Transgendered Persons in Beauty Pageants?

Recently, a Facebook-friend posted a news article indicating that the Miss Universe pageant would allow transgendered persons to compete with women. I'm against this, and I urge you, dear reader, to give me a chance here and read through the logic on this. It's more nuanced than you might think.

First, let me establish that I have nothing against transgendered persons, and I fully-support the rights of the transgender community to be recognized as their newly-assigned gender under the law. Let's get that out of the way before anyone accuses me of being a discriminatory arsehat. :)

The reason I am against transgenders in a *visual* beauty pageant is because hormonally, most transgendered women developed as *men*, and their bodies are sculpted this way—from muscle mass, to muscle insertion points, body fat percentage, lipid layer distribution, facial characteristics, etc. If we're going to have a contest comparing the visual appeal of one woman to another, I think all the contestants should be women who developed as women, with female attributes for an equal contest. Women and men are simply not built the same way, and there are far more differences than genitalia and secondary-sexual characteristics alone.

Just as we don't have men in female beauty contests, I think it's out of place to allow those who developed as men and became women later in life to compete in the same visual-appeal contest. Similar reasoning is used which prohibits transgendered women from competing with naturally-developed women in sporting competitions, where there's real fame and fortune to be had and yet, the men turned women have real advantages due to developmental physiology, greater height, fast-twitch muscles, hip-to-thigh angles (running), etc. There is a reason the fastest men always outrun the fastest women, and it's entirely attributable to physiology.

Transgendered men illustrate this the other way. How well would a female-to-male transgender be able to compete with men in a contest of beauty, to keep it fair? Would the male transgender have the correct 'male' body type, not just with genitalia but the way a male body develops? This example might make things more obvious.

Legally, being male or female is as simple as genitalia and the brain-chemistry that causes one to experience gender-dysmorphia after obligatory psychological-testing and living as a transvestite to be 'sure' one is committed. Someone who is male or female from birth is sculpted by hormone-driven developmental processes from puberty. How many transsexuals have had  this operation before puberty and with proper hormonal intervention at what most would consider an age bordering on child-abuse, or before a child's sexuality is fully-developed? We humans notice these subtle developmental cues in males and females. These contests aren't just about being male or female, but being *specimens* of each gender. Every detail matters and is ostensibly being-judged. For many, having a transgender in a female beauty contest seems wrong, and it can be difficult to verbalize why.

I just don't see how allowing someone who developed as a man and became a woman later qualifies one to compete with women in beauty contests anymore than we'd allow a transgendered female to compete in Olympic sports against women. It's the same reason we don't put women and men together in Olympic contests or in a UFC cage. We could also make the argument that males, who are generally taller and with less bodyfat, hold an unfair advantage with regard to silhouette, form, clothing, etc. In the Trump-owned Miss Universe competition, elective surgery is 'discouraged', so why would they allow someone to enter the contest who had a whole gender-reassignment surgery? Wouldn't it be similar to a female who's had every elective procedure done?

The reality here is in-conflict with gender-assignment law. We acknowledge the difference in sporting competitions because there are real developmental and muscular-skeletal differences between developmentally male and female athletes and we should remain consistent with other contests—even in 'beauty'.

 I would also be ok with eliminating 'beauty' contests altogether, but that's a different blog for another day. ;)

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