Having gender variance classified as a mental disorder and relying on that for health insurance coverage is a bit of false logic. Most insurance companies in the U.S. exclude treatments for Gender Identity Disorder, but there hormonal imbalances are covered for all kinds of conditions that are not related to GID. People who need to have medical support to manage their gender variance can and should be able to access competent medical care through health insurance, but for the most part right now a GID diagnosis must be avoided if coverage is expected. There are transgender health advocates working to address this issue systemically, both from the activist side as well as from the health care provider side. Thanks, by the way, for your generally excellent responses to the questions raised about this sorely neglected and unfortunately too long obscured topic.
It's Not as Simple as Pink or Blue
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Debra Rosenberg: Interesting. I have not heard the term bigenderism myself. There are "intersex" people born with ambiguous genitalia or genitalia of both sexes. But this sounds like an equivalent term for gender as opposed to biology. Maybe it will catch on.
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Chandler, AZ: Why do you use the umbrella term, "Transgender" when the more precise and more appropriate term, "Transsexual" is available. "Transgender" covers the whole gamut from casual crossdressers, fetishist transvestites, through to those who have or want reassignment surgery.You wouldn't write an article about French culture, but continually refer to it as European culture, would you? Refering to transsexual people as transgendered people is akin to that.
Debra Rosenberg: We used the umbrella term "transgender" because it was broader and included people who didn't want to have surgery. I know some people, like the tennis player Renee Richards, do prefer to be called "transsexuals," however. We decided to use the most general term to be most inclusive.
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Centreville, VA: I am a parent of a boy who is working to transgender m-f. As a youngster there were not apparent feminine inclinations- in discussions this was confirmed to me. We wonder whether being Transgender m-f is a way to be more accepted because he says he ( on hormones for 2 years so working to be a she and presenting as a female) always felt a bit of a loner? Our child feels women are more accepting and is comfortable presenting as a woman and actually feels "she " is more comfortable dating females. Isn't it possible this transgender
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