There are so many people here at Susan's that this is the first time I have encountered Del. It is interesting to note that the two posters above me seem to have been thankful for Del's opinions about transsexuality, critical as they must have been - though perhaps not offensively so - judging by his post in the thread. My opinions on the other hand have been coolly received at best, and ignored and passed by at worst. I suppose criticism from inside is always more painful that criticism from outside the community.
I don't mind if you are very keen upon pills and highly enthusiastic about surgeries and procedures, if that is what you want, then go for it. * It is when you try to assert(tactfully for the most part) that pills and surgeries are the very essence of transsexuality, and those who don't live and breathe such things are perhaps fooling themselves about being transsexuals. That is when I get annoyed and restive. I am firmly of the opinion that surgeries wouldn't make a blind bit of difference in my passing, so I am most unwilling to go down that route. I am more ambivalent regarding pills, as most of their effects are unseen by the general population. However, what makes me deeply suspicious of pills is that (1) They weren't designed for us. (2)As a consequence of this their effects upon the genetic male/female body varies very widely indeed. To give an example, some mtf's on oestrogen faces start to take on an unmistakable female appearance, while other mtfs experience good breast development but their face never looks feminine. Other mtfs - myself - gain huge amounts of unhealthly and unsightly weight on hrt. In addition to all this I simply do not trust pharmacology. I am most reluctant to risk wrecking my body as part of a huge semi-unofficial medical experiment, the long-term outcome of which is any doctor's or pharmacologist's guess. Trying to hint, however tactfully, that the 'true' transsexual is always and will always be mad keen to change their body through the mechanisms of pills and surgical procedures is highly offensive to those who cannot or will for many legitimate reasons, not go down this route.
What brought all this on was that the posters above me seem grateful that a cisgender person and a Christian to boot has deigned to try and understand our community. This gushing gratefulness is endemic in the TS/TG community. Del has stooped to our level, he has tried to understand us and our baffling ways and thought processes, and now he is going away mildly sympathetic but with his initial views and opinions wholly unchanged, and we thank him for this? Had Del come here ranting and raving about us all being 'sinners' and bound for 'the unquenchable flames' then the moderators would have had him out of here in two seconds flat. Perhaps I have maligned Del by all this? He may have been quite serious and honourable in his intentions - I leave that judgement entirely up to those that read Del's posts. The point is that only Del ultimately knows the truth.
* Yours is the risk and yours is the reward.
