It started with Hanzi Smatter‘s year-old piece on someone who’d got 妖 tattooed on their neck, which might mean “charming” in Japanese on occasion, but is more likely to mean something more demonic, like “goblin, devil, monster”, and is mostly seen in combination with 人, as in人妖 or 变性人妖, both of which mean transsexual. Halfway through the comments, ‘right-on-tranny’ comes in with the yawn about how 人妖 is akin to ‘shemale’, or ‘chick-with-a-dick’ and that feels quite safe to say that the ‘vast majority of transsexual and transgendered women’ find these terms ‘exceedingly offensive’, backing it up with a boring and earnest page of tranny terms explained. Personally, I like tranny coz it’s alot quicker to type, and while I appreciate not being burned at the stake or dragged behind a horse, I don’t really feel part of a movement that’s emerging from the shadows. Maybe this is an American thing…

And though it’s very out-of-date, I’m not sure how Transsexual Seeks Mate Online is news unless the meta-narrative of “see how the exotic oriental dwarfs are beginning to enjoy the same freedoms we in the enlightened English-speaking Empire do” is the true subtext. I mean for fuck’s sake, trannys and internet go hand-in-hand, even besides the debt we all owe to internet porn for such joys as password-protected sites and internet banking, places like URNotALone has the whole ecosystem of girls, M2F, admirers, chasers in China going on like a bomb.

Speaking of porn, somehow all of that lead to this: Pornographic Film and Video: Transsexual, on qlbtq, kinda worth a read about a cultural theory perspective on tranny porn, but somehow it makes it all boring and not as fun as Buck and Allanah, though I’ll settle for an Almodovar-esque tranny flick like 20 Centímetros … actually anyone who knows me might think “A narcoleptic transvestite who yearns to become a transsexual dreams up elaborate musical numbers in which she’s the star” is all about me.

Transgender movement emerging from shadows

CHICAGO – Shawn Coleman bristles when an application poses the question “male or female?” – as if there are only two choices.

When it comes to sexual identity, the 23-year-old Shawn – born Patricia – sees a broad spectrum, a man-to-woman or a woman-to-man continuum with many stops along the way. Think gender without borders. He (the preferred pronoun) looks male but not completely. He is not a lesbian, a cross-dresser or contemplating a sex-change operation any time soon.

“I always knew I was different than other girls,” explained Coleman. “I was never a fan of Barbie but liked playing sports with my two older brothers. People were always telling me to act more feminine – that I should sit with my legs crossed – but I found that stuff incredibly difficult. It wasn’t the way I felt inside.”

A graduate student at Iowa State University, Coleman is a transgender young adult and at the forefront of a movement that some say represents a new edge of grass-roots activism.

Frequently lumped together with gays and lesbians, who have not always been welcoming, transgender people are carving a separate profile and flexing new political clout from campuses to corporations.

Transgender is an umbrella term that refers to people whose sexual identity differs from conventional expectations of what it means to be a man or a woman. It includes transsexuals, who have surgically moved from one sex to another. It includes those who have had electrolysis and take hormones. It also encompasses people like Coleman who identify and express themselves differently from the sex indicated on their birth certificates.

Because of the range of definitions and the stigma, reliable statistics are difficult to find. Pop culture has helped “trans” issues gain more visibility. Felicity Huffman’s performance in “TransAmerica” grabbed the headlines – and a “best actress” Oscar nomination – but “Rent” and “Breakfast on Pluto” included such characters last year as well. On the Sundance Channel, a documentary series called “Transgeneration” followed four college students who morphed from one sex to the other. VH1’s “Surreal Life” also features transgender celebrity Alexis Arquette.

The sports world, too, is seeing more fluidity. There’s Terri O’Connell, a male-to-female transsexual and the only NASCAR driver to compete as both a man (T.J. Hayes) and as a woman. Canadian cyclist Kristen Worley, who also changed from male to female, currently is vying for a spot in the 2008 Olympics. The International Olympic Committee allows transsexual athletes to compete if two years has elapsed since surgery. The NCAA is studying a similar proposal.

More visibility has fostered more understanding.

“It used to be that when journalists called, the first question was about surgery,” said Mara Keisling, 46, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, who was born Mark and “transitioned” six years ago. “Now reporters are acknowledging the humanity.”

Seven states have transgender-inclusive anti-discrimination laws. Even the business world, while not exactly rolling out the welcome mat, is becoming more receptive. More than 100 major corporations – 40 in the last year alone – now include gender identity as part of their non-discrimination policies. That’s up from eight firms just five years ago.

Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, a human-rights group, held a benefit in Chicago recently, sponsored by such buttoned-down firms as IBM Corp., JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup.

“It’s the next big social movement,” said Riki Wilchins, GenderPAC’s executive director. Wilchins compares these efforts to those waged by blacks in the 1960s, women in the ‘70s and gays and lesbians in the ‘80s.

Nowhere is the activity more evident than on the nation’s campuses. In 2003, students organized GenderPAC’s first youth chapters to help combat bullying and discrimination. Today, there are 40 campus chapters in 25 states.

“More than 200 schools have reached out to us,” Wilchins said. “It just shows the breadth of interest right now.”

Veterans of the movement such as Wilchins, 53, who transitioned to female in 1978 but answers to either pronoun, are heartened by the growing acceptance. Attending a gay youth conference in Des Moines two years ago, Wilchins was greeted by more than 1,000 cheering, stomping “genderqueers,” an increasingly popular term used to refer to anything off the binary gender map.

“All these kids were just so gender non-conforming and testing the limits,” Wilchins said. “I asked them, `How do you do this in Iowa?’ But kids always get there about 10 years before everyone else.”

One of those kids was Shawn Coleman, who says he had problems with only one roommate during college and that his mom considers this “a phase.”

He currently favors close-cropped hair, baggy jeans and polo shirts purchased in men’s departments. Sometimes, he binds his chest with an ACE bandage to conceal the silhouette of breasts, but usually comfort wins out. No artifice can quite disguise the high-pitched giggle.

For Coleman, it’s as much about power as gender.

“I feel more entitled as a guy. … I have the right to be more aggressive, to do and say whatever I want,” said Coleman, who is living in Chicago’s Edgewater community while working on his master’s thesis in sociology.

Is sex-reassignment surgery in the future?

“Not at all,” he says, without hesitation. “I am about so much more than anatomy.”