Honestly, I think this forum is way too caught up on solving the "appearance vs. body" issue. The facts are that getting facial plastic surgery or other facial improvements is in no scientific or theorized manner different from altering the breasts or genitalia. It is simply no different, there is no science that proves there's a soul hiding in your face that will be damaged if a surgeon's scalpel touches it or hormones change it, or that if you want facial changes more than body changes, then you must be a "fake trans". It's silly, because after a number of years of living and not waking up one morning with a vagina, you start to think about other changes as well, weighing in the real world, weighing in social experience and education. Psychiatry is so much more complex than you can "only be true if you only want a vag"; there's so many psychological conditions and preferences that govern what a patient wants based on what he/she believes and has experienced, both in life and in spirituality.
With that being said, social recognition to me is having people judge me for being who I am, not just by gender, but by personality as well. When you are a soft, happy, bright, cuddly female, but you have the face of a brutish, masculine, grumpy man, potential partners and even friends find it very, very hard to accept your personality, no matter if that soft personality is coming from a gay man (what I used to identify as) or a woman (what I identify as now). With me personally, I like to cuddle, flirt, and touch, both with friends and potential partners, yet everyone literally "jumps" away from me when I try to cuddle. Yet no one (including these same friends and partners that I have specifically been around) jumps away from the pretty girls or cute boys, the people who automatically do have a facial air of cleanliness and health. It's something that probably bothers me more than any single thing I can pinpoint.
Does that mean I don't want vaginal surgery? It just means that, especially with my disassociative disorder concerning my genitalia area (I have never had a sexual urge to put my penis in anything, nor having someone put their penis in me in any sort of way), aquiring a vagina is pretty useless for me other than closing the relationship pictures. I do not value my own genitalia, male or female, it is not a sexual organ for me. And wanting a vagina for non-sexual purposes really makes about as much common sense as wanting to chop of your own leg. Really, if these books want to be all discriminatory toward my own goals, I'll flat out say how much sense it makes. I would never, ever do something because it'd just "make me more confident" - I have to have many scientific and beneficial reasons for doing anything in my life, I am not a spiritual person who walks paths based on confidence or faith, instead of reality. To be quite honest, not following a beneficial reality is pretty much classified as insanity.
I believe all Transpeople do what they do because they know the real world benefits of being the opposite sex of their choice, yet no one has the balls to stand up and say "Yes, I do this because I think being a girl is better than being a boy in so many ways, both socially, sexually, and in congruency to my given personality. Deal." or vice versa. Everyone wants to dance around and blame it on a disorder that stems from the person originally wanting a different genitalia and absolutely nothing else, but I just don't believe that's the root nor cause. I for one definately believe it's a big sociostatus-sexual-self image thing, a triple kill of emotions that have thousands of bizarre combinations, and especially on this forum, I'd say the people who value genitalia above absolutely all else make up about 15%, if that much. Yet, what, 85% of us here are on hormones?
