I am not normally interested in organizations which objectify women, as I think the Miss Universe pageant does. But it is a reflection of our world culture, and shows what human beings think is beautiful. Jenna Talackova, a woman who was assigned male at birth, has been banned from competing in the Miss Universe Canada pageant because of an outdated and completely pointless rule stating that competitors must be "natural born females."

Not only is this rule discriminatory, it also flies in the face of what we know about transgender people. Both trans women and cis (non-trans) women are born with a very specific brain patterning that cannot be changed after a certain period in fetal development. The same is true of trans men and cis men. Transgender women are born female, because their brains are born female--the rest of the body is just a shell for an identity, after all. It's time that this pageant, which represents how we as humans see women skin-deep, to realize that bodies are less important than brains, and they need to catch up to the times.