Years ago before my transition it was very normal for women to comment on my photos and tell me how good looking I was as a man and it inflated my ego and gave me a general sense of acceptance and well being. I never gave a second thought to a compliment, or come-on from a woman. However today since I'm well into my transition I'll post normal pictures of myself online and guys will ask me about my body, if I'm good in bed, want me to send them pictures in their emails or text them erotic photos of myself and I find myself offended and upset that from my feminine perspective that the men that contact me only want one thing. "Sex."

Sex while wonderful and fulfilling is what it is, I'm more than just a sexual being. I'm a person and want to be known for being a person, not for bedroom skills, eye candy, or arm candy. I want to be taken seriously as having more to offer the world than my body. It's frustrating that as a man I could not see this behavior as childish and sexist, today however I find a new perspective and I must say being on the other side of the fence now; it's not fun what women go through to be taken seriously.

I understand where you are coming from. I created a Skype account in order to communicate with other staff members in a way that was far faster than PMs. No picture, age and only a name but I started getting regular request to add them to my list. I ended up using an idea that Susan had and made my display message read "Only known contacts will be accepted. Unknown contacts will be rejected. Tell me where I know you from.". This has calmed things down and if it's a site member, they only need to mention the site and they are in. All others are rejected.

I do not know where you know me from? do I need to set up a skype account to use the message boards on this site?

The Skype account is independent from the board. When I became a moderator I knew I would have a bunch of questions and typing was just to slow. Pretty much all of the moderator staff uses Skype as we are located in different countries and long distance phone just doesn't work well. I use PMs for messages when a response isn't important or when a member isn't available but I know they will be on latter. I also am more than willing to PM with any member who has questions and doesn't feel the topic belongs in a thread.

For you to be able to message, you need 15 quality posts. Once you hit 15, you will gain the ability to send personal  messages through the forum. You will also be able to customize your profile and add avatars. If we judge you are posting just to reach 15 posts, we will disable these features or adjust your post account. Fortunately I have only seen a few people who were posting just to run the numbers up and given a few days of normal posting, you should have no problem reaching 15 posts.