transgender confusion?

This week I learned of two socially disturbing things. Ok, I probably picked up a couple others somewhere, but these are two prominent ones that are related. First, The Bible's industry news reported that the soap All My Children will debut a transgender character named Zarf. And GLADD was all excited about it. I am all for the greater visability and understanding of transgender individuals, but let's step back for a moment. What the hell kind of name is Zarf? It sounds like an alien. Yeah, that's exactly the impression we want to give the wider, ignorant public about transgenders. They're so fucking weird they don't even have human names. No transgender person I've ever met has introduced himself/herself as anything so ambiguous. Just now I googled "zarf" to verify the name of the soap, and it turns out it's a word found in both Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia, and the principle meaning is the sleeve that protects your hand from that hot cup of whatever. The devil is in the details. If you're going to celebrate diversity, let's do it respectfully.

The next day after learning about Zarf, I was driving west on Sunset headed home when I saw a billboard that reads, "HIV is a transgender disease. Get tested." And yes, the emphasis was in the original. The background features women of all sorts. I get that the city (yes, it was put up by the city's AIDS Council) is trying to target women since most of the other billboards regarding HIV/AIDS awareness feature men, but why use "transgender"? I have never before seen "transgender" used to refer to both men and women. "Transgender" is a confusing enough word as it is. And now your images say one thing, but the text reads another. It's potentially damaging and stigmitizing. What the hell were they thinking?