Male teenager expelled for wearing women's clothing to school

[Zorra]

7. What's with the masculine pronouns referring to the young woman,

Keirny, who is the subject of the article?

It's very disrespectful.

I can't help but wonder if it is mean spiritedness or just ignorance.

The fact that they inaccurately used the archaic word "transvestite" in a caption can be taken as either mean spirited and/or ignorant as well.

Ignorant, mean spirited, narrow minded bigots often deliberately use inappropriate pronouns to refer to transgender(ed) person in order to insult, mock, and to try to make transgendered persons feel bad about themselves.

Keirny is most likely a transsexual woman, based on her understanding that she is a female in a male body. The word transsexual is itself becoming archaic, but it is pretty much the only generally accepted specific word that descibes Keirny's situation.

&quot s)he felt trapped in a boy’s body" is a primary specific diagnostic characteristic of a transsexual woman.

You'd think people who work with words for a living would have a better grasp of their usages and meanings.

Transsexualism

The DSM diagnosis requires four components:[7]

A desire or insistence that one is of the opposite biological sex (that is not due to a perceived advantage of being the other sex)

Evidence of persistent discomfort with, and perceived inappropriateness of the individual's biological sex

The individual is not intersex (although a diagnosis of GID Not Otherwise Specified is available, which enables intersex people who reject their sex-assignment to access transsexual treatments)

Evidence of clinically significant distress or impairment in work or social life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transsexualism