[jannet.duff]

Like most of you girls I seem to have a gender identity disorder.

You're free to have whatever you like, I guess... but is that how you want to see yourself? Broken?

Some of us prefer to look at it as something like "gender gifted". Gifts carry burdens, to be sure, but that's the part we have to learn. Along that path, we learn the many blessings it brings, too.

You can have a mental illness. Or you can have a gift. It's up to you.

Which do you prefer?

(Frankly, I find it a bit rude that you find "most" of the folks here to have a "disorder". I'm just going to assume you meant something a little different...! )

Its something I have been carrying around since before I was school age. As a child I was very sensitive, so much so I was often called a big girls blouse by some of my older male relatives.

So were many other boys. It doesn't mean anything other than you were small and effeminate. Possibly. I wasn't particularly noticeably that way, but boys still talk trash and fight. Bigger boys pick on smaller ones. Welcome to Earth. It doesn't mean you're a woman trapped in a man's body, as the story goes.

Guess what? Girls are mean to each other, too. It's perhaps a more emotional bullying and trauma than physical, but I don't think it much varies from that of boys' in intensity.

I am trying my hardest to be as open as I can, but after keeping things buried and private for 50 years or so its a real uphill struggle.

50 years is a long time to keep part of yourself in the closet. The longer it goes (in my observation) the more extreme becomes the whiplash. Be careful, in your newfound exuberance, not to do something you regret.

Miss c - ouch ... Sorry you feel that way. You must have a raw nerve there somwhere.?

I'm no doctor, so the feeling I post are my interpretation if you find that it does not apply to you, then my apologies . we all have different experiences and feeling, wants and needs, I think it is fair enough to say one cookie cutter does not fit us all.

Thanks for the welcome girls.