Post by nehketah on Aug 30, 2005 18:47:02 GMT -5
I have been hearing from many people that the hip-hop artist Ciara used to be a man and had to have a sex change. Even more, I heard that she stated it on nation televison!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There has been rumor around the internet that hip-hop artist, Ciara, was once a hermaphrodite until the age of 11, when she had sugery to remove her male "appendages."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have heard a rumor that the R&B star, Ciara, was born male. That he/she decided that he wanted to be a female at the age of 5, and his mother let him grow his hair out. I was told that he had surgury, so he no longer has a penis. and apparently he/she was on Oprah having an in depth converstation about it, along with discussing it in a magazine article.
Origins: Ciara Harris, an 18-year-old who performs under the sole name of Ciara, has been dubbed the First Lady of "Crunk & B," a genre of music described as a grinding, dancefloor-friendly alternative to R&B. Her 2004 album, "Goodies," topped the charts, and she has been nominated at the 19th annual Soul Train Music Awards in four categories, including best R&B/soul single, female ("Goodies") and best R&B/soul or rap new artist.
She is beautiful and talented. And someone has tied a nasty rumor to her.
We first heard this scuttlebutt about her being born a male in January 2005; it has since fallen on our ears in a number of forms:
The singer came into the world as a male, but somewhere along the way either she or her parents decided she should become a girl, with surgery performed on her to bring about this transformation.
She was born male, but a botched circumcision did irreparable harm to her manly parts, so her parents opted to have what was left of her made into a girl.
She started life as an intersexual, a person of mixed genders. Once again, a surgical solution was sought on her behalf, but in this version of the whisper, it was to correct her body to being wholly one gender rather than a mixture of the two.
(NOTE: 'Intersexual' is the preferred medical term for persons of ambiguous gender, replacing 'hermaphrodite.' Follow the link provided in the "Additional Information" section of this page for more information on intersexuality.)
She voiced this startling disclosure on national television, with The Oprah Winfrey Show often named as the venue in which she made this revelation.
Ciara's father serves in the U.S. military, so her family moved from Army post to Army post during her childhood, living in Germany, New York, California, Arizona, and Nevada, before finally settling in Atlanta. Ergo, claims that her parents just opted to have a girl child crafted from the male child the stork delivered should be viewed with skepticism, in light of the cost of such procedures and the relatively low pay accorded those in the armed forces.
The assertion that Ciara was on The Oprah Winfrey Show is false; we can find no record of her having been a guest on that show. Many urban legends which feature a shocking revelation being made on a TV show name Oprah's as the one where it was voiced (e.g., designer Liz Claiborne confides she doesn't design for African-American women because "their hips are too big," designer Tommy Hilfiger states "If I knew that blacks and Asians were going to wear my clothes, I would have never designed them," the CEO of Procter & Gamble admits his company tithes ten per cent of its revenues to the Church of Satan). We haven't figured out why this is, other than Oprah Winfrey seeming like the kind of person one could tell anything to.
The singer herself has denied the rumor. The New York Daily News quoted Ciara on this subject:
R&B sensation Ciara just wants everyone to know: She's all woman. "You know what's funny? The rumor that I used to be a man," she told us at the launch party for Vibe Vixen magazine at Frederick's.
"They said Oprah said that on her show," she laughed. "I've never been on Oprah in my life — we all know I have years before I go on Oprah, so come on!"
Muddle-headed confusion between the songstress Ciara and a transsexual in Ireland who shares the same name may well have worked to create this rumor. Ireland's Ciara was born in 1968 (which is about 20 years before the gal who was to become the popular Crunk & B singer). The Emerald Isle's Ciara came into this world male but in 1999 was surgically transformed into a female.
Online searches for 'ciara' quickly find the Irish Ciara's web page, which chronicles her experience of being surgically regendered. Perhaps the rumor about a talented young singer therefore properly lies at the feet of someone who could not conceive of there being more than one person in the world bearing that particular given name.
Degrees of intersexuality vary in intensity from presence of an additional Y chromosome to being born with a mixed set of genitals. Treatment of cases of blatant intersexuality is generally (but not always) surgical in nature, with reconstruction performed on the infant patient to add or remove body parts so as to end up with a child completely male or female in physical appearance. Hormones are also given towards this end, but there is a limit to what can be corrected medically. Though an appearance of sexual normalcy can be constructed, fully functional reproductive organs cannot.
According to Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a recognized expert in this field of study, 1-1/2 to 2 percent of all births do not fall strictly within the tight definition of all-male or all-female, even if the child looks "normal." In reaching her numbers, Dr. Fausto-Sterling is counting all incidents of intersexuality, from mild to extreme. The incidence of children with mixed genitalia is pegged at 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 3,000, or 0.033 to 0.05 percent of all births.
A similar rumor long ago attached to actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
Barbara "mixed message" Mikkelson
Additional information: Intersex Society of North America
Last updated: 27 March 2005
The URL for this page is www.snopes.com/music/artists/ciara.asp
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2005
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources:
Rush, George and Joanna Molloy. "Family Viewing, Michael Lohan-Style."
[New York] Daily News. 21 February 2005 (p. 26). Current Message Board Topics
Chinese Researcher Warns of Nude Web Chats - trollface (1)
What if everyone were a donor? - Steve Eisenberg (61)
Asking for a raise - Bozone (20)
Top 5 #5s - trollface (95)
U.S. to blame for Katrina - Hans Off (5)
Son of the Letters You Wish You Could Send. - CherryQueen (434)
Sex offenders may have been killed by vigilante - TurquoiseGirl (82)
Adam, Eve and T. Rex - Silas Sparkhammer (98)
Katrina - Joe Bentley (90)
Why not Shakespeare? - gnome (15)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There has been rumor around the internet that hip-hop artist, Ciara, was once a hermaphrodite until the age of 11, when she had sugery to remove her male "appendages."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have heard a rumor that the R&B star, Ciara, was born male. That he/she decided that he wanted to be a female at the age of 5, and his mother let him grow his hair out. I was told that he had surgury, so he no longer has a penis. and apparently he/she was on Oprah having an in depth converstation about it, along with discussing it in a magazine article.
Origins: Ciara Harris, an 18-year-old who performs under the sole name of Ciara, has been dubbed the First Lady of "Crunk & B," a genre of music described as a grinding, dancefloor-friendly alternative to R&B. Her 2004 album, "Goodies," topped the charts, and she has been nominated at the 19th annual Soul Train Music Awards in four categories, including best R&B/soul single, female ("Goodies") and best R&B/soul or rap new artist.
She is beautiful and talented. And someone has tied a nasty rumor to her.
We first heard this scuttlebutt about her being born a male in January 2005; it has since fallen on our ears in a number of forms:
The singer came into the world as a male, but somewhere along the way either she or her parents decided she should become a girl, with surgery performed on her to bring about this transformation.
She was born male, but a botched circumcision did irreparable harm to her manly parts, so her parents opted to have what was left of her made into a girl.
She started life as an intersexual, a person of mixed genders. Once again, a surgical solution was sought on her behalf, but in this version of the whisper, it was to correct her body to being wholly one gender rather than a mixture of the two.
(NOTE: 'Intersexual' is the preferred medical term for persons of ambiguous gender, replacing 'hermaphrodite.' Follow the link provided in the "Additional Information" section of this page for more information on intersexuality.)
She voiced this startling disclosure on national television, with The Oprah Winfrey Show often named as the venue in which she made this revelation.
Ciara's father serves in the U.S. military, so her family moved from Army post to Army post during her childhood, living in Germany, New York, California, Arizona, and Nevada, before finally settling in Atlanta. Ergo, claims that her parents just opted to have a girl child crafted from the male child the stork delivered should be viewed with skepticism, in light of the cost of such procedures and the relatively low pay accorded those in the armed forces.
The assertion that Ciara was on The Oprah Winfrey Show is false; we can find no record of her having been a guest on that show. Many urban legends which feature a shocking revelation being made on a TV show name Oprah's as the one where it was voiced (e.g., designer Liz Claiborne confides she doesn't design for African-American women because "their hips are too big," designer Tommy Hilfiger states "If I knew that blacks and Asians were going to wear my clothes, I would have never designed them," the CEO of Procter & Gamble admits his company tithes ten per cent of its revenues to the Church of Satan). We haven't figured out why this is, other than Oprah Winfrey seeming like the kind of person one could tell anything to.
The singer herself has denied the rumor. The New York Daily News quoted Ciara on this subject:
R&B sensation Ciara just wants everyone to know: She's all woman. "You know what's funny? The rumor that I used to be a man," she told us at the launch party for Vibe Vixen magazine at Frederick's.
"They said Oprah said that on her show," she laughed. "I've never been on Oprah in my life — we all know I have years before I go on Oprah, so come on!"
Muddle-headed confusion between the songstress Ciara and a transsexual in Ireland who shares the same name may well have worked to create this rumor. Ireland's Ciara was born in 1968 (which is about 20 years before the gal who was to become the popular Crunk & B singer). The Emerald Isle's Ciara came into this world male but in 1999 was surgically transformed into a female.
Online searches for 'ciara' quickly find the Irish Ciara's web page, which chronicles her experience of being surgically regendered. Perhaps the rumor about a talented young singer therefore properly lies at the feet of someone who could not conceive of there being more than one person in the world bearing that particular given name.
Degrees of intersexuality vary in intensity from presence of an additional Y chromosome to being born with a mixed set of genitals. Treatment of cases of blatant intersexuality is generally (but not always) surgical in nature, with reconstruction performed on the infant patient to add or remove body parts so as to end up with a child completely male or female in physical appearance. Hormones are also given towards this end, but there is a limit to what can be corrected medically. Though an appearance of sexual normalcy can be constructed, fully functional reproductive organs cannot.
According to Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a recognized expert in this field of study, 1-1/2 to 2 percent of all births do not fall strictly within the tight definition of all-male or all-female, even if the child looks "normal." In reaching her numbers, Dr. Fausto-Sterling is counting all incidents of intersexuality, from mild to extreme. The incidence of children with mixed genitalia is pegged at 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 3,000, or 0.033 to 0.05 percent of all births.
A similar rumor long ago attached to actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
Barbara "mixed message" Mikkelson
Additional information: Intersex Society of North America
Last updated: 27 March 2005
The URL for this page is www.snopes.com/music/artists/ciara.asp
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2005
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sources:
Rush, George and Joanna Molloy. "Family Viewing, Michael Lohan-Style."
[New York] Daily News. 21 February 2005 (p. 26). Current Message Board Topics
Chinese Researcher Warns of Nude Web Chats - trollface (1)
What if everyone were a donor? - Steve Eisenberg (61)
Asking for a raise - Bozone (20)
Top 5 #5s - trollface (95)
U.S. to blame for Katrina - Hans Off (5)
Son of the Letters You Wish You Could Send. - CherryQueen (434)
Sex offenders may have been killed by vigilante - TurquoiseGirl (82)
Adam, Eve and T. Rex - Silas Sparkhammer (98)
Katrina - Joe Bentley (90)
Why not Shakespeare? - gnome (15)