Freedom of expression.

It seemed like just another, quiet dinner at T.G.I. Friday's in Laurel, Md., when "T.K."--a nose guard for the women s professional football team the D.C. Divas got up to use the women's room. However, the night turned out to be anything but quiet. As T.K went into the rest room, another woman said, "This is the women's rest room." Unfazed, T.K. responded, "I know it is."

Then, when T.K. left the bathroom, she was met, she says, by a restaurant employee and two police officers. Apparently her masculine gender expression led them to believe that she was a man. T.K. tried to show the officers her I.D., but she says they didn't seem to care that it listed her as a female. Soon, she says, she found herself facedown on the ground, handcuffed, and under arrest.

Since she is, in fact, completely female, all the police charged T.K. with was disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace--and that, she says, was because she had asked the officers for their badge numbers and because she tried so hard to convince them that she is female.

We usually think of the "bathroom issue" as a problem mostly for trans-gendered women who have changed sexes. But harassment, confrontation, and even arrest for being in "the wrong rest room" also plague thousands of women whose gender expression transcends narrow feminine ideals. Even my partner, who looks like a handsome young boy, has found herself being pulled out of the women's room.

In short, our ideals about femininity don't include masculine lesbians, especially not muscular darker-skinned athletes with short kinky hair like T.K., and certainly not women who pull on helmets and pads every Sunday to go out and kick some serious girl-butt. For a "real woman," shoulder pads are the little foam things that ensure your blouse hangs right.

Lesbian's like T.K. and ray partner, and even feminists who transcend gender norms, are often the same women who face workplace discrimination for being "too masculine" or "too aggressive."

My organization, GenderPAC, recently joined the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups in supporting the legal appeal of 44-year-old feminist Darlene Jespersen, who was fired after two decades at the same job when she refused to wear makeup and high heels as required by her employer's dress code.

And in 2001 a federal appeals court in San Francisco found that Antonio Sanchez, a young Latino waiter, was repeatedly and unlawfully harassed because coworkers considered him too effeminate.

What makes cases like these especially pressing is that protections for people like T.K., Darlene, and Antonio are being left out of the advances taking place in the area of workplace nondiscrimination. Companies such as American Airlines, IBM, and Kodak have added gender protections to their equal employment opportunity policies. And on Capitol Hill there is a concerted effort to add such protections to the proposed federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act. In addition, more than 55 cities have passed laws outlawing gender stereotyping on the job.

Yet these heroic changes, which have largely been driven by transsexual activists, focus solely on transsexuality and gender identity. They disregard gender expression. T.K., Darlene, and Antonio are not transsexual--they do not identify with a gender other than the one they were born with--but the way they choose to express their gender doesn't fit with what many Americans perceive to be normal.

Gender expression is the great crossover issue--one where gay, straight, and transgender concerns can come together. It would be easy for us to stay in the LGBT model--to continue to assume that all of our community's issues can be pegged to one gender identity or sexual orientation. But maybe it's time to look outside that model. In protecting gender expression we have an issue that brings us together with other Americans--together in ways that make all of us safer and more respected.