Michael Phelps’ ‘Girlfriend’s Previous Genitalia Not Important

News broke today that Michael Phelps’ self-proclaimed girlfriend was born with ambiguous genitalia, and the reaction of the news media has been as if a nuclear bomb just exploded. However, his girlfriend’s previous ambiguous physical gender is entirely meaningless and holds about as much significance as a person being blond but having been born with (gasp!) black hair. It is simply not important. Phelps’ girlfriend is a woman now, and so she is a woman. Period.

If Phelps’ “girlfriend” has been born with a cleft foot, would the headlines blare “Michael Phelps’ Self-Proclaimed Girlfriend Was Born With Twisted Feet”? If she was born with an eye condition and needed corrective surgery, would the headline shout about that procedure?

No, they would not.

It is for this precise reason that Michael Phelps’ girlfriend’s previous genitalia are not important: because they were physical issues that needed to be corrected. That is how she views it, and that is how everyone should view it. It is as insignificant as if she had appendix surgery or had her tonsils removed when she was a child. The removal of her ambiguous genitalia and the corrective surgical restoration of her current genitalia has no bearing on who she is as a person, her relationship (or lack thereof) with Michael Phelps, or anything else about her life.

Her previous genitalia do not impact most things about her life now, and they certainly do not affect ours. She says that she never felt as though she were a man and has always considered herself a woman. That is how she should be considered by everyone.

The Daily Mail reports that Taylor Lianne Chandler, who says that she has a romantic relationship with the celebrated Olympian, is scared that Phelps will leave her now that she has admitted her previous genitalia were ambiguous. She says it never came up in the course of their romance. Why she has chosen to make it a public issue now is entirely unclear.

Headlines that are screaming out that Chandler was born a “man” are completely inaccurate and show a lack of understanding about physical gender issues. When a journalist writes about an intersex person, that journalist should be knowledgeable about the subject. Chandler was not born as a man; she was born with mixed reproductive organs. She had both male and female anatomical parts. Since her gender identity is female, she had the
unnecessary male parts removed and surgically corrected.

As a society, we should really move beyond this childish obsession with people’s genitals. The physical structure of a person’s genital region is not related to his or her gender identity. Chandler feels that she is a woman and now her genitals happen to match her gender identity. Her previous physical “parts” do not matter and are not important. Hopefully, Michael Phelps will feel the same way.