11-08-2014, 09:57 AM
(10-08-2014, 09:17 PM)MissC Wrote: First, nothing is inevitable. That comes across like you're jumping from a plane and it's as normal a step as pulling your rip cord. Plenty of trans folk opt for no surgery at all, for a myriad of reasons.
I hate to be a rainer-on of parades, but since no one else has yet pointed it out, I'll do so in the spirit of full disclosure.
You sound like you're in the throes of fantasy. You're imagining yourself with real girl parts, being a real girl... and it's apparently all about, or mostly about, sex. Does it turn you on thinking about it? Make you hard?
Guess what happens when that can't float your boat any more.
The stone-cold hard reality is that no amount of surgery can turn you into a woman. You can be cosmetically rearranged, but that's it. It doesn't magically make you into something you're not.
It's exactly as if you were a white person and wanted to become black, or vice versa; pick your analogy... and there were a skin treatment you could get. You could be a facsimile, but you wouldn't *be* a black person, and you know it.
The professionals who make their living in this field -- the therapists, the doctors, the plastic surgeons -- have invested in creating the narrative that you are on a path with only one ending. They've convinced you that their narrative is the one that leads to a happy ending.
I'll tell you one thing for certain: they'll have your money. Their happiness is guaranteed. Yours isn't.
We know two things: there's about a 50% "buyer's remorse" rate for GRS. And transexuals still get depressed and commit suicide at the same rate post-op as pre-op. There isn't anything wrong with your life that GRS will fix. Get non-gender related counseling if you don't believe me on that.
Don't go and do something stupid because of a pretty fantasy and some clever marketing. Marketing is just what it is, too: buying x brand of auto insurance doesn't make you hip, drinking x brand of beer doesn't make you sexy, and having plastic surgery does not make you a woman. Buying that insurance makes you covered, drinking that beer makes you drunk, and getting that surgery makes you a man with no twig & berries.
Think long and hard about the difference between marketing and reality.
I disagree, paying tax and death are inevitable.
Meant as a joke but sadly also true. 
As for the spirit of full disclosure, I agree with the principle of disclosure but disagree with your method and unsubstantiated facts.
You say that "no amount of surgery can turn you into a woman." true. But I'm sure no one considering GRS is under any illusion that it will make them a genetic female? GRS is so you can physically represent yourself as the gender you feel you are.
In the United Kingdom the professionals who make their living in this field -- the therapists, the doctors, the plastic surgeons -- do not need to persuade anyone to have GRS for monetary gain. It could be said that persuading patients not to have GRS would be preferable to save the National Health Service (NHS) having to fund it. I have not read of a single professional surgeon anywhere that does not require substantial reports before excepting a patient for GRS. The number of GRS in 2009 was 143 and each costs around £12,000 ($20,000) on the NHS. £1,716,000 total. That works out each UK tax payer pays £0.029 ($0.05) per year. Obesity cost the NHS more than £5 billion every year. £83 ($140) per tax payer.
Buyer's remorse of about 50% is complete and utter rubbish and is quoted by the discredited psychiatrist Paul McHugh to fuel his anti-transgender agenda. McHugh is accused of purposefully misrepresented the research he cited in his article in the Wall Street Journal.
Quote:Outen (2009) describes that, for many clinicians working in the field of gender reassignment, the favourable outcomes observed for patients selected for surgery (over 60 years of established practice) have provided evidence for the efficacy of such procedures. As observed at an Oxfordshire Priorities Forum meeting, which represents clinical and commissioning staff and makes recommendations about which drugs and treatments should be low or high priority, "Charing Cross is a very large clinic with a long-standing reputation in the field; in twenty years of practice, they have only had three patients who reverted to their original gender". A review of post-surgical follow-up studies on transsexual people, spanning a period of thirty years concluded that "in over 80 qualitatively different case studies and reviews from 12 countries, it has been demonstrated during the last 30 years that the treatment that includes the whole process of gender reassignment is effective". A prospective study by Smith et al (2005) found that no patient was actually dissatisfied, 91.6 per cent were satisfied with their overall appearance and the remaining 8.4 per cent were neutral. A survey in the UK also reported a high level of satisfaction of 98 per cent following genital surgery (Schonfield, 2008).review-access-nhs-gender-reassignment-services
"There isn't anything wrong with your life that GRS will fix." Really?? Kidding right?? So if you have been presenting yourself as female for years, taking hormones and know to your core that you should be female. Finding the courage to go through a potentially life threatening procedure. The final act of GRS, removing male genitalia and becoming as close to female as is possible would be considered by many as the final piece to "fix" what's wrong.
Denita
