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The disqualification won Talackova widespread sympathy and raised the question of whether the pageant has the right to decide who is female. Her change of gender was hardly a secret before the event because she had competed in the 2010 Tiffany Miss International Queen Competition for transgendered and transsexual women in Pattaya, Thailand. In a video interview for that pageant, she said she had lived her life as a female since age 4, began hormone therapy at 14 and changed sex at 19. "I regard myself as a woman with a history," she said. Connie McNaughton, Miss World Canada in 1984 and first runner-up for the world crown, had called the decision outdated and discriminatory. Professor Patrizia Gentile of Ottawa's Carleton University, who did a dissertation on beauty pageants, equated the ban with the exclusion of blacks and Jews from pageants in earlier times. From the conservative side of Canadian society, Gwen Landolt, national vice president of REAL Women of Canada, said the pageant was simply being realistic in barring Talackova.
[Associated
Press;
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