Sex and preference.

(please ensure you have read the previous post first)

So could you do it?.....

Did you manage to answer the question?.....

Where do you hope to be in ten years?....

How did you answer, was it something like?:

“I hope I’ll have come out, and that I’ll have started HRT?”….

Maybe you’re a little more ambitious?

Maybe you said:

“I hope I’ll have come out, I’ll have started HRT (maybe had some FFS or a “boob job”), and that I’ll be living fulltime as a woman”.

So you’ve decided you fit into the first group or category I wrote about and you want mainly social transition, and you’re Transgender?

That’s ok, if that is what you feel you need for your life to be better, then I’m all for that. You have my very best wishes and I hope for your sake that you have an easy time achieving your goal. I would just ask that you please be careful of/with yourself and considerate of others.

We all have to share the world and try and find as much happiness in life as we can and it wouldn’t be fair of you to expect others to give up their personal comfort, security, personal principles (and therefore probably their own happiness) so you can have yours and feel better about yourself. They don’t EXPECT you to sacrifice all of those things for them do they? They don’t DEMAND you BE or FEEL or BELIEVE something that you were upfront and HONEST (as in: telling the ACTUAL truth, rather than what you HOPED or WISHED was the truth) about NOT being do they? (most people I know aren’t that unreasonable, they generally only expect from you the same things you’d expect from them as aperson and in a relationship).

But maybe that isn’t your goal? Maybe that isn’t all you need?

Maybe after reading what little is here so far and all the other stuff you can find out there on the internet and everywhere else (heck! maybe you’ve even already made it that far already?), you’ve decided that those things won’t be enough and that you need to go “all the way”?

Maybe you’ve decided like many that you fit into the second group that I talk about, and that you NEED SRS, and that you know and have finally accepted the horror that IS, and that you were born; transsexual?

You have my most heart felt condolences. YOU have what (for most) is a VERY hard road ahead of you.

Most people end up losing all their money, many lose theirhouse, often people lose their job and have a great deal of difficulty finding new work that pays anywhere near what they once could have earned.

If you happen to have been one of the less fortunate (relatively speaking) who ended up married and possibly even fathered a child or a few children, then it’s probably going to hurt you terribly. I probably don’t have to tell you that most relationships don’t survive a transition. Many end in divorce with the trans person losing a great deal of assets, and ending up responsible for child support for their children, who they love beyond belief but if they’re lucky; will only get limited visitation rights too see.

If they’re unlucky, and their (former) spouse gets angry and (or) the law is strict where they reside, then there’s a very good chance those visitation rights will be supervised. If they’re VERY unlucky and the spouse gets really angry, and has evidence they’re prepared to provide to the courts that might skew things and about how they’ve managed to deal with their issues over the years of being married to make things look like they have some kind of kink or sexual fetish, then they MAY end up paying a great deal of child support for children that they love and would probably never dream of hurting but will also probably NEVER SEE AGIAIN (maybe EVER! if by the time their children are old enough to legally make their own decisions, the spouse has turned them far enough against them).

That is a truly terrible outcome for anyone to ever have to face in order to feel good or comfortable about themselves and their body.

It’s NOT unheard of though, it does happen, and as most trans people are considered by the law and (generally) society to be male until after they’ve had SRS (and in some cases even AFTER they’ve had it) the law and society generally takes a dim view of them.

The law is never on a MANS “side” is it?

How often do you hear about a husband and provider getting custardy of the children and cleaning his wife out?

Why?

Because mostly the wife is viewed as the innocent party and secondly, the wife rarely has any money or assets TO take, she’s not often the head bread winner of the household and more often than not, that is because she spends the bulk of her time looking after and raising the children (which her proven history of being able to do responsibly, will likely be used to help win the custardy battle).

I honestly don’t know what to tell you or how to advise you.There is no RIGHT or best way that will help you, sadly all I can offer is whatI’ve written for the group above that I described as transgender.

Try to be careful and take your time and think EVERYTHING through and if there’s ANY better, easier or POSSIBLE way to avoid all of this; then certainly it would be advisable to give it the best try possible wouldn’t it? Even if that means not having SRS, staying a male and just seeking the treatments set out above to try and make life bearable, or maybe even enjoyable.

If you do things that way, and are careful about how you handle things, you still find a way to take care of the responsibilities you always did before and you are discrete about things, your wife might stay with you. She might find a way (eventually) to understand who you are and she might even be able to go back to loving that person on some level or in some ways. I can’t promise she will, but if you take things slow and try to be considerate, then maybe the worst that might happen is that she doesn’t get angry and you get to see your kids and surely that would make it worth trying wouldn’t it?

Again though; you have the most heartfelt best wishes I can offer, try to remember always that we are ALL people, that we ALL need to live and breathe, that we ALL need to find a way to pay our bills and to take care of the things we are responsible for. (That’s EVERYONE not just you)

Ok, so which was it? Transsexual or Transgender?

It was transsexual right?

Well before you answer, I’d like to talk about transsexualsa little more.

I was born Transsexual.

I was raised the middle son of three children, in a very small and remote community in a part of the world where anything or anyone not considered to fit heteronormative ideals was either treated VERY poorly (regardless of age, sex or any other factors) or if the person that didn’t fit the ideals HAD come of age (as it were) they were often beaten or killed (or at least that’s what most assumed, it’s likely they were just not ever heard from or ABOUT ever again. Not even for a court proceeding).

Put simply, no matter WHAT you were, you were straight and you were the sex you were given at birth if you knew what was good for you and you wanted to survive.

I first realised I wasn’t normal (relative to what I felt was normal for me) when I was 4 years old, at a pre-school day care centre, when I watched my carer take my mother aside when she came to pick me up in the afternoon. I’d been playing with the other girls in a pile of toys and clothes heaped in the corner of the room.

From what I can remember, I didn’t go to day care very often, only every once in a while ( at that time, early on) and that was only when my mother had reason to bring me into our small community for the day. At that time, I guess she had things she needed to get done and she only had so much time around the town to do them, so it was probably easier for her to leave me with someone for the day and collect me on the way home.

Until that day I’d never really worried much about it. I only had my two siblings at home to play with (one was still only a baby so I didn’t play much with it yet and the other was older than me but kinda didn’t seem to fit) and there were heaps of kids at this place, even kids I thought were like me.

I don’t remember earlier in that day, just the afternoon, and that something bad was happening/had happened.

The carer and my mother looked pretty serious in their talk and they were watching me play, it made me worried. I knew from that day that something was wrong, but I didn’t know exactly what was wrong with me and what my problem was until a little later on (and even then I was too young to fully understand).

I remember not long later, my mother bathed us three children together, and that my baby sister had a difference I could SEE, too me and my older brother.

I gradually put things together after that and by the age of about 6 or 7 (best I can place it) I’d asked my mother if there was a way a boy could be turned into a girl. She denies (even to this day) remembering the conversation (and for a long time I was mad at her for that and for not helping me when I was a child) but that’s ok, I understand now the pressures she was under and what she’d have had to do in order to help me and in reality, she did the very best thing she could for me and my siblings.

HOWEVER, she DID give me the RIGHT answer to the question I was asking her, that; (with a different wording that I still remember)essentially yes, they could, and that surgery was involved.

From that day forward, that was what I clung to for hope and survival. In the back of my mind was a plan to fix the problem as soon as I REALLY knew how. I did my very best to get by until that time and not get hurt or killed, I basically tried mostly to make myself pretty invisible to most people in my daily life.

Oh sure, I did things as a boy to get by and to try and cope but that only ever went so far and I never really allowed myself to develop relationships ona personal level with anyone but my family. Everyone has to have a family and at least some form of love, but what is the point in developing friendships and romantic relationships when you can’t base them initially on truth and when you know that the you you’d have to maintain to keep that relationship is only a temporary person/thing anyway?

So when the time came for me to transition, I really had no friends (or very few that I knew on a meaningful level) to worry about losing.

My family on the other hand? They’d been my everything my entire human interaction was based pretty solely on them and even though I’dalways tried to be honest with them, it seems they’d never understood or could see what I was trying to show them, and so they’d grown very attached to the person I’d had to be over the years, to the point where they loved that person and what he represented to them and their own lives VERY much.

Taking him away from them hurt them VERY much, to the point where they rejected me completely and largely refused to have anything to do with me, and FLATOUT refused to help me.

By this time I’m in my early twenties and I have a formal qualification to do a (commonly low paid) menial job in a very male dominated environment in my already narrow minded town.

By my late twenties I was a post-operative transsexual born female, but if you’d asked me; the only part of that description that made adifference to me in my opinion was the FEMALE part, the rest just described my early life and circumstances.

How did I do it?

The most I will tell you is it took me four very long and hard (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially and lastly physically) years to finish what I would personally think of as transition.

And now we have FINALLY reached the point!

Like ALL transsexuals I’ve ever known, for me there always was A POINT there always was A GOAL to achieve, by which we defined the end of the “transition” phase of our life. HOWEVER, that goal was never the END goal of our lives or solely what we focused on.

If you ask a TRANSSEXUAL person where THEY hope they will bein ten years? I’d lay money on (almost) EVERY SINGLE ONE of them being able to give you an answer that DOESN’T involve “transition” but rather, the life they hope to have AFTER transition.

Most should be able to tell you all about their hopes and dreams becausethey’ve had their entire lifetime up until the point (at which you are asking them), to work out EXACTLY what it is they DO hope and dream for and those hopes and dreams for their life are and always have been what get them through the trauma of life up until they can start it.(in my opinion/experience)

From the moment that they become aware of what their issueis early in childhood, they learn how to handle life and the people in it. They watch and prepare for their new life from that early point and they never (or rarely) develop enough of a life as a male to give them something substantial to lose when they transition.

That’s good and bad for them. Good in the sense that nothing or little to lose means hard decisions aren’t as hard as there is mostly very little personal or emotional investment (however that has the consequence that the few things they ARE invested in, they are HEAVILY invested in and so, are harder to deal with). BAD in the sense that it is hard to verging on impossible to make something or achieve a goal when you have no real means to do so.

What that means is that very often, the price TRANSSEXUAL born women MUST pay to do what they absolutely NEED to do (in order to have ANY life at all that is worth them living) is, one of self-respect and self-degradation, as (most often) the only things of any useable value that they have are their body and the traits about it that personally sicken and disgust them.

Can you imagine that?

Four years exploiting that about yourself which you loath in order to achieve a life that is probably going to be less than what you NEED or had hoped for?

How many “Trans” blogs and people do you read about, who are prepared to do that? Who are prepared to take degradation in order to achieve what they need to?

I laugh when I hear most so called transsexuals complain about being “misgendered”

Most people think that a large part of transition is shedding “male" privilege and to that I would say, although it IS in different ways, most transsexual born women know as much degradation and misogyny as most natal born women (again, although we experience it in different ways), however, unlike natal born women, other women often don’t recognize the ways in which we do, and so we are additionally subjected to misandry to counteract any privilege (benefit) it may be perceived we have. (which is what truly DOES hurt us)

Most transsexuals I know can tell you no matter what point in “transition” that they happen to be at; what they hope for from life in a fair amount of detail and there is a VERY significant thing that almost ALL can ALSO tell you and that is; WHO they hope they will be with in the end.

I read all this crap about sex and sexual preference not being related from transgender people (and I to an extent I agree, for “trans”people), but for a transsexual (as I experience/d it), those things are a large part of what again is THE POINT of transition to them.

For a TRANSSEXUAL (the POINT of transition) is NOT solely changing their body but more importantly; the life they need to live and will be able to live (and the capabilties they need to have) AFTER they have become female (to the most extent possible forthem).

Almost ALL transsexuals I know, know about and understand and have experience many or MOST of the things I’ve written about my life here (unless they happened to be recognised and supported by family early on or when they first exposed themselves).

The first two groups I described would in my opinion BOTH be typically labelled transgender (and NOT transsexual. I never said the the second group WAS just that MOST people think it is) although their motives may seem different, they are just variations of the same thing.

I have NO advice for the last group, aside from: try to be careful and be SMART about how you do what you are going to do, and importantly, be as quiet about it as you can. (but most of them don't need my advice anyway, they will simply do whatever they can and need too)

So let me ask you again:

Which are you?

Where do you fit?