http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-mcdonalds-beating-20110423,0,3336656.story
there's nothing self evidently "male" about this woman, that would make someone react with fear or violence, and she is in fact post-op so she had no other legal recourse than to use that bathroom.
Quite likely, the gender factor was not even the cause of the beating (and thus not a "hate crime") because everyone speaking here except the camera-man refers to her as "she" (along with derogatory terms for females). Even at the end one of the bystanders says "she's having a seizure" even though the camera guy has repeatedly said "that's a man"
in the police report the witnesses refer to her as "she" and "the woman"
There's not really a credible case that these people saw her as "a man in a dress perving in the ladies room"
irrespective of anyone's hindsight opinion about whether her surgery makes her a "real" woman.
As an aside, one of the things I asked last night was - where does a post-op woman have the legal right to pee, if not in the ladies room?
Based on the new info, I changed my line of reasoning. See #162 above.
White girl flirting with black guys? Not a hate crime?