A personal announcement, emphatic thank-you, and cheers to Fedora.

SixteenBlue wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

I've got to say, some of those transitions are remarkable.

Indeed.

I have the weirdest boner : (

Mex wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

I've got to say, some of those transitions are remarkable.

Indeed.

I have the weirdest boner : (

Why's it weird? If they're attractive, they're attractive. For all you know the plumbing has been re-piped so you wouldn't even have a surprise if you got down there

No babies, Mex. NO BABIES!

Trachalio wrote:
Mex wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

I've got to say, some of those transitions are remarkable.

Indeed.

I have the weirdest boner : (

Why's it weird? If they're attractive, they're attractive. For all you know the plumbing has been re-piped so you wouldn't even have a surprise if you got down there ;)

Seriously, if they self-identify as a woman, and they have the woman plumbing, then... so what if they used to have the guy plumbing? I wouldn't go for someone with guy plumbing because that just doesn't do it for me, but that's just me. All types of people make the world go around, and not all guys have that same hang-up.

Assuming none of those above are photoshop jobs, I'm quite stunned at just how much medicine has evolved to help people transition physically to the gender they self-identify as.

This thread reminds me of why I love GWJ. There's enough ugliness around; it is great to have this.

Farscry wrote:

Assuming none of those above are photoshop jobs, I'm quite stunned at just how much medicine has evolved to help people transition physically to the gender they self-identify as.

When you get down to it, changing your hair and eyebrow style does a lot for determining what gender you look like. Not to take away from the hormones, but for me it's almost always the longer, more feminine haircuts/wigs that "shifts" things.

Mex wrote:
SixteenBlue wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

I've got to say, some of those transitions are remarkable.

Indeed.

I have the weirdest boner : (

Mex's location wrote:

Standing over a stained copy of an old Ronald McDonald ad, masturbating furiously screaming MY WAY!

Let's not overcomplicate this, Mex....

I don't know if offensive is the right word but I definitely did not like reading that story. I'm not sure that's the kind of thing that needs to be in this thread.

Edit: Actually maybe it is good to read because there is the conclusion that you can be very, very convincing.

SixteenBlue wrote:

I don't know if offensive is the right word but I definitely did not like reading that story. I'm not sure that's the kind of thing that needs to be in this thread.

Edit: Actually maybe it is good to read because there is the conclusion that you can be very, very convincing.

I don't even know what Tucker Max is, and I don't care to research it, but all that story does is highlight that some people have a long way to go... On both sides. If the story is true, the gay guy shouldn't care about freaking out the straight guy, and the straight guy shouldn't care, if he was convinced (or, in fact, never doubted at all), because it doesn't mean a darn thing about his sexual preferences. That he can't recognize that fact shows that he's pretty shallow, self-interested, and his commentary is hardly worth attention.

Oh if only you knew some of the douche-nozzle history of Tucker Max.
Needless to say his name should not be brought into adult discussions except in the most condescending of manners.
He basically made money off the more narcissistic version of a dating thread, except filled with what seem to be far fetched tales.

I also thought it was a little much, especially considering the (wonderfully!) feel good tone of this thread.

Yeah, I'm not going to suggest removing it I'm going to insist on removing it.
Nobody here needs that trash for inspiration.

There is a devil's advocate argument to be made about allowing other points of view, even stupid ones.

Except this thread isn't in P&C, which is part of what makes it awesome.

That being said, I also don't think that story belongs here. The tone is wrong.

Yeah. Tucker Max is a douche. Nothing involving him belongs in this thread.

In other news...

Just came across the latest installment of this series in The Guardian where a trans woman has been talking about her transition since June 2010. Nothing earth-shakingly new here, but still interesting reading.

Just catching up. Holy. f*cking. sh*t. This thread is crazy. And awesome.

Hypatian - nothing but love for you and what you're going through.

Removed by popular demand.

Mmm. Not really happy to see that story here. Sure, statistics, possibility of passing, whatever. But the attitudes the story expresses are more than a little ugly.

I would suggest removing it, because while I'm pretty cool with myself I still found it pretty offensive (and I've come across it before, and know that no goodjer is going to do something [em]intended[/em] to be offensive in that way). If somebody who's in a more vulnerable state than I am comes across the trans part of this thread some day while trying to figure things out, I don't think it would be great if they came across that, even with the spoiler tag in place.

Edit: Thanks, kaostheory!

Hypatian wrote:

Of course, it's a bit wrong to focus so much on the physical transition when there's so much more going on.

My intention wasn't to solely focus on the physical aspect, hence the links I posted, but I think that one of the biggest issues for transgender people is worrying about being accepted and thus passing becomes a bigger worry.

Keep the updates coming!

Yeah—wasn't trying to criticize so much as remind everybody that there's a ton going on besides the appearance stuff. Reading [em]Whipping Girl[/em] made me more conscious about how sensationalized that side of things is often made. It does still help, though, to know how well things can go. On the other side, have to make sure not to get too optimistic, because there's no guarantee things would go that well for me.

Not too much to report, update-wise. Everything is in super slow motion. (In fact, I'm reminded of how it feels if you try to pretend to run in slow motion—it gets really hard to keep your balance.)

Just managed to get in touch with the Persad Center about counseling. I'll be going in for an intake interview in two weeks.

Dieting is hard. I'm trying to figure out how to work in a "eat whatever" day every week. Not a "go crazy" day or anything, just a "this day is the day where I'm not going to even keep track of anything, and if I want a couple of chili cheese dogs, I'll have a couple of chili cheese dogs." I think that I'm actually unlikely to go way over my calorie budget on that day, anyway—most likely just neutral instead of burning more than I eat.

Going to start explicitly setting aside an hour out of every day for voice practice stuff. Ick, making schedules. I hate it.

I've not talked with my mom and sister for a little while now. I don't want to be a pain, and I know my sister is busy with a bunch of stuff right now—so maybe when that calms down. Or maybe when I've at least got a real actual meeting with a therapist lined up and not just intake.

Really neat story about openly trans people gaining acceptance in broader society:
N.J. woman to break new ground as first elected transgender DNC member

In a state with a reputation for machismo, that’s no small feat for someone who describes herself as "a woman scarred by years of testosterone."

But for Siperstein, known to most as Babs, it’s surprisingly easy to get people past the fact that for almost 50 years much of the world knew her as Barry: an Army veteran, a small-business man, a husband and a father of three.

I'm really encouraged by stories of people who transition later in life. In the case of Ms. Siperstein, she didn't come out to her wife until she was in her 50's and I don't think publicly transitioned until later. It's really easy to fall into a mindset that if you didn't transition by X or Y point in life that it's too late for you, you missed your chance. Really cool to see people defy that.

Today's note:

I found Voice Feminization - Fundamentals of Your Feminine Voice the other day. Decided to purchase a copy of their audio recordings to use for a reference while doing voice practice. It's a little goofy, but good stuff. I feel like it could be better informed by phonological principles, since (among other things) I'm a language geek, but it's pretty solid and I feel like I can round out the practice with things I think are useful based on the phonetics of English. I suppose that their more off-the-cuff approach to that sort of thing makes more sense considering most of their audience hasn't studied linguistics, though.

Came out to the last person on my "people I want to tell ahead of anything" list today. Everybody else is either "they'll find out when it becomes appropriate" or my dad, who I've spoken of before. For my dad, I figure I'm going to wait until I visit over the winter holidays (which is the only time of year I tend to visit family), and ask him to go on a walk with me some evening and talk to him about it. Like I said before, I don't expect much of him... and that means the holidays might be messy because of it. But he deserves to know, and he deserves the chance to be better about it than I expect him to be. So... prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

Going to meet Transpitt people on Saturday. Admission interview at Persad a week from Monday. I'm really hoping now to start on facial hair removal shortly after that. Hopefully I can get some pointers from people at Transpitt and Persad on that.

(I won't have seen a therapist yet at that point, I expect, and I want to do that before fully committing to transition. But... I'm pretty sure already, and it's not like I would miss shaving. If it's possible to grow facial hair somewhere, I probably do, and my skin is too sensitive to shave more than once every 2-3 days without breaking out in a nasty rash. So even if I were to miraculously change my mind after starting that, I'm pretty sure I would not be sad.)

And so it begins.

I just recently had a buddy I've know for many, many years come out and tell everyone he was undergoing sex reassignment surgery. He has wanted to be female since he was a child and had been taking hormones since he was 20 (he is now in his mid forties).

He is one of the last people in the world I would have figured wanted a sex change. He's married to a drop dead gorgeous Ukranian woman, has a cute young daughter, and while not a macho, deer hunting, beer can crushing on the forehead man's man (please note the sarcasm), he was very, very good at hiding any traces of this part of his life.

I'm happy for him (soon to be her) but it was quite a shock. I don't know if our friendship will survive in its current form... probably not since I don't really have any female friends now and never really have as an adult... but my friend does have my support. He actually thought I was one of a couple of friends that would never speak to him again once we found out, because I'm a pretty conservative guy in most aspects of my life. Another of his friends is pretty flamboyantly gay and, being in the media biz, hangs out with all kinds of "alternative lifestyle" folks. He was so weirded out by the idea of the sex change that he isn't speaking to my buddy anymore... just couldn't handle it.

So I guess the point I was leading up to is this - yeah it's scary to have to tell people you've known for a long time about heavy stuff like being homosexual when people didn't know, or wanting to change genders, but you may be surprised at who is OK with it and who isn't. You will definitely find out who your real friends are!

Just remember with your friend that they're still the same person they always were--just presenting themselves a bit differently. I think that in some ways that's one of the hardest things to wrap your brain around, sometimes even for the person involved: This isn't a new thing. They've always felt this way. They've always seen themselves this way. They will always be the person who lived the life they lived leading up until now. It's just that they're choosing to show the world more of the truth about who they were that whole time, and they're choosing to do the really life-changing thing of living under a different set of rules (because men and women [em]are[/em] treated dramatically differently from each other in every culture ever, and ours is no exception to that.)

Your friend may choose to leave certain attitudes and behaviors behind and to pick new ones up. She'll be trying to figure out how she wants to interact with the world, now that she's chosen to live in it openly as a woman. But she'll also be carrying forward with all of the past you have together, and will probably enjoy most of the things she used to enjoy. (Although some trans folk do try to aggressively leave their birth-assigned gender behind completely by rejecting a lot of stuff. But if she's been living as a man for this long, even while taking hormones, I kind of doubt that she has that sort of attitude. Any aggressive girliness will be a temporary thing, making up for lost time and figuring out how girls are supposed to act. A lot of trans women go through a "teenage girl phase", but it passes.)

But that's the key thing: It's not that "he" is soon to be "she". It's that she has always been a she, the whole time you've known her--you just didn't know it. Imagine that this whole time she had a girl's body, and was only forced into playing the part of a man for some reason--a witch cast a spell on her as a child so that the evil king wouldn't know she was the princess spoken of in prophecy, etc. etc. Sure, she was constrained by her role to act in certain ways to conceal her identity, but that doesn't mean she was behaving in all ways contrary to her deepest opinions and beliefs. Now she's decided that it's time to stop, but when she wakes up (or woke up) on the day she chose to start presenting herself to the world as a woman, she's only one day older than she was when she went to sleep.

She's going to be trying new things, but she's the same friend you've always known, just in her second regeneration. So take it one day at a time, and learn about how she changes as she learns about herself. No preconceptions, don't assume anything--just a friendship evolving, as all friendships do.

Went to the Transpitt meeting tonight, and it was nice. Most of the folks there are indeed older cross-dressers rather than transsexuals. I had a "big sister" for the meeting to tell me about stuff, and when we chatted a bit my lack of interest in dressing up was a little awkward. But the woman I met before was there, and I talked with a couple of other trans women there, and their wives. Got a couple of email addresses. So, it went pretty well. I was about at my socializing limit for the night after the meeting broke up (I am a total introvert), so I passed on heading to a local bar afterwards and came home.

I expect I'll join and go to more meetings. It's likely to remain a little awkward with the cross-dressing emphasis, but it's good to have more TS women there. It's one of the first things you can find when you start looking online for local trans people around here.

Edit: It just occurred to me how marvelously funny it is to be concerned that I might feel peer-pressure to dress up in a more femme way.

First of all, congrats!

From one introvert to another: I'm just now stepping up my involvement in some live theater groups around here, and my introversion/social anxiety has been bad enough to require medication. I've made friends and enjoyed myself at them, even if sometimes I'm still the wallflower. I now make every after-party possible in order to enjoy the camaraderie that takes place there. They really can be great things for us introverts.

Whether you do or not, it's great to see you moving forward and looking for your own happiness. Congrats again!

Hypatian wrote:

It just occurred to me how marvelously funny it is to be concerned that I might feel peer-pressure to dress up in a more femme way. :D

Oh, the irony.

It might just be my own personal tastes at play here, or else my experiences are sui generis, but I find that there's a point where being too feminine actually hurts your chances of passing. Sometimes the really femme outfits and accessories can just highlight the things that aren't quite right with your body and mannerisms where a t-shirt and jeans are a lot more forgiving. Maybe it's just that I associate really femme clothes more with drag queens than with any genetic women I know, but they make you stand out more than anything.

Then again, I'm also from a part of the country where women don't generally wear a lot of makeup or dresses. I've had women from Texas and parts of the South describe Colorado as being a land of tomboys. Fine by me.

Is it similar to the uncanny valley effect, where as you try harder, the remaining seams seem more glaring?