Men have facial hair, women don’t. It’s probably the single biggest gender marker. A person with facial hair will be assumed to be male almost regardless of all other evidence. Women with facial hair are so rare that once upon a time “bearded ladies” could make their living displaying it at sideshows.

There’s no not seeing a man’s beard, even if he’s clean-shaven. No matter how often or closely he shaves, even if he’s blond, the beard shadow can’t be missed. This is why transsexual men have small need for “facial masculinization surgery;” their blooming beards and sideburns do the job for them.

This is why, for transitioning transsexual women, permanently removing their facial hair is one of the highest priorities. After deciding to transition, there’s a period of up to several years during which a transwoman continues to present as a male for at least some of the time; this is necessary because she needs to save money for various medical and surgical procedures, replace her wardrobe, learn how to apply makeup if that’s something she’ll want to do (there’s a stereotype that transwomen are hyper feminine “girly girls” who dress all in pink and are always immaculately made up, but this is no more true for transwomen than it is for any women), change her name and related documents, etc.

During this time is usually when transwomen get their facial hair cleared. Most don’t want to go “full time” presenting as women while they still have a visible beard shadow, for obvious reasons, so it’s better to do this while most people still see them as male most of the time.

Estrogen hormone replacement therapy doesn’t make beards stop growing. It may soften and lighten the hair slightly, but that’s all. Only two methods will reliably remove this hair without disfiguring the face: laser hair removal and electrolysis.

Laser hair removal can be very effective in some people, but it has limitations. It works best on dark-haired, fair-skinned people; anyone else may not get a good result. And since it works by targeting pigments, it can discolor one’s skin in unattractive ways. It has to be considered experimental.

So really, there’s only one reliable way to remove one’s facial hair, and that’s electrolysis. It works like this: an electrologist has a tiny needle which, with the help of a magnifying glass, is inserted into each individual hair follicle. A jolt of electricity is sent through the needle; it burns the hair loose and creates a tiny pile of scar tissue inside the follicle.

In a few months the hair will grow back, but it will be thinner and lighter. The electrologist will zap it again, creating more scar tissue. It will grow back several more times, thinner and weaker each time. Finally (I’ve been told six zaps will do it, but individual hairs may need more or fewer), the hair will finally be gone forever.

Most electrolysis sessions last an hour and will only clear a small area of the face. Depending on how densely forested the face, it can take months or years of these sessions (and they’re not cheap) before the work is done. Usually the electrologist will work on two areas on opposite sides of the face, so the hairless areas are symmetrical. After each session, the skin worked on will be red, swollen, and even hot to the touch for several hours afterward.

When my electrolysis was in-progress, a friend of mine, a non-transgender male, told me “I’ve always hated shaving. Maybe I’ll get electrolysis too, so I won’t have to shave anymore. What’s it like?”

It’s like this: imagine the worst physical pain you’ve ever felt. On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the worst pain possible, remember any nines or higher that you’ve experienced. Now imagine that pain concentrated into an area the size of a needle point. Now imagine that needle-prick of agonizing pain, on your face, repeated hundreds of times over the course of an hour, for an aggregate total of dozens or hundreds of hours. That’s what electrolysis is like.

My friend decided shaving’s not such a chore after all.

My doctor prescribed a topical anesthetic cream which blunted, but didn’t eliminate, the pain somewhat. Even with that, my upper lip was too sensitive and nerve-ending-rich for the treatment to be bearable. For this, I went to a dentist who injected Marcaine, a dental anesthetic that deadened my whole mouth area for a marathon two-hour session during which I didn’t feel a thing. I did this twice.

A bad electrologist doesn’t use a high enough voltage, so the zaps hurt just as much but are less effective, or uses an excessively high voltage, which gets the job done but leaves visible scars—tiny craters on the face, like acne scars. A good electrologist will study each client’s skin and hair type and adjust the tools of the trade accordingly to get the best result with the fewest sessions.

If you have any questions or remarks about this entry, please leave a comment below!

This year I sat in the waiting room for a time with another woman who I guessed to be a Latina in her mid-thirties. She struck up a conversation, which turned immediately to our surgeries.

She revealed she’d had a facelift and was back for her six-month checkup. When she said this I revised my estimate of her age upward by a decade, and praised the successful work. She had no visible scarring, and no lingering swelling. The face is a delicate organ, and surgical swelling in facelifts and nose jobs can persist for up to a year in some cases. She clearly had a very good outcome, and was happy with it.

When she asked what procedures I’d had done, I told her I’d also had a facelift. Of course this was a lie, but it’s near enough to the truth that I wasn’t willing to “out” myself over it. I did have surgery on my face, and it did have the effect of making me look younger, so it was one of the whitest of white lies.

When we see new people we sort them into “male” and “female.” We all do this; we can’t not do it. We do it without knowing we’re doing it. It’s one of the first ways we classify individuals inside our brains. There are markers, cues, some subtle and some obvious, that tell us which gender a person belongs to.

The obvious ones include height, hair length, and clothes. The average height of women in the U.S. is around 65 inches; men on average are about five inches taller. Women usually wear their hair longer than men, and of course clothes are different. Women wear more dresses and skirts, but even trousers are styled differently for women than for men, and most of us are good at telling one type from the other. Women wear more pink and yellow, while men wear more dark tones.

Male and female bodies are shaped differently. A male torso is like a wedge, with broad shoulders, thick arms and legs, and narrow hips. Women are an hourglass shape, with narrow shoulders, a much narrower waist, slender limbs, and broad hips. And women have breasts.

Men and women walk differently. Women swing their arms from side to side; men swing them backwards and forwards. Men move their arms more when they walk just in general. Men have longer strides, partly because their legs are longer, but also just because they do.

Male and female voices differ in complicated ways. Our usual understanding of this is that men have deep voices and men have high ones, but there’s much more going on. The actor/director Ron Howard doesn’t have a deep voice, but his voice has other qualities of pitch, resonance, and inflection that mark him as male; if you heard him with your eyes closed, you wouldn’t think he sounded like a woman. Similarly, the actress Kathleen Turner has a deep, husky voice, but it’s also considered a quintessentially female voice.

The most important (and subtle) gender cues come from faces. Women’s eyebrows are farther from their eyes than are men’s. Their hairlines are lower and more oval than men’s. Women have no eyebrow ridges or Adam’s apples, their noses are smaller, and their lips are plumper. The angle between the bottom of the nose and the upper lip is wider than 90 degrees in most women, and smaller than 90 degrees in most men. Subcutaneous fat is distributed differently, making men’s faces look generally more angular and women’s faces softer and rounder. Most of all, men have facial hair and women don’t.

All of the above are gross generalizations, and no one conforms 100% to the physical expectations of their sex. There are short men, broad-shouldered women, soft-featured men, gravelly-voiced women, long-haired men, women who wear men’s clothes, men without facial hair, and women with droopy noses.

There are hundreds of behavioral and physical gender cues, and we all subconsciously note and add them up in our heads to get an absolute value of |male| or |female|. Most people, as I said, never think about these cues. Transwomen can’t not think about them, and work very hard…changing their clothes, walk, voice, and other superficial features…to change that value to that of their preferred gender. And when changing the superficial features isn’t enough, we turn to FFS, if we can afford it.

I had my Adam’s apple removed. An implant plumped my upper lip. My eyebrows were raised higher by millimeters. My chin was shortened and my jawline narrowed.

The difference was understated but profound. Before the surgery, most strangers assumed I was a crossdressing man; after the surgery, no one made this mistake. And yet, for those interactions wherein I still had to present myself as a man, no one noticed the difference. The male cues I still deliberately exuded in those situations were enough to overwhelm any changes in my face.

Everyone has some notion of the genital surgeries involved in a gender transition, but gender is as much a social construction as anything else. And if you think FFS is only about vanity, watch this video. Transwomen who fail to “pass” (I’ll be writing a whole post about “passing” later) are beaten or murdered every day. That’s not hyperbole: every day.

My partner and I attended the world premiere of the play Angry Fags, written by local playwright Topher Payne, at Seven Stages back in February. We learned about it (and were offered free tickets) because every past grand marshal of Atlanta Pride was invited (with a plus one). It was general seating, and we got excellent seats near the center of the audience; Payne himself sat right behind us.

The show opened, played its run, and closed so long ago that it seems like everyone knows its story by now. But many reading this aren’t in Atlanta, so in a nutshell, the plot is this: when one of their friends is brutally beaten in what looks like a hate crime, two gay best friends decide “it gets better” is too passive a position, and embark to “make it better”…by going on a killing spree targeting right-wing religious groups and homophobic politicians. They murder a hypocritical politician. They blow up the building of a Focus On The Family-like group, Oklahoma City-style.

I’m not interested in reviewing the play; that’s been done already by many critics better qualified than I. I will note that Payne, whose work I’d never seen before, is a very gifted playwright. The story juggles many different narrative balls and keeps them all in the air. Angry Fags is also extremely funny, and most of the humor is character-based, which is the most difficult kind of comedy to pull off. When, late in the play, we hear a voiceover of the voicemail greeting of one of the characters, it’s hilarious because we’ve come to know that character, and what we hear is exactly the greeting that character would record. There are moments like this throughout the rather long (three hours with two intermissions) play, and it was a delight to watch.

The central characters, Cooper and Bennett (those are their first names) come to believe that violent confrontation is the appropriate, even necessary, response to homophobia. If a few outspoken bigots die, they reason, and it’s clear they were targeted for their homophobia, then they’ll be afraid to engage in hateful rhetoric against gays.

Also, Cooper and Bennett believe, a gay public figure needs to die as a martyr to the cause (and they have a candidate picked out). Cooper tells us Harvey Milk doesn’t count as this martyr because Mayor Moscone was also killed by Dan White.

Out in the lobby after the premiere, some friends and I were scratching our heads, baffled. No, I don’t think Topher Payne advocates violence against anyone. But he does appear to believe that violence has been a necessary handmaiden to past civil rights advances. Cooper and Bennett are not presented as insane; in fact, Bennett seems careful and calculating. The show plays more like a political thriller than a satire; Payne is clearly going for a realistic approach. He’s careful to explain, for example, how the pair acquires all the materials they need (poisons, explosives) for their assassinations.

This is why I was so perplexed by the play. I don’t know when Payne wrote it, but it felt like it should have been written five or ten or more years ago. It’s the story you’d expect from a movement that feels like it’s in stalemate with the system, frustrated by its inability to find a populace sympathetic to its cause. When the Reagan Administration was indifferent to the AIDS crisis or when George W. Bush was talking openly about a marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution: those were times when a rage-driven play like this would have seemed reasonable. Angry Fags would have been perfect as a period piece.

But it’s not a period piece. I don’t remember hearing any dates, but that unfailing year indicator of the past two decades, the size and design of the characters’ cell phones, tells us it’s set in the present day. And in this present day:

• Four openly gay legislators are serving in Congress
• Another four are in the Georgia General Assembly
• Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is on the garbage heap of history
• Ten states and the District of Columbia have full marriage equality

And all of these were achieved without violent actions by the gay community or violent reprisals from our enemies. The LGBT community’s battle has been a breeze, in fact, compared to past struggles. The African-American civil rights pioneers and their allies in the 1950s and 1960s had to deal with organized monsters like the Ku Klux Klan. People were driven from their homes, lynched by mobs, bombed in their churches. Teeth were knocked out. Crosses were burned into lawns. Sometimes local sheriff’s departments were even in collusion with the bad guys.

The worst we’ve had to contend with since Stonewall are loudmouthed cretins like the Westboro Baptist Church. They shake their offensive signs and shout their misunderstood scripture, and they’re objects of ridicule more than they’re agents of menace. They don’t scare anyone.

I don’t mean to suggest there hasn’t been, and isn’t still, violence against the LGBT community. As a transperson who reads the names of too many murdered transpeople each November, I’m acutely aware that the world is not a safe place for us yet. But the personal, one-on-one viciousness we experience is not perpetrated by the people Topher Payne targets in his play, and his characters’ jihad against them wouldn’t do anything to end it, either. If Angry Fags has a useful point to make, I’ve missed it.

Transphobes often deny transsexuals’ reality (especially when commenting to online news stories (believe me, I know)) with remarks like, “If your chromosomes are XY, you’re a man. Period.”

I’ve always found that a curious bottom-line assertion, since sex chromosomes were only discovered about a hundred years ago. So for most of human history sex would have been unprovable.

But anyway, if transwomen don’t put the lie to this assertion, women with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome certainly do. They are fully authenticatable as women by even the most probing of cavity searches, but every cell in their body has an XY pair.

I grew up watching Siskel and Ebert (or looking for them, after the move from PBS to syndication and many name changes). I consider myself well-informed about movies and cinema history, and the foundation for that knowledge was the reviews and arguments Gene Siskel and Ebert presented on their show. They reviewed blockbuster crowd-pleasers, but they also looked at art-house films I never would have heard of otherwise. If not for their show, I would never have seen My Life As A Dog, The Dresser, My Dinner With Andre, or a host of other indie or foreign movies I saw and loved, either when they were at the cinema or years later via home rental. I wrote a few movie reviews for my college newspaper, and I felt like I channeled one or the other of them whenever I sat down to begin.

Siskel was the more intellectual of the two, and the better observer. He dissected the films he saw with a surgeon’s skill, wry, parsimonious and unsentimental. I always felt smart when I agreed with Gene.

Roger’s response to movies was more emotional, with less insight. I used to think this was because he was less intelligent, but in time I grew to realize he was just more forgiving and sentimental, which is also a valuable point of view for a critic. His enthusiasm was infectious; he talked with his hands and bounced up and down in his theater seat when he was particularly vexed or delighted by the film under discussion. He’s famous for his witty jabs at bad movies, but he didn’t really enjoy them, and doesn’t seem to have recognized (as I generally do not) a “so bad it’s good” category. My favorite quote from him is not any of these zingers, but “No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough.” I always felt more humane when I agreed with Roger.

Of course, sometimes the movies themselves weren’t the main draw of the show; it was the back-and-forth conversation between Roger and Gene, which frequently devolved into an argument even when talking about a movie they both liked or didn’t like. Their points of view were different enough for them to complain when the other shared an opinion about a movie, but for the wrong reason. The show became a buddy comedy, and was fun to watch on that ground alone. Sometimes Gene made subtle fat jokes about Roger. Roger frequently tweaked Gene for his baldness. They never got angry at each other and you could always sense the fondness beneath the annoyance. If their show had been a movie, it was brilliantly cast.

Siskel died in 1999. Now Roger has passed, and with much more dignity than I’ll be able to muster when my time comes. I’ll miss him, but two thumbs up for a life well lived.

I’m not sure how I was chosen for this distinction, I know Pride takes nominations from people in the community, and I know at least one friend of mine submitted my name with supporting documentation (news clippings, I’d guess). Maybe she wasn’t the only one who did so.

Of course I know why I was chosen; it’s because of the federal lawsuit I won with the help of Lambda Legal. It happens that today, October 16th, is the fifth anniversary of the day Sewell Brumby fired me for being transsexual. I’d be the first to admit I enjoy tooting my own horn, but in this case the credit rightly goes to Lambda Legal, which has been honored in the past with grand marshalship (marshalhood? marshaldom?). I think it’s important to keep a humble perspective, so I accepted the honor and the attendant adulation as a symbol for the great big win Glenn v. Brumby brought to the LGB and especially T community.

Since I’m an etymology geek, I’ll stop here and mention the origin of the term “grand marshal.” According to Wikipedia, which is never wrong, a grand marshal originally was “a ceremonial title for certain religious orders.” Of the modern uses, I suppose the one that applies here is “a parade dignitary,” although I’d love it if one day I could join the “Order of Teutonic Knights.”

In addition to grand marshaling, I sat at the table for Atlanta Outworlders, the LGBT science fiction and fantasy fan group I’ve been a part of since 2007. That’s where I began my day at Pride Sunday morning. I had to be at the parade’s mustering site on West Peachtree by 12:30, and with the help of my Razor scooter, I got there about 20 minutes ahead of time.

There were hundreds of people and vehicles spread out over several blocks. I never would have found my car, but I did find a Pride official with a map. Yes, there were so many marchers, floats, and cars that they had to take positions according to a map.

I was told where I’d find my convertible, and it was a short walk away, facing east on Pine Street. It was a BMW owned by its driver, Jason, who is a member of the Pride committee. He was very kind and friendly. There was a big magnet on each door with my name on it.

The parade began promptly at 1 p.m., but we were pretty far back and didn’t move for some time; in that respect it was like the starting line at the Peachtree Road Race. But soon we began to move; we crawled up the low hill, turned left onto Peachtree, and the odyssey was underway!

…Which is a dramatic way to say we drove up Peachtree to Midtown at five miles an hour. But it was like no other experience I’ve ever had. If it had been in a movie, it would be the scene at the end, after the heroine has achieved all her goals, that sums up the story we’ve all just seen.

At the Pine intersection and for several blocks later, a small number of people lined the streets, cheering and waving at me. The number grew and grew the further north we progressed, and by 10th Street the crowds were four and five deep on the sidewalks and more spectators were hanging out of second-story windows.

Most of the spectators weren’t there to cheer for me, of course, but some were among the best people I’ve known in my life. I know I didn’t see all of them in the crush or hear them call my name, but I did see many. My girlfriend and her parents were there with the love I couldn’t live without. Several Outworlders called out my name; the Outworlders were the first group of friends who only know me as I am now, post-transition, and were there to support me in the desolate days after Sewell Brumby fired me.

My best friend David, the first person I came out to, and his boyfriend were there. I saw Winston Johnson, a courageous gay rights activist I’ve met and become friends with in the last half-decade. HRC’s Atlanta chapter gave me an award named after Winston and his late partner.

I saw Lorraine, the first person I spoke to at Lambda Legal after my firing. Dyana, who has written more news stories about my case than anyone else. Kristen, my esthetician friend who waxed my eyebrows and taught me how to apply makeup, and made me up for the press conference when we kicked off the lawsuit. My friend Tamara ran into the street at 10th and gave me a kiss.

There were homophobic protestors along the parade route, too. I shouted to them all that I love them.

I don’t imagine I will get many more opportunities like this. As time passes and Glenn v. Brumby recedes into history (it’s already being supplanted in the larger narrative by Macy v. Holder, which follows and builds on it), my name will fade from the public consciousness. I can’t think of many better ways I could have taken my bow.

There’s a bunch like these every election year; a prediction model based on various key factors like the tides or the pork belly futures or what-have-you, that has correctly predicted the outcome in “every Presidential election since ____.” And every election year several of them are wrong for the first time.

This one was especially suspect, since it used its standard bellwethers but ignored current polling (also, the prediction was announced before Romney went into full-time gaffe-generating mode). You can’t trust any prediction that suggests, as this one did, that Obama will receive fewer than 242 electoral votes. That’s the tally of states that have voted for the Democrat in all of the last five elections, like Pennsylvania, California, and Illinois. Polling in these states remains rock-solid behind Obama, even in Wisconsin, home of Romney’s mendacious running-mate, Paul Ryan. Short of the proverbial dead girl or live boy, Obama definitely will win all of these states and their electoral votes.

The only state to look at, really, is Florida. Romney simply can’t win the election if he doesn’t win Florida, so if/when the Sunshine State is announced for Obama on election night, that will mean Obama has 242 + 29 = 271 electoral votes, and the election is over. Gnash your teeth or celebrate as appropriate.

If Romney wins Florida, Obama still has several other paths to those 29 electoral votes, through other swing states such as Ohio (18 electoral votes) plus Virginia (13), or Ohio and some combination of New Hampshire (4), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5), and Nevada (6). It’s tough math for Obama without Florida, but it’s impossible for Romney without Florida.

Of course, Nevada and New Mexico aren’t really swing states anymore, thanks to their large Latino populations and the Republican Party’s mystifying decision to alienate them through regressive immigration policies, so Obama’s starting point on election night is closer to 253. Add Ohio and we’re done. Florida is just gravy.

Now, you may be thinking, “won’t Romney’s big debate win change things?” It could; debate performance can make a big difference in close elections. In 1960, Richard Nixon looked sweaty and nervous on TV across from John F. Kennedy’s youthful good looks, and that is thought to have tipped the 1960 election to JFK. And in 1980’s debates, Ronald Reagan landed a few zingers on Jimmy Carter, who looked dour and discouraged. But there are generally three debates, like this year, and in my experience the candidates usually trade wins and then parry to a tie in the third, so they’re a wash. Obama’s lead has been small but consistent all year, and at this point the “undecided” are really the “don’t cares,” so I don’t expect the debates to cause any big poll movement. Most people may think Romney won the debate, but that won’t change people’s minds about who they’ll vote for.

The Colorado professors haven’t weighed back in since their big reveal in August, but almost immediately afterward The New Republic had this takedown up on its website. That story further links to a post on the Five Thirty Eight blog explaining why election predictions based on “fundamentals” are inherently flawed.

So I was surprised by what I regard as a pretty big lapse in its July 20, 2012 issue. In a story about singer Frank Ocean headlined “The Bravest Man in Hip-Hop,” writer Melissa Maerz wrote that he “…admitted that his ‘first love’ was another man.” In a sidebar review of Ocean’s new album, Maerz also wrote “…he just recently admitted he was once in love with a man…”

Do you see what happened there? Maerz used the verb “admitted,” and that’s really not okay. A same-sex attraction or relationship is not something to be “admitted,” as if it were a crime or something shameful. In the 21st century, you may “reveal” you’re gay, or “declare” it, or “announce” it, or even “celebrate” it, but “admit” should be off the table. It’s especially disappointing since Jess Cagle, the magazine’s managing editor, is himself openly gay.

I don’t think I’m being oversensitive here. Words matter, whether you want them to or not. Trademark attorneys know this; people only use “facial tissue” on television, except in Kleenex ads. Don’t call someone a “liar” in public unless you want to invite a libel suit. They also matter in less overt ways.

When you use the language of criminality or shame in describing people who are neither criminals nor shame worthy, you’re projecting a belief (intentional or not) that they should feel bad about what they are. It emphasizes their otherness and brings them down, in ways that probably aren’t quantifiable but are nonetheless real and hurtful.

This is the first post in an occasional series where I’ll examine language and words, especially as they relate to the LGBT community.

Date: 10 Jun 2012 09:15:33 -0700
To: vandybeth@mindspring.com
Subject: Email from vandybethglenn.com
From: infosri@juno.com

NAME: Sharon Kass

EMAIL: infosri@juno.com

COMMENTS: Congress knows that homosexuality and transgenderism are preventable and treatable. They’re too scared and selfish to defend the truth, but the people will defend it.

You are a very sick man. See Richard Fitzgibbons’s “Gender Identity
Disorder in Children” and “The Desire for a Sex Change,” at www.narth.com.

The truth will out–no matter what people in government do.

www.narth.com
www.gaytostraight.org
www.peoplecanchange.com
www.pfox.org
www.janellehallman.com
www.josephnicolosi.com

PAGE: http://vandybethglenn.com/contact/email/
REFERER: http://vandybethglenn.com/

I share her email address without compunction, partly because her message was unsolicited and rude, and partly because I suspect that juno.com address was created for the sole purpose of this drive-by, and it’s not her actual regular address.

Anyway, I don’t believe in ignoring the ignoramuses or letting them have the last word, so earlier today I sent this response:

COMMENTS: Congress knows that homosexuality and transgenderism are preventable and treatable. They’re too scared and selfish to defend the truth, but the people will defend it.

Those are interesting remarks. You do realize I’m not a member of Congress, yes? So I don’t know why it’s important for you to bring that up in a personal email to me. Do you think I have the number for “Congress” saved in my cellphone address book? Maybe between “Cleaners” and “Cousin Ralph”?

Furthermore, Congress is composed of 535 individuals who are not all in agreement when it comes to homosexuality and “transgenderism” (and that isn’t really a word used by 21st-century residents). Quite a few of the Senators and Representatives in Congress agree with you, and have been quite vocal about defending that “truth,” as you put it. People like Rep. Michele Bachmann and Sen. James Inhofe. They’re not at all “scared,” so maybe you should contact them about getting the word out. They are, however, in the minority, and that minority shrinks every year, so you should hurry.

I’m not sure what you mean by “selfish,” though. Do you think Congress wants to keep all the gay for itself? I’d like for you to expand on this in your reply, if you wouldn’t mind.

You are a very sick man. See Richard Fitzgibbons’s “Gender Identity Disorder in Children” and “The Desire for a Sex Change,” at www.narth.com.

I don’t believe I’m either “sick” or a “man,” and since you’ve plainly seen my blog and know a few things about me, you must know this. So to make such a declaration to me is both rude and unkind. Was that your intention? If so, I’ll look for an apology in your reply, and then we can set about having a real dialogue.

I read Dr. Fitzgibbons’s article, “The Desire for a Sex Change,” but I’m afraid none of its assertions apply to me, and none of them were backed up by empirical, testable data. They’re just opinions derived from a handful of anonymous anecdotes. Tell me, did you honestly think, after all I’ve been through in the pursuit of my gender transition, that you could show me a few links and I would be persuaded I’d been mistaken all this time?

The truth will out–no matter what people in government do.

I agree with you! The truth will out, that people who are gay or transgender, regardless of why they are so, and regardless of whether that can be changed (it can’t), are valuable members of society, deserving of respect and equal rights. No matter what people in government do. I’m glad you and I are not completely at loggerheads.

I’ll let you all know if I hear anything back.