Quote from: Zenda on December 07, 2011, 12:17:46 PM
Kia Ora Spacial,
I'm sorry if you took this the wrong way however it was not meant as a judgement question on whether or not a person as a right to alter their body...It's about whether a person is 'sure' about their feelings when doing so....
Denial due to pressure from outside sources can greatly impact a person's judgement, especially if they live in an environment where 'homosexuality' is still frowned upon, and from a young age they had/have been told it's sinful/wicked and one will burn in hell etc...Growing up in this type of environment[one where the heteronormative mind set is strongly promoted] is bound to have some impact upon an already 'confused/questioning' person's somewhat fragile mind...
The stigma attached to 'homosexuality' is alive and well even in this forum... No doubt there are some members who 'fear' being seen as 'gay' and not just it being a case of 'mistaken' identity ["oh you're just gay" so to speak and then not taking the person's 'true' trans identity seriously], but for those still questioning/unsure about their feelings/identity it's all the 'religious' baggage that could come with such an allegation ..
Pretty's comment about this thread being 'lock' would be an indication of to what extent 'homosexuality' still sits uncomfortably with some...
My question is a simple 'straight' forward[excuse the pun] one...However it does require some 'deep' soul searching [if one believes in a soul that is]...
"Are you sure of who you are ?" [Or are you trying to conform to the 'heteronormative' norm ?]
Nothing more nothing less, so I hope the 'readers' don't take offence nor go on the defensive by attempting to read more into it...It's just to make the reader[whose still questioning their true feelings] think more deeply before committing to what many believe to be irreversible life changing procedures...
Being 'happy and content' is what life is all about !
Metta Zenda 
Sure, it can happen. An extreme but nonetheless good example of that, would be places such as Iran, where apparently 45% of those having SRS are not transsexual, but have SRS only to avoid Cultural discrimination and even death sentences.
I also believe that non-transsexual transitioners are not unusual at all in, for instance, Thailand, although actual regret, atleast seemingly, appears to be considerably more rare there than in the West World, although they ofcourse do exist there aswell. It would be illogical to believe otherwise.
Perhaps their Cultural filosophy is an important key factor in that aspect(For less regret), as they hold the Cultural view that if someone is feminine, than that person are- regardles of birth-assigned sex- naturally meant to be a woman, and if someone is masculine, than that is a man, regardless of biological gender.
So perhaps non-transsexual yet non-regretting Thai-transitioners holding this Cultural view simply have another concept of what a "True transsexual" are and what a male and a female are, hence resulting in few regretters statistically speaking, despite many non-transsexual transitioners.
Regarding regretters in the West World, their seem to be a good number of them in comparision, although one must also remember that the number that turn out happy, are in clear majority.
The reason for this differrence, if there truly are a difference, one can only speculate about, but it is not unlikely at all that Cultural view may be a big key factor here aswell, while another factor ofcourse indeniably are that there are nowadays a growing awareness of more variations in gender than only male and female, hence transitioners that transitioned years or decades ago because they were in actuality, perhaps, extreme ->-bleeped-<-s but transitioned because they could see no other way to express their constant feminity, or androgynes that transitioned for the same reason, but later on found out that now when it is considered okay to express gender identity in other ways too, they became depressed as they did not have that awareness from the start but now wish that they did. And so on.
I do know that you foremostly referred to transitioners in the West world that denies themselves regardless of legal pressures, but I decided to stretch the answer a bit more anyways.