Quote from: whatever on March 21, 2010, 10:06:58 PM
That makes sense. I get that, but I haven't met anyone who has gone through operations, transitioned, been through the social degradation, and not had it effect their identity. I mean, wouldn't transgender always be a part of these peoples identities?
You don't hear from a lot of post-transition "wrong body" types because we generally drift away from "the community" after a while.
There's nothing bad about that (or about staying with the community either - I have much respect for them), it's just that for people not to "drift", they have to be getting something out of the interaction. A lot of post transition people just find there is nothing much left to hold their interest. They are comfortable, they've set things right, and moved on. And some people stick around because they like helping others enough for it to be interesting. Some have other reasons.
We're brought together by the cirumstance of having the same medical condition (and that, when we come here, fixing that condition is high on our "interests list"). Once that link is broken, it's like childhood schoolyard friends that have grown up to find they don't have much in common - your paths "uncross" and you end up persuing and building other relationships with people that are sharing your next "interest".
The people to which you are refering do exist, and they are plentiful. It's just that you won't often find a lot of them being very public.
I don't get the link in this thread between op-status (and legal / transition status) and mental "gender" though.
I can't speak for other people, but I've always just been male. I haven't had an identity that's changed over time down some path of "female feels right -> other label feels right -> male feels right". It's just been "male (but trying to ignore it because it'd be annoying and painful to deal with) -> male (Ah screw it, it's too painful
not to deal with it)".
I am
psychologically speaking, male (with the professional opinions to back me up

) regardless of my organs or how other people may have seen me in the past. No operation, opinion or legal document is going to change what gender I am.
In the end, I'll always have an awkward medical past - weird scars, deformed genitals and all, and my upbringing will be slightly different (but not that different - it's not as if there's a perscribed method for each gender). Doesn't mean I'm not as man as the next man, man.
Once you bring non-physical factors into it, I think the perfect "100% male" is a mythical creature from a non-existant, non-varying unrealistic scenario reflecting what the collective FTM consciousness wishes had been. He's a unicorn on a pedistal. Screw him and his measuring horn... there are as many different men in the world as there are men, with just as many different upbringings and subsequent neurosis