Category: Opinion

I'm a Christian who happens to be transgendered. It's taken a long time to get the description in the right order.

It isn't a divinity degree or special schooling that makes me write to you about issues of faith. By training, I'm a scientist, by profession an engineer, by upbringing a lukewarm Protestant, hardly the makings of an evangelist.

What, then, have I have to say? First, let me relate what my pastor tells me in counseling, a man who does hold a Ph.D. in divinity, taught theology, leads an 800 member church, a forthright type many would consider a fundamentalist Christian.

YOU AREN'T GOING TO HELL FOR WHAT YOU WEAR, OR HOW YOU APPEAR.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #102, Summer 2003.

by loocefer

As the transgender community struggles even today to gain recognition and actual inclusion within mainstream lesbian, gay, bisexual politics, pre-operative and non-operative transgenderists and gender-variant individuals also strive to overcome the oppressive hierarchy within the transgender community. Such hierarchy is based on a tranny?s process of transitioning, and it assumes that all transgenderists and gender-variant people ultimately wish to undergo sexual reassignment surgery. Indeed, the assumption goes that most if not all transgenderists break the norms of their assigned gender in order to become the opposite sex. While that assumption may accurately apply to transsexuals and many transgenderists, it doesn?t by any means hold for the entire transgender community.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #102, Summer 2003.

by Catherine Lynn Andrews

The difference between those born in the mid-1940s and those born in the mid-1960s is an important one. Until recently, the existence of the older group was relatively unknown (to me anyway), as they were not vocal and just blended into the larger transgender community. The realization that this was a significant group came to me during a late evening discussion on Wednesday at the 2002 IFGE conference in Nashville. As I sat at a table in the bar enjoying the music of Donna Frost, a new acquaintance approached me. We had met earlier in the day and had spoken briefly at the social. "Can we chat for a moment?" she began, as she slipped into a chair across from me. "I have a feeling we have something more in common than crossdressing." She was elegant and well-mannered, with an easy feminine presence that seemed to come toher naturally. "Of course," I replied, mustering all the casual response I could as I concealed my concern that she was implying I appeared to be a deviant of some kind. "Let me tell you about myself," she began.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #098, Summer 2002

The University-Affiliated Gender Clinics, and How They Failed To Meet the Needs of Transsexual People

by Dallas Denny
? 1991 by Dallas Denny

When the Christine Jorgensen story made headlines in 1952, she and her physicians were immediately deluged by frantic requests from hundreds of men and women, pleading for a sex change (the term sex reassignment had not yet been invented). There was little Jorgensen or her doctors could do, however, for her surgery had been one of a kind. It was considered highly experimental, and its morality and legality were being hotly debated in the pages of medical journals. Her physicians were not prepared to do further surgeries (or at least not more than one or two), and no one else was in the sex-change business.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #98, Summer 2002.

by Janice Josephine Carney
? 2001 by Janice Josephine Carney. All Rights Reserved.


For V-day, and all the transgendered who have been violently abused.
For my own childhood that never was, due to incest and painful penetration.
If your vagina got dressed, what would it wear?
My vagina would wear a sun hat. Yes, a sun hat, I want my vagina to be out in the sun, basking in all its glory.