[Lotus]

What REALLY cheeses me off about this is that NO ONE has to get approval or ask permission from others to do any other kind of body modification!! All the way from getting a different haircut or colour and changing your dressing or make-up style to tattoos, piercings and having surgery done to look like a lizard!!

Welcome to the Club, Although I have little interest in SRS (partly due to extreme fear of surgery, partly due to it just seeming to me like an extreme band-aid of sorts, and being mostly ok with remaining male) If a person can get surgery to make themselves look like a Cat/Lizard etc and it isn't considered to be a mental issue why should a gender swap be?

But, if all you want to do is look and dress more fem or grow tits, or, heaven forbid, even BECOME a woman (or man), you have to BEG for approval and acceptance from EVERYONE!! And even then you STILL stand the risk of being tortured and/or killed by someone of small intellect who thinks you're a disease and it's up to THEM to rid the world of you!!

please don't get me started on that, particularly with having relatives who's views are "almost" as bad as you described.

On the other end of the stick, why is it perfectly okay for women to look as butch as they want, but not for men to look as fem as they want?

I could type a an encyclopedia long rant on this myself, and I am currently restraining myself from doing just that, it is a something that has long been like a lit match to a vat of gasoline with me.

Research for yourself, get informed and Teach Others, even if you think this does not effect you or anyone you know, (a quote from Lenneth's blog). Thank you, Lenneth!