"Batgirl" writer Gail Simone told Laura Hudson at Wired that the inspiration for the character came from a conversation with a fellow writer -- and a desire to mirror the diversity of comic readers themselves:

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The 7-4 vote concluded an hours-long parade of transgendered and straight people who tried to persuade the panel to oppose Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. John Kavanagh's bill. The crowd broke out in chants of "shame, shame, shame" as the vote on the bill sponsored by the conservative Republican passed.

Kavanagh had radically altered the bill after being faced with an outcry from advocacy groups, but that wasn't enough to keep about 200 opponents from attending a nearly 7-hour long hearing that concluded with several hours of testimony on the bill.

The original bill would have made it a crime for a transgendered person to use a bathroom other than his or her birth sex. The new bill instead seeks to shield businesses from civil or criminal liability if they ban people from restrooms that don't match their birth sex.

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As Think Progress notes, Kavanagh used a Senate bill about a Massage Therapy Board as a vehicle for the blatantly transphobic proposal, which would prohibit a person from entering a “public restroom, bathroom, shower, bath, dressing room, or locker room” if the sex designation of that facility does not match their birth certificate.

Defending the bill to a local news affiliate, Kavanagh likened transgender people to people who want to go into "opposite sex facilities" because "they're weird":

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She also happens to be transgender.

Fox was born a man, but came out as trans 10 years ago by telling her parents that she was born in the wrong body. Their response was to inform her that she wasn't transgender, only a "confused" gay man, an assessment that landed her in so-called gay conversion therapy. When the sessions ended, Fallon ceased contact with her parents and began hormone treatments. She started her transition to live as a woman a decade ago. Soon after, she had gender reassignment surgery.

In her mind, in her body -- and in the ring with her opponents -- Fox is a woman. An insanely strong, ass-kicking, ultimate-fighting woman.

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Now, nearly two years later, Javier is suing the university for violating California's Unruh Civil Rights Act and breach of contract.

California Baptist, like many other religiously-affiliated institutions, bans same-sex relationships through a policy on "sexual conduct outside of marriage," but there is no such language prohibiting the enrollment of transgender students. And while Christian universities have successfully defended against anti-gay discrimination suits on religious grounds, it's less likely that they can make the same case for an anti-transgender policy, Suzanne Goldberg, a professor at Columbia Law School who specializes in sexuality and gender law, told the Huffington Post. "While the position against same-sex sexual relations in some religions is widely known, I don't think the same is true for positions regarding gender identity," she said.

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I know. I know. I know.

Anyone who has watched "Animal House" (or even casually scanned Katie J.M. Baker's reporting on Greek life over at Jezebel) knows that "trans-inclusive" and "frat culture" aren't concepts generally uttered in the same sentence. And yet, here we are. Or rather, here they are, the brothers of Phi Alpha Tau, working to not only raise money for Visual & Media Arts sophomore Donnie Collins' top surgery, but building a personal, relatable campaign to raise awareness about transgender rights and the many health insurance-induced hurdles to accessing hormone therapy and surgery.

As reported by Out:

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The footage is striking for a few reasons. The first is perhaps the most superficial (and obvious): iiGethi's transformation is astonishing. Through hormone therapy and Facial Feminization Surgery, her appearance changes dramatically, literally before the viewer's eyes.

The second isn't about what iiGethi captured, but the video itself. Because of social stigma and violence often faced by trans people, many try to maintain their anonymity while transitioning. But iiGethi's YouTube stardom (there are nearly 4 million views to date) does quite the opposite. Much like Against Me frontwoman Laura Jane Grace's coming out story in Rolling Stone, iiGethi is inviting public conversation about a very private process.

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"Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law," the president said.

But as an 11-year-old trans girl, Sadie couldn't help thinking something important was missing from his speech: transgender rights.

So she put pen to paper and wrote an addendum for the president, hoping to tell him a little about her experience of growing up trans:

"The world would be a better place if everyone had the right to be themselves, including people who have a creative gender identity and expression. Transgender people are not allowed the freedom to do things everyone else does, like go to the doctor, go to school, get a job, and even make friends.

Transgender kids like me are not allowed to go to most schools because the teachers think we are different from everyone else. The schools get afraid of how they will talk with the other kids' parents, and transgender kids are kept secret or told not to come there anymore. Kids are told not to be friends with transgender kids, which makes us very lonely and sad.

When they grow up, transgender adults have a hard time getting a job because the boss thinks the customers will be scared away. Doctors are afraid of treating transgender patients because they don't know how to take care of them, and some doctors don't really want to help them. Transgender patients like me travel to other states to see a good doctor.

It would be a better world if everyone knew that transgender people have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else. We like to make friends and want to go to school. Transgender people want to get good jobs and go to doctors like they are exactly the same. It really isn't that hard to like transgender people because we are like everyone else."

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The 53-year-old Burchill is famed for her brash, confrontational style. If you're unfamiliar with her work, imagine a less pleasant Glenn Beck. It must be exhausting having one's professional reputation based on a propensity for fit-pitching. So imagine the dander Burchill had to work up to file a column that would far exceed the controversy her friend Suzanne Moore stirred when she wrote flippantly that contemporary women are angry at "not having the ideal body shape – that of a Brazilian transsexual." So intense had the response to the piece been that Moore felt compelled to quit Twitter, citing a stream of "threatening, ignorant and nasty" responses, saying, "I am sorry to those that I misrepresented." It was quite a turnaround from the way she'd, not long before, complained about detractors who think they can "cut their dicks off and be more feminist than me."

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The new version of the DSM-5 will instead include an entry for "gender dysphoria," an important shift from "identity disorder" since dysphoria applies only to those individuals feeling distress over their assigned gender identity. Individuals who identify differently from the gender assigned at birth are thus no longer considered to be mentally ill by the APA's categorization. "We know there is a whole community of people out there who are not seeking medical attention and live between the two binary categories. We wanted to send the message that the therapist’s job isn’t to pathologize," Jack Drescher, a member of the APA who worked on the this issue, told the Advocate earlier this year.

Retaining "gender dysphoria" within the DSM-5, as opposed to removing all listings relating to gender variance, will allow individuals seeking coverage for hormone treatments or surgery to point to a medical problem within the DSM.

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The radio hosts were discussing Gabrielle Ludwig, a 50-year-old transgender woman playing junior college basketball in California. Ludwig told the USA Today last week that she wants to be a role model:

“If the example I can set for the kids who are transgenders in high school, for the people who hate transgender people and for those learning to deal with transgenders, transsexuals, if they see me as a normal person and we are not the bogeyman and love life and raise kids just like you, maybe some of this mystery of who these people are will be taken away and there can be more blending into society,” she said.

Steve Czaban and Andy Pollin offered their thoughts on the issue last Thursday.

“That’s a man, baby,” Chris Knoche began. “That could be a Russian chick….So how does this work? You lose testicles and gain eligibility?”

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Linda Carragher Bourne of Sarasota said her daughter was Miss Trans New England and asked if he would help them. "A lot of my friends are being killed, and they don't have the civil rights yet. These guys are gonna make it happen," she told the pool.

Biden has been a vocal supporter of LGBT rights -- notably endorsing same-sex marriage before the president. Many will welcome Biden's comment about transgender rights. Bourne took to Facebook to elatedly recount here interaction with him: "It was a miraculous (to me) and magical moment in time... He’s in our corner, friends!!!" [sic.]

However, other trans allies and advocates reacted to Biden more critically. One trans activist acquaintance of mine took to Facebook to comment, "Oh, Fuck off Joe Biden," and was followed up by a fellow commenter noting, "You mean Uncle Joe doesn't have the right invested in him by White Male Privilege to tell marginalized communities what 'the Civil Rights Issue is of our time' [is]?"

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However, owing to a backlash from parents and local conservative groups, the East Aurora school board has been forced to reconsider its policies and will recast votes on Friday. "Every one of those parents was upset that we put this policy forward, and we are now going to go back and rescind that Friday night," said East Aurora School Board president Annette Johnson. Activists and other parents supported the policies as a step toward providing a safe, supportive educational environment for all young people.

Watch the video below for further details on the school board's decision to reconsider the new standards:

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Amazon and Catarina, both trans women imprisoned at that Richard J. Donovan Correctional facility, have refused food since Sept. 21 in a strike "against the unfair treatment of trans women within [the prison]," according to a release from radical trans women's collective Gender Anarky (of which both inmates are members).

Since both Amazon and Catarina are trans women in a men's prison, the inmates have been held in isolated, single cells -- despite having asked to share a cell with each other. It is not clear what convictions the two inmates are serving time for -- Gender Anarky does not list its members' crimes; to do so would be to use the logic of the prison system, which they fight against.

Transgender individuals are regularly put on single-cell status, or even moved into solitary confinement in the U.S. prison system.

This particular hunger strike is underpinned by a militant anti-prison stance. The release from the inmates' collective calls for "directly attacking the systems of domination that make living conditions of trans women, both inside and outside prison, a living hell."

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A transgender third-grader in New Hampshire has won the right to be treated as a girl in her school community — including being allowed to use the girls' room. Score one for tolerance, and the increasing strides grown-ups are making in understanding that gender isn't always definitively settled the moment a baby is born, nor is orientation only figured out in adolescence or beyond. Children are a lot more complex than that.

The girl's triumph is a well-earned one. Her family — who have chosen to remain anonymous — told the Nashua Telegraph that after last year's winter break she returned to the second grade fully female-identified. She was dressing as a girl and using a female name. The school initially accepted her as female, but, the parents say, the staff began addressing her as a male and "the child was ultimately separated from her classmates, seated in a single desk in a room of shared tables and was no longer allowed to use the girls' restroom." Isolated and despondent, the girl's "behavioral issues increased" until the family removed her from the school. She finished out the year with tutors.

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