Dear Miranda, I fail to understand how the transgendered community has anything to do with the gay community. Sure both are oppressed and should support each other as all oppressed groups should lend their support to one another, but they are totally different issues. If you are now a woman dating a man, what is the gay issue? Do you not consider yourself a straight woman?

Dear Reader, It is easy to look at our communities and list all the differences. But I prefer to look for the similarities.

Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw, wrote, "Our movements belong together because gays and lesbians by their very nature are transsexual. They cross established sexual boundaries. Who are women supposed to love? Men. When they love women instead, they are taking on a man's part and crossing that boundary."

You see, it all comes down to the fact that we in the GLBT community fall somewhere outside of society's gender role expectations.

We violate these expectations by expressing our love for another person whom society frowns upon, or expressing our gender in a way that makes them uncomfortable. Either way, we are stigmatized because we transgressed some unwritten rule of gender conduct.

I happen to be in a LTR with a woman. That makes me a transsexual lesbian. I have transitioned from the straight world into the gay world. But even that view is too simplistic. As I progress on my gender journey, I am finding all genders attractive: masculine, feminine, trans, and others. I find it easier to look past the shell and love the person inside.

For a transgender person, at some time, at some level of existence, if that person has relationships at all, that person has same gender relationships.

So let's look at the similarities. Let's look at the roots of discrimination and hate crimes. Let's look at the consequences of being queer in a straight world. Let's look at the difficulties of growing up knowing you are different, and the only one in the world like yourself. Let's look at the coming out process. These similarities are too important to dismiss! They bind us together and galvanize us into a single community.

I would like to examine just one commonality a little further… the roots of hate crimes. Riki Anne Wilchins of GenderPAC, issued the following statement following the shocking murder of Matthew Shepard:

…What seems unavoidable is the recognition that those singled out for special brutality -- gay men who are small, slight, and gentle, "butchy" women stalked and shot on the Appalachian trail, transgendered people like Brandon Teena assaulted, raped and murdered… are most often people who are in some way "visibly" queer; that is, they are those whose bodies or genders don't fit in some way with social conceptions of "real men" or "real women."

We live in a culture that systematically dehumanizes us with a barrage of hatred from rightwing politicians and religious fanatics, on talk shows and college campuses, in the newspapers and on the floor of Congress. Set against that backdrop, it is no wonder that there is an epidemic of hate crimes ravaging our community.

To the world, we are all gay. The sooner we accept that fact, and join in the fight for human rights, the sooner we can end this insanity.

Miranda Stevens-Miller, Chair of It's Time Illinois welcomes your comments at MirandaSt1@aol.com