must work for the city for a year to become eligible for the benefits. If using a doctor within the city’s health network, employees have to pay 15 percent out of pocket; if using a doctor outside the network, employees are responsible for 50 percent of the costs. An article by Margie Mason for the Associated Press said that the city had identified fourteen transgendered employees out of its thirty-seven thousand workers. Margie Mason, “Sex-Change Benefits Approved in San Francisco,” Associated Press, April 30,2001. Brad told me, “In the city there are thirteen of us. Half of those have already had the surgery; out of the other seven, three don’t want surgery. So I would say that there are only four people. Hello? There are not going to be droves of people coming out here. There aren’t that many city jobs, and you’ve got to wait a year anyway. This year they’ve got one point seven million dollars set aside for the thirty-five surgeries they thought were gonna
