"I get a lot of letters from people in their 40s who are considering having this kind of operation. And I discourage all of them. It's not something for somebody in their 40s to do, someone who's had a life as a man. If you're 18 or 20 and have never had the kind of advantages I had, and you're oriented in that direction, sure, go ahead. . . . But if you're a forty-five-year-old man and you're an airline pilot and you have an ex-wife and three adolescent kids, you better get on Thorazine or Zoloft or Prozac or get locked up or do whatever it takes to keep you from being allowed to do something like this."

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Yet to continue living as a male had seemed impossible: "I couldn't do it. Most people can't."

As a doctor, parent and tennis pro, Richards had been "a thorny problem for those who liked to think of transsexuals only as perverts dancing in sleazy bars," a puzzle that could not be solved by resorting to stereotype. This, she says, was the source of her "surprising popularity."

Richards, now the surgeon director of ophthalmology and head of the eye-muscle clinic at Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital in New York City, acknowledges that this popularity continues to haunt her. "Sure it bothers me," she says. "It bothers me that when I die, my obituary will read, 'Transsexual Tennis Player Dr. Renee Richards.' But there's nothing I can do about it."

Transgendered individuals have published autobiographies not only to tell or to clarify the stories of their lives, but also to educate others in an effort to gain greater acceptance for transgender people.

Fears and misconceptions about transgendered and intersexed athletes abound.

Representations of transsexuality in films range from freak-show exploitation, to dramatic and documentary depictions, to the use of transsexuality as a metaphor for exploring the crossing of all kinds of borders.

One of the greatest tennis players in history, Martina Navratilova has become an outspoken supporter of gay and lesbian rights.