Happy second unbirthday to me

http://birdofparadox.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/happy-second-unbirthday-to-me/
9/20/09

The medical condition of transsexualism – with which I was formally diagnosed in October 2006 and which still impacts on my life today – is defined by the NHS here in Britain as "a life-long and extreme form of [gender dysphoria]". Life-long: and my own experience bears that out. I knew, with absolute certainty, at the age of five years old that the body into which I had been born was not the body my brain was expecting. Transitioning – and I don't view it as comprising only surgery; it has many other aspects: medical, social, legal, etc – is no more and no less than a way of managing that dissonance, of making my life bearable, of finding ways to function as a contributing member of society. I do not accept that any one particular change, or set of changes, offers a 'cure'. I am not 'ill', therefore there is nothing to 'cure'.