Question for the sake of curiosity

[Kristinagl]

So I was talking to a friend that I have known on WoW for years (yes the single most addictive game ever) and it got me to thinking. Would you be willing to give it all up financially to pass. I'm not talking give up your car or savings account.  But full on everything completely bankrupt ones self knowing you could pass 100%.  I know this sounds silly but passing is obviously a huge concern to everyone here. So as financially silly as it sounds would you be willing to bankrupt your self to 100% pass in everyone's eyes?

[MissGendered]

Yes.

That is exactly what I have done, and continue to do. Assets liquidated, career torpedoed, and debt still climbing, and still, not enough resources available to move ahead from where I am now stuck..

For me, being as perfect as possible is my one over-reaching goal.

I haven't been clocked in ages, but I avoid situations where my remaining flaws are apparent. My hope is that with all the surgeries currently available to undo, or disguise, my T damage, I will eventually be camera ready, beach beautiful, and fully satisfied that I am as I ought to be.

Missy

[LShipley]

Personally I think many are pretty close to that as it is if they are transitioning earlier than 30s

[Inarasarah]

I was that way when I came out.  I was willing to loose everything just to transition, fortunately I did not.  But it was a risk I was willing to take to live as me.

[Dayta]

No, I don't believe that I would.  I was actually thinking a lot about this as I move closer to coming out to my colleagues in the workplace.  I'm pretty sure that I am never, ever going to pass with people that have known me for years, and that it's just not going to make that much difference in that context.  I know that it won't make a difference if I do or don't to my family or my wife.  I'm certainly in a much different place than many others here, and I also haven't gone in public long enough to really feel much in either direction.  But that's where my head is atm. 

Erin

[warlockmaker]

For  me it was the wonderful change in mental perspective. I am also very luck to pass quite naturally. I had all my surgeries at PAI in Bangkok, and the total cost was US 28,500. For FFS, BA and SRS. The FFS was mostly rejuvinating face lift and a brow shave and a tuck in the nostrils. I dont think that will bankrupt you. The rest is keeping slim and healthy which cost nothing but self determination. BTW Im 68 yeats old.

[Dayta]

I just had another thought about this, thanks for posting the provocative question!  I've taken to looking at people more closely, especially as I travel, and notice the women I see.  I play a little game with myself, and imagine if I'd trade places with the women as they pass by.  I feel unwilling to trade myself, regardless of how thin, pretty, tall, or whatever the woman I see are.  I know that I may not look like a woman now, or may not ever.  But I do like who I am, and believe that there is a woman within this body whom I am proud to be.  It felt a little to me that your question implied not only passing, but also meeting some normative standard of beauty.  Maybe that wasn't in your mind, but I do think it adds a little more intrigue to the question.  So do you mean would you give everything up to be perceived as a woman by 100% of people, or do you mean to be perceived as a physically beautiful woman? 

Erin

[JoanneB]

For me gender is about 1/4 of what goes into making me Me. Exploding my life for an illusion, a hope, of perfecting that fraction of me is not worth the gamble. Then add a dose of reality when you are big boned and 6ft tall and balding since 14.

[Harley Quinn]

I think I am already trying to bankrupt myself and still a fair bit off

[Michelle_P]

I gave up over half of what I had financially in the divorce, and I still have to pay for all my treatments and surgeries, and somehow scrape enough out of remaining finances to cover the rent and living expenses.

It's still worth it.  Die rich or live poor, but happy. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Angela Drakken]

Passing? Or having a better life for myself?
Frankly I dont have much of a life to ruin.

Big. Fat. Yes.

That said, I think being prepared to give it all up, I may be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't all explode in my face.

[Sophia Sage]

Oh, if it only took money!

[Karen_A]

My answer now is definitely no. I have seen some who were close to me who had lost everything for other reasons, so I have seen what is to be really poor ... how few options on has how hard that makes life, how hard it is to come back from if you are not young, and what it means when you get older... and it scares the neck out for me...

That said transition alone RISKS everything.  But risk is not certainty.

I was worried that I would wind up broke , alone AND unpassible ......  but I transitioned anyway because I had to


I did spent a lot on transition to try to make sure I could pass... Yes I wanted to be 100% passable to have  a chance for "normal" life as woman but also because I was afraid of the potential consequence of not passing (I transitioned about 19 years ago)

I lost over 100lbs, I went to Electrology 2000 to make sure I got cleared quickly and without a lot of skin damage, I had experimental voice surgery, I had full FFS with Dr. O. and breast augmentation with SRS (SRS itself was payed for by insurance) ... I also went to an image consultant for ggs to make sure I did not make big mistakes with clothes and makeup so I could present professionally if I lost my job and had to find another early on...

All that created a huge financial strain, but as I did not lose my job and did not get divorced, I was able to eventually recover ... but it was not enough (big male type build and not a lot of fat redistribution)...

There were more surgeries I could have done to try and make my body below the neck more female looking... but enough was enough. It would have risked bankrupting me and likely would have resulted in divorce.

Of course I could not know if that still would have gotten me to 100% physically passable,  but with the perspective I have now early in my 6th decade of life, I know the answer now would be no, even if there was surety. (not so sure what I would have said back then in that case)

After that it it should be remember there is a lot more than the physical in passing 100%. The physical is certainly important,  but alone that is not enough.

That said, I strongly believe that one can (but not necessarily WILL)  grow into the non physical part a lot easier post transition if one physically passes well. It can create a positive feedback loop, and it makes it a lot easier to lose the self consciousness.

- Karen

[Janes Groove]

Nope.

Couldn't do it. Not at this point in my life.  8 months into my transition I do want to pass. The more I get gendered correctly as a woman the more I like it.  I think it might be becoming addicting.  Like crack. It just feels soooooooo good (disclaimer: although I'm speculating here. I've never done crack cocaine.) I will do everything in my power to be gendered correctly, short of bankrupting myself, in future but if I never make it to 100%, I can live with that.  A reduced standard of living or being broke and homeless. No ****ing way!  And there is the little matter of no matter how fast and hard I run away from it, I do still have a 57 year history of living as a man that I need to find unity with somehow as well as a y chromosome that all the surgeries in the world will NEVER remove.  But I do have the advantage that younger women don't. We are not held to as high a standards and are given a pass more easily.
I try to cultivate a Buddhist perspective with this.  Talking about meditation practices the Buddha was said to have noted that if one tunes a stringed instrument (like a guitar) too tight the strings will snap, if one tunes the strings too loose it won't play.  That's when he noted that the answer is in the middle way.  So I continue with my transition, hoping for the best outcome but willing to accept something less than 100% passing.

[Lynne]

... So as financially silly as it sounds would you be willing to bankrupt your self to 100% pass in everyone's eyes?

When we left home and moved to the capital city of our country to transition with my girlfriend(she is also MtF) I had a debt as high as 2 months' salary and just got enough compensation for loosing my job to roughly pay for expenses for 4 months before going totally bankrupt and she was just finishing school so she didn't have income either.
There was absolutely nothing to ensure that we will be able to transition in these circumstances or that we would pass in the end but we just had to try. Anything was better than not even trying and living miserable in a toxic environment. The most realistic possibility was that we will not be able to pay rent and bills.
But just before we ran out of money the job situation was resolved to an extent that we didn't starve(much). After a few years we still have things that we would need to do in order to pass 100% in totally every situation and we still don't have a lot of money saved but we are getting there. We'll see if me going full-time resets my financial balance to zero again...

[Kylo]

Totally.

I'm not exactly the most solvent person I know at the moment. What's to lose? An apartment that isn't mine? A computer? An overdraft?

I've been down and out before as well and it's not like the end of your life, provided you can accept the losses and start again. Gets more difficult with age, but if you've got decent friends or the "gift of the gab", it's probably not the end of the world. I may be slightly overconfident but I figure I could get out of most scrapes including that.

I suppose it comes down to what you've got. I've got next to nothing, so I'm not going to miss it. If you make a lot of money and have a lot of investments, you're looking at kissing your empire goodbye.

[Angela Drakken]

Totally.

I'm not exactly the most solvent person I know at the moment. What's to lose? An apartment that isn't mine? A computer? An overdraft?

I've been down and out before as well and it's not like the end of your life, provided you can accept the losses and start again. Gets more difficult with age, but if you've got decent friends or the "gift of the gab", it's probably not the end of the world.

Until youre dead theres no reason you cant start over.

[MissGendered]

Until youre dead theres no reason you cant start over.

That is exactly how I feel! I am not the youngest woman on these boards, but vanity does keep me from saying my actual aga, lol. That, and the fact that transition rolled back the impact of time and stress from my face and body, and I am now consistently seen as somebody MUCH younger than my ID indicates...

I lost a small empire, that is a fact. It was a very sweet life, in so many ways, sooo perfect for a woman hiding in a man's world, but still, I was a woman hiding in a man's world, soooo, here I am..

I just got back from grocery shopping. While at the market I had casual conversations or just a few words with about ten women, and had a lot of nice greetings and smiles from men. Being able to live as I am, instead of just pining away for that which I soooo desired, is priceless.

I will take being just another lady looking through the clearance items, trying to meet an impossible budget, over being the isolated, stoic, joke-crackin' dude buying angus steaks and fresh seafood from the woman struggling to pay her rent by working three jobs, including her part time gig in the fresh meats/seafood department at Kroger, any day, any time...

At least this life, MY life, is real. Poverty sucks, but living a lie, even a very privileged lie, sucks waaay worse. At least that's my take on it, everybody has their own choices and options to consider, ya know?

Missy

[Angela Drakken]

At least this life, MY life, is real. Poverty sucks, but living a lie, even a very privileged lie, sucks waaay worse. At least that's my take on it, everybody has their own choices and options to consider, ya know?

YUP..!

[stephaniec]

I think for myself the core issue is why I want to live as a woman. Woman come in all shapes and sizes and there are quite a few woman who can't make the cut as according to some objective standard.