Question:
 
Thursday September 01, 2005 a documentary premired on Home Box Office (HBO)*. The documentary was titled "Taxi Cabs Confessions", the popular award winning show where passengers in New York, NY spill their inner most secrets unknowingly in front serveral HBO hidden cameras.

About 4:58 am a couple was taking a taxi ride to their home, in an undisclosed location, and they began to reveal their "sexual fetish": the guy was a guy and the female was born a male. A person who practice cross-dressing behavior and use hormones to alter their physical characteristics (e.g. voice, breast) is known as a transvestite.

While viewing the one hour documentary, I thought to get your opinion on the matter. So my question is, if a male undergo a sex change (surgical operation to recieve breasts and a vagina which requires at least one full year of living the life of a female and about 40,000 dollars), should he be concidered a male or a female?


REFERENCES
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, Transvestic fetishism (St. Petersburg, FL: Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 2005).

Fact-O Rama, The Cost Of Changing Your Sex (Alexandria, VA: CNS News - Cybercast news Service, 2005).

Taxi Cabs Confessions, Synopsis (New York, NY: Home Box Office, Inc. (HBO) - A Time Warner Company, 2005). * This website may contain adult content.

Christina Breda Antoniades, Understanding What "Transgender" Means: An Expert's Perspective (Silver Spring, MD: Discovery Health - Discovery Communications, Inc., 2005).
The Prison Hospital

Prisoner: Look here, doctor! You've already removed my spleen, tonsils, adenoids, and one of my kidneys. I only came to see if you could get me out of this place!

Doctor: I am, bit by bit.





Answer:
My opinion is a male is a male and a female is a female.

If a boy is born, grows into a man then (due to mental reasons) wishes to have drugs to grow breasts and his penis cut off/turned inside out to make it "Look" a bit like a Vagina on a female would look, also dressing up in womans cloths.

Then, he is exactly that.

He's a man who has taken some drugs, had an operation and wears womens cloths.

There's no beating around the issue, He's still a man who had medical work done. And nothing you can do can change that.

If some people wish to pretend that, as he LOOKS like a women then he is a woman, then that is of course their choice to view him that way. Just because some people choose this view does not make him a woman.