Transgender

A media boom is under way on behalf of transgendered men and women. Last week, for instance, A&E's "Investigative Reports" ran "The Transgender Revolution," quoting an activist who called it the fourth great rights movement of our era. The Los Angeles Times weighed in with two days of long, sympathetic reports. One account featured an enormous bald man with a long beard who had been born a woman, and a husband and wife who are both undergoing sex-change operations. They will stay married, but the husband will become the wife and vice versa.

Herman Burton, a transgender prostitute, was ordered yesterday to stand trial on murder, arson and related charges in the slaying of a Chester County businessman in a Center City hotel room in October. Burton, who identifies as a woman and goes by the name Peaches, walked into the preliminary hearing wearing a quizzical expression, a gray sweat suit under which enlarged breasts were visible, and tightly braided hair with tiny pigtails on either side. So violent and brutal are the facts involving the defendant's alleged beating and strangulation of Patrick Michael Brady, 49, that the attorneys on both sides agreed that Burton's police statement would not be read in open court and that the city medical examiner was not called to testify - both of which normally happen in murder hearings.

The death of a transgender woman in her Point Breeze house on Monday has been ruled a homicide by strangulation and asphyxiation, police said yesterday. The 31-year-old victim, known to friends and neighbors as Stacey and identified by police as Michael Lee, was found half-dressed on the floor of a second-story bedroom by her live-in boyfriend about 9:30 p.m., police said. He called police to the house and is not considered a suspect at this point, said Homicide Sgt. Bob Wilkins.

Nico Adamor is fighting a policy that's been in place longer than he's been alive. And though his opponent declared again just last month that it would not budge, Adamor, 28, says he's not quitting either. The opponent is SEPTA and the issue is the transit agency's use of M for male and F for female stickers on weekly and monthly passes. The stickers, in use since 1981, are meant to prevent riders from sharing passes, said spokeswoman Jerri Williams. But transgender activist Kathy Padilla said that doesn't make sense because "any two women or two men can share passes.

On May 16 the Philadelphia City Council voted 15-2 to pass a bill that prohibits discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations on the basis of "gender identity. " Many sexual minority-rights groups consider inclusion of people under this rubric a major victory. Mara Keisling, co-chair of the Pennsylvania Gender Rights Coalition, described City Council's action as "a wonderful step forward for civil rights for citizens of Philadelphia. " I thought the Constitution's 14th Amendment - equal protection under the law - took care of that.

Jennifer Finney Boylan is at ease now in the living room of the Devon home where she spent her boyhood. She has not always been comfortable in this place. When she lived here as 13-year-old James Richard Boylan Jr. and had the whole top floor to herself, she did her homework with the dead bolt on the bedroom door, wearing the bra and sweater she kept hidden behind the room's faux wood paneling, and trusting she'd hear the stairs creak if anyone approached. Now a professor of creative writing at Maine's Colby College since 1988, Boylan, 52, is a visiting prof this semester at Ursinus in Collegeville.

A transgender lobbying group says SEPTA has agreed to remove gender identification stickers from monthly transit passes next year under pressure from transgender riders and others who feel discriminated against. Since the 1980s, the transit authority has required that all TransPasses have a male or female gender sticker affixed to prevent heterosexual spouses from sharing passes with one another. As a result, opponents argue, riders whose gender identifications don't match the stickers on their passes, including transgender men and women who are not living in one gender full time, and people who do not present themselves as male or female, have been harassed and ridiculed by drivers in front of other riders.

A University City resident is one of four sexual minorities awarded a $10,000 "courage grant" from the Colin Higgins Foundation. Kiya Morton, 20, a transgender person who was born male, was honored Monday night at an awards ceremony in New York. "This is really a big help," Morton said yesterday. "It's going to help me go back to school. " Morton said she had been studying photography at the Art Institute of Philadelphia but had to withdraw because of money. She has since been working temporary jobs.

The longtime boyfriend of 31-year-old Stacey Lee arrived at the couple's Point Breeze rowhouse Monday night after work. He immediately noticed something was not right. "The house light was on," said the boyfriend, 39, referring to a small fixture next to the front door. "It's never on. " The boyfriend of Stacey Lee, a transgender person, asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing his job. Police do not consider him a suspect, and said he was at work when she was killed.

For school officials in Haverford Township, the challenge was daunting: What do you do when a 9-year-old student, with the full support of his parents, decides that he is no longer a boy and instead is a girl? Parents of a third-grade student at Chatham Park Elementary School approached the administration on April 16 to ask for help in making a "social transition" for their child. The Haverford School District consulted experts on transgender children, then sent letters to parents advising them that the guidance counselor would meet with the school's 100 third-grade students to explain why their classmate would now wear girls' clothes and be called by a girl's name.

Bee Gees brother Robin Gibb has shaken off his night fever and is stayin' alive. According to the BBC, Gibb's doctor at the London Clinic, Dr. Andrew Thillainayagam, said the longtime pop star was conscious, lucid and talking with his loved ones. Gibb, who is amazingly only 62 considering the Bee Gees had hits in the 1960s, had been in a coma for 12 days. Dr. T. said that Gibb was tired but that "it is testament to [his] extraordinary courage, iron will and deep reserves of physical strength that he has overcome quite incredible odds to get where he is now. " Gibb had been battling colon and liver cancer, which was thought to be in remission, when he got pneumonia because of his weakened immune system.

ATRANSGENDER lobbying group says SEPTA has agreed to remove gender-identification stickers from monthly transit passes next year, under pressure from transgender riders and others who feel discriminated against. Since the 1980s, the transit authority has required that all TransPasses have a male or female gender sticker affixed to prevent heterosexual spouses from sharing passes with one another. As a result, opponents argue, riders whose gender identifications don't match the stickers on their passes, including transgender men and women who are not living in one gender full time, and people who do not present themselves as male or female, have been harassed and ridiculed by drivers in front of other riders.

A transgender lobbying group says SEPTA has agreed to remove gender identification stickers from monthly transit passes next year under pressure from transgender riders and others who feel discriminated against. Since the 1980s, the transit authority has required that all TransPasses have a male or female gender sticker affixed to prevent heterosexual spouses from sharing passes with one another. As a result, opponents argue, riders whose gender identifications don't match the stickers on their passes, including transgender men and women who are not living in one gender full time, and people who do not present themselves as male or female, have been harassed and ridiculed by drivers in front of other riders.

VANCOUVER'S Jenna Talackova , who looks like a busty Lisa Kudrow , was disqualified as a contestant in May's Miss Universe Canada pageant last week. Seems she was born male. But even though she no longer has a scepter, the rules of the contest run by the Donald Trump organization say that entrants must be "naturally born" females. The pageant's New York-based parent backed Miss Universe Canada's decision. "After review, organizers discovered that Jenna Talackova falsified her application and did not meet the necessary requirements to compete in the 2012 Miss Universe Canada pageant," a statement said.

Determined to overcome a cocaine addiction that had propelled him into a downward spiral of unemployment, sex work, and life one step off the street, Erik Leiff contacted dozens of treatment programs. In person, when he explained who he was - a trans man, having medically transitioned from his birth gender to the only one he could live with - office workers giggled and pointed: "It's like, 'Look at the freak.' " On the phone, all said he would be housed with women. "If you saw me, that would have been ridiculous.

I FELT SOME pressure to get this story into the paper before Chaz Bono got axed from ABC's "Dancing with the Stars. " He's not the most polished dancer, but I really hope Bono lasts on the wildly popular show because the transsexual son of singer/actress Cher and the late Sonny Bono is so much fun to watch. Plus, every flash of his smile is a slap at the haters and those who are urging a boycott of the show because they're afraid Bono might confuse their children. Of course, gender dysmorphia isn't contagious.

A CITY CORRECTIONAL officer who had been accused of sexual assault by a transgender inmate will not be criminally charged, police confirmed yesterday. The officer also had a disciplinary hearing Thursday, but Prisons Commissioner Louis Giorla hasn't acted on the hearing's recommendations yet, spokeswoman Shawn Hawes said. The inmate's allegation, made last month, sparked scrutiny of security procedures at Riverside, the city's female jail, because officials learned that the inmate, Jovanie Saldana, spent 14 months there despite having male genitalia.

HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Human Relations Act has long banned discrimination in employment and housing on the basis of gender, race, religion, and disability. Not covered, however, is sexual orientation or gender identity. State Rep. Dan Frankel (D., Allegheny) has waged a nearly decade-long fight to change that through legislation that would add gay, lesbian, and transgendered Pennsylvanians to the protected categories. Speaking at a House Democratic Policy hearing Monday, Frankel noted that 21 states, including New Jersey and Delaware, along with dozens of municipalities and the 27 Fortune 500 companies located in Pennsylvania, have such policies in place.

GET NAKED, squat and cough. That's what inmates are supposed to do when they enter the Philadelphia prisons, at least those charged with felonies, or who are drunk or acting suspiciously. The exercise expels whatever contraband they could be concealing up their keisters. In the rare cases in which authorities aren't sure if they have a John or a Jane, it also would confirm the inmate's gender. But Jovanie Saldana, of Kensington, somehow suckered the system. Saldana, 23, a transgender woman, spent the last 14 months incarcerated at Riverside Correctional Facility, the city's only female prison.