Controversy is raging over the beautiful model Isis Tsunami who appears in the TV reality series America’s Next Top Model. Not because she swore or criticised the Pope. But because she’s a transsexual.Some of the other contestants say she's merely a drag queen who shouldn’t be on the show. One TV presenter openly laughed at her and discussed her genitalia. Others have talked about an audience-grabbing publicity stunt. But many are lauding her inclusion on the show as a sign of enlightened attitudes.
Many years after the first transsexuals appeared, they're still the subject of heated debate and have never been totally accepted as ordinary men or women. They're regarded by many as a strange mixture of the two.
I must admit to being politically incorrect on this issue. While I have no problem with men adopting a female identity and behaviour (or vice versa), or even becoming buxom supermodels, I’m bemused by someone wanting to be treated as a genuine woman on the same basis as a person actually born a woman.
The fact is that a man is always anatomically and biologically a man however much his body has been changed to resemble the opposite sex. He may look like a totally convincing woman but he is not. Which is why a lot of women have trouble accepting a transsexual as one of them, or are even overtly hostile*.
I’m even more bemused by the increasing legal recognition of a new sexual identity, with the issuing of new birth certificates, passports, marriage certificates etc. Of course it makes life easier for the person concerned but at the end of the day it’s a denial of physical facts.
Don’t get me wrong. I totally accept the reality of transsexual feelings, the conviction that despite your physical sex you’ve always felt yourself to be the opposite sex and as the cliché has it, you’re trapped in the wrong body. That fundamental sense of mis-identity seems undeniable. But it’s another thing entirely to want the world to accept that you ARE the opposite sex.
I don’t see any obvious answer to this dilemma. A transsexual doesn’t want to be seen as a drag queen or a mock-female, she wants to be taken as the real thing. But if she ISN’T the real thing, then what?
And now I expect a hail of criticism to rain down on me….
* See in particular “The Transsexual Empire” by Janice Raymond
