Miss Universe Canada officials have banned 23-year-old transsexual Jenna Talackova, who was born a boy, from competing in the pageant finals to be held in Toronto, Canada in May, 2012.
Talackova, from Vancouver, was one of sixty-five women chosen to compete in the contest, which is owned by Donald Trump.
The Daily Mail reports that Denis Davila, national director of Miss Universe Canada, said every contestant must be a "naturally born female."
Talackova felt that she was a girl by age four, started hormone therapy at fourteen and had sex reassignment surgery at nineteen.
She's previously competed in both transsexual and women's beauty pageants.
Talackova told the National Post: "All I can say is that they disqualified me because I'm not 'natural born.' [That] doesn't make sense because since I was conscious, I always felt this way."
After being kicked out of the pageant, Talackova tweeted: "I'm disqualified, however I'm not giving up. I'm not going to just let them disqualify me over discrimination."
Online support for Talackova is growing. People have started a petition, on Change.org, demanding that she be allowed to compete.
Perhaps the rule exists because the effect of the sex change on pageants is similar to the effect of steroids on sports? Otherwise, this seems senseless to me, even though I find the procedure disturbing.
I checked it out and it seems they do allow plastic surgery for their contestants; and if they include that, then surely they can't have anything against hormone supplements. That's the only reason I can think of that a transwoman would be excluded from the contest. So yeah.. I agree with you, it's senseless. I don't think she has an unfair advantage. If anything, she started at a disadvantage, though she certainly doesn't have one now.
It's not so disturbing to me, though. Sure, it can't have been easy on her to be born with a female brain and a male body; but look at her now! She was lucky. Her parents recognized it when she was four, and helped her out as she grew; and she didn't have to try to re-feminize a body that had been exposed to the male puberty hormones and all of that. What's more truly you--your mind, or your body? And if you start out with a mind of one gender and a body of the other, changing the body to match just makes so much more sense than trying to tamper with someone's brain.
Interesting argument. I believe it was a fluke that her original gender was discovered. If not for that, how would they ever know? I don't want oddballs or freaks entering the contests because liberals insist that they should all have the opportunity, but if someone like this can legitimately compete, then I don't see a problem. I say "don't ask, don't tell".
She sure looks like a woman to me. I'd love to see where in the Miss Universe rules it actually says "naturally born female". I bet they just wrote that in.
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