Is there anyone on the planet sexier than Shirley Manson?  I don't think so.

Do you guys do this?  Okay, we've all heard that crap about Ann Coulter being a man and everybody thinks transgender issues are, like, such a laff riot, man!  But I've known a couple of transgendered people and the Coultergeist is definitely not one of them.  I hate to make sweeping generalizations, especially about such a wildly misunderstood population, but there are two things that all the transgendered people (post-op, pre-op, and non-operative) I have known have in common.

1. They are incredibly courageous.

2. They are deeply empathetic.

I think No. 1 is true as a matter of course.  If a transgendered person has made you aware of who they are, they have already demonstrated a kind of fierce courage.  It takes a lot of nerve in our neurotic, sex-phobic/sex-obsessed, gender-rigid culture to even admit to yourself that you are different from others, let alone anybody else.  So, TG people by nature have to be brave.  Otherwise you would never know they were any different than you or me or the million other people you brush shoulders with in life's elevators and dentist's offices.

And empathic because they understand that no one can take anything about themselves for granted.  Most of us are lucky enough to be mentally matched, more or less, to the bodies we arrived on earth in.  Imagine if that wasn't the case, and your body felt like somebody else's Christmas present that you opened by accident but got stuck with anyway.  Your very body.  Your soul's house in the world and it's not the right sex?  Just imagine how you would see the world if that was you.

TG people know what it means to feel betrayed by god and your body and everything.  I've never known them to look down their noses at anybody other than the ignorant, the thoughtless, and the cruel.  (And those are the right peope to look down on, don't you think?)

Quod erat demonstrandum, Ann Coulter couldn't possibly be a TG because she's:

1. A coward.

2. Slightly less empathetic than a box of tacks.

It was a treat watching Kirsten Power bring the pain to Ann on that C&L clip, though, wasn't it?

But that's not why we're here.  The whole reason I brought this up is to say that at some point it occured to me that if I'd been born a female (and not a 60ft. carnivorous therapod), I would want to be Shirley Manson.  Do you do that?  Do you ever look at someone of the opposite gender and think, "Yeah, that's right.  That's how it oughtta be done.  If I was a man/woman, I'd be like that!"?

Anyone?  I just thought I'd put that out there.