Boxer to undergo sex change

[Snoriega27]

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/20...e_surgery.html

[TomSelis]

LOL

That mugshot...I mean picture, looked like a creature from star trek.

no way!

[alyssats]

i taught it was about the famous ladyboy Thai boxer

[Nowhere]

I respect the decision made, but somehow I don't think this is exactly going to help work towards helping the rest of the world understand gender identity mismatches as the medical condition it is.

The current state of the person IS about as masculine as a human being can be (not that it should matter, but it's just fodder for the media)...

[Justawannabe]

That's actually been one of the issues I think with acceptance. People continue to believe that there are those who should transition and those who should not due to outward appearance or past behavior. We would never say that a person should not get cancer treatment because they have smoked in the past, though we might think that smoking was not a good decision. Similar issue here, the soldier/boxer/football player is just showing off denial or survival instincts, a bit like someone taping up their own fingers when they get broken. It's fine, they tell us until the pain gets to bad.

Just saying that if we want it to be viewed as a medical condition rather than a lifestyle choice, someone like this, who has done everything possible to be as male as you can get, SHOULD be one of the poster children. The young, sexually appealing, very passable trans person makes it seem like it's just another choice someone might make, rather than a desperately needed medical therapy.

[Silcc69]

Ewwwww

[rockabilly]

i taught it was about the famous ladyboy Thai boxer

That's what i thought too.

[phobun]

The current state of the person IS about as masculine as a human being can be (not that it should matter, but it's just fodder for the media)...

Probably a turn-on for indeed.

[Nowhere]

That's actually been one of the issues I think with acceptance. People continue to believe that there are those who should transition and those who should not due to outward appearance or past behavior. We would never say that a person should not get cancer treatment because they have smoked in the past, though we might think that smoking was not a good decision. Similar issue here, the soldier/boxer/football player is just showing off denial or survival instincts, a bit like someone taping up their own fingers when they get broken. It's fine, they tell us until the pain gets to bad.

Just saying that if we want it to be viewed as a medical condition rather than a lifestyle choice, someone like this, who has done everything possible to be as male as you can get, SHOULD be one of the poster children. The young, sexually appealing, very passable trans person makes it seem like it's just another choice someone might make, rather than a desperately needed medical therapy.

Um, no.

When the person looks as unpassable as possible, they look as much of a sexual deviant aka "PERVERT" to the rest of the world as possible, not someone with a medical condition. And, as we all know, perverts are seen as people who choose to get their rocks off on, whatever, further confusing gender identity with sexuality (and implying "choice" in it, when there is none).

You are as wrong as it gets.

We need more clear examples like Kim Petras out there so that is is considered to be a standard, treatable medical condition, covered by insurance and dealt with, at the right time, by puberty, so that people with incongruent gender identity can have the ability to be who they truly are, without the damage of puberty.

And, of course, so that you don't have the current situation, where many/most are forced into poverty and prostitution, given most most families throw them out, most jobs find a way to fire them, and the cost is rather astronomical on your own.

Would this boxer doing this right now, if it was considered a standard medical condition? Absolutely not. She would have simply lived as a woman the majority of her entire life, close to how most natal women do, every day.

[SarahG]

Just saying that if we want it to be viewed as a medical condition rather than a lifestyle choice, someone like this, who has done everything possible to be as male as you can get, SHOULD be one of the poster children. The young, sexually appealing, very passable trans person makes it seem like it's just another choice someone might make, rather than a desperately needed medical therapy.

Only this type of story is precisely why it is viewed as a lifestyle choice.

The general public's views on gender related conditions (transsexuality and the various intersexed conditions) has never been about "how people look."

The reason why people think its a "lifestyle choice" is not because of how passable someone is (or isn't), but because of how many stories there are -just like this one- painting it up to be some impulsive, sudden process.

Just take a look at the title of the article; "Boxer Rob Newbiggin to become 'Mercedes' after sex-change surgery." What do we have? The implication that this big masculine boxer will simply go away for a weekend, get a "sex change surgery" only to wake up to a new name, a new life, and new genitalia... without any otherwise changes.

It would be hard to find a more fictitious depiction of the transitioning process. All this article is missing is a picture of her putting on makeup at home, and/or pictures of her going clothes shopping at a mall.

My problem here has nothing to do with the fact that she lived half her life as a masculine man in a masculine field- if this were an article about a trans girl transitioning at 18 with feminine hobbies the article would still stink. What about showing how many years she suffered from dealing with gender related issues? What about talking about how old she was when she first started realizing that something is wrong? Instead of showing this to be a life long problem we get this single sentence:

"Newbiggin, born in Pennsylvania in 1964, had the anatomy of a male but high levels of the female hormone estrogen, which mean he could not be definitively classified as either sex."

Followed by the rest of the article making it look like she then was adopted, lived a masculine life as if everything was normal & un-noteworthy until this sudden moment of "omgwtfbbq I am married with kids and work as a boxer and now I am going to go get this sex change surgery and become a mother."

For fuck's shake the whole article doesn't even use the word "intersexed" once, there is no explanation given for the endocrine issues in childhood, pronoun after pronoun is incorrect (presumably only because she hasn't had the surgery yet to bring about that kind of over night change) and then to top it of the article stresses how these decades of masculine experience will be replaced by an envisioned "...future in modeling, painting, and interior design." Stereotypical much?