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Batavia High Parents Learn About Gender Identity Disorder Mike Doria, Patrice Walsh (Batavia, N.Y.) -- Parents at Batavia High School learned a lot about gender identity disorder Monday night. More than 100 parents met with school leaders and heard from legal and medical experts to talk about the transition when a male teacher at the high school returns to school next week as a woman. The earth science teacher, whose name hasn't been released, has been with the Batavia City School District for eight years. Parents were sent a letter last week explaining the situation. Some feel they weren't amply...

SHE hadn't seen him naked for a while - but when she walked in on her husband Stephen in the bathroom, Catherine Everett couldn't fail to spot something very different. He still had a full head of hair. He was still ruggedly handsome. But he certainly wasn't the man she married. He had grown a pair of breasts. In fact he was admiring them in the mirror at the very moment she walked in to give him a kiss. Catherine says the 41-year-old pizza restaurant manager had decided to have a sex change - without telling her. Advertisement "I couldn't...

Wearing lipstick, a scooped-neck sweater and nearly waist-length hair, the witness cried while describing what it feels like to be a woman trapped inside a man's body. "The greatest loss is the dying I do inside a little bit every day," said Michelle Kosilek, an inmate who is serving a life sentence for murder. [snip] Since then, Kosilek has been fighting for the state Department of Correction to pay for sex-change surgery, which can cost from $10,000 to $20,000. After two lawsuits and two trials, the decision now rests with a federal judge. [snip] The case is being closely watched...

IN the most recent season of the lesbian soap opera, “The L Word,” a new character named Moira announced to her friends that, through surgery and hormone therapy, she would soon be a new person named Max. “It just saddens me to see so many of our strong butch women giving up their womanhood to be a man,” one friend said. The sentiment was a tamer version of what many other women wrote on lesbian blogs and Web sites in the weeks after the episode was broadcast last spring. Many called for the Max character to be killed off next...

Saturday August 19, 2006 BY DENISE LAVOIE AP Legal Affairs Writer BOSTON (AP) -- Wearing lipstick, a scooped-neck sweater and nearly waist-length hair, the witness cried while describing what it feels like to be a woman trapped inside a man's body. ``The greatest loss is the dying I do inside a little bit every day,'' said Michelle Kosilek, an inmate who is serving a life sentence for murder. Michelle Kosilek was Robert Kosilek when he was convicted in the killing of his wife. In 1993, while in prison, he legally changed his name to Michelle. Since then, Kosilek has been...

Few will know this genetic truth, because the 5-year-old's parents and school administrators have agreed that it's in his best interest to blend in as a female. Mental health professionals have diagnosed Pat - not his real name - with gender dysphoria, a condition in which a person believes that he or she is the opposite gender. After two years of examination, they have determined that he is not simply effeminate or going through a phase. "Gender dysphoria can take place during a fetus' development in the womb," said noted gender specialist and sexologist Marilyn Volker, Ph.D., of Miami. While...

(AgapePress) - The country's youngest "transgender" child is reportedly set to attend school in Broward County, Florida. The young boy's family is enrolling him as a girl in kindergarten this fall. Some South Florida newspapers have recently published stories featuring a family that has been allowing their five-year-old son to dress, act, and live as a girl. The kindergartner-to-be is said to rejecting his physical characteristics as a boy. According to the Miami Herald, mental health professionals have diagnosed the cross-dressing boy with "gender dysphoria," or gender identity disorder. The newspaper says the school plans to address the youngster by...

It's a spring break morning, and by 11 a.m. at the Anderson home, chaos is erupting. School is out for the week, and the twin boys are throwing a ball inside the spacious, two-story house. Upstairs, the preteen daughter pretends not to hear her mother calling. Lauren Anderson, a tanned and well-dressed stay-at-home mom who seems incapable of sitting still, cajoles her offspring to behave as she waits for a babysitter to arrive. Her youngest, Nicole, five, is frowning. Nicole's face is framed with delicate brown braids, and her fingernails are painted a rainbow of colors. She plans to go...

KOBE (Kyodo) An elementary school in Hyogo Prefecture has accepted a 7-year-old boy with gender identity disorder as a girl, a local board of education said Thursday. The second-grader was diagnosed with the disorder before entering school, a board official said. Gender identity disorder occurs when someone's gender identity differs from his or her biological sex. The board of education and the school decided to treat the pupil as a girl after talking with the child's parents from January to March of last year, the official said. Since entering school in April last year, the child has undergone health checks...

Recently, I got the following email from Brian - a Transgendered person (hereafter with a capital “T” to reflect the superior insight of people who have had sex changes) who I assume was once named Brianna: "The fact that you are in a position to teach young people, yet espouse your bigoted views, shows what an immoral person you are. Jesus says not to judge others, yet you choose to condemn a segment of society, not for their moral value, but instead, out of your dislike for the fact that they are not close enough to your ideology to allow...

Barbara Colonna had a secret.For most of her 56 years, she led a solitary existence to protect her identity. But now that she has filed as a Republican candidate for Haworth Borough Council, she's breaking her silence. The 5-foot-3-inch woman with bobbed salt and pepper hair and piercing green eyes was once a man named Edward.  After becoming more involved in town, it made sense that eventually she would run for council. But what would she tell people about her past? She started with her running mates. When they were not alarmed, she was encouraged. Her slate plans to run...

SAN FRANCISCO - In what may be the first legal action of its kind in California, a Cameron Park transgender person is alleging that co-workers and supervisors harassed her and tried to force her out of her job after she switched genders. In an interview Monday, Danielle Ryan described the hostile work environment that she claims developed at the South Natomas office of the international engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff. A computer technology specialist, Ryan said incidents began 15 months ago, after she announced that she considered herself a woman and would start wearing women's clothing to work. Ryan, 44,...

Shawn Coleman bristles when an application poses the question "male or female?"--as if there are only two choices. When it comes to sexual identity, the 23-year-old Shawn--born Patricia--sees a broad spectrum, a man-to-woman or a woman-to-man continuum with many stops along the way. Think gender without borders. He (the preferred pronoun) looks male but not completely. He is not a lesbian, a cross-dresser or contemplating a sex-change operation any time soon. "I always knew I was different than other girls," explained Coleman. "I was never a fan of Barbie but liked playing sports with my two older brothers. People were...

EAGLESWOOD TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) - To students at Eagleswood Elementary School, she used to be Mr. McBeth. Now, after undergoing a sex change, 71-year-old Lily McBeth is ready to return to teaching as Miss McBeth. Despite criticism from parents, the school board on Monday stood by its decision to allow McBeth to resume working as a substitute teacher. After two hours of public debate and a private meeting with McBeth and her lawyer, the board took no action on calls by several parents to bar McBeth from returning to the school where she taught for five years before becoming a...

The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, an Atlanta-based advocacy group for homosexual, bisexual and transgender people, filed suit in U.S. District Court in Milwaukee on behalf of four male inmates seeking state-paid "gender reassignment therapy" after a new Wisconsin law barring the use of state tax money for prisoner sex changes went into effect. The ACLU claims that failure to fund the therapy would be cruel and unusual punishment and would violate their right to equal protection under law. "The legislature is substituting its judgment for medical judgment, which is causing serious harm to our clients," said Manfred...

Inmate goes from man to woman and back on NHS By Richard Ford, Home Correspondent A PRISONER who had a sex change operation to become a woman is to undergo further surgery to become a man again. John Pilley, currently known as Jane Anne, is in Holloway women’s jail in North London. The prisoner made legal history in 1999 when he became the first inmate in England and Wales to be granted permission for a sex change operation. He is understood to have undergone the gender reassignment operation on the NHS in 2001 at an estimated cost of £15,000. Pilley,...

On a hot Saturday night last June, Don Brunner arrived home with his wife and took off the last suit and tie he'd ever wear, knowing that the life he had always led was about to end. The next morning, the New Milford plumber glanced one last time in the mirror and emerged from their split level - still very much a father and husband, but no longer a man. This is a story about a family that could have spun apart, but instead pulled together. It's a story about a stunned New Jersey town that could have spurned a...

PATTAYA, Thailand -- American Mimi Marks won 8,000 dollars, a crown and several other gifts by beating out contestants from around the world to win the Miss International Queen beauty contest for transvestites and transgenders here over the weekend. Blonde Marks pipped Korea's Yu Ri and Thailand's Tiptanlree Rujiranon to win the title in the beauty quest being held for the second time. Contestants from across the world took part in the contest, which selected the most beautiful woman who had been born a man. Miss International Queen organizers said the contest aims to raise awareness of issues facing transvestites...

I know a man who had a "sex change" operation and is now a "woman." What moral teaching does the Church give on this subject? — A reader in Roseville, California Before addressing the morality of "sex change" operations, or what is more formally termed "sexual reassignment," we need to first call to mind the fundamental moral foundation governing this issue. Each person is a precious human being made in God's image and likeness with both a body and a soul. Vatican II's "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World" asserted, "Man, though made of body and soul,...

(Gender bending, expressing non-traditional gender identities, isn't new, but it's increasing.) Like many female UW- Madison students, Dite Bray and her friends walk past the fraternity houses on Langdon Street wondering if the men inside will notice them. Unlike most of the other students, it's not because they're looking for dates. "I've walked around town in drag before," Bray said. "I'm frightened, because I'm walking down Langdon Street and we have fake facial hair stuck to our faces. I wouldn't do that by myself, but in a group it's OK." Bray, 24, is one of the growing number of young...