Sports reporter to undergo sex change

I've known Mike for a lot of years -- not exceptionally well, but we've had a few beers together at events and stuff like that. Great guy, despite the affinity for soccer. Guess he'll be a great gal now. I wish him/her (this gets awkward, huh?) the best. Took some serious balls to write that column. Ironically enough.

 

Good thing she doesn't work at Sports Illustrated - she'd be transferred to the women's sports beat when she comes back.

 

Zoe - thanks for your courage to post here. And it is COURAGE, despite what other bigots (like Zagoshe) might think.
If you're born that way, it's only normal to do what you and others are doing.

 

She-he wasn't born that way -- she-he just told you she-he paid 100,000 bucks to be that way.

 

Did you not pay any attention or are you just thick?
Christine and Zoe both said their minds were wired that way from as early as they can remember. They paid $100,000 so their bodies can fit with their minds, like 90 percent of humans already do.
If my mind didn't fit my body, I'd certainly pay 100 grand so it could.
They're just being honest with themselves, and you're just a bigot.

 

You're not all that bright, are you?

In your first post--the one where you talked about how it will be fun to watch her career blow up--you prove the very point that you are attempting to disprove. That it takes courage to come out as a transsexual. Why? Because voices such as your own make it very difficult for GLBT people to thrive in this society. Faggot is the last slur that still is defended (even when it isn't defendable).

And that's all the time I am going to waste of you (and I would suggest that it's all the time anyone should waste on you) because you clearly are too pig-headed to listen to anything that anyone else has to say. You must be a hell of a journalist.

Now run along...isn't Rush on or something?

 

I'm on four days off, and got three calls today on the golf course about this.

This is a good person we're talking about -- a very good person.

I will say one negative thing: That anybody who said this was self-serving is an idiot -- you know who you are, of course.

Yes, of course, it's self-serving to tell readers who have been looking at one byline for 20 years that it's now going to be another byline.

And sure, it's just like changing beat writers. Exactly the same. Routine. We do it all the time.

Sorry, I don't have the time or energy to bother with the sarcasm font. Geez.

Interestingly, I've never felt better about some of you here -- and worse about some of the others. It's quite a thread that can do that.

I'm off into life for a few days. See ya next week.

 

I've known Mike many years, and I'm sure that if he's doing this, it's not for fame or money or anything else. It's because he needs to.

As far as her career blowing up, the good news is that most people are pretty understanding, and with her talent, Christine has a long career ahead of her.

I've shared beers with Mike and I'd be proud to do so with Christine.

Good luck, Christine.

 

Zoe, thanks for coming on here and answering our questions, as sophomoric as they may seem to you. It is interesting to learn new things and I know I may sound silly but I do have a question. You started out by saying you're not a sports journalist. Are you a journalist at all? If not, what is your line and has your unique situation caused you any problems?

I'll be interested in any information but I don't think I can add anything more here since I really don't know anything. And please forgive us for being less than up on this topic.

 

Example: http://www.isna.org/faq/reimer
At age 6, when I first went to school, it was obvious I wasn't a boy. I didn't think like they did. I didn't know what I was, really. But by age 10, I'd chosen my name (Zoe) and was losing sleep worrying about how ugly I'd be when I turned into a girl at puberty. It came as a terrible shock to find out that boys and girls differed at birth. I thought the differentiation only happened in the early teens.

Most of us have hormones, brain, genitalia, and body all consistent, all in alignment. 98.3% of us do, anyway. But some of us have male chromosomes but a female body (and some in this situation have given birth), some have female chromosomes but a male body (and some in this situation have been fathers), there are mosaics with some male chromosomed cells and some female chromosomed cells, the Kleinfelters (47xxy) who are usually normally male but sometimes female instead, and so on and so on.

http://www.harrybenjaminsyndrome-info.org/
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TS-II.html#anchor616725
These reference a number of rather abstruse medical papers, e.g. "Male-to-Female Transsexuals Have Female Neuron Numbers in a Limbic Nucleus"

http://forum.darwincentral.org/viewtopic.php?t=1532
Has embedded in it many URLs to information

A good summary of the evidence in 2003 is at
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/DeakinLRev/2004/22.html#Heading437

This was the Australian Family Court's assessment of the expert testimony before it.
The traditional analysis that they are "psychologically" transsexual does not explain how this state came about. For example, there seems to be no suggestion in the evidence that their psychological state can be explained by reference to circumstances of their upbringing. In that sense, the brain sex theory does not seem to be competing with other explanations, but rather is providing a possible explanation of what is otherwise inexplicable
...
But I am satisfied that the evidence now is inconsistent with the distinction formerly drawn between biological factors, meaning genitals, chromosomes and gonads, and merely "psychological factors", and on this basis distinguishing between cases of inter-sex (incongruities among biological factors) and transsexualism (incongruities between biology and psychology)’.

http://cloud.prohosting.com/benjsynd/benjamin/causes.html
Has a good discussion of causation too.

http://cs.anu.edu.au/~Zoe.Brain/is_ts_hr.html
Just summarises and re-capitulates what the other sites say in a simple form.

The definitive encyclopedic work on the subject is the Praeger Handbook of Transsexuality , ISBN 978-0275991760

 

Thanks for sharing Pat