Transsexual Miss World contest aims to boost awareness

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Transsexual Miss World contest aims to boost awareness

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01 November,2009 07:24 pm

Shimmering in a tight gold evening gown, a Japanese television host wept and called for greater tolerance as she was crowned the world's most beautiful transsexual at a pageant in Thailand. Haruna Ai, 37, beat off stiff competition from 20 other glamorous contestants at the Miss International Queen 2009 who came to the Thai beach resort of Pattaya from as far as Brazil and the United States. The contest, which was called off last year because of political turmoil in Thailand, is taken just as seriously as more traditional pageants in a nation famed for its sexual tolerance. Millions of Thais watched live on television late Saturday as the statuesque beauties -- all of them born men -- strutted their stuff at Tiffany's Show Pattaya, billed as the world's largest transsexual cabaret. Japan's Ai won 10,000 dollars, a year's stay at a Pattaya hotel and a 500-dollar surgical voucher after judges picked her over runners-up Karngsadal Wongdusadeekul from Thailand and Daniela Marques of Brazil. While the audience may have whooped and cheered raucously, contestants and organisers said there was a serious side to the pageant -- boosting public awareness of transgender issues.Transsexualism is a condition in which an individual identifies with a physical sex different from the one they were born with. A medical diagnosis can be made if a person experiences discomfort as a result of a desire to be a member of the opposite sex, or if a person experiences impaired functioning or distress as a result of that gender identification. Transsexualism is stigmatized in many parts of the world but has become more widely known in Western culture in the mid to late 20th century, concurrently with the sexual revolution and the development of sexual reassignment surgeries.