Woman Claiming to Be Michael Phelps’ Intersex Lover Devastated Over Media Coverage

Taylor Lianne Chandler Facebook photo

By now you’ve likely read the headlines about Taylor Lianne Chandler, the woman claiming to be Michael Phelps’ intersex lover. The question is which headline have you read? The first one, by Radar Online read “Michael Phelps Sex Scandal: Troubled Olympian’s Girlfriend Was Born A Man!”

Several stories with the same kind of headline followed, until someone was smart enough to figure out that Chandler was born with both set of reproductive organs. She wasn’t born a man. She’s intersex.

“I was born intersex and named David Roy Fitch at birth,” an update on her Facebook page read. “But the time I could walk and talk I made it clear I was a girl and dressed as one. In my early teens I was medically diagnosed and went on testosterone blockers, at 15 estrogen enhancers. My birth certificate was modified along with my name while I was a teenager, prior to any corrective surgery.”

Queerty reports that she is appalled at the way media outlets have been portraying her, particularly when they call her a man:

“In a world of educated people that had all the facts of intersex and what it means and then to sell a magazine say [sic] Michael Phelps is dating a MAN,” she said. “I have cried now for an hour, thrown up anything in my system till I dry heaved. I just can’t believe this is happening in 2014!”

She continued: “I am Taylor Lianne Chandler; I have always been a female regardless of labels and personal opinions. I am not transsexual and I have never identified with the moniker transgender, but intersex is certainly on the spectrum of gender along with them.”