Trans Across America

When James Madison was urging his young nation to refrain "from oppressing the minority," he was talking about "other sects," not other sexes. Shannon Ware, an engineer from St. Louis, Mo., who began life as Craig Ware but now lives as a woman, would grant that much. But since a high school civics teacher inspired her, she has clung to the belief that social change is possible, that America is elastic enough to accommodate all minority groups--even when the minority is as caricatured and misunderstood as hers.

Ware is "transgendered," which means her mental gender--her deepest awareness of her identity--doesn't correspond to the parts she was born with. Though she has become an activist in the past year or so, Ware struggled with these feelings for years. Now, at 45, she is happy with her inner and outward selves, the latter feminized with hormones and women's clothes. Ware isn't yet "transsexual," but she does plan to undergo what doctors call "sex-reassignment surgery" when she and her beau David can afford it; it will cost about as much as their new Nissan.

Since transsexuals burst on the scene in the 1950s, when a G.I. went from George to Christine Jorgensen, journalists have periodically revisited the subject in tones varying from the dryly medical to the hotly sensational. But today many forms of gender nonconformity have actually become mainstream. In the past five years, several movies, plays, tabloid shows and famous cross-dressers like RuPaul have moved drag from the fringes of gay culture to prime time. Even Teletubbies, a show for toddlers, features Tinky Winky, a boy who carries a red patent-leather purse.

Less noticed, however, is that gender nonconformists have been working together, with some remarkable successes, to build a political movement. Their first step was to reclaim the power to name themselves: transgender is now the term most widely used, and it encompasses everyone from cross-dressers (those who dress in clothes of the opposite sex) to transsexuals (those who surgically "correct" their genitals to match their "real" gender).

No one knows how many transgendered people exist, but at least 25,000 Americans have undergone sex-reassignment surgery, and the dozen or so North American doctors who perform it have long waiting lists. Psychologists say "gender-identity disorder" occurs in at least 2% of children; they experience discomfort with their assigned gender and may experiment with gender roles. Some of these people turn out to be gay; most don't. The overlapping permutations of gender and sexuality can get baffling, which is why transgender activist Riki Anne Wilchins simply declared "the end of gender" in her recent book, Read My Lips. Wilchins believes that male-female divisions force constructed social roles on all of us and create a class of the "gender oppressed"--not only transgenders but also feminine men, butch women, lesbians and gays, "intersexed" people (hermaphrodites) and even people with "alternative sexual practices." (Marv Albert, meet your leader.)