Life, liberty, and the pursuit of new genitals
by Mad Dog

    Take sex change operations. It used to be that if you wanted one you had to run off to another country and have it done at your own expense, like in 1952 when George Jorgensen became Christine and Ben Arthur became Bea. But it’s much easier these days. All you have to do is sashay down to NaughtyBits-R-Us and tell them you work for the city of San Francisco or are enlisted in the British Army and they’ll reassign your sex faster than you can say, “I’d like one of those and three of those. No, better make it two of those.”

    That’s right. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors recently voted to expand the list of perks city employees receive. As if vacations, personal holidays, sick leave, medical insurance, and all the pens they can fit in their pockets weren’t enough, the city’s going to start picking up the bill for their sex change operations. The board figured that since the medical insurance program already covered removing warts, moles, and hangnails, to be fair it should pay to have anything you want removed.

    While this isn’t surprising coming from San Francisco, when the British Army decides to help you change your sex you know a trend is afoot. Or maybe the trend is a vagina. According to The Sunday Times (motto: “We can’t make up stories any better than this.”), the army is shelling out the taxpayer’s hard-earned pounds so five men can receive hormone therapy, which is the standard procedure before having a sex change operation.

    The reason they do this—hormone therapy, not foot the bill—is to see if the woman-to-be can handle having PMS before making this change of life. Just kidding. Actually hormone therapy is needed so doctors can make jokes like “Do you know how to make a hormone? Tease her for hours.” British doctors idolize Milton Berle.

    Contrast this with the United States, where the top brass is still arguing about whether female soldiers should wear shoes, be allowed out of the kitchen, and sleep in the same army as men. How embarrassing to find out that England is more on the cutting edge than we are, though the truth is it could be less that they’re so open-minded and more that they flat out need to recruit soldiers and someone decided that “The Army—isn’t it time for a change?” would make a good campaign slogan.

    Not surprisingly, the 20-year-old, 5’11” nursing student denies it. She’s shown pageant officials her birth certificate, but apparently not the goods or this whole thing would be resolved by now—I’m sure a doctor could clear this up pretty quickly. But it may not matter, since the rule that contestants have to be a “natural born woman” doesn’t go into effect until next year. At the moment all the rules say is that contestants must be “female citizens”, be able to smile non-stop for 72 hours without their lips adhering to their teeth, and manage to answer questions like “What color is an orange?” while four rolls of duct tape hold their breasts in place to maximize cleavage while wiping out jiggling. Luckily they don’t have to answer the questions correctly.

    If this trend continues, businesses everywhere will start adding “sex change” as a covered operation under their employee health plan, right alongside appendectomy, heart transplant, and removing the forceps the doctor left in the last time. And why not? It will save money in the long run, especially if they’re smart and view it as a form of birth control. After all, when it comes to procreation the new sex organs are as useful as a Cracker Jack prize. Hey, what did you expect for free?

©2001 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country. Read them while waiting to be reimbursed for your sex change operation.