And yet you've already mentally separated yourself from women by using that ridiculous "cis" garbage.

Penis people in women's showers....and in the last year and a half the internut discussions have been overrun with TGs demanding exactly that....

If you thought like a woman instead of a trans something perhaps you'd gain a perspective you clearly lack. Your very first response to me was to say I hated. Nice opening to dialogue. You then proceeded to tell me to shut up about that I know not about in blissful ignorance that I was fighting for trans civil rights when you no where to be seen (delete speculation on where you were and were doing then). I'm not part of the transvestite communities (a much more accurate 'umbrella' term for those who aren't classic transsexed at birth)

I will not fight for a community that uses terrorism, tells women to 'shut up' and claims the right to define and enforce those definitions on those who want no part of their nonsense. Like the Progressive Revolution that is awakening in the face of Obama ignoring their issues, post corrected women are starting to finally speak up and say "enough is enough" and state loudly and clearly that these self appointed transvestite activists do not speak for us, never spoke for us and actively work against our interests and already done real, tangible, harm to our lives and civil rights.

Jillan, I and others have been writing, essaying, blogging for years on exactly what harm. If we weren't silenced, banned, marginalized, threatened, barred from the discussions perhaps you'd have a better handle on this.

You pretty much appeared recently out of no where to be yet another trans saviour.....do the work, read our blogs. Until the trannys clean up their own house they are the ones who should shut up, not us.

Click on my nick, read the back essays on my blog, check out those blogs I link to.....then ask me again if you still don't get it.

Around 12 or so years ago I was in a face to face with a very very very conservative republican member of the House, one with influence. He gave us over two hours of his time, missed several roll call votes to do so.

One of the things he told me was if we separated from the GLBs who were selling us out (HRC was actively pre-lobbying against us then) there was considerable support for our civil rights on his side of the House. No one wanted to hear this then or now. At any rate, ten years of women with penises 'education' made damn sure that ship sailed. Back then there was considerable sympathy for the plight of transsexual women. Now we are erased from public view, the very word 'transsexual' stripped of it's meaning, decades of building public understanding and acceptance tossed out the window.

Back then we had actual civil rights legislation within reach that would have covered all trans and gender transgressive gays and lesbians but the transvestite activists needed to 'educate' that they didn't want surgical correction and that women have penises. They pushed us out, shouted us down, banned us from all political action email lists.

What harm? Back then if you got outed the public assumption was you were post corrected or soon would be, today it is you are some she-male, chick with a dick freak. That harm alone extends across your entire life and is far from the only harm done.

Another major difference as calling me a transgender is probably the worst insult you could hurl at me. One does so at their own peril.

Dr. Weiss,

I, myself, don't usually respond to hey you, nor, as I was apparently known in some quarters of the Ottawa gay men's community, that bi tranny bitch. I believe as a woman, a person of transsexual experience and a person, I am entitled to respect and common decency--as I freely give it.

Nor does this mean I will not be direct, even blunt, in dialogue--I expect this in return--and believe this is the path to greater knowledge and understanding.

In Canada, the argument for the inclusion of gender expression in human rights and hate crime legislation is very much as you have argued here for gender identity alone.

The belief is that, given the paucity of legislative experience, but much psychological/psychiatric experience, that gender identity will be interpreted as applying to transsexual people and gender expression will be interpreted as applying to transgender people.

The purpose of advocating for transgender and transsexual people and gender identity AND expression is to form the very coalition you suggest.

Gender expression is a much wider net and will bring together not only transgender people, but also gay and lesbian people and heterosexual cisgender people also.

The argument being that even including transgender people in a coalition will not be enough, numerically, to make much of a dent in public opinion--or at least the opinion of members of Parliament and members of provincial legislatures.

In strict human rights consideration, numbers are not important, in fact, human rights is intended to protect those whose numbers in the general population are so small that we are, by definition, minorities.

It used to surprise me that those who are minority in the general population, but are majority in what some call gender and sexuality minorities, turn around and act precisely as they have been treated by the majority to those whose identities and/or lived lives are different from theirs--and their numbers smaller.

A word on coalition, something rarely seen in any part of what might be called sexual and gender minorities--even as we see in these comments, even as we see in response to the use of transgender and transsexual people.

The history of the gay rights movement, both before and after Stonewall, up to and including Frank's stripping of gender identity from earlier versions of ENDA--and the HRC's support of this--shows quite clearly it is not a coalition, though transgender and transsexual people have always been part of it.

My own experience is much as another Canadian author, Viviane Namaste, has put it, unless I articulate my advocacy through the prism of sexual orientation it will be repudiated and erased.

I once expected this from heterosexual, cisgender, cissexual people not gay and lesbian and not transgender people.

Experience, though not universal, has taught me the reverse is closer to the truth.