Diversity means difference or unlikeness or the opposite of same. Men and women are perfect examples of diversity. In fact, men and women are called opposites. Sexism and racism are examples of zero gender or zero race diversity, respectively. The US constitution codifies a requirement for equal treatment (equality) of certain classes of people. Men and women are two such classes …

As I was watching “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” the Bravo reality series where five fabulous gay guys transform a straight, uncultured slob, I was struck by a moment where I identified more with the hetero than the homo. It was a scene where Carson, the fashion maven, was going through the closet of Slob ‘O The Week, and …

Gender is a primary category in which individuals both identify themselves and are identified by others. Gender is not a set of binary categpries, but rather a spectrum. The concept of gender can be restrictive in many ways. People are generally expected to identify as a particular gender, the one which has been assigned to them, and act in specific …

Transgenderism is the practice of transgressing gender norms. A Transgender person is someone whose gender display at least sometimes runs contrary to what other people in the same culture would normally expect. Transgender folks come in several flavors: FTM (female to male) are people who were born female but see themselves as partly to fully masculine. MTF (male to female) …

This is for everyone who’s planning to tell their parents soon and to everyone whose parents know but just don’t understand (I apologize in advance to FtM readers and non-transsexual readers. This is written in terms of a transsexual woman. I hope you can find useful insight regardless)… As you may know when I came out to my mum last …

At the age of 3, Simon was playing with tea-sets. At 5 he fell in love with Barbie dolls. And at 7 he told his mum: “I wish I’d been born a girl.” But Pat wasn’t shocked… she already knew there was something different about her eldest son. He never touched boys’ toys and he only ever wanted girls as …

To understand the history of transgender people, one must also understand how both transgendered people themselves, and non-transgendered people explained the presence of such apparent misfits in the otherwise neat binary sex/gender social fabric. One can understand how law, medicine, and society in general treated transgendered people only within the context in which the transgendered person fit into a theoretic …

1907 Harry Benjamin Meets Magnus Hirschfeld 1910 Magnus Hirschfeld coins the term “transvestite” 1919 Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Institute for Sexology in Berlin, Germany, which becomes the first clinic to serve transgendered people on a regular basis. 1920 Jonathan Gilbert publishes “Homosexuality and Its Treatment” the story of “H”, Dr. Alan Hart’s 1917 FTM transition 1923 Magnus Hirschfeld coins the term “transsexual” 1931 “Genital Reassignment …

The modern era of the gay & lesbian rights movement is usually marked as starting on a hot July evening at the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The New York police, as many city police departments across the United States did, made period raids on sexual minority bars to harass and arrest the patrons. On this particular …

What it feels like to be a Male-To-Female Transsexual, Before, during, and after transition. How it touches the soul, and How it affected my life. Initially, the trouble with my body being the wrong sex was just…troubling. My mother told me stories, before she died, of the difficulties toilet training me, of getting me to deal with plumbing I felt …