Anon, I mentioned my own history simply to point out to you how complex this is, not to imply all trans people have the exact body I do. But I do believe that transsexualism is a subset of intersex, and will be increasingly viewed as such as cognitive and evolutionary developmental biology advance. It is certainly true by definition.

We are all functions of our brains. The brain determines the mind. Philosophers call this materialism, and even should you believe in the "soul" that would not change this.

I haven't called you "right-wing," just your questions and your attitude and that of your psychiatric friends. There is no longer any debate about whether or not being transsexual is a mental illness, or a gender identity disorder. It is a mismatch, an incongruence, between genitals (which determine sex at birth from a legal pov), and brain sex, which is every human being's understanding of him/herself as male/female.

Beyond that you have the manner in which people express their gender, and that varies from culture to culture and epoch to epoch.

My problem is figuring out why you have such a hard time understanding this, why you insist it is a "mental illness." I imagine you now recognize that schizophrenia is a brain disease, and bipolar is a brain disease, and epilepsy is a brain disease, and we might categorize them as mental illnesses for insurance purposes but we don't treat those with such conditions as if they're crazy without cause. Since trans persons are intersex and cannot and have no desire to change their minds or brains, just their genitals, why can't you simply accept that? The research over fifty years backs this up, and completely refutes your contentions.

Or is it simply because the phallus reigns supreme? Do you feel the same way about trans men who enlarge their clitorises medically or surgically?

I believe that what we are seeing here is a battle to establish the supremacy of the thesis that this is all about gender.

The effort here is to unify L, G, B and T as a single community by subsuming all oppression as based on gender nonconformity.

This is a self-serving project of trans folks that belies the fact that the LGB-T communities are a range of partially intersecting sets rather than a linear, continuous continuum.

This approach falls short as a descriptive project as there are ample cases of L, G and B who cleave to normative gender roles yet are oppressed. If it cannot describe, then it cannot be used to prescribe.

Yes, it is all about the phallus because it homo, bi and trans phobias are all about patriarchy. Patriarchy is all about the phallus as an instrument of control and power-over.

Vaginas are the source of uncontrolled sex and pleasure, that which must be controlled by the patriarchy with one and only one phallus.

Multiple phalli represents the uncontrolled sexual expression of two male sexualities that are always "on," and is a temptation for men to enjoy as much sex as we would without social function that is productive to patriarchy. See Larry Craig and the pantheon of right wing, homophobic MSM cruisers.

Multiple vagina sex represents the uncontrolled nature of female sex, not controlled because not under the power of the male patriarch's phallus and because women have always represented a threat to male dominance unless controlled. This form is only acceptable when controlled by men for use in their getting off.

From this perspective, gender falls below patriarchy and sexism as an expression of those forces rather than the main oppressive force of its own.

These matters have yet to find consensus amongst the LGB-T communities. It is naive to assume that absent consensus internally we can convince a skeptical congress and public to whom they are accountable that a trans inclusive ENDA should move forward now.

Given these realities, trans folks risk alienating potential lesbian and gay allies with this gambit, and that portends negatively for moving any of our agenda forward before John and I are seniors.

Further, the notion of rejecting a phallus or crafting a new one, as misplaced as it might be for the realities of trans folks, strikes a chord with heteros as it violates the prime principles of patriarchy--that phalli are to be used by het men with het women and het women alone.

They don't care how you dress as much as how you fuck and how the phallus is deployed for those purposes.

This goes a long way towards explaining why people like Boris Beckham and other metrosexuals can bend gender convention while not being subject to the same kind of discrimination as trans folks.

As nasty and acrimonious as this debate on trans-inclusion has been within the GLBT community at large, I have to say I have had a completely different experience working within the community of GLBT military veterans, and I'm puzzled as to why that is the case.

We vets seem to be getting along just fine as we discuss various items on our political agenda, chief among them, the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." This is a statute that mandates discrimination based on sexual orientation, but is silent on the issue of gender identity (transsexuals are prohibited from military service by DOD regulation, not by statute, and there are various provisions in the Uniform Code of Military Justice that can and have been used to prosecute transgender individuals for conduct such as cross-dressing). Transgender military veterans have been involved with our efforts to repeal DADT for many years. One, a Naval Academy graduate and Gulf War vet, worked on the staff of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, helping servicemembers harmed by DADT. None of these transgender activists, thus far, has insisted that full trans-inclusion be a predicate to repeal of DADT. Everyone seems to recognize that, hey, these military laws and regulations are really complicated and we want to make sure we make pragmatic decisions, whatever those decisions might be.

By the same token, the GLB veterans, to my experience (with some noteworthy exceptions) have been solicitous and welcoming to the T-vets community and genuinely interested in their issues (and the T-vets have a lot of quite different issues to address, among them, the ability to receive treatment for gender identity disorder at VA). There has been some, but very little, discussion about whether transgender vets "belong" in "our" community, whether certain individuals belong in front of the TV cameras, whether transgender individuals "hinder" "our" efforts to win over the very conservative military community, etc. etc. Where there is such discussion, it has been candid and respectful, and a collective discussion that involves all parties with a stake in its outcome.

Why the vets' community seems so different than the GLBT community at large, I can't really say. Perhaps a large part of it is simply our shared military experience, and the sense that no one should tell a fellow veteran that he or she is not part of the veterans' community. But I wish the form of dialogue we experience among GLBT veterans could be transplanted into the wider GLBT community.

Also, for what it's worth, I really don't see the issue of trans-inclusion as a sort of "idealism vs. pragmatism" paradigm, nor do I buy into the assumption that transgendered Americans are somehow behind the GLB community in the civil rights queue. Sure, they've not made themselves as "visible" as gay people, but that can be a blessing as much as a curse. My friend, the USNA grad who worked at SLDN, used to go back to the Naval Academy from time to time and give lectures on DADT and gays in the military. When she talked about gays in the military, the midshipmen were vociferous in their objections to the idea of sharing a shower with a gay man. But when she later disclosed that she was born male and had identified as a man while she was attending the Naval Academy, their response was more like idle curiousity: "Oh...huh."

So, I tend to think that the negative stereotype of the GLBT community that hurts us the most, collectively, is not that of the "trannie," but that of the gay male predator in the shower or public restroom, the Larry Craig, out there cheating on his wife, menacing children and spreading venereal disease. The transsexual experience is so foreign to most Americans that I don't think most of them have even bothered mustering up a visceral reaction to it. This sort of begs the question of who is riding on whose coattails, exactly.

Anyway, them's my two cents' worth.