The real problem devolves around class lines once again: it's the street hormones that folks without insurance, or folks who are too young for prescriptions without parental okay, use. Sometimes those hormones can be pretty rough.

Gender is used as a control mechanism that's just wrong. Gender is never anything to struggle with; gender is something to play with. Once you're free of the rules that all these hierarchical, oppressive systems place on gender, that's the tricky part.

Just across the ocean in, say Kenya or Tanzania, a two-gender system is vital for the survival of most of the folks who live there. Men do men's work, women do women's work, and so it all gets done and the jackals can't get into the hut and eat grandpa. So, the future of the transgender movement is like the future of all human rights movements: whatever the state of things in your area now, with some work it all gets a little bit better all the time, even if it is sometimes three steps ahead and two steps back.

I was obsessed, and like most obsessed people, I was the last one to know it.

I love the idea of being without an identity, it gives me a lot of room to play around; but it makes me dizzy, having nowhere to hang my hat.

My own take on the word "transgender" is that it's an umbrella term for anyone who breaks any rules, laws, guidelines or protocol of gender. So, to really be an ally, it's important that you recognize and embrace your own transgender nature. Really, I haven't met a single person who doesn't break some rule of gender. In other words, we will assimilate you. Resistance is futile.

There's a simple way to look at gender: Once upon a time, someone drew a line in the sans of culture and proclaimed with great self-importance, 'On this site, you are a man; on the other side, you are a woman.' It's time for the winds of change to blow that line away. Simple.