Yawn. Call me when there's a show featuring stereotypically unattractive geeky women being partnered with loving, attractive men. Or other women, for that matter.

We're still firmly ensconced in the world where the baseline requirement for having value as a woman is to be pretty and pleasing. There's nothing revolutionary in women making nice to make their men feel good, even if those men are considered unusual. Nor is there any surprise in men's value being grounded in brains and earning power.

The day we have unbeautiful women on television who are treated as already valuable and complete rather than as candidates for an Extreme Makeover of one sort or another, I'll allow as how some kind of progress might have been made.

These cars are yet another problem for gender-variant people. Already having problems using a public bathroom without risking harassment and even danger? Now public transportation can be just as bad!

Say you're a male-to-female transperson. If you go on the men's car, you're risking your life; go on the womens' car, maybe they'll decide you're not "really" female and throw you off.

Or what if you just look androgynous? Who decides who qualifies for which car? Who decides what a "safe" space is for each individual?

1. I'm not trans, but my girlfriend is.

2. You don't care? Peachy. Go troll somebody else.

If it's a phase, the kid will tell them that too.

I'm sure there are crossdressing boy children who grow up to be gay, not trans. But I wonder how many of those express such a consistent and specific desire to change their bodies into womens' bodies. I think that's less likely. I have met so many transgendered people who began just like this little kid, and of my gay male friends, I can't think of a single analogous story. Not scientific by any means, but you can add that data point to the list.

Anyway, say it is a phase. I fail to see what the big deal is about letting it run its course. If it feels wrong to the kid, if the desire suddenly goes away from peer pressure or something like that, it seems to me that the kid will stop on hir own.

I'm inclined to doubt it's a phase, myself. I've not met anyone who started like this and just kind of stopped being gender-variant entirely one day.

...but I have to tell you.

You. Rock. Your wife is one hell of a lucky woman.

The best part, to my mind, is that not only did you marry the woman of your dreams, but you'll stick up for her and people like her in the face of other people's idiocy. I wish there were more people in this world who would do that!

...he could just be bisexual. Which would mean that this is just porn he happens to like, not that some divorce scenario would have to come to pass.

Although if the brothers are really that homophobic, it would be nice if the father would try to reeducate them, assuming they're of an age where that might be possible.

...but the sad fact is, two truisms apply:

1. Most people are as dumb as a sack of hammers

2. Most people don't pay any attention to anything but bread and circuses, and so whatever sound bites float by most often will stick no matter how ludicrous they are.

The Bush administration's great sinister genius was to be completely aware of these things and to use them to their own fullest advantage.

Bottom line: most people are mindless sheep. Lead them, and they're only too happy to follow, even if it's over a cliff.

This is exactly the issue my partner and I have been considering. She's intersexed--was assigned male at birth, which was wrong and she's now correcting that--and I'm both biologically and self-identified as female.

I don't think the government should be allowed to tell someone which of the organs they were born with "count" and then legislate their freedoms accordingly. This entire thing is ridiculous, and the case of people with intersex conditions just makes that vividly obvious.

Let me count the ways:

1. I vote for the issues, not for identity. I don't care who they are, I care how they'll act.

2. I hope we're entering a future where female candidates are not going to be a once-in-a-lifetime happenstance. I'm totally content to hold out for one that I actually agree with.

3. What a terrible model for one's children: "I'm voting for this person because they have certain physical characteristics". Not to mention "All female candidates are interchangeable in my eyes". If you want to make a good impression on your daughters, for ghods' sakes, teach them how to study the candidates' positions on the major issues that concern them and vote accordingly. The last thing we need is yet another way for image to trump content.

I could certainly stand to lose the weight, and if having an amped libido is the side effect, that's a hell of a lot better than most other side effects.

I don't think this is worth protesting over--it sounds from the article as if they were working on one much-researched topic (the libido aspect)and found that it also had the second effect. It's not like eeebil scientists were trying to come up with one that did both.

Spare us the hate mail, please. Transpeople get enough of that all the time as it is.

Go read the research. It's not sick, it's the way these people are born, and the consensus in the mainstream scientific community is that transitioning to the gender the brain says it is is the only thing that helps.

Just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it's sick or wrong.