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.

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

Miss C,

I agree with freedom of speech and opinion yet what I object to in your "Tell it like it is" attitude, it looks more like you use as an excuse to be rude, offensive, derogatory and condescending.

You voice opposing, often offensively worded opinions then portray yourself as a hard done by, shouted down minority when you get a reaction.
You would not join a NRA forum then complain that your views on total gun control was shouted down. If you don't understand or empathise with Gender Dysphoria and transitioning then why do you feel the need to post strong views in opposition to it in a forum?

You also voice your opinion as fact, yet any research or opposing opinion to yours, you trivialise or miss direct or ridicule.

Having read your posts over many months I find myself questioning your motivation and the agenda behind your posts?


Denita

Dear miss c.

Yes I do fantasize about being a bio female but I am in no way stupid enough to think the mangling of a penis into what looks like a vagina has somehow the harry potter magic-like effect of making me completely female. This is not about sex for me this is about finally being able to accept my body. I have kids so I dont care about the reproductive organs. Sex is part of my life so when my fiancee posed this question to me and I told her I didn't know she told me to post the question here and thts just what I did. I am fully aware tht not everyone ops to get grs but I do so when I said its inevitable thts what I meant. Ur response lacked any type of compassion or empathy for someone who just wants to feel right, someone who feels they hav been living a lie for 28 yrs. I don't know whats going on with u or in your head but feel free to avoid my posts in the future if u have nothing constructive to say. Thts not what this forum is for.

Miss C you say you like to read, here's a kinda long one for you....

While this is a bit outdated and a lot of things are better these days its as relevant today as its ever been and will ever be....

http://www.shb-info.org/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderfiles/transsexualphenomenon.pdf

May I burn each second of my life to love. Rumi

Ur response lacked any type of compassion or empathy for someone who just wants to feel right, someone who feels they hav been living a lie for 28 yrs. I don't know whats going on with u or in your head but feel free to avoid my posts in the future if u have nothing constructive to say.

Hi! Welcome to the internet!

When you ask questions, you don't always just get answers you like. If you only want one kind of answer, don't ask your question in a public forum.

Or perhaps you could specify, "Here's my question. Please only give me the answers I want to hear."

You say you have a fiancee, and kids -- young ones, going by your age. There are more lives than your own in the balance here. It's apparent that your need to "feel right" is going to outweigh all of their concerns and futures, a phenomenon we generally call "narcissism."

Not everyone is going to kiss your ass and tell you that you're doing the right thing.

And like I told someone else, you're not the first. I know and interact with a number of transsexuals, some with families... or should I say, used to have families. I've seen this story play out a dozen times, and it never ends well.

I can't say "you best not do that" or "I told you so" to my real-life friends. No, I have to watch them circle the drain. You, a complete stranger, get the empathetic, compassionate, swift kick in the pants that I can't give to the people I really care about. Some times you will only get the truth from a disinterested party; an anonymous stranger.

Okay, C, you've made your point, so let it go. I don't think you give a rat's ass about Katrina's welfare.

I agree with freedom of speech and opinion yet what I object to in your "Tell it like it is" attitude, it looks more like you use as an excuse to be rude, offensive, derogatory and condescending.

You are welcome to view it however you please. That is not my intent.

Rather, bluntness is more easily understood by most audiences than is subtlety.

If it is my aim to influence the conversation (and it is) then it behooves me to use the tools at my disposal. One of those tools is controversy, which begins conversations, which lead to enlightenment or compromise. I could write so subtly and clinically that no one would get the point... but what would be the point?

I'm not out to be liked and loved by all. Whether I'm on the wrong side or the right side of history, only time will tell. I can only speak what appears correct to me at a time in history. There is no such thing as a universally loved and accepted idea -- even the very best of ideas have detractors.

You voice opposing, often offensively worded opinions then portray yourself as a hard done by, shouted down minority when you get a reaction.

That's just how things happen. If it bothered me, I'd probably go hide in the corner.

You would not join a NRA forum then complain that your views on total gun control was shouted down.

My position has often been that of a hypothetical NRA member who defends the right of the gun control advocate to be a part of the conversation. It's good for all concerned to understand each other, rather than dig in to intractable trench warfare.

If you don't understand or empathise with Gender Dysphoria and transitioning then why do you feel the need to post strong views in opposition to it in a forum?

You mistake me. By the clinical definitions, and the terminology used by most here in this forum, I am gender dysphoric, and I have transitioned to live as female, minus hormones and surgery. I don't look at it that way, of course, but that is what I appear to be, by those definitions.

However, I have rejected the thinking behind those clinical definitions and terminology, because it does not suit many of the people who find themselves in my position. For example, I reject the notion of binary gender -- that a person must be thoroughly male or thoroughly female, or as thoroughly as possible, which is what we're discussing here.

I also unambiguously reject the notion that gender variance is, in all cases, a disorder or disease that requires medical treatment. In many cases, the removal of some societal barriers (such as not letting boys wear dresses on occasion, or play with dolls, or the like) is all that is necessary to ensure an individual grow up well adjusted. Denial of some aspects of a child's nature is the surest way to intensify them -- and that cycle of denial and intensification is what often leads to mental illness.

It's an easy conclusion: gender variance exists in some form in every culture on Earth. It's the same thing. However, what happens to it, and to the variant, is a matter of which culture they belong to. It is my belief that our Western first world culture has not yet got it right.

You also voice your opinion as fact,

I could preface all of my opinions with "it is my opinion that..." or "I believe it to be true that..." but it would be rather tedious, wouldn't it? Suffice it that I do know the difference between opinion and fact, and readily admit to it.

any research or opposing opinion to yours, you trivialise or miss direct or ridicule.

I trivialize and ridicule junk science. Even physics can harbor junk science, but it's far more prevalent in the "social sciences" due to the impossibility of objectively quantifying something as complex as human emotion and behavior into empirical data.

We now live in a time when, thanks to the internet, the gender variant can read all of the papers, and practically quote them verbatim to the gender therapist. This creates a self-perpetuating cycle wherein scientific objectivity becomes much more difficult, because self-diagnosis has become the new reality. Each new finding brings new deceptions to bear on the gatekeepers.

Having read your posts over many months I find myself questioning your motivation and the agenda behind your posts?

Good. You should do that with everything you read.

[...]because she seems to want to be the oldest living virgin!! As far as I know, she has NEVER had sex with her new parts! That's one of the FIRST things I'D try!!!!

One would think, right?

It's the elephant in the room that few are willing to discuss, but let's face facts -- unless you are completely asexual, have no drive, have never had sex in your life and don't plan to -- it's a factor.

The strangest scenario, to me, is the "straight man" planning to be a "straight woman" after SRS. That basically never happens. This is why you hear of so many "lesbian" couples of post-ops. But most end up asexual even if they weren't before.

The post-op who settles down in a relationship with a man, guaranteed, was attracted to and slept with men long before the operation. Men are clever creatures; we figured out how to have sexy good times without a nearby vagina at least several millenia ago. Hell, monkeys can have gay sex, so it probably wasn't rocket science to Cro-Magnon man. Bottom line here: if you're not attracted to men before SRS, you probably won't be after; if you are, then you're not letting lack of a vagina hold you back.

If you're bisexual, you already know you can go both ways with the equipment you've got. SRS can't improve on that. This is probably why I've never met a bisexual transsexual.

A sex change is one hell of an excuse to get a divorce if you no longer like your wife... and I can't imagine for the life of me why you'd throw away one you actually like... for a fantasy.

Because that's what happens. Hate on me all you like, but statistically, that describes at least some members of this forum, whether you know it yet or not, and all your vociferous protests to the contrary.

She HAD a boyfriend before SRS, but he dropped her very shortly after. If I remember correctly, it was because she no longer had a dick!!

Heather, I'm not sure if you're response to MissC was serious or sarcastic. Hopefully, the latter, because I don't think that response was at all helpful.


Clara

Clara dearest,
I was expressing my view on MissC's post which I found to lack empathy and far too opinionated.

All my replies to posts and threads are well meaning and I try my upmost to give my most sincere and honest thoughts and most importantly without offence.

It will be clear to some that my limited education and clarity of thought coupled with only an average vocabulary does somewhat control the input to the debate.

I can honestly, with my hand on my heart, say that I meant no harm in what I said but merely wanted to express that I thought MissC was being a little harsh.

If I have overstepped, please accept my most sincere apologies both to you and MissC.

The reality is very clear to me, I need you ALL so very much particularly you Clara.

My love to you all. I regrettably do not retract my view.

Your dear friend as always.

Heather Xxx[/b]