- Fresno High School senior Cinthia Covarrubias, the school's first transgender prom king candidate, is shown in front of campus Friday.
Posted on 04/20/2007 3:44:52 PM PDT by SmithL
When school officials announce the name of the Fresno High School prom king on Saturday, Cinthia Covarrubias will be wearing a tuxedo just like the six boys vying for the honor.
School officials this week added the 17-year-old's name to the ballot for prom king, reversing a previous district policy that allowed only males to run for king and females for prom queen.
Gay youth advocates called it a landmark victory for campus gender expression and said they believe it's the first time in the U.S. that an openly transgender student has run for prom royalty.
Covarrubias, who wears black-and-white Vans, baggy shorts and close-cropped brown hair, sometimes identifies herself as Tony. Her date, a close female friend, plans to wear a black dress and red corsage to the prom at an outdoor reception hall surrounded by man-made waterfalls.
"I would never have run for anything if I had to wear a dress," Covarrubias said.
She considers herself transgender, an umbrella term that covers all people whose outward appearance and internal identity don't match their gender at birth.
"My freshman year I just started feeling different," she said. "When I decided to change to be like this, all of a sudden I said, 'Wow, I feel OK. I feel like finally I'm being me.'"
She has no current plans, however, to permanently alter her gender through hormones or surgery.
A native of Jalisco, Mexico, Covarrubias said she has bucked rigid expectations of how a girl in her culture should behave. Explaining the meaning of terms like "queer" and "transgender" to her parents and eight siblings has at times been painful, she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
- Fresno High School senior Cinthia Covarrubias, the school's first transgender prom king candidate, is shown in front of campus Friday.
Fresno?
Cut that out.
Where's ICE when you need them?
Prom Thing.
Looks like just another lesbian if you ask me.
Kind of knappy headed, though.
tooo funny...
You forgot the “dyke” after “nappy headed”
A win also for fat and weird people.
Nappy-headed bull dyke?
Roger that...
So does she like chics or dudes?
BTW, have we seen hisher "date"?
Ok...
Yesterday I just realized it - I'm a turnip. I'm trans-specied. At birth I was identified as and categorized into the wrong species - the wrong biological kingdom in fact. I'm basically a turnip trapped in a man's body. Narrow-minded people who refuse to accept my real species identity are nothing but bigots! My species identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of what non-inclusive people call "humaness". 
Can I be Godzilla? Please?
Coming out of the closet and into the cooking pot! ;-)
Why should a high school student be expressing gender in public?
She hasn't done a very good job of it. I see plucked eyebrows and a manicure with coke fingernail. Where is the uni-brow, scraped knuckles, and hangnails?
They’re going to get to the point where contestants will have to submit a sample of their DNA to confirm gender.
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