Alison Davison, who works at the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation, will be among those participating in the transgender awareness discussions. "I think it's important the community recognize we're here, and for people who may be facing the same issues to know that they are not alone."

mamta popat / arizona daily star

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When he was carded recently at a local convenience store, the clerk noticed something odd on Joe Nutini's driver's license. Next to sex, it said female.

The clerk laughed at what he thought was a mistake by the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division. Nutini laughed, too, though he knew the state had not made an error.

Nutini looks and sounds like a man, has legally changed his name to Joe, and identifies as male, but the 25-year-old graduate student was born female. Now "transitioning," from female to male, Nutini's government documents still list him as the sex he was at birth. He's hoping to change that following scheduled surgery in May.

Legal identification for transgender people will be among the highlighted issues during the first-ever local Transgender Awareness Week, which begins today.

Emphasizing that the transgender population has its own set of stressors and issues unique from gays, lesbians and bisexuals, organizers from the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance say they want to heighten awareness of the 'T' in GLBT, which stands for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.

"A lot of people assume transgender is another way of saying gay, and it's really not. They are two separate concepts," said C. Michael Woodward, program coordinator of the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance, a program of Wingspan, Tucson's GLBT community center. "Even a lot of gay and lesbian people don't get what transgender is about."

The idea for a week of education programs about the transgender population came from a growing gathering of local residents who hold an annual vigil for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Organizers hope more education will prevent future violence and hate crimes against transgender people, which they say is a problem around the country.

According to statistics from Wingspan's Anti-Violence Project, seven people have been murdered in Arizona since 1985 because of their gender expression.

Woodward estimates about 1/2 of 1 percent of the population is transgender, though he said it's an extremely difficult population to count.

For example, some people will transition from male to female and then identify solely as female.

Also, the term transgender may or may not include other gender-variant populations, such as cross-dressers and people who are intersex — a general term used for a variety of conditions in which a person is born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't seem to fit the typical definitions of female or male. The local gender alliance's listserv has 270 members, Woodward said.

Some of the problems transgender people encounter are high unemployment rates, difficulties with health insurance and finding health care. Other more obvious challenges are the reactions of friends and family.

"My parents are not supportive at all. They do not talk to me. It's kind of a typical thing for the trans population — if they follow the path, they will lose someone or something, whether it's family, friends, jobs," said Alison Davison, 61, a case manager for the Southern Arizona AIDS Foundation who transitioned from male to female four years ago.

"It's a toll that is different for everyone, Some people are very lucky; others lose a lot."

Davison will participate in two panel discussions called "Ask a Tranny Anything" — an event that has been successful at Wingspan previously. Organizers say no issue is off-limits.

"I'm one of the people who have chosen to be very open about who I am. I think a lot of people prefer not to do that. They prefer to blend in and be quiet," Davison said. "But I think it's important the community recognize we're here, and for people who may be facing the same issues to know that they are not alone."

As an undergraduate women's studies major at UA, Nutini identified as a female and a butch lesbian. The decision to physically transition from female to male with the help of hormones about two years ago angered some female colleagues who thought Nutini was a traitor, though others were supportive. Now a graduate student of social work at Arizona State University's Tucson campus, Nutini says he's never felt happier. He is currently in a relationship with a female partner, and teaches a class at Wingspan called "Trans 101."

"I think transgender awareness is a long time coming. Everyone has a gender identity, and a lot of people feel like they have to be in a box," Nutini said. "I never felt that being female was an accurate representation of who I was. Being transgender is a spiritual representation for me and the further I go along, the better it is."