Update (8/20/2009): You can now download "Transgender Health Care Provider Directory" in PDF (8MB).

On July 21, the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) will distribute copies of the first public directory of transgender-sensitive providers in the New York City metropolitan area ever published. The Gender Identity Project (GIP) of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center (208 W. 13th St. in Manhattan) will host a special event from 7-9 p.m. at which hundreds of copies of the provider directory will be distributed to members of the transgender community. The directory – which includes of physicians, mental health professionals, acupuncturists, and AIDS agencies as well as other health care providers – is a project of the Transgender Health Initiative of New York (THINY), a community organizing project whose goal is to ensure that transgendered and gender non-conforming people can access health care in a safe, respectful and non-discriminatory manner. THINY was established by the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF), NYAGRA, and the Center GIP in 2004 and has been coordinated by TLDEF staff since then.

One of the biggest myths around is the myth of 'the liberal media.' Eric Alterman has persuasively debunked this hoary myth in his book, What Liberal Media? The Truth About Bias and the News (Basic) ( excerpted in The Nation)

The mainstream media are (note 'media' is the plural for 'medium') not really liberal; rather, mainstream media in the United States are corporate, which means that they often reflect the worst of market-based imperatives, above all, the need to generate a profit for owners and investors.

Nowhere is this un-liberal profit motive more in evidence than in media coverage of transgender issues. Consider an article in the New York Daily News from January 25. In "Welcome to the drag race! Gender benders are crossing over, into your living room," Joe Neumaier writes,

"Sure, 'Brokeback Mountain' is riding atop solid box office (even in red states) and is lassoing every award in sight. But the real sex story du jour in American pop culture? Try transgender people: Women identifying as men, and men as women. In movies, at the bookstore and on TV, people are passing for the opposite sex. In many performance spaces, drag queens and drag kings reign supreme. And the very human stories they're telling are dragging people in."