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If she wasn't born in a female body, no. But I suspect she was.

This is the real starting point of this discussion: being born male or female, physically, sets up a series of parameters. Those parameters are not really altered if the male puts on a dress and declares himself to be a woman. (I have grown tired of transvestites being called "she.")

As so often happens in our Society, the pendulum has swung, and as it usually does it has swung further in one direction than the other. Thus, in the last hundred years or so, we have gone from being incredibly narrow and restrictive in matters sexual -- incarcerating homosexuals, for instance -- to stretching perhaps a little too far to be "all encompassing."

I understand the biological processes that can happen in utero, which are considered by some to be the cause of "transgender" individuals, but, as some have noted, the jury is still out on whether this creates a genuine condition or a mental illness.

What we do know is that it's a very difficult experience for those people, there's a lot of social stigma around it and many resort to suicide. So it's best to be respectful - live and let live.

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A REALLY hard question, then: Many people are tortured and driven by a desire to have sex with children. Our society frowns on this, and such people are considered mentally ill. We do not accommodate them, we do not respect them.

How is being "transgender" different? Given all the twists and turns that have happened in our general understanding of how the brain and mind work -- still a work in progress -- how difficult is it to imagine a future in which it will be determined without doubt that "transgender" is, indeed, a mental illness? How will we feel about all those people who, instead of actually helping them, we encouraged in a program of self-mutilation?

This is a long, long road, and so far we have taken barely a single step upon it. (Christine Jorgenson was half a century ago. How much has changed?)