Anon, you sound very much like the Anon on our Vigilance blog in Montgomery County, spouting the same right wing fundamentalist talking points over and over again.

YOU made the point -- if you step on a land mine, you would still be male. Not because you have a Y chromosome or an SRY gene that works or 54 other genes that worked in sync in utero . . . but because you developed a male brain in utero. And the loss of your penis would not affect that male brain and its gender identity. You feel male because your brain tells you that you are male. it's not very complicated.

I suppose I shouldn't complain that there would be posters here at Salon who don't understand the basics. I keep forgetting that this isn’t Americablog.

Anon, you really are misinformed, because you don’t understand the reality of hundreds of thousands of people or the science that has been evolving over the past fifteen years. I was not born with a normal male body. In my case, I was born with a penis, testicles and a partial uterus. But even had I not been born with a uterus, I would still be intersex and transsex because I was born with a female brain.

This is not rocket science. There are still debates over how this happens, with some genetic clues, some endocrine disruptors being involved, and a host of well-known chromosomal variations and metabolic irregularities that result from variations in fetal sexual development. Different people have different conditions, some known, some still unknown. But it is REALITY.

You see a problem with the mind but have no evidence with which to back it up. Freudian analysts tried for seventy years to cure us, and used techniques as extreme as lobotomy and electroshock to “fix” our minds, to no avail. They gave up on trying to convert gays back in 1973, when their research showed nothing worked and all that was needed was to stop treating gay people as mentally ill. The problems gay people had were reactive to the society in which they were living – Culturally Induced Stress Disorder, so to speak.

Psychiatry kept on trying to fix us, and the science has been slower in coming. Harry Benjamin’s work was only published here in 1966, genital reconstruction was privatized in 1976, and cognitive science began to revolutionize psychiatry in the late 80’s. Now we know we can switch the gender identity of a fruit fly by flipping one gene, fruitless. That endocrine disruptors such as DES cause similar changes in mice, rats and humans. That the brains of trans persons fit their gender identity and not their genitalia. That decades of social transition and genital reconstruction have changed the lives of tens of thousands of people in this country alone, with hardly a problem. I can count the number of people who re-transitioned, almost all because of socioeconomic stress, on one hand. That is a phenomenal track record. And counseling and therapy have rarely helped anyone come to a state of peace with their “normal” bodies.

So you think we are the deluded ones? How about trying to meet some of us? Some mistaking trans women for drag queens and cross-dressers, who, while gender variant, are truly men and would never agree to genital reconstruction. Learn about sex and gender and human sexual development before you sound off.

As for calling this GID, or Gender Identity Disorder, that is a term from 1990 when the DSM IV was being developed, before the cognitive science revolution had even begun. Many psychiatrists, hard to believe, really didn’t even understand the concept of gender identity. Now that has changed, and gender identity and brain sex are part of neuroscience. You will be hard pressed to find a psychiatrist today who is not a religious fundamentalist who believes this is a mental illness, treatable in any manner with classic psychiatric techniques.

This is the 21st century, we know who we are, the medical profession understands and accepts that, and we deserve to be treated with respect and dignity, with the same rights as other Americans.

"straights continue to point to the fact that there is no "gay gene" or other medico-phsyical "cause" of homosexuality identified"

Yes some of them also continue to deny scientific reality. That's neither here nor there.

"And there are, in fact, numerous examples in nature of animals who change sex or who assume the social roles of the opposite sex"

Gender ROLES are very different than actively denying you are the sex you were born in. And here I was sure that we've learned to separate societal behaviors from self-perception... It's the latter we are talking about. Granted we won't be seeing penguins line up for sex reassignment surgery.

"homosexuality was an official "psychological disorder" as set forth in the DSM III. It was only political pressure that got homosexuality finally removed from the DSM IV."

Again, we've already covered this. This happened 30 YEARS ago. Tell me something new.

"Too bad the T's (and transsexual is only one of the many groups under the general T umbrella, and as far as I know, the only one still in the DSM IV) don't have the political clout by themselves to effect a similar change."

I'm not talking about political clout. I'm talking about factual science and medicine. The DSM change for homosexuals may have started with someone having political clout (a change of this magnitute couldn't have started otherwise!), but plenty of research by a bunch of credible scientists backed up the change.

Mr. Aravosis asks why Transgender people should be connected with Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual people and advocates for a watered-down version of ENDA which might be thought of as the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell ENDA." Gender identity is something EVERYONE has, just like sexual orientation. A sexual orientation-only bill offers gaping loopholes to employers who would adversely discriminate against GLB people who don't look or act straight. Rep. Frank's bill is effectively driving a wedge into the GLBT community that will not ultimately benefit most gays or lesbians. The history of the Gay Rights Movement shows that it has stood on the shoulders of the Transgender community for over 50 years, most obviously at Stonewall in 1969, an event that gay rights advocates appropriated from transpeople almost immediately. We didn't have the language of transgender or gender identity back then -- these are more recent developments as our collective understanding has deepened. But those who despise GLB and T people don't see much distinction between these groups: it all looks queer to them. Sticking together to fight for the rights of all queer people is important. And there is considerable historical precedent for impacted communities or bill sponsors being willing to give up their own rights to include others. For example, Disability Activists who had worked for years to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act stood up as a united front and were willing to kill the bill altogether rather than allow it to exclude people living with HIV. Learn more about that civil rights battle and others at http://www.bilerico.com/2007/09/a_moment_of_truth.php

You might also read the introduction to Transgender Equality (as well as the rest of that publication) at http://www.thetaskforce.org/reports_and_research/trans_equality

Gender Identity was also included in the Hate Crimes bill that passed both houses of Congress just days before Mr. Frank unleashed his "strategy." It makes no sense to back off from the inclusive bill. No ENDA bill has been introduced in the Senate, and our homophobic President will not give you your half a loaf, anyway!