No question this is what freaks out people the most.

Look, practically speaking, this is NOT a major issue. When handled with decency and repsect and presented to a group of employees there is rarely a problem. There are so many alternatives to working this out, family and unisex and single-stall bathrooms, and each situation is different because the people are different.

The women who still have a problem with a trans woman using the women's bathroom should get over it. White women had problems with black women back in the 60's. I think most have gotten over it. Many universities have co-ed bathrooms these days, and no one is freaking out. No one should know what's between a trans woman's legs, and when she is in public no one does know. Believe it or not there are many women walking around with penises or enlarged clitorises that look like penises, and there are men with micropenises or no penises. No one knows, because people don't pay attention in bathrooms. The guys don't look at each other's genitals, and the women are in stalls.

This is a problem because certain individuals choose to make it a problem, and to use it for political purposes. People of good will always find a way to work this out, and transition is a limited time period, anyway.

Again, this is very frustrating for me. I raise valid questions and you call me "right wing" and make it political. My goodness sometimes the asinine political correctness police drives me up the wall.

danabeyer, I've mentioned this over and over, I'm a 33 year old blue-state liberal gay man. I am a freakin potential ally and yet all I get is called names and dismissed (from most people, the intelligent posters are great but haven't convinced me yet). If you can't convince a 33 year old blue-state liberal gay man of the logic of your position, you are seriously screwed.

"You feel male because your brain tells you that you are male. it's not very complicated."

Actually, my brain is silent on the question. Being "male" isn't something you FEEL it's just something you ARE as a fact. Yes I classify as male, XY chromosomes, primary & secondary sexual characteristics, I "look" male. But I don't FEEL one way or another, I'm just ME. Dye my hair black or red and I'm still blond.

"In my case I was born with a penis[...]and a partial uterus."

And you fall into my statement on otherwise healthy XX or XY children how? Just like that guy who looks white but was born to African-American parents due to some funky recessive gene, you're talking about something different.

Are you saying that all transgendered people have some sort of chromosomal anomaly or birth defect that causes abnormal hormones to make your mind "feel" that you are the opposite sex? Cuz that's what I'm hearing from you. And from my understanding, that is not the case.

"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."

You're mixing the social aspects with the medical. Again.

"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."

Well, that's news to my bf medical doctor who works with loads of psychiatrists who all to a man (no pun intended) disagree with you. The only point I'll agree to that last statement is the phrase "classic psychiatric techniques". I totally agree cognitive science has revolutionized many things but from what I understand, the only consensus on this issue naturally comes from within the trans community.

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--gaycustomer-lawsu1009oct09,0,7920858.story

From Newsday, today:

A lesbian filed a civil rights lawsuit against a popular Greenwich Village restaurant Tuesday, claiming a bouncer chased her out of the women's bathroom and forced her to leave because she looked too masculine.

Khadijah Farmer, who was at the Caliente Cab Company after New York's gay pride parade last June, said the bouncer ran into the bathroom, pounded on the stall door and demanded that she leave.

Anyone think similar things can't happen in the employment arena? John? Hello, John? Are not speaking to me anymore, honey? Funny, you stopped responding to me when I asked you to provide evidence for your three false assumptions that I itemized earlier. Won't you at least respond to this post?

Please? I'll do something special for you, baby...

Interesting piece, John. You start by likening human rights group's inclusiveness to a nuclear bomb explosion, the famous Mushroom Cloud which puts you in the company of George Bush and Condi Rice.

Then you assert that ENDA won't pass with transgendered rights included, but you supply absolutely nothing to support that claim, which leads me to believe you studied at the David Brooks school of journalism. You say it's so, therefore it is.

You claim to support transgendered rights but just don't want to support them now. You must have cut the "Some of my best friends are transgendered" line in editing.

I think you are auditioning for a regular spot at Salon.

You want to impress the editor with your ability to draw readers and to do that you've tried to be controversial, Paglia style. At that you have succeeded, but at the cost of portraying yourself as someone lacking in basic compassion for others.

Anyone who as been persecuted for being gay, lesbian, transgendered or bisexual knows that straights hate us all equally. That fact binds us together and together is the only way we can successfully fight for our rights as people.

Listen, Anon, I do not make it a habit of insulting anyone. I'm actually quite good at bringing people together from the extremities of the political spectrum.

However, you have repeatedly used language which is grossly insulting, and it doesn't mean anything that you're a gay man from a blue state who is a potential ally. You have deliberately chosen to ignore everything Zoe, I and others have said, trying to show you the facts.

You're correct -- in my case I am both "physically" intersex and transsex. But the fact that I have a partial uterus in no way changes the fact that I was born with a female brain and a penis. That makes me like many other transsex women. I had a friend who was also transsexual -- born with a penis and a female brain, and she happened to have Klinefelter's Syndrome, XXY, as well. To you she would have looked like any other transsexual woman.

My point is that we are all biological intersex individuals; by definition, if one has male and female "parts," one is intersex. There are many sexual characteristics, and not just X and Y chromosomes which you consider determinative. Well, no one else does anymore. There are gonads, and genitalia, hormones and hormone receptors, genes and histones, secondary sex characteristics and reproductive organs. And there is the brain.

My "sex" is biologically determined by my brain sex which creates my gender identity. My genitals don't influence my sense of self, or anyone else's for that matter.

If you want to argue semantics, then to a biologist "sex" is simply whether you are producing large or small gametes. I used to produce small gametes; now I produce none.

You proudly announce the existence of many cases of homosexual orientation in nature. You're correct, and I suggest that people read Professor Joan Roughgarden's great book, "Evolution's Rainbow." But there are as many variations on sexual identity, with a host of intersex conditions, throughout nature, as you will read in her book.

As for your psychiatrist friends, well, they are in the distinct minority if they consider us mentally ill. I doubt they have many trans patients, they do not follow evidence-based medicine, and they do not respect their patients' humanity. I'd be happy to meet with them, because it would be interesting to set up a debate between the cognitive scientists and the Freudians.