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Courtesy of Ben A. Barres NOW AND THEN Ben A. Barres as Barbara, age 34; and as Ben at 42. Perhaps it is inevitable that Ben A. Barres would have strong opinions on the debate over the place of women in science. Dr. Barres has a degree in biology from M.I.T., a medical degree from Dartmouth and a doctorate in neurobiology from Harvard. He is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford. And until his surgery a decade ago, his name was Barbara, and he was a woman. Now he has taken his unusual perspective to the current issue of...

June 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A Houston hairdresser with a long rap sheet conned the feds into paying for his sex-change operation with Hurricane Katrina aid, it was revealed yesterday. In a shocking example of mismanagement and fraud in the widening FEMA fiasco, Michael James Green, 25, was charged with bilking the feds out of $36,000 meant for destitute hurricane victims. He claimed to have lived in 18 damaged addresses and used 18 different Social Security numbers, federal prosecutors said. But Green wasn't using the money for food and shelter: He used it to pay for a sex-change operation,...

WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance. That's just one of thousands of examples of alleged fraud and abuse described in a new report by the investigative arm of congress — abuse that cost taxpayers about $1 billion. One person applied for aid 13 times, using 13 bogus addresses, and received a total of $139,000. The report says FEMA didn't even try to verify the identity of people who applied for aid by...

When 5-year-old Robert Kosilek started dressing as a girl in a Chicago orphanage, the seemingly innocent act set in motion a tragic cycle of punishment and abuse that paved the way for the killer con’s violent downward spiral. The nuns who ran the orphanage beat him with paddles and rulers, locked him in a closet and forced him to kneel on a hard, wooden floor on top of rice grains. He was repeatedly molested by his grandfather starting at age 10. Now serving life without parole for the 1990 murder of his wife, Kosilek has embroiled the state in a...

Should Taxpayers Fund Con's Sex-Change -- or "Trans" Propaganda in Schools? For the life of us, we can't figure out why everyone's going nuts over the convicted murderer who is demanding a sex-change operation ... while apparently few are upset that our teenagers are constantly hearing about the wonder of such surgeries in our public schools. In both cases, taxpayers are funding support for insane, unnatural mutilations. In the former case, it involves adults. In the latter, children are being drawn into that sick world, usually without the knowledge of their parents! Which case is worse? The Governor's Commission on...

Not satisfied with his taxpayer-funded female hormones and laser hair removal, a convicted killer-turned-transsexual is again asking the state to pony up to complete his transformation into a woman. Robert Kosilek, who is serving life in prison for strangling his wife, was back in federal court yesterday, again demanding that the state Department of Correction pay for his sex-change operation. A similar bid was denied in 2002, and his latest attempt has infuriated Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey. “I strongly oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund a sex-change operation for any prisoner, but especially a convicted murderer,” Healey said. “Should taxpayer...

Candidate changes gender, politics By Rebecca Walsh The Salt Lake Tribune Jennifer Jackson is hoping to win a seat in the state Senate. About the time Jennifer Lee Jackson rejected her male body, she also dropped her Republican roots. The process was gradual. Both identities - her gender and her politics - had been constant, but conflicted. Now, two years after gender-reassignment surgery and abandoning her previously conservative political ideology, Jackson feels whole. She's running for a seat in the state Senate as a Democrat. The notion she might be a long shot has not occurred to her. "If not...

OLYMPIA -- The Legislature is having trouble coming to terms with its feelings about taxpayer-financed sex-change operations. Earlier this year lawmakers added a line to the budget to end the policy when reports based on a 2004 Medicaid audit revealed the state had paid for a sex-change operation and other questionable procedures such as penile implants. The amendment, which read "no funds ... shall be expended upon gender reassignment surgery or treatment," passed with broad bipartisan support in the House and Senate, and supporters thought the matter had been resolved. But as the Legislature adjourned last week, leading Democrats reversed...

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...

A Thai prostitute escaped caning for drug dealing in Singapore after a doctor established that the accused, who was identified in a passport as a man, had undergone a sex change, the Straits Times reported on Friday.

The state of Minnesota is quietly getting out of the business of paying for three controversial treatments that affect the sex lives or sex organs of low-income patients. Starting today, the state will no longer cover routine circumcisions, unless "required by religious practice," under its insurance plans for 670,000 low-income Minnesotans, according to the Department of Human Services. It's also dropping coverage of Viagra and other impotence drugs. And last month, it completely stopped paying for sex-change operations. Each of the three changes in coverage may face legal problems.

Mystery 'sex change' has curious flocking to Myanmar monk-to-beTue Jul 12,10:53 PM ET Thin Sandar, a chicken seller in Myanmar, had always dreamed of being a man. When she inexplicably grew a penis last month, the 21-year-old treated it as an awe-inspiring omen -- as have the thousands of stunned villagers who have traveled to a pagoda to see him. "On the morning of the full moon day of June 21, I noticed my thing (sex organ) was not the same as before," Thin Sandar, who now goes by the male name Than Sein, told AFP in an interview at...

You see them at night in big cities: men dressed up as women, complete with makeup, jewelry, and high heels. Despite their best efforts, it’s not a pretty sight. Nor is the sight of men who take a more drastic step: undergoing so-called sex-reassignment surgery. When these surgeries were first performed at Johns Hopkins University in the early seventies, one psychiatrist—Paul McHugh—started asking questions about the wisdom of this. After all, the outcomes were not women, but grotesque caricatures of them. When McHugh became psychiatrist-in-chief in 1975, he decided to test the claim that men who underwent sex-change surgery were...

SPOKANE -- A federal judge will decide if a U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee who has undergone a sex change suffered discrimination at the hands of co-workers. A six-day trial concluded yesterday. Tracy Nichole Sturchio, formerly known as Ronald Sturchio, sued the Department of Homeland Security. The non-jury trial was heard by U.S. District Judge Robert Whaley, who will rule in the near future. Sturchio, 56, told The Associated Press yesterday it was difficult to relive the torment of the past few years during the trial. "I had to sit on the stand and admit it tore me apart...

ABC flacking for Clinton again. DIanne Sawyer promises Slick will make a "major announcement," "only here on Good Morning America." No time set, but indicated it was today.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - An Indian who became a man to marry a female relative was dumped after the surgery, a newspaper reported Monday. Twenty-nine-year-old rubber tapper Kuttiyamma, born with both male and female genitals, had been in love with the relative, Laura, 25, for 15 years before having surgery to become a man and change her name to Binu, the Hindustan Times reported. But Laura became engaged to another man and Binu is suing her for breach of trust after spending 50,000 rupees ($1,150) on the sex change in southern Kerala state. "She had agreed to marry me after...

It will take four hours for Jacqueline Yanni to become a woman thanks to a Montreal surgeon and a sharp knife. But she needed a year to grasp the feminine mystique - the words, gestures, tone and melody contained in a simple "How are you today?" Every Wednesday, the 47-year-old Pennsauken hairdresser, who was born male, comes to Temple University Speech-Language-Hearing Center. Dark hair swinging around her face, she picks up the microphone to practice the everyday sentences of life in a new gender. Nothing is easy. Gesture from the wrists, not the elbows. Ask questions at the end of...

Photo by The Associated Press Judi, left, and Mikayla Howden pose at their home in Concord on Dec. 12. The two married nealry four years ago before Mikayla, then Michael, underwent a sex change which transformed the couple into a legally married same-sex couple, despite a ban on such unions in 40 states, including New Hampshire. CONCORD - Judi Howden found happiness in her second marriage, but only after a struggle with issues that have destroyed other families and divided the nation. With Michael Howden, she had love, another child and a home. It took all three to keep...

A Wisconsin inmate who has developed female characteristics as a result of state-paid hormone therapy is suing prison officials for not completing the sex change process. The suit is pending in federal court in Milwaukee, filed by an inmate who was born Scott Konitzer but who now uses the name Donna Dawn Konitzer. The plaintiff is serving 123 years for multiple armed robberies and for stabbing another inmate. The department has been providing Konitzer, 40, with hormone therapy to stimulate female development since 1999 but will not allow genital surgery. Konitzer claims a prison doctor said the surgery would follow...