This is a subject that will always get me. How do you view yourself after transition and ops are over and you're pretty much how you're wanted to be?

I know that once I've transitioned and underwent SRS, I'll see myself as a woman, cured from the previous illness and no longer under any labels of the trans umbrella or as intersexed.

I see SRS as a cure to transsexualism and generally a cure means the condition is no longer prevelant in the individual. Why then do many trans people identify as transsexual and not male or female? I honestly don't see the point in transitioning to still be seen as having the "illness" or to be a gender neither the one you want to be or the one you were. Surely this just creates a continuing dysphoria as the person with this belief would never truly see themselves as their mental and now physical gender.

I'd love to hear what you all think on this.

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Hellfrozeover be a pirate and a Transgenderzone moderator.

I don't stand under the TG umbrella anymore, it's way too bitchy and crowded in there but it's sunny out here

Personally I think I would view myself after everything as being a woman on the outside as well as inside but I also realise that physically I will not be completely the same so I'm saying I'll identify as being a woman but with a few birth defects should I say causing some minor differences. We are all born different so I really don't see that as being that bad. I think that is wonderful in todays society that it is even possible to change the outer appearance to closely match that of a natal woman.

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Chrissy
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Yeah, I think I will be female in mind and body, I mean I almost am now. But there will always be the little voice wishing I had been born female, had a real/normal female body and not just the best of a bad situation.

No matter what I look like on the out side, on the in I will always be me. I as many other FTM's will not have lower surgery, so that not make me whole, never the less I am a man no matter what physiscal thing I lack.

Yet when I'm dead and burried, and the "meet the ancestors" dig up my bones they will see a female skeleton.

Same as if "god for bid" any of us had to have an autopsy, once on the inside they will see that the 'woman' has a Prostate, the 'male' has the scarin were a womb had been.

What counts is how you feel once you have all the things done, it's who you are on the inside, it's how you feel.

We all have to remeber that sadly not all SRS done work.

You are I am.

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I think I agree with most of what Chrissie says. I was quite horrified when I heard that one of my friends was introducing me as "a transexual". Okay, I might technically be called one by other people, but I dont consider myself to be one.
I'd certainly identify with bieng a woman, although one who has some physical defects. I dont particualy like bieng regarded as a transexual even now, because that seems to suggest that I was once a man. All I think that transition is, is correcting some of the birth defects that we were born with. Hormones and surgery and stuff are only ways of correcting the physical side. The fact that you are not "trained" to be your new sex says it all really. You always were that gender, you just had problems looking like it. I dont even consider it to be stealth if I was to say, post-transition, that I was never a man.

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I look back at most of my life and think "WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING?!??"

I'm pretty much pre-everything, but I'm a guy. What other people choose to make of my appearance is up to them. Most of them seem to agree with my assessment though SRS won't change how I see myself, it'll just make life more comfortable if I don't have to wear a binder and packy.

i'm am a woman, but i'm also going to be a transsexual no matter what i do. i do not believe, for one second, that the two are mutually exclusive. my <i>gender identity dysphoria</i> has been cured, but in doing so i've wound up being trans. that's the way round i see it. it's not that i'll identify as transsexual, because i'd really rather not be such, but trying to pretend that somehow SRS and a bunch of pills somehow erases that history and makes me other than is, really, in my eyes, nonsense.

plus, i mean, come on: it's my mental gender and my birth history that makes me transsexual in the first place. if i wasn't 'fully' my mental gender as a chick i wouldn't be trans. plus, as much as i'd like it, my body can never be 'fully physically female'. not that bodies are all that important anyway. but.

i'm grown into being a pretty proud woman who, through that growing process, just happens to be transsexual and, you know, with a little more work i think i can live with that.

I strongly question the conceptualisation of transness being a mental disorder!!!!!!!!!!!

A 'mental disorder' refers to a problem, a pathology with the way you think.

Just because you are distressed with your body, it doesn't mean you have a mental disorder.

Just because some psychs think that we have a mental disorder, it doesn't mean that they are right.

Believe me, I'm doing my honours on this topic, and the evidence that we have a mental disorder by being trans is ZIT. The problem is that psychs START with the a-priori ASSUMPTION that we are ill, and then do research on the basis of this assumption, WITHOUT questioining their assumption.

Once upon a time, women who wanted the vote were diagnosed with a mental disorder. Homosexuality was once a 'mental disorder' too.

NOTHING is inherently wrong with our thought processes. Infact, given the effects of hormones on our brains prior to birth, our thought processes are expected and normal!

We don't say that cancer patients have a mental disorder because they are distressed about their bodies.

We don't say that people with a cleft-palate have a mental disorder because they are distressed about their bodies.

We don't say that someone with a hole in their heart due to a birth defect has a mental disorder because they are distressed about their bodies, and it affects their lives.

And we don't need the label of 'mental disorder' in order to get treatment! People with other birth defects don't need the label of mentally ill to get treatment. Neither do intersex people!

Having transGENDERED attributes is not inherently distressing - it is only distressing when us being differently gendered results in discrimination, abuse and oppression - due TRANSPHOBIA.

Having the desire to change our BODIES is due to a PHYSICAL disorder of our BODIES. It is a physical, bodily defect. There are PLENTY of physical problems which are very distressing to people - it just happens that people don't understand ours, and we get loaded with stigma, which compounds our distress.

YES there is a mismatch between our brains and our bodies. And often our chromosomes aren't what we would expect given our gender identity.

But in reality, we have a kind of intersex property - our body is entirely one sex, apart from our brain, which is another sex. There are plenty of other intersex conditions where the persons chromosomes don't comply with their body - and they are not labelled 'mentally ill'. Why should they be?

For example, people with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome identify as women, but they have XY chromosomes. Their body is largely female, but they don't have ovaries. Their chromosomes don't match up 'normally' with their bodies, but they are not labelled as mentally ill. They are labelled as having a physical intersex condition.

In terms of the other stuff, I am proud to identify as transgender. I do so because for me personally, it helps me to integrate the bits of myself that I liked when I was living as female, and the bits of myself that are male.

I don't believe that being or identifying as transgender or transsexual makes me anything less of a man.

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Post surgery I will be as close as I can possibly get to the man I should have been born. I will live life as close to how I feel I wouldve had I been born a man. We will all still be trans in my opinion, that is who we are. Whether we choose to turn our backs on the trans community or not we are still trans people.

I for one will still be on hand for any young trans people startin out and findin their feet. I would like to think that in years to come my experiences as a trans man can be put to use in helping those just startin out. Im not sayin that my life will be all about bein trans. Far from it. I will live life as any other man would, but I will have the knowledge to sit down and offer those in need a shoulder to cry on.

i am male always will be shame my body dont match but i will always see myself nothing but male

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Ich bin männlich ich nein es so ich jetzt werde, wer ich ich sein will, bin froh ich habe jenen Wahldank zur Stütze meiner Familie

Hmmm, the options dont really fit me.

I define as female, i consider myself female, but also transsexual, as, that describes whats happened to my gender. It will probably how i will define myself: trans female, but definately female. And i dont need any surgery to define myself as female.

Aye, I have to agree with Aimee, the options don't really suit me so I chose the closest.

I'm a transsexual, as much as I'd like to think I'm female, I never truly will be. As 'genetic' women have only ever been female, I on the other hand, have not.

I and ALL transsexual will NEVER be totally genetically female, only as close as we can get to it. That doesn't mean I'm any less of a women.... just different.

I'm not being nasty or harsh here, I'm just being realistic and I'm under no disillusion of my physical body.

We need to accept we are trans, and get on with it. We shouldn't lie to our selfs.... just other people

Sarah-Jane

P.S. Trans folk that find the term transsexual offensive piss me off

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