Apparently someone has coined a new word for people who aren?t transgender and who have a socially condoned gender identity. We?re now supposed to call such people cisgender, which sounds a bit like they have cysts or something. The idea is that defining the majority as other than ?normal? or ?default? will make transgender identities seem less like aberrations, and more like equal alternatives. Of course, it?s unclear how much power word games have to change most people?s perceptions.

Psychologists and social scientists have piled up tons of data on the ?cross-race effect,? which is pretty well accepted as fact now. In a nutshell, people are more likely to recognize (and correctly identify) a face of someone who belongs to the same race than the face of someone from another race. One study of 15 Latino students found the students were much more likely to recognize Latino faces than black faces. The study also found that this effect depends on the ?perceptual categorization of race.? The researchers used ?racially ambiguous? faces and still the subjects were more likely to recognize the ones they believed were Latino.

Now a new study finds that kindergartners and third graders are less likely to be able to pick someone out of a lineup if that person comes from another ethnic background. The study seemed a bit simplistic, but it did suggest that even at a young age, perceived outsiders blur together much more.

What the research doesn?t seem to do is explain why the cross-race effect happens. Is it unconscious racism, a belief that all people outside your ethnicity look alike? Is it that when you see someone of another race, you?re registering them as a member of that race instead of registering the facial characteristics you?d be noticing about someone of your own race? We need to know, not least because the cross-race effect makes accusers much more likely to provide a false identification of a criminal suspect of another race.

Legal newspaper The Recorder today that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that psychiatrists cannot testify against their clients in court. The decision grew out of a lawsuit in Oregon where a man was convicted on two counts of threatening to murder FBI agents based on two pieces of evidence: some things he said to a telephone operator, and his confession that he was having murderous thoughts in a therapy session. After the court?s decision, he was acquitted on the second count.

What this means is that while counselors/therapists/psychiatrists are obligated to report clients who seem homicidal or suicidal, information from their sessions with the client will not be admissable as evidence in court. On the one hand, this seems like a good idea: it will reduce the number of people convicted of thought crimes and (as the judges wrote in the majority opinion) it will allow people to get more therapy rather than making a decidedly non-therapeutic trip to prison. But the problem is that counselors who have genuinely dangerous patients will have to rely on law enforcment to find more evidence before they can take custody of a possibly suicidal or violent person. In some cases, perhaps involving angry Muslims, I could imagine law enforcement being eager to gather this extra evidence (unanswered question: does testimony from a shrink constitute enough evidence to merit a wiretap?). In other cases, though, I could see law enforcement dragging their feet, telling a shrink that just because some guy says he feels like raping his girlfriend that doesn?t mean he needs to be investigated.

So I?m on the fence with this one.

According to the archives of NPR?s Fresh Air program, Gene Simmons ?declined to give permission? for the Fresh Air web site to archive the audio of his interview with Terry Gross. (You can read a transcript here. Of course, that interview has been blogged to death, but what?s interesting is that half the people who discuss it believe that Terry Gross put Simmons in his place, and the other half see Gene as the undisputed winner in their smackdown. (Is it the battle of the sexes? Of the classes? Gene keeps talking about Terry being immersed in books and dust mites, Terry keeps asking Gene about his codpiece.) But if it?s true that Terry was willing to have the audio on the NPR site and Gene wasn?t, then that really settles the question of which of them felt he or she came out on top. (Of course, NPR may not have tried too hard to get Gene?s permission.)

It?s hard to imagine a more tawdry coda to the chest-beating legend of Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway?s son Gregory, author of ?Papa: A Personal Memoir,? had a sex change and became Gloria Hemingway in the 1990s. Gloria blamed her father?s ?super-masculine? image for her need to transform. Then, in 2001, Gloria stripped naked on the street and got arrested. Soon after, she died of a heart attack in jail. Now, Gloria?s ex-wife Ida is claiming that Gloria and Ida remarried in 1997 (after divorcing in 1995) and Gloria left Ida all her money in a new will.

The whole controversy predictably raises questions about the legal status of transgender people, much like the famous lawsuit over whether transsexual J?Noel Gardiner could inherit part of her husband Marshall?s $2.5 million estate. Gloria?s kids are claiming that because Gloria was a woman in 1997, the second marriage to Ida was a same-sex union and therefore invalid. The judge in the case sounded gleeful to be tackling such ?cutting edge? topics.

Leaving aside the considerable Jerry Springer-meets-Moveable Feast titillation factor, it seems really sad that one of the main ways that society tries to grapple with serious issues of gender and social status is through a prism of greed. Ernest?s grandkids wouldn?t be affirming Gloria?s femaleness if they didn?t stand to inherit all her dough as a result.

Update Oct. 3, 2003: According to press accounts, the grandkids and Ida have settled out of court.

Identity theft, questioning sexuality, pickpocketing? and prog rock?

A man who impersonated Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy has been arrested in New York, the band?s web site claims. Not only did the unnamed man steal Portnoy?s identity using an uncanny knowledge of his band, his drum beats and his business contacts, but he also stole from people once he gained their confidence. One post on the band?s site claims that the faux Portnoy would hang out in bars and tell men he was ?questioning his sexuality? and uncovering memories of childhood sexual abuse. He would then go somewhere and ?get it on? with his victims ? then steal their wallets and whatever else he could grab, including house keys.

The real Portnoy is happily married, doesn?t drink, and works hard on producing ponderous two-CD sets of arty Pantera-inspired rock for the band, according to the official site. It?s interesting to see the different forms identity theft can take ? the imposter didn?t know Portnoy?s social security number or bank account number, but he still managed to do plenty of damage. And he showed just how slippery identity is these days ? how many people in New York now believe Portnoy is a gay kleptomaniac?

Wale wanted to escape anti-gay persecution in west Africa, so he fled to Russia. There, he fell in love with Sergei and the two of them moved in with Sergei?s mother. But everywhere Wale went, officials and others harrassed him as a ?monkey? ? not to mention the abuse he and Sergei received from people who knew they were gay. They managed to find a Scandanavian country that would accept them as both refugees and as a married couple. But before they could get away, Wale?s body was found ? below the apartment?s fifth-floor window, his neck broken.

The story of Wale and Sergei reads like a tragic romance, but also something out of an older time, when we lived in a bipolar world. A world full of people trying to escape from the Nazis or Communists to the ?free world.? Only now the free world is a place where people like Sergei and Wale can live openly and safely. And at this moment, it?s hard to predict whether the U.S. will be part of the ?free world? ? or someplace that people flee.