Jonathan V. Last, online editor

IF TINA BROWN were alive today, we wouldn't be able to escape talk of transgender buzz. The eighties were the gay decade. The nineties belonged to lesbian chic. Now it's a transgendered world. We have seen the rise of the transgender movie--"The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" (1994), "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" (1995), "Flawless" (1999), "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" (2001)--and, more recently, the appearance of transgender TV characters on "Friends" and "The Education of Max Bickford," and even the transgender mini-celebrities Boy George, RuPaul, and Ben Schatz (former advisor to President Clinton, cum drag-apella sensation).

Transgender people were once the forgotten stepchildren of sex interest groups. When the gay-rights revolution erupted at Stonewall in 1969, the transgender set wasn't even an afterthought. Twenty-five years later, the group has been completely embraced by the gay-rights crowd, with the word "transgender" tucked into the mission statement of every advocacy group in the cosmos, from the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund to the Human Rights Campaign.

Other groups have been more circumspect. Last winter an argument broke out on Ms. magazine's Internet bulletin board when it was revealed that one of the most strident male-haters was a transgender woman, which is to say someone who was born male. Many of the "WBWs" (woman born woman) wanted to exclude the "WBMs" (Woman Born Man) from the talks, presumably because in the victimology sweepstakes, no group, no matter how marginal, is allowed to

Here it may be helpful to provide a little taxonomy to readers who don't keep up with such things. "Transgender" is an umbrella term which applies to people who aren't entirely happy with the sex into which they were born. Some of them manifest as cross-dressers--either full- or part-time. Others feel the need to actually live their lives as members of the opposite sex. Members of this subgroup are referred to as "transsexuals." Some transsexuals merely dressup, some take hormone therapy to alter their appearances, and some go the drastic route of surgical alteration. More on that later.

There doesn't seem to be much reliable data on transgender people. The National Transgender Advocacy Coalition website claims that between 2 and 3 percent of the American population is transgender and that about 10 percent of them are homosexual. The group Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays says, "The largest subgroup of transgender persons is crossdressers who are mainly heterosexual men, although there are also women who crossdress." But beyond that--What's the racial distribution? What's the breakdown of men vs. women? What percentage of transsexuals seek surgery?--it's all mist, and many transgender groups are intent on not giving out hard data. Persistent attempts to contact transgender-rights groups--including the Human Rights Campaign--were rebuffed. And members of the scientific community--including Dr. Peter Fagan at Johns Hopkins Hospital--also avoided interviews for this piece. Which is curious, because it would seem that the case for transgender rights is an easy one to make.