First Timers Club

"We sent an alert on New Year's Eve that one of our board members got a federal appointment," Keisling says. "We never said she was the first [transgender appointee] ... Dylan wasn't ducking it [either] -- we didn't mention [him] because he's not on our board."

Any inaccuracies should be blamed on a 24-hour news cycle desperate to tell a memorable story, according to Keisling. "[The media] almost demanded that Amanda be the first, even when neither Amanda or anyone else told them she was the first."

Autumn Sandeen, who blogs on transgender issues for PamsHouseBlend.com, says Simpson's gender helped push her story forward: "If Dylan's story came out first, people still wouldn't care because he's a trans man, and trans men are not looked at as 'dangerous' in the way trans women are."

Gender politics aside, calling someone the "first" anything is inherently thorny. That's especially true when referring to transgender trailblazers, many of who would prefer to simply be thought of as a man or a woman, rather than a transgender man or woman. Keisling says there were actually two transgender men -- Kellan Baker and Ejay Jack -- who interned for short stints this summer in the White House. And Sandeen points out that way back in 1996, President Clinton named Lynn Conway, a transgender woman, to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors.

"There are a lot of trans people who are out, but not out in government, just as there are gay people in Washington who [aren't out]," Keisling says. "There's a difference between not wanting people to know, not mentioning it, and hiding it. There are probably people in the government hiding it."