I am not a transgendered person. But I was married to a man who decided (and I am not using that word loosely) to become a woman after we had been married some years. I say decided because, unlike some transgendered folks, my husband was not inclined toward suicide or self-mutilation; he truly decided that he PREFERRED to be a woman to a man. He was extremely fortunate in that his build and features lent themselves to this extremely well, despite having neither an XXY chromosome nor a deficiency of testosterone.
I loved my husband, and I didn’t stop doing so before or after his operation. I think, under the circumstances, we can take it as a given that I neither hate nor fear transgendered folks. But I didn’t and don’t view him as a woman. To me, the operation simply took the costume deeper than wearing make-up and women’s clothing (in which he looked absolutely fantastic, I might add, at least once I taught him to dress!). And that was a key factor in splitting us up (the other being that I truly felt he hadn’t gone through all of that to remain married to me - and while he loved me, I think he was relieved. He wanted to experience dating as a woman.). He couldn’t accept my continuing to regard him as the man I married, and I not only couldn’t, but wouldn’t have chosen to view him any other way. He was the man I’d married, for heaven’s sake! I was perfectly willing to help him make OTHER people believe he was a woman if that’s what he wanted, but, sorry, nothing would or could make ME believe it in any deep way.
One of the points I’m trying to make here is that an inability to believe that someone who has had surgery is now the sex that their body resembles does NOT mean that that person either hates or fears the transgendered. Joe_Cool was being aggressive and even rather obnoxious, but to assume he fears TSs is contrary to any evidence I saw and rather facile, IMO. One can have views on this point without them being informed by either hatred or fear. To assume otherwise is to apply a stereotype which I can assure you from personal experience is not valid.
The other thing I wanted to mention was my particular theory on why MTFs tend, particularly at first, to be very dressy, and often not in very good taste at that. And this one will almost certainly piss some of you off, for which I apologize; it is not my intent.
While there are some exceptions, I don’t believe that most men who choose to follow this path have been raised as girls. Regardless of how they may feel internally, the fact is that they are viewing being a female in their society from the outside. Sorry, but this is utterly inevitable; if you are a boy on the outside in this (and I would imagine most, if not all, other societies), your experiences are going to be those of a boy. Our society treats boys and girls differently long before puberty, and of course the divergence increases enormously with age. What I’m driving at here is that I suspect most men who start trying to live as women ( before surgery, since a reputable surgeon requires this) are pretty clueless. They dress and often behave as they PERCEIVE women doing, from the OUTSIDE. Also, (although I think this is more common for TVs than TSs), I think many men feel much freer to be flamboyant as women than as men, and thus dress in a flashy fashion that they wouldn’t consider when dressed as a man. This is OPINION; I have no cites, nor have I looked for any. It is based solely on my personal experience and observation, so if I’m wrong, I’m wrong. It won’t be the first time or the last!
Just my two cents…
