I suspect most of us have answered each of these questions somewhere on this board, at least those who are active have. It's a pretty big list, and I'd probably want to write a book to answer some of them, while others seem almost irrelevant to me?
I'll try to be concise. I'll probably fail. Like Lana Wachowski, I tend to be a bit of a talker.
How did you know you were transgender?
Transgender wasn't a word when I was young and coming to grips with how I was different. All I knew for sure was that I wanted to wake up and be accepted and treated as a girl, and eventually as a woman and a mother. In lieu of that, I did all I could (without getting punished or shamed) to be true to myself. Played with dolls, other girls, hopscotch, skipping rope whenever I had the chance. When chances like that were not offered I did what many girls do, I retreated into books and schoolwork and being as much of a good girl as I could in the hope that God or something would magically have me wake up one day all fixed and clean and shiny.
Describe how living as male/female made you feel?
Being coerced into male activities depressed me. Usually I managed to avoid them by failing at them spectacularly. Even the dumbest of coaches rarely wanted me on their teams after they'd spent any time trying to "motivate" me, since it just didn't work. I was a little too big for them to use violence successfully, but some did try, usually by allowing some self-hating idiot to do the heavy lifting, since they would have been fired if they'd done it directly. It still didn't work. Nor did starting boy scout troops. I'd just figure out new ways to hang out with the other girls. I joined the Army at one point, but it was the mostly GLBT part of the Army. My barracks room had pink sheets, yet I made it to Sergeant. Go figure.
Why do you want to take hormones?
They make your skin nice and soft, cause breasts to develop, change the texture of your hair, and make emotions, sense of smell and all kinds of things more like what I expected to grow into.
What do you feel hormones will do for you?
See above.
Why do you want surgery?
Mixed feelings about surgery. If it had been offered with a working womb, though? I think that would have led me to insist on it much sooner, if I'd had any hope I'd have been listened to by parents and doctors. I learned about SRS when I was 10, but found it hard to imagine that I could have gotten my parents to accept it back in 1970 or thereabouts.
How do you think living as male/female will be different to how you are living now?
I try to live as myself anyway, but I often imagine that transition, especially had I done it much earlier, would have left me with far fewer conflicts and anxieties around people. Realistically, I find it hard to imagine that transition now would mean I would be living exactly as female but it definitely wouldn't be seen as typical of a male, would it? It would clarify for others things that I find I have to explain to others now, with limited success. In a lot of ways, it's the desire to not waste time explaining (and to be sure that people coming onto me see me as me) that is the main reason to consider transition, apart from the internal effects of hormones.
What male/female things are you now doing in the community?
I do most if not all of the things a full-time parent my age does. Take kids to events, discuss their problems and feelings, commiserate about love, longing and relationships, encourage them to do well in school, discuss their interest in Homestuck... I talk to other parents. I get my sewing machine fixed, and keep meaning to start various sewing and craft projects. Some of this is a way of procrastinating about the other work related to writing and filmmaking that I've long told myself I wanted to do, but was not as dedicated to as becoming a parent and spending especially their infancy and early childhood getting to know them and developing a deep bond with them.
How can you tell if someone is male/female?
You can't. Not always, not entirely. Many people live in hiding and in fear. The best you can do is let them tell you. Until they do that, all you have to go by are your impressions, which can sometimes be mistaken in a culture that coerces gender on people at birth, rather than acknowledge their sense of gender once they reach an age where they can express it.
