Trans Across America

When James Madison was urging his young nation to refrain "from oppressing the minority," he was talking about "other sects," not other sexes. Shannon Ware, an engineer from St. Louis, Mo., who began life as Craig Ware but now lives as a woman, would grant that much. But since a high school civics teacher inspired her, she has clung to the belief that social change is possible, that America is elastic enough to accommodate all minority groups--even when the minority is as caricatured and misunderstood as hers.

Ware is "transgendered," which means her mental gender--her deepest awareness of her identity--doesn't correspond to the parts she was born with. Though she has become an activist in the past year or so, Ware struggled with these feelings for years. Now, at 45, she is happy with her inner and outward selves, the latter feminized with hormones and women's clothes. Ware isn't yet "transsexual," but she does plan to undergo what doctors call "sex-reassignment surgery" when she and her beau David can afford it; it will cost about as much as their new Nissan.

Since transsexuals burst on the scene in the 1950s, when a G.I. went from George to Christine Jorgensen, journalists have periodically revisited the subject in tones varying from the dryly medical to the hotly sensational. But today many forms of gender nonconformity have actually become mainstream. In the past five years, several movies, plays, tabloid shows and famous cross-dressers like RuPaul have moved drag from the fringes of gay culture to prime time. Even Teletubbies, a show for toddlers, features Tinky Winky, a boy who carries a red patent-leather purse.

Less noticed, however, is that gender nonconformists have been working together, with some remarkable successes, to build a political movement. Their first step was to reclaim the power to name themselves: transgender is now the term most widely used, and it encompasses everyone from cross-dressers (those who dress in clothes of the opposite sex) to transsexuals (those who surgically "correct" their genitals to match their "real" gender).

No one knows how many transgendered people exist, but at least 25,000 Americans have undergone sex-reassignment surgery, and the dozen or so North American doctors who perform it have long waiting lists. Psychologists say "gender-identity disorder" occurs in at least 2% of children; they experience discomfort with their assigned gender and may experiment with gender roles. Some of these people turn out to be gay; most don't. The overlapping permutations of gender and sexuality can get baffling, which is why transgender activist Riki Anne Wilchins simply declared "the end of gender" in her recent book, Read My Lips. Wilchins believes that male-female divisions force constructed social roles on all of us and create a class of the "gender oppressed"--not only transgenders but also feminine men, butch women, lesbians and gays, "intersexed" people (hermaphrodites) and even people with "alternative sexual practices." (Marv Albert, meet your leader.)

In the early '90s, transgenders started forming political groups, mostly street-level organizations, which picketed the American Psychiatric Association, for instance, for using the gender-identity-disorder diagnosis. Previously, transgenders appeared as figures in the early gay-liberation movement: it was cross-dressing men--their "hair in curls," as they chanted--who threw the first rocks in the 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City's Greenwich Village. But as the gay movement went mainstream, it jettisoned transgenders as too off-putting.

Transgenders faced practical obstacles to organizing themselves separately. Most couldn't simply dress as a member of the opposite sex without getting beaten or fired. Many felt pressured to undergo expensive genital and cosmetic operations, which doctors wouldn't perform unless the patients also underwent years of psychiatric treatment. After the surgery, some had to move to find a new job and start a new life. Political organizing was a luxury.

Today medical rules are getting more relaxed. Some transgenders still elect to have full operations, but others (especially the young) express gender their own way, perhaps just with clothing or hormone treatments or with partial surgery. Increasingly, they simply refuse to discuss their private parts. "What's important is hate crimes and job discrimination," says Shannon Minter, a female-to-male transgender and civil rights lawyer. "Why does everyone want to talk about my genitals?"

Governments and employers are starting to listen. Although just one state, Minnesota, has a law protecting transgenders from job and housing discrimination, cities all over the country (including San Francisco, of course, but also Seattle and, as of last year, Evanston, Ill.) have passed similar legislation. Recently the California assembly approved a bill to increase penalties for those who commit crimes against transgenders; the bill awaits senate approval.

Lawyers with the Transgender Law Conference have helped pass statutes in at least 17 states allowing transsexuals to change the sex designation on their birth certificate, which means their driver's license and passport can reflect reality. (One unintended consequence: legal marriages between people who have become the same sex.) In Missouri, the house judiciary committee met in March to discuss the state's first civil rights bill to include "sexual orientation"--defined to include gender "self-image or identity." Illinois and Pennsylvania considered similar bills. None passed, but "we were happy to get the issue out there," says activist Ware.

Many transgenders are furious that the biggest gay lobbying group in the U.S., the Human Rights Campaign, opposes adding transgenders to the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a gay job-protection bill that has been pending in Congress since 1994. But the Campaign is coming around. Last year it helped arrange a meeting between transgender activists and Justice Department officials to discuss anti-trans violence (a 1997 survey of transgenders found that 60% had been assaulted). The Campaign is also lobbying for a bill that would give U.S. district attorneys the authority to handle state crimes involving bias against "real or perceived...gender." Transgenders have their own D.C. presence, Gender PAC. It sponsored its third Lobby Day on Capitol Hill in April, when more than 100 transgenders met members of Congress. A state-focused group called It's Time America! has chapters in half the states. And of course, transgenders are talking about staging a march on Washington--de rigueur for any minority going mainstream.

Businesses are paying attention. Computer firm Lucent Technologies has added "gender-identity characteristics or expression" to its equal-opportunity policy. The University of Iowa has similar language, and in February, Rutgers adopted more limited protections for "people who have changed or are in the process of changing" their sex. Last year Harvard allowed an incoming female-to-male freshman to live on a male dorm floor. Campus groups have asked the college to formally protect transgenders, but Harvard being Harvard, the university is studying the issue. Transgenders are pushing ahead in the courts as well. In a little-noticed but groundbreaking case last year, a Minnesota male-to-female transsexual won Social Security "widow's benefits" following her husband's death in 1995. The Social Security Administration declined to grant them at first but reversed itself after the woman appealed, with the A.C.L.U.'s help.

The most important victories are often won outside the public arena. A little over a year ago, Shannon Ware was the host of a constituent meet-and-greet for her state representative. Over coffee and snacks, Ware introduced Representative Patrick Dougherty, a moderate Democrat and devout Roman Catholic, to several transgenders. He was set to consider legislation that would make it difficult for transsexuals to gain even partial custody of their children after a divorce. For Ware, it wasn't an academic issue. She was once married and has a daughter, Elizabeth. Though the 13-year-old and her mom have been "totally cool" about her transition from Craig to Shannon, Ware knew others weren't as lucky as she was. Another Missourian, Sharon (ne Daniel), has fought her ex-wife for six years for the right simply to visit her two boys.

The low-key meeting at Ware's house worked. Dougherty listened as she and several others told their stories. Some had lost jobs, some had been rejected by family, all felt battered by a society that insists that biology is destiny. Dougherty left seeing no reason to attack these folks with a new law. A few days later, he quietly let the legislation die in his committee.