[julieTG]

Actually Pansy ,
Thats a damn good point,
If you were halfway , the extra feminisation would not feel a huge shift, but too a 99% male with a tg factor moving to say an 80% level would be a HUGE , crikey whats going on,


Well done and sfen for raising that,

Laying over in bed last night, I felt right side roll, and the wife says gosh looks feminine now

Julie

[sfem]

nice! enjoy!

[hoselover]

Hi Julie,

Don't judge them. Chances are they're not doing well:
http://www.eje-online.org/content/164/4/635.abstract
I'm not a patient there (just too scared), but I really respect their scientific honesty in publishing this. Just look at what these poor girls died of. And the abstract doesn't even mention what life is like for TG girls in the Netherlands: hate crime, chosen isolation, solitude, and depression.

Work on your future. Honestly

Hi Isabelle, is it really that bad in the Netherlands? As I am a transvestite myself (in NL) I know it is not all easy especially if you choose to live a normal life as father etc. It might even be easier to admit that you are gay.
But real TG's will have understanding if they come out to the world I thought, or not?. I even met a TG / Transsexual in my work and nobody ever said a word

[Isabelle]

Hi Hoselover,

I think it's that bad, yes. People in the workplace are perfectly cool about it, that's right. The bad stuff must be happening somewhere else.

I heard the researchers were shocked by the results. Police were also shocked by the hate crime statistics. In the Netherlands? Today? Yes, the numbers don't lie.

I'm totally out and hit town on heels every weekend five to ten years ago. As long as I was TV, it was paradise. After NBE, emotions took over.

I managed to stay away from hate crime, solitude, and transition. Just feel sorry for those who didn't.

[chrissie]

Ther are lies, damned lies and statistics. To be TS is not easy, but the worst I have met is trivial, compared to the support I feel, from the good people of Conwy.

[Isabelle]

Dear Chrissie,

I don't think those are lies. Professor Louis Gooren and Jos Megens are pioneers, who have treated more TSs than anyone else.

When I was still very active in the transgendered community of Amsterdam, we saw it happening all around us. We thought the culprit was the medical centre and the methods they used. Too much cyproterone acetate, we thought. But the article concludes hormones have nothing to do with it.

My therapist wonders if the mortality among post ops is also higher than in a group of single elderly men. There is also talk in the Netherlands that suicide is high among pre ops too.

I agree that working on your support system, the people of Conwy, is a good bet. Charing Cross are pretty good too: you can ask them what they can do about it. There is also talk (talk, not proof) that post ops are so happy initially that they decline continued therapy. Ask Charing Cross for a follow up programme.

I know this doesn't sound right to you now. TSs I know were all very happy when they got the green light. They were suddenly in a hurry too. But paradise after SRS lasts only a year. Six months, for some. Please prepare for your life after that.

[chrissie]

I think my point has been missed. I live as a pre op Ts woman and life is sweet. I have no fantasys about SRS, but recognise that it may be important, in dealing with the years to come. I live a high profile life as a business woman and chef/patron, but avoid situations, that may cause problems; neither am I afraid of puttig my view forward. I know who I am and what I want, out of life. This is why I worry about the ambigious. The TV/ TS world, is riddled with serious mental health problems and I do not want to be a contributor, to those. For a very few, like myself, the liberation, of coming out, is sheer bliss, but I do not want, the majority, thinking it is for them. If. I was murdered, for being TS, as least I would die for being the woman I am, so I get on with life!

[Pansy-Mae]

There are so many possible variables that this is a debate that really won't ever get anywhere. Aside from basic differences between the UK and the Netherlands, let alone every other country in the world, there are the differences between one town and another, between big cities and small towns, north and south, etc, etc. There are of course also the differences between individual people, and what one person feels is threatening or intolerable in some way, may not bother another individual at all.
I'm not going to repeat what I've said on this subject previously, but I will add one thing - it is 25 years since I was active on the TG scene, mainly in southern England, but back then, my perception ( right or wrong) was that it was the TS's who had mental problems, not the TV's. I've come across a fair few of both since then, just in passing, and I've seen nothing to make me alter that view ( and I'm not implying anything about any specific individual in saying that). That is a sweeping generalisation of course, as all such viewpoints in a debate like this always are, and that's what makes them get so heated and so pointless.

As long as Isabelle is happy in her world and as long as Chrissie is happy in hers, and I am in mine, and so on, that's all we can hope for and we should each celebrate that in others and not appear to be telling them they've got it wrong because they are different to us and we don't quite understand their perspective.

End of sermon

[julieTG]

Applause

[Isabelle]

Thank you Chrissie, Pansy Mae, and Julie,

I did overlook that not only I can't feel what Chrissie feels, but we live in different worlds too.