Opinion: The year of fear

[LostInTime]

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IN 2006, TRANSGENDER people found it hard to get jobs because they were transgender. Some, like Lily McBeth gained their job — as a substitute teacher at a small school in New Jersey — just to see yet another so-called "family" group jump up to try and block her from ever setting foot in a classroom. Even with the school board siding in her favor, her status still remains in doubt.

In the world of sports, Michelle Dumaresq, a competitive cyclist from Canada won a race, only to have one of the other cyclists show up on the stand wearing a shirt attacking Dumaresq's status. Even more recently, Santhi Soundarajan, a 25-year-old runner from India, failed a gender test administered by the Olympic Council of Asia. Soundarajan has more Y chromosomes than was allowed and was stripped of her silver medal. In both cases, the assumption is that they had some performance enhancers at work.