[MI,USA]
County bans discrimination over gender identity
In May 2004, Kalamazoo County worker Karen Pease returned her15-year pin when the Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners rejected a proposal to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the county's nondiscrimination list.

[CA,USA]
Mookey's Story -- Transgender Youths Find Support, But Challenges Remain
Editor's Note: A new generation of transgender youths is finding more societal acceptance and support than ever before. But hardships remain, particularly for young people from immigrant backgrounds. Carolyn Goossen, a writer for New America Media, spends times with Mookey, a 24-year-old Chinese-American college student just beginning treatment with sex hormones.

[MA,USA]
Health club harasses transwoman
Natasha Lee West, a transgender woman, was a member of the BallyTotal Fitness club in Worcester for one year in what she calls "malemode" before deciding to take the step to present herself as femaleat the gym last June. For the past three years she has lived asfemale everywhere except for on the job and at the gym, but afterfinalizing her name change, getting breast implants and getting anew driver's license with her female name and photo, she decided thetime was right to live as female full time. West said when she firsttold the management at the gym in June that she was going to beliving full time as female, manager Dale Stoddard seemed supportive.She showed Stoddard the document approving her name change from herbirth name to Natasha as well as her new license.

[Australia]
Clifford DIVA's Newest Legend
As a boy growing up in the Sydney suburb of Auburn, Penny Clifford dreamed of a life on stage.
"From the age of six or seven my Mum would take me off to dance school,” Clifford recalled this week.
“At the end of each year we’d do the big dance eisteddfod and so I sort of had that in my blood. When I was about 17 I went to a club in Oxford Street called Capriccio’s. They used to have mammoth drag shows and that was the first show I’d seen. The whole thing just really appealed to me.”

[VT,USA]
Difficult Transitions
Coralyn Guidry's 20-year-old son Michael looks like a typical young man. He has short, brown hair, so dark it's nearly black. It continues down his cheeks in thick sideburns that extend to his jaw. The whiskers on his otherwise pale chin suggest that he has forgotten to shave. Dark, downy hairs sprout on his arms, beyond the sleeves of the T-shirt that hangs on his flat chest, and on his legs below the cuffs of his shiny green, knee-length athletic shorts.

[Canada/Iran]
I Know That I Am
A horrifying glimpse into the lives of Iranian transwomen

[Japan]
Transsexual politician demands louder Japanese gay pride
Japan`s gay community must make itself known in the country, the country`s only transsexual politician announced last week.

[Bahamas]
Female Impersonators
In Las Vegas and other cities in the United States and around the world, being a "Drag Queen" is a metaphor for making big bucks as an entertainer. Here in the Bahamas and the Caribbean at large, "Drag Queen" is merely a label that conjures up scary images for many parents.

[USA]
Enough with the gender queer androgyny!
Musician Julia Serano is tired of all the femininity bashing and she wants it to stop. She argues that those who decry the value and authenticity of femininity express unconscious patriarchal percepts.

"An important yet often overlooked aspect of traditional sexism [is] that it targets people not only for their femaleness, but also for their expressions of femininity," Serano says.