Transgender

NEW YORK - The advocacy group GLAAD has given the CW network high marks among broadcast outlets for its portrayal of gay and lesbian characters. Cable networks Showtime, ABC Family, TNT and HBO all were given a favorable rating by the group. The number of gay and lesbian images on TV held steady this year. But the range of impressions continued to grow, with those representations increasingly presented in a matter-of-fact manner rather than as curiosities, GLAAD found in its annual Network Responsibility Index.

DEAR ABBY : I am a confused transwoman. I have been in a committed relationship for years with a woman who knew me before "the change. " I successfully transitioned two years ago and live and work as a woman. My confidence and emotional depth have grown. When I go to clubs and bars with other girlfriends, I attract male attention. (I pass well.) The problem is, my attraction to women is fading and men are now more appealing. My pulse races at the idea of spending time with men, while my current relationship now feels like we're housemates or family members.

THE SCHOOL REFORM Commission unanimously approved the revised Code of Student Conduct on Thursday night but added a resolution on language regarding nonconforming gender identities to be included under the dress-code/uniform policy. Fred Ginyard, an organizer for Youth United for Change, sent an email Tuesday to the SRC asking for such language to be included in the new code. Under current rules, transgendered students or those nonconforming to their genders "can be disciplined for expressing their preferred gender identity," Ginyard said in his email.

I commend Councilman Jim Kenney for his letter criticizing the comments of Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy in opposition to marriage equality. Much of the support for Chick-fil-A rests on two arguments: supporting free speech, and ensuring the city's competitiveness in attracting businesses. Both arguments fail to withstand examination. Kenney is not denying Cathy's right to free speech, nor could he. Indeed, it is evidence of a free society when a corporate official and an elected official can publicly disagree.

She's one of the transgender community's most passionate advocates. Yet New Hope plastic surgeon Christine McGinn has an equally intense suspicion of the news media even as she relies on them to get her message heard. "There is so much ignorance out there about transgendered people," says McGinn, one of half a dozen transgender men and women profiled in Trans, a documentary screening Sunday as part of Philadelphia QFest and one of an unusually large crop of transgender films at the annual lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender film festival.

You might not have noticed the difference at first. The figure behind the microphone as the Gainesville, Fla., quartet Against Me! drove through a hard-charging 45-minute set at the Electric Factory on Sunday night looked much the same as she did a few months ago, before the band's singer, who had been known as Tommy Gabel, announced that he had become a woman named Laura Jane Grace. If you stood 12 feet away from the stage, you might have missed the mascara and the dangling earrings and seen only a performer commanding the stage with a furious joy and the tight-knit knot of bodies churning on the floor below.

When the possibility of prohibiting discrimination against transgender people comes up, opponents often raise concerns about bathroom usage, of all things: "What about the men's and ladies' rooms?" It seems like a frivolous basis for denying an entire group of citizens their civil rights, but all too often, that's the tenor of discussions about legal protections for transgender individuals. It places little stock in our ability to assimilate, sympathize with, and simply deal with people whose experience of the world does not match our own.   Fortunately, the experience in Philadelphia has been different.

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.