APPENDIX I Suggested information to use in educating judges about transgender people Language All professions' members talk to each other in their own special language. The law no exception. In the law, we sometimes use what appear to be ordinary words in extraordinary ways. (180) Words have power. [W]ords in the law, their meaning, their selection, and order, are paramount. The particular selection and sequence of the words in the law are the source of its power. A single, well-chosen word can win case, or heart, or enforce contract. A single, ill-chosen word or comment can, on the other hand, breach contract, destroy relationship, or lose case. (181) Though words have power to connect us, they also have power to exclude. Some people are outsiders, excluded from the heart of community life, by the words used to define them. Pronouns. People should be treated according to their self-identified gender.... While most people have never questioned their gender identity, some people have spent great deal of time struggling over it, trying to reconcile how they feel with how they look, trying to decide how to cope with the discrepancy, how to tell family and friends. (182) Living differently from one's sex assigned at birth is not undertaken lightly. (183) Simple respect requires referring to people with the words they prefer. Some activists advocate using gender-neutral pronouns: ze (pronounced zee) or sie (pronounced see) in place of he or she, and hir (pronounced heer) in place of his or her. However, some have fought very hard to claim gendered pronoun and prefer to use that hard-won pronoun. Identification defined by others can negatively affect transgender people. Because it connects people to data, identification attaches informational baggage to people. This alters what others learn about people as they engage in various transactions and activities. (184) Transgender an umbrella for a wide range of identities including what some sources describe as transsexual people, regardless of whether they undergo or plan to undergo hormone treatment or sex reassignment surgery. (185) In its most inclusive sense, transgender means not conforming to gender expectations. In an award-winning play entitled Clearly Marked, S. Bear Bergman (186) asks the audience, Who here with vagina has repaired something? and Who here with penis has helped raise child? (187) When audience members raise their hands in response, Bergman points at them and names them transgender, transgender, transgender. (188) Although anyone who transgresses or transcends gender lines could be characterized as transgender, the term also often used to refer to individuals whose sex assignment at birth incongruent with their gender identity. Cisgender (pronounced sizz-gender) refers to person whose sex assignment at birth congruent with her or his gender identity. (189) Along with that congruence comes an ease, an unquestioning comfort, not generally available to transgender people. (190) A schema for analyzing dimensions of human sexual identity. (191) For clarity, it may be useful to consider four distinct dimensions related to human sexual identity: sex, gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. None of these dimensions necessarily binary, and, although some are more highly correlated, all are capable of functioning independently. Sex defined biologically, with reference to chromosomes, genitalia, internal sex organs, secondary sex characteristics, and hormones. (192) Sex generally regarded as binary, i.e., male or female. (193) Chromosomes are the only biological characteristics used to define sex that cannot be changed medically. (194) Chromosomes are not divisible into binary categories. (195) Using chromosomes to define sex problematic, because they are not readily visible. …