By By Mackenzie Grisdale
Originally posted on
New Media Journalism.
If Kristen Worley, a Canadian track cyclist, qualifies for the 2008 Olympics at time trials this spring, she'll become the first openly transgendered Olympian in history.
For Worley, 39, it's not just a personal triumph. Sure, she's made sacrifices, like taking time away from her family to train for hours each week. But each stroke of the pedals is worth it if it helps society respect those, like her, who were born another sex, she said.
Transgendered people are born with genitalia that don't match the gender they feel they are in their minds. The American Psychiatric Association calls that mismatch Gender Identity Disorder.
Some transgendered people, including Worley, decide to have a sex change operation and hormone therapy to treat what they see as the conflict between their bodies and minds.
Worley calls that process "transitioning." She also uses the term "transitioned" instead of "transgendered," because it refers only to people who have completed surgery and now have genitalia that match the sex they always perceived themselves to be, she said.
Nobody who's admitted to going through that surgery has ever become an Olympian, said Dr. Myron Genel, an endocrinologist and professor emeritus at the Yale University School of Medicine.
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