Newsweek’s Profile of Transgendered – Racist, Sexist?

In a cover story titled “Rethinking) Gender,” Newsweek magazine announces – “A growing number of Americans are taking their private struggles with their identities into the public realm. How those who believe they were born with the wrong bodies are forcing us to re-examine what it means to be male and female.”

This Newsweek web link at –

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18618908/displaymode/1107//s/1/framenumber/1

contains a photo gallery of fourteen transgendered individuals – persons who have changed their public sexual identities from male to female or vice versa.

Of interest :

11 of the 14 are male-to-female gender reassignments.
3 of 14 are female-to-male conversions.

The ethnicity of the persons portrayed looks like:

7 Hispanics
3 African-Americans
3 Whites
1 Asian

Of the Hispanics, all 7 are male-to-female reassignments.
Of the African-Americans, 2 of 3 are M > F.
Of the Whites, 2 of 3 are F > M.
The lone Asian is M > F.

So, the obvious question — other than whether Newsweek is racist and sexist in its profiling of transgendered persons – is how come Latina women don’t want to become men? (Isn’t Charo still alive on stage in Las Vegas?)

Also interesting is that there were no (acknowledged) Muslim transgendered persons profiled.

Most sadly (you be the judge), only one or two of these tragically gender-reassigned individuals present a credible or attractive simulation of the opposite gender they pretend to be.

The daily performance of the masquerade must be exhausting. (They all look a bit tired and stressed out….)

Newsweak… indeed.