The Trouble When Jane Doesn't Become Jack

The front page of last Sunday's New York Times Style section was dedicated to an adequately researched puff piece on female to male transgenderism in the lesbian community and the tensions felt between these overlapping and typically marginalized groups. For lesbians living in most urban US communities this was news back in 1998. Of course, this article wasn't written for the lesbian or FTM transgender community since it included nothing about the second generation of transitioning and genderqueer women, the enormous social pressure now exerted on self-identified butch lesbians to become men, or the recent sexual assault scandal in San Francisco allegedly perpetrated by a transman and tried in the court of public opinion via the women seeking women board on a local popular online list. This article doesn't even take into account the possible long term medical issues for the FTM population that are currently unknown. That would be news.