Brandy Glines has felt the sting of being referred to as "it" by her co-workers.

Jesse Fluetsch thinks about becoming a special-ed teacher, but he worries whether a Utah school would hire a "transgender boy."

Joni Weiss kept her gender identity secret for 50 years, fearing the rejection of family, friends and her employer.

Awareness of transgender people has grown in the past decade, advocates say, but the community still struggles to secure widespread acceptance and gain legal protections. The "T" on the end of LGBT -- the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender -- is a minority within a minority that faces distinct challenges.

"Trans-awareness is a decade or so behind gay-lesbian awareness," says Terry Kogan, a University of Utah law professor who sits on the board of Equality Utah.

"If one looks at the arc of the rights of gay and lesbian people in our country," he adds, "as more and more people realize they know [family or friends who] are gay or lesbian ... the knowledge makes that particular difference less threatening, less something to be afraid of."

The same is happening with transgender people, he says.

Kogan points to the inclusion of gender identity in addition to sexual orientation in Salt Lake City's newly minted anti-discrimination ordinances as a sign of progress. Congress also is considering a law that would protect transgender people from employment discrimination. And President Barack Obama recently signed a national hate-crimes law that covers acts against transgender people.

Increasingly, transgender individuals are coming out at younger ages. Society's gender norms have become less rigid, and gender-bending behavior is more acceptable. Transgender youths are more likely to learn the term that describes what they are experiencing -- a sense that their gender identity does not match their assigned sex.

"We didn't have the Internet," says Kerry Bell, a 42-year-old Bountiful police officer who recently transitioned from female to male. "We didn't have role models."

Joni Weiss, who came out as transgender five years ago, agrees. She lived her first 48 years as a man, vowing to take her desire to live as a woman to the "grave." She realized her "bigger and bigger" closet was suffocating her so she finally stepped out.

"I thought I would lose everything," recalls Weiss, a Salt Lake City woman who serves on the Utah Pride Center's board. "I thought it would be a death."

To her surprise, coming-out proved a "rebirth." Family, friends and her employer supported her decision to switch to a female identity.

"The world is different" now for transgender youths, she says. "Kids, by and large, are much more accepting. Being different is not the stigma that it was."

Jesse Fluetsch, a 23-year-old University of Utah student, came out as transgender when he was 18, dropping the female identity he was given at birth. As a child, he hated pink and wanted to be Luke Skywalker, not Princess Leia, when he watched "Star Wars." At 15, he came out as a lesbian because he knew he was attracted to women. Later, he realized it was more than that.

"I was taught: There are men, and there are women," Fluetsch says. "It took meeting people who kind of don't fit into those categories to become OK with who I am and to realize that gender diversity is a beautiful, positive thing in our world."

The Utah Pride Center, celebrating November as Transgender Awareness Month, serves 150 to 200 transgender people a month.

"There's a huge, huge need for services for transgender people," says Jude McNeil, the center's director of youth programs.

The Salt Lake City center offers social activities, support groups and referrals to therapists and doctors. Having medical treatments to alter your sex requires a letter from a therapist. So does changing your name and sex on a driver license and other government-issued identification.

The center also educates employers about how to treat transgender workers. (Employees want to use the restroom that coincides with their gender identities.) It offers support to parents and other relatives of transgender people.

Even as a lesbian mom, Bonnie Bills was stunned to learn her "little girl" was transgender.

"Why didn't I even see it? I was blindsided," she says. "I gave birth to a little girl who was never really a little girl. ... I tried very hard in his life to make him a little girl. That didn't work."

One of the hardest things for Bills, was giving up the name she had waited nine years to give a daughter: Stacia. But at age 19, Stacia chose a new name, Tylar. He let his mom and her partner pick out his middle name. They chose Braxton.

Tylar Bills, now 20, says he is "happy" with his transition and the calming effect that hormone treatments have had on his body. He also is pleased by the support of his mother, grandmother and other relatives.

"It's just brought our family closer," he says.

Brandy Glines, a Salt Lake City transgender woman, came out at age 40. Nine years later, she says she still grapples with the judgments of others each day. She is attending Salt Lake Community College to switch from the health-care industry to accounting.

In a past job, she says, co-workers would call her "it" instead of "she." At job interviews, she has been told she should move to San Francisco, because she won't be accepted in Utah.

"People have a real tendency to discriminate against people they don't understand," she says. "Hopefully, in another 20 years, we'll see more progress."

rwinters@sltrib.com