Inquirer dot net
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=98045
By Belinda A. Aquino

It was as a doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa that I came to know Rommel very well. His late mother Anita I knew back in Manila. He was all of 230 pounds but over time I could notice a gradual change in his appearance. He had embarked on a regimen of female hormone pills and estrogen shots.

"However, in some cases, complete TS transitions "fail to meet very unrealistic expectations, and way too late the transitioner may realize that undergoing sex reassignment surgery (SRS) was a BIG mistake." Among the "regretters" is Renee Richards, who was born a male but transitioned as a female via surgery in 1975 at age 40 and became a famous tennis player. She wished she had not done it, but too late. She realized she would always be seen as a transsexual and never as a real woman that she had earlier hoped to become."

I remember reading that Renee Richards doesn't regret the actual transition and surgery, but regrets the forcing the issue in order to play tennis professionally and thus making herself into a spectacle and from then on always being a 'transsexual' in the eyes of the public.

Karen

Renée's problem looks to me like old-fashioned privileged affluent white male entitlement attitude which she didn't quite grow out of. She grew up pre-feminism and I doubt she ever realistically grasped what womanhood means to women of today.

richards is on the record for pretty much telling late transitioners to not do it, take whatever meds you need to cope but not to go forward with transition and surgery.

i live entirely as a 'normal girl' dont ask, dont tell works fine with me!
love how the article is HE till grs, then she after... thats not cool...
R

I think that the writer was relaying their coming to terms with the transition from one to the other and highlighted it by the pronoun usage.

Quote from: LostInTime on November 02, 2007, 11:33:56 AM
richards is on the record for pretty much telling late transitioners to not do it, take whatever meds you need to cope but not to go forward with transition and surgery.

Yeah, and that "advice" goes beyond stupid, arrogant, and ignorant--it's downright evil.  >