Guest post by: Dana Beyer, Executive Director of Gender Rights Maryland. It’s time, Maryland. We’ve made great progress protecting transgender and gender non-conforming persons in Baltimore City, Montgomery, Howard and Baltimore counties. Fifty percent of the state is now covered, more than 2.5 million people, the last two counties both within the past three months. [...]

People Magazine editor and trans activist Janet Mock has been honored in Black History Month by The Grio as one of the one-hundred most influential in African-American community. Her honoree page up on The Grio is entitled TheGrio’s 100: Janet Mock, Changing Perspectives On Gender Nonconformity. Here is what Janet Mock calls her “television debut“: [...]

My wonderful friend Jillian Page is an editor at the Montreal Gazette. She has a blog at her publication’s website entitled Trans Talk where she writes about trans issues. It’s a must read blog for me, and I automatically tweet her blog entries on my twitterfeed. She currently has a piece up on her blog [...]

Yesterday (Monday, February 13, 2012), while taking my daily three-and-three-quarter mile walk, I was at a corner waiting for the walk light to turn green. Three young men in their early twenties were at the same corner, and one of them asked me a question in that way that was clearly meant to make me [...]

How does one police men’s and women’s public bathroom use to the sex and gender binary — whatever the standard one uses to define the sex and gender binary? That isn’t a rhetorical question. Recently, Tennessee State Representative Richard Floyd proposed a law to prohibit trans people from using use public bathrooms and dressing rooms [...]

Civil rights movements — ones formed to address the oppression of minority populations — have often had significant pushback by societal oppressors that have included bathroom and/or significant shower components. Jim Crow states passed statutes severely regulating social interactions between the races. Jim Crow signs were placed above water fountains, door entrances and exits, and [...]

Being trans, and being of Swedish ancestry — as well as having a sibling who actually lives in Sweden — the trans civil rights issue that Love Georg Elfvelin has highlighted in his video is of much interest to me. “Hi, my name is Love, I’m from Sweden and I’m trans. That means I’m born [...]

Update: LGBT organizations respond. See below the fold. As we approach the Christmas holidays, what editor thought this was fit to print? Here’s an excerpt from “Christmas carols — with a twist” written by columnist and copy editor Dan Phelps at the Lowell Sun. Lowell is the fourth largest city in Massachusetts and is located [...]

In the late seventies and early eighties, my Dad (Jack Sandeen) worked at Disney Studios — first as a costumer, and then as the head of the Wardrobe Department. He worked on films such as Splash, The Black Hole, and the original Tron. He passed away on June 17, 2002, and I began my transition [...]

Some folk have no doubt noted I haven’t been posting a lot of late. I’ve felt ill, and I’ve felt the depression side of my cyclothymia, for awhile now. But thinking “out loud,” I’ve been considering what to be thankful for in the midst of dealing with both physical and mental illnesses. So, between November [...]