"New Look Same Great Taste"

[iFindMeHere]

I have heard so many times that people need to get reacquainted with the person. Granted I'm a noob but it seems like only peoples externals change--looks, persona, but not the core of who they are.

Agree/Disagree/Threadjack?

[mtfbuckeye]

I certainly don't want the core aspects of my personality and interests to change after transition. I guess I want to keep the things I like about myself and change the things I don't... Or is all that just horribly naive?

[Constance]

I'd say that it probably varies from person to person. And also, it varies to degrees for any given person.

I am most certainly not the same person I was 10 or 20 years ago. But in some ways, I most certainly still am. Religiously, I'm quite different. Politically, I'm somewhat different. Sexual-orientationally (is that a word?) I have not changed at all.

[tekla]

Change seems to be one of the only constants in the universe.

[mtfbuckeye]

I went from crazy-super-lefty politically in college to being more of a "New Deal" ish Democrat now.. Though I'm probably still to the left of 75% of the US public.

In terms of sexuality? I don't think that has changed since, say, college, but my understanding of it has improved.

[Sephirah]

I have heard so many times that people need to get reacquainted with the person. Granted I'm a noob but it seems like only peoples externals change--looks, persona, but not the core of who they are.

Agree/Disagree/Threadjack?

I guess on one level that's true, however, there's also the idea that a person's personality/core self:

a) May appear to change since, as a result of the changes in appearance, it's the first time they've had the means and opportunity to express everything that's been kept hidden away.

b) May actually change as the person grows in confidence and self-belief, also as a result of the physical changes.

Both of which, to the outside observer who has no knowledge of your inner psyche adapting and developing, may lead to a degree of confusion or the feeling of dissociation.

How many people here, before transition, can say they have the opportunity to fully express their core selves to others? So it's not, in my opinion, unreasonable for someone to express that view. To them you may well seem to be a different person, if only for the fact that that different person is who you knew you were all along but never got the chance to be.

[mtfbuckeye]

Leiandra,
That's a great point... I tend to wear drab clothes all the time because I can create no enthusiam for expressing myself as a man. I only have like three basic outfits I cycle through, and that will probably changes after transition. I also run from any sort of responsibility that makes me feel like a "grown up" man... Yes, I'm married and have a child, and i love them, but traditional male responsibility still stresses me out and terrifies me. Will I embrace adult womanhood more? I'd like to think so.

[iFindMeHere]

How many people here, before transition, can say they have the opportunity to fully express their core selves to others? So it's not, in my opinion, unreasonable for someone to express that view. To them you may well seem to be a different person, if only for the fact that that different person is who you knew you were all along but never got the chance to be.

You know, I can see that. thank you for pointing that out to me. You gave me exactly what i needed to know

[Stealthgrrl]

Shades makes an excellent point. How much of the changes that have taken place within me, would have happened anyway, as a result of experience and so forth? Not all of them, by any stretch. But certainly some of them.

I think I am essentially the same person as I was, because I was always this woman. BUT there have been some sea changes, some expected and some not, some important and some merely interesting in passing.

One big thing is that the mere absence of testosterone effects important changes. I don't think I probably need to catalog them here. And the simple presence of estrogen brings more changes, again well known to anyone who reads these boards.

But i also have gotten a major, first-hand education in what it means to be gay and to be a part of a minority. That experience has made me more compassionate towards many different sorts of people. I'm unquestionably a better person for it.

There are any number of little mannerisms and inclinations that are generally specific to or typical of females, that crept into my own ways one by one, by natural process. Other things fell away. Even though most of my male friends stuck with me when I transitioned, I eventually stopped seeing them all, because we didn't have the commonalities we once had. Almost all my friends are women, now. That's not for everyone, but it occured naturally for me, and I like it. To illustrate the sort of unexpected, not really important, but interesting things that change, I'll throw out this one: my lifelong interest in baseball, my love of the numbers and the history, just vanished. I still like to watch my local MLB team on tv or in person, but i couldn't care less anymore who plays shortstop for Atlanta, or how many homeruns they hit in 2003. I just don't care at all, and I did, before. On the other side of the coin, I've been learning to cook and discovered that I love it. I dodn't do this because it is stereotypicaly feminine. I took it up because I suddenly found i wanted to.  Also, babies never did a thing for me, and now I find myself oohing and ahing with the rest. I've gone soft! 

So yes, things change, sometimes unexpectedly, and sometimes surprisingly. At least for me, they did.

Stealth

[trannyboy]

Change will happen, people will have to adjust, these are guarantees. The only things in question, is who, what, where, when and why.

->-bleeped-<-boy