Regeneration

So I'm a big fan of the show Doctor Who which is about a time traveler known as the Doctor. He is a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. He travels in a ship called the TARDIS, which stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, that is supposed to blend in with the environment of what every place he lands, but that is broken so it is stuck in the form of a Police Box. One of the things that comes with being a Time Lord is that they can cheat death. Whenever they are about to die they can regenerate, up to 12 times, and continue on. Some days I really wish I could do that.

Now generally speaking regenerations are random. The 5th Doctor looking in the mirror says: "Thats the problem with regeneration.....You never know what your going to get!", but not always. The second Doctor was forced to regenerate by his own people, and was given a choice. He didn't want any of them, so they CHOOSE for him. (And yes I realize that by saying all of that I have just cemented my place in the geek/nerd/dork hall of fame, but if you hadn't figured out that I was a geek/nerd/dork by now you haven't been paying attention so I don't care :P) So there must be away to choose!Heres the brilliant thing too, when he regenerates he keeps all his memories. Hes not a blank slate. His personality is different, but his values are the same and by the way, there is nothing NOTHING that says he can't regenerate into female form.

I would love to regenerate into a cisgender womyn's body. I would still be me, just with a different face and body. Everything I fight for would still be apart of me, just in a different skin. Some days I think how great that would be I know its never going to happen, but it would be super cool! Usually I only think about that on bad days and one of those days another thought occurred to me. Transsexual, which for the sake of this post means people who take hormones and may get the surgery to be the other gender, people are probably as about as close as humans can get to being able to regenerate.

Transsexual people go from one gender to the other. They can change everything! The way they talk, the way they walk, their personalities, etc. Granted they don't HAVE to change everything, but they can and a lot of them do. In fact a lot of the times their values even change because they have been hiding the ones that come out for so long. We also change our bodies with hormones and with surgery if we wish. It isn't as right away like the way Time Lords regenerate, but it still happens.

One could argue that the biggest difference is that when the Doctor and other time lords do it to save their lives and that trans people don't. I disagree. I disagree because often times transitioning, or regenerating, is the last resort. We have two choices, live or die. Meaning if we don't be the men or womyn that we know we are suppose to be, we will doubt kill ourselves. Often times that decision is a matter of life or death. We do it in order to survive. Funny, considering it also puts us in danger too. The Doctor is always in danger just by nature of being the Doctor. He has made many enemies that would love to kill him just for being him. I grant that it is a stretch to compare the two, but transsexual people are often killed because people don't like us.

I grant that this is, probably, just me trying to relate to a character, but honestly I think it makes some sense. Also, please don't think I am trying to demean the transsexuals and other trans people who die because they are who they are by comparing them to a fictional character, that isn't my intention.