Transgender teen 'Cassidy Lynn' crowned homecoming queen in the O.C.

Homecoming season is once again upon us, which can only mean one thing: stories about transgender high school kids running for king and queen. Cassidy Lynn Campbell broke down in tears Friday night when she learned that she had been crowned homecoming queen. The senior at Marina High School in Huntington Beach was born male but told The Times she always felt like a girl. In high school, she began 
Transgender is the state of one's gender identity (self-identification as woman, man, neither or both) not matching one's assigned sex (identification by others as male, female or intersex based on physical/genetic sex).^[1] Transgender does not imply any specific form of sexual orientation; transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, polysexual, or asexual; some may consider conventional sexual orientation labels inadequate or inapplicable to them. The precise definition for transgender remains in flux.

• "Transgender," at its most basic level, is a word that applies to someone who doesn't fit within society's standards of how a woman or a man is supposed to look or act.
• For example, "transgender" may be used to describe someone who was assigned female at birth but later realizes that label doesn't accurately reflect who they feel they are inside. This person may now live life as a man, or may feel that their gender identity can't be truly summed up by either of the two options we're usually given (male or female). They might feel like they're in between those two options; both male and female; or outside the two-gender system, entirely, neither male nor female.
• “Transgender” can also be used as an umbrella term, meaning it groups together a variety of people with different identities. The common link is that people under the “transgender umbrella” don’t really fit within their society's standards of how women and men are supposed to look and act (in other words, they're "gender non-conforming").
• You might think someone is transgender, but this is a personal identity that some people claim and others do not. Wait to see how someone self-identifies (or ask, respectfully) before assuming.

It is important to distinguish between gender identity and sexual orientation, because some people confuse the two. Gender identity has to do with someone's perceived gender. Historically, gender identity has generally been confined to the binary of male and female, but in the 20th century, activists increasingly began to promote the idea that there are other ways of viewing gender, and that in fact biological gender is more of a continuum than a binary system. Sexual orientation involves sexual attraction, and is independent of gender identity.

Everyone should simply be kind to all!