You don't have to start off with full time these days.  I was on HRT for a few months before I felt comfortable enough to switch over, and I've heard of others taking way longer.  Set your own pacing, and only do what you're comfortable with (like missy1992 said)

Quote from: nonameyet on December 20, 2013, 09:08:37 AM
unless im feeling especially girly im somewhat comfortable in guy type clothes. its as much about passing for what i am as passing for what i want to be.[...]
i just dont want my first year as a woman fraught with people wondering whether to call me sir.
and aside from that fact. i identify more as a tom boy prone to fits of girlyness. i love dressing up and looking pretty. but if im not seen as fitting the textbook trans woman at all times is it going to hurt my chances at getting recommendations for surgery.

I totally get this. A RLT without proper passing is just a test if you can/want to be living as a freak. Whats the point in that? Also what would a RLT consist of? Wearing dresses? No way - for me it was HRT first, then telling people about me and using my name and then ask for a legal name change and letters for SRS. Screw "text book" transsexuality - the psychs dont get it. A TS woman is not all about wearing dresses and lipstick, it is about being a woman, what would a RLT with such requirements prove? A ->-bleeped-<- would like it too maybe.
A frekish thing is that actually a RLT is much much more commitment to transition than HT. It is much harder to "go back" from RLT than it is to back out of HT if it was wrong. Why asking such a big commitment first to get the prescriptions for the lesser commitment?

Quote from: evecrook on December 20, 2013, 09:30:43 AM
I think the surgery thing is more of a question of whether mentally can you handle castration . Will you regret what you have done. Once you've done it you can't go back. Are you going commit suicide because you don't fit and you've taken off you penis.

I find this an odd way to put it - castration and "taking off your penis". I would not use these words - yes technically it even is a castration as it results in infertility. But it is about reshaping your genitals not about taking anything off... O.O

Quote from: nonameyet on December 20, 2013, 09:08:37 AM
okay. so. quick background. most people dont know im trans. its a relatively recently accepted notion for me. ( as in it finally hit me as true within the past couple months) i have a lot of questions and few answers. mostly about vaginoplasty but thats for another post.

right now im wondering how others cope with the pre op recomendations (requirements?) known as the real life test. putting aside the frustrating 'for your own good' mentality i really dont know how comfortable i would be living as a woman if i couldnt pass as one. and especially if i didnt feel like one physically. its seemingly contradictory and may seem dumb in some ways but the fact is that while i truly want to be a woman im still a man. i have the parts. unless im feeling especially girly im somewhat comfortable in guy type clothes. its as much about passing for what i am as passing for what i want to be. and im really hoping someone else gets what im saying. because it probably sounds like im unsure about the whole thing and im not.
i just dont want my first year as a woman fraught with people wondering whether to call me sir.
and aside from that fact. i identify more as a tom boy prone to fits of girlyness. i love dressing up and looking pretty. but if im not seen as fitting the textbook trans woman at all times is it going to hurt my chances at getting recommendations for surgery.

and now that ive spilled my guts about so much is there a single person that can see what i mean.

The thing that scares me about this post is that you're somehow equating surgery with passability... like, it sounds to me like you're not accepting yourself as a woman unless you can get SRS first. Well, I hate to be blunt here, but SRS will not affect your passability whatsoever. If you look like a guy, but get SRS, guess what? To everyone else, you don't just magically become a woman because you have a vagina now, you just become a guy with a vagina.

Looking for SRS as validation to give yourself the mental freedom to call yourself a woman, is generally a bad idea. You're overestimating how much SRS changes. In the grand scheme of things, it changes absolutely nothing. All it changes is that you have to pee sitting down, dilate, and you have sex in a different way. For the most part, none of these things affects your daily life one bit. It pretty much changes NOTHING about who you are. Odds are, if you were unable to accept yourself as a woman before SRS, you're not going to magically start accept yourself as one afterward.

I'm in much the same boat, by the way. I've wanted SRS since I was like 13 years old, I really care about the surgery as an end goal, possibly even moreso than the end goal of being accepted as female by society, and I'm also currently petrified by feelings of inadequacy in regards to beginning that real-life requirement, because I'm scared that I look too male for cis-women to really accept me as a member of their gender. So this is from someone who has gone through many of the same feelings, but then met a few post-op girls who went through SRS, and who basically told me that they were honestly shocked how little about their lives it changed. You've got to want SRS because you're not comfortable with your current anatomy, and would rather have a penis than a vagina... not because you're expecting it to somehow make you feel validated as a woman. Because no matter how much we may want it, we need to realize that it's basically nothing but a cosmetic procedure that changes the appearance of your genitals, nothing more. It doesn't magically make you a woman.

im a tomboy. thats the only way i can put it where it doesnt come out in a 5 minute read packed with apparent contradictions.
i actually just deleted like 20 minutes of typing proving that.
i am a woman. i am a tomboy. i want the parts to match. and it doesnt fit the rlt standards from what i can see so thats what worries me.
hell. for all intents and purposes i may as well define as butch just to get the recommendations.

Carrie : First off, I agree 100% with what you've said about how GRS doesn't change passability, being accepted, etc. It's an easy mistake to make in the panicky early days, and I sympathize so much, but count me now among the post-op girls who say the "sex change" was when I legally, publicly, and socially changed to being female. GRS was wonderful, but it was a coda to make my body fit what I needed for ME, not a way of convincing society. (It's nice not to be scared in bathrooms and public changing rooms and so on... but so far there's been not a single incident where someone would've actually *seen* my genitals since then.)

Secondly, you keep saying you look too much like a guy, and if your picture is actually you I gotta say I think you're looking in the wrong mirrors. 😉 I hear you about sometimes seeing the man you left behind, I do too, but I'd be surprised if anyone else does for you!

Nonameyet : You may - MAY - run into problems getting HRT because of that. You shouldn't have trouble getting GRS if you get past that first hoop, and you should not have to start your RLE without HRT if you live in the US. Even the most restrictive standards of care say HRT is permitted for people who aren't full-time yet.

Quote from: anjaq on December 20, 2013, 04:38:58 PM
I totally get this. A RLT without proper passing is just a test if you can/want to be living as a freak. Whats the point in that? Also what would a RLT consist of? Wearing dresses? No way - for me it was HRT first, then telling people about me and using my name and then ask for a legal name change and letters for SRS. Screw "text book" transsexuality - the psychs dont get it. A TS woman is not all about wearing dresses and lipstick, it is about being a woman, what would a RLT with such requirements prove? A ->-bleeped-<- would like it too maybe.
A frekish thing is that actually a RLT is much much more commitment to transition than HT. It is much harder to "go back" from RLT than it is to back out of HT if it was wrong. Why asking such a big commitment first to get the prescriptions for the lesser commitment?

I find this an odd way to put it - castration and "taking off your penis". I would not use these words - yes technically it even is a castration as it results in infertility. But it is about reshaping your genitals not about taking anything off... O.O

I was just trying to say that I think they have you go through this process to try to make sure when you do it to the logical end you don't all of a sudden say to your self I've made a terrible mistake because you won't have a penis any more you'll have a vagina. If you realize your not the woman you believe yourself to be . They just want to help you to be sure

Quote from: nonameyet on December 20, 2013, 09:08:37 AM
okay. so. quick background. most people dont know im trans. its a relatively recently accepted notion for me. ( as in it finally hit me as true within the past couple months) i have a lot of questions and few answers. mostly about vaginoplasty but thats for another post.

right now im wondering how others cope with the pre op recomendations (requirements?) known as the real life test. putting aside the frustrating 'for your own good' mentality i really dont know how comfortable i would be living as a woman if i couldnt pass as one. and especially if i didnt feel like one physically. its seemingly contradictory and may seem dumb in some ways but the fact is that while i truly want to be a woman im still a man. i have the parts. unless im feeling especially girly im somewhat comfortable in guy type clothes. its as much about passing for what i am as passing for what i want to be. and im really hoping someone else gets what im saying. because it probably sounds like im unsure about the whole thing and im not.
i just dont want my first year as a woman fraught with people wondering whether to call me sir.
and aside from that fact. i identify more as a tom boy prone to fits of girlyness. i love dressing up and looking pretty. but if im not seen as fitting the textbook trans woman at all times is it going to hurt my chances at getting recommendations for surgery.

and now that ive spilled my guts about so much is there a single person that can see what i mean.

Is this a requirement you're facing to start HRT? Have you begun HRT? If not, then surgery is probably not advisable.
According to my doctor, the super strict requirements to begin hormones (like the real life test, and two letters from gender specialist therapists) are a thing of the past, and practitioners today prefer to just have a single letter/communication with a therapist.


IMHO, the real life test is an archaic and silly thing. Living as a woman can mean a million different things to different people. Someone might simply want to transition in order to combat powerful dysphoria they feel regarding their bodies, and simply end up presenting as a woman who dresses/behaves in a masculine way. Or someone might be all about pink, dresses, make up, etc. Or whatever! The idea of "living as a woman" for a set period of time as a requirement is sexist as hell.

Quote from: Carrie Liz on December 20, 2013, 05:03:40 PM
The thing that scares me about this post is that you're somehow equating surgery with passability...

this is of course not realistic at all!

QuoteYou're overestimating how much SRS changes. In the grand scheme of things, it changes absolutely nothing. All it changes is that you have to pee sitting down, dilate, and you have sex in a different way. For the most part, none of these things affects your daily life one bit. It pretty much changes NOTHING about who you are.[...] So this is from someone who has gone through many of the same feelings, but then met a few post-op girls who went through SRS, and who basically told me that they were honestly shocked how little about their lives it changed. You've got to want SRS because you're not comfortable with your current anatomy, and would rather have a penis than a vagina... not because you're expecting it to somehow make you feel validated as a woman.

I think you are underestimating how much SRS changes a life. Yes, you are right that in daily routines and in relation to other people it changes little, but really, if you are feeling dysphoria about your genitals, chances are it is a big dysphoria and getting rid of that is a huge boost for many things. It was for me. Feeling much more right in my body, I was more confident afterwards, also in how I presented myself, how I radiated. So it also affected my social life actually - indirectly. So while SRS will not fix many things like passability or such, it should also not be underestimated, at least if your body dysphoria is as strong as it was in me.

Quote from: anjaq on December 20, 2013, 05:54:13 PM
I think you are underestimating how much SRS changes a life. Yes, you are right that in daily routines and in relation to other people it changes little, but really, if you are feeling dysphoria about your genitals, chances are it is a big dysphoria and getting rid of that is a huge boost for many things. It was for me. Feeling much more right in my body, I was more confident afterwards, also in how I presented myself, how I radiated. So it also affected my social life actually - indirectly. So while SRS will not fix many things like passability or such, it should also not be underestimated, at least if your body dysphoria is as strong as it was in me.

Great... now I'm feeling like s*** about the RLE getting in the way too...

My 'parts' have nothing to do with RLE (formerly RLT.) I started my official RLE on 2/5/2013 (the day I was officially female at work.) I was part time for years before that, as well at the not official full-time-except-work for a time.

The lead up to RLE included full disclosure to family/friends and work, a name change, some doctors notes and some consultation with my lawyer, about the possibilities that could happen in my extremely conservative area. There are already people now in my life that do not know about my past, like a new coworker for example...Who thinks my scheduled medical leave this spring is for a boob job, and I'm happy enough to have him believe that.

Quote from: Carrie Liz on December 20, 2013, 05:58:38 PM
Great... now I'm feeling like s*** about the RLE getting in the way too...

Well I am not saying that one should get SRS without having spent some time transitioning before, if that was how it came over. I just wanted to point out that I keep hearing by some women that SRS did not change that much and wanted to say that for me it did. But I never had the expectation that it would improve my social interaction or passability or therelike. I know some people think that too. SRS is about personal stuff - about the own body, about matching it to how it should be - and all other effects to the outside are secondary. To know if SRS is right, I am not sure if a RLE will help except that of course there is a correlation if you like the life as a woman socially, often you will also like the body changes from SRS - but that is not really that sure either. In the end only we ourselves can know how our bodies should be and feel like. RLE is a good thing in some aspects. Its hard for me to talk like this because for me really the RLT was just RL - I did what I had to do anyways and it was not really a test. But doing this change gives an impression of how life will be with transition - SRS or no SRS. I am not sure what would be the possibilities if one would get to the conclusion in that time that socially transitioning is not working or not the thing one wants to do. If it is not working because of passability etc - what are the choices - go back to pretending to be a man and have no SRS because it doe snot fit? Get genderqueer and then choose SRS or no SRS? Transition anyways and get SRS? All of this assuming that person wanted SRS pre-transition. If it is not working because the female social role is not that fitting - what then? If the mind still says the body needs to be female - is a failure to transition socially a reason to not have the body changed?

these are just some questions and I think it is complex, but I think that RLT is not really a great way to find out if someone is going to be happy with a genital surgery or not. I think RLE should be about doing what one wants to do anyways. SRS should IMO still be done just after a while . I had 18 months between basically going by my new name (so that is probably "fulltime" then, even though I did not dress femme) and the letters for SRS and then some more months of waiting list. I think I wanted that time to go by as fast as it could back then, now I think I also needed these 18 months to get emotionally clear about wanting SRS. And when I did, really it had more effects to me and my life than being able to use a womans locker room etc.

Quote from: Carrie Liz on December 20, 2013, 05:58:38 PM
Great... now I'm feeling like s*** about the RLE getting in the way too...

I don't understand how RLE can be seen in such a scary way. Before understanding the process and committing to transition, sure. The path ahead is unknown and crazy.

RLE is a reward! RLE is the goal. Or at least this is true for me. Passing or not.

And in most circumstances, you begin RLE when you're ready, after starting HRT and already feminising to the point you're comfortable to share that with the world.

Viewing RLE as a requirement for SRS seems to change it from being a wonderful experience into just some mundane and arduous requirement for surgery from what I see... It isn't like that. The dependency for SRS isn't just some WPATH recommendation for the sake of it, it's to ensure beyond all reasonable doubt that you are comfortable living life and interacting with the world in your chosen gender.

RLE is where the fun begins, and for me when life really began . Of course I want SRS yesterday, but it won't change me in the profound ways that HRT & RLE has. And on those grounds, I'll put up with the thing below and wait.

yeah its an archaic way of thinking but whatever. they still do it and its the nearest place and the only place id trust.

its still just a fantasy for right now. im definitely not at a point where my life would accomodate the change. by the tim it matters i may have just given up on surgery and settled for hairless. cause no matter what. the hairs gotta go.