Crossing Gender Lines

I was endlessly amused by your Column One, “Boy, You Fight Like a Girl” (May 17), especially the sentence, “The ultimate challenge: to be another gender.” These Internet gamers are learning things that I, a transsexual woman, have known for years, specifically how it feels to be the other sex. The difference is that most of us transgender people cannot easily retreat back to our born genders, if at all.

Ultimately I see these cyber-roles as a positive thing, that non-transgender people are getting a taste of what it means to cross the gender line. Not only may it give them new appreciation for the full range of humanity, it may someday help to pass laws prohibiting discrimination against people who have permanently crossed that line.

Christine Beatty

North Hollywood