Putting Lipstick on a Pig

The origins of the expression I quote here are long and varied, but the message is the same:  You can put lipstick (or perfume, or a bow) on a pig, but it will still be a pig.  Some things cannot be disguised as something else...as in a wolf in sheep's clothing.  As in not being able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.  Or...and this is probably the same thought with a softer connotation...a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.  (Thank you, William Shakespeare!)

I give you Bruce Jenner.  Bruce Jenner, the 70s Olympic athlete who won it all.  Good looking fellow with the world as his oyster, who married Kris Kardashian Jenner and became part of the reality TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians.  Bruce Jenner who, after 20-some years of marriage, divorced Kris Jenner and...uh...disappeared as a man.  He is now a she, or wants to be accepted as such. The name is now Caitlyn Jenner, and a picture of him/her has been published on the cover of Vanity Fair, along with a two-hour TV interview with a noted television journalist, all in the past month. The media hype has been pretty dramatic.

I have followed the story, and I've tried to understand.  Really, I have.  I am as liberal as they come, politically and philosophically.  I totally comprehend homosexuality.  I understand that sexual attraction is probably hard-wired into people at birth--not necessarily just a choice.  But I am struggling to figure out the whole transgender thing.  Picking a sex partner is personal, but picking a gender when one has already been assigned at conception just seems outrageous to me.  If you want to be a woman but were born a man, why not just dress like a woman and act like a woman? Surgically altering the genitalia renders it ineffective in function.  There cannot be a "normal" sexual relationship thereafter.  It's all just play-acting.  I don't view it as immoral.  I just view it as vain, expensive, and stupid. Caitlyn Jenner considers herself heterosexual.  What does that mean?  If she has become a woman and is still attracted to women, does that make her a lesbian?  She says no.  Please explain to me how that works.

When I was a kid, I can remember telling people that I was supposed to be boy...and I was a bit of a tomboy in those days...but I never, ever considered that I was born in the wrong body.  Transgender wasn't even a glint in the eye of society in those days!  I mean, how can you change what is?  In the real world, I know two transgender people--one of whom is a pseudo-family member--and I have to tell you that "she" makes for an ugly woman.  Caitlyn Jenner isn't exactly ugly, but she isn't going to cut it as a woman, either.  I wish her well.  To me, however, she will always be a man playing dress-up. Bruce Jenner in drag.  Lipstick on a pig.