Gilda

While I think the quotation marks are unnecessary, I appreciate your being courteous enough to at least use feminine pronouns when talking about my sister. That's more than many people who have the same discomfort do.

Not quite. My twin sister and I were the oldest of nine children. She died in a car accident 13 years ago. I have three younger sisters and four younger brothers. One of my sisters, Sissy, was born physically male with a female gender identity and has changed her physical sex and social role to match her true gender. She lives with me and has since I got her away from my parents in a custody fight three years ago, and my parents have disowned us. And yes, I am homosexual.

If you're referring to my twin, she died some time back. I have contact and am on good terms with one of my brothers, who just finished high school. The other five are all still school-aged and my parents won't me or Sissy any contact with them. My youngest sister just turned six and knows me and Sissy only through pictures of us that are years old, from before we "betrayed" the family.

Occupying cross-gender roles predates Christianity. There have been transsexuals in the social sense for thousands of years. The only difference now is that medical science has advance to the point that medical and surgical treatment have caught up with a problem that is thousands of years old.

I don't see it as playing God any more than any other surgery to correct a birth defect is.

Two reasons. It's much more commonly performed, and everything labor based is cheaper in Thailand by a large degree, including surgery.

Yes, transsexuality is much more accepted there, and there is a thriving sex trade built around it, both in terms of trassexual shows and prostitution.

Drag clubs can and do in fact do quite well in the US, and the performers are chiefly either drag queens (gay men) or pre-op transsexuals.

Yes, laser vocal cord ablasion. It's new and experimental, and produces inconsistent results at best, tending to produce squeaky unnatural sounding voices.

This is the primary method, learning to speak like a woman. It involves adjusting pitch, tonal quality, inflection, speaking speed, and even word choice.

Durng the initial learning phase, keeping a consistently feminine voice can be difficult. Sissy got it rather quickly, and hasn't spoken in a male voice in more than three years. She never went through a phase of switching, and it's entirely possible she may have lost access to her male voice. She doesn't slip, and never really has. Her female voice is what is natural for her; speaking with a male voice would take some effort, I think.

Jen switches back and forth, male at work and female everywhere else, and can do so with the ease of flipping a light switch. She did have a point early on when she'd slip on rare occasion going both ways. She tells about how one weekend after months of hard work, trying slight variations, it just clicked, and she had access to a female voice that was convincing and effortless to maintain. Upon going back to work the next week, she found she couldn't access her male voice. It was gone, and she began to panic; she wasn't ready to come out at work. After working on it in the car on the way, some ten to fifteen minutes later, she found her male voice again. Since that time, she's been able to use either one at will.

Nope. It was going to happen eventually, depending upon how long it took her to save the money.

She's a full-time college student. My wife and I paid for it.

As I understand it, it was only city employees who were covered by the legislatiion, not anyone, though my memory of that is a bit shaky.

Transsexual surgery is generally excluded as elective cosmetic surgery. None of the major insurance corporations are willing to cover it, and I personally think their reasoning is at best specious.

There are indeed many for whom this is a deal breaker, but there are a surprising number who just don't care.

Transsexual lesbians have a much more difficult time, as lesbians are a much smaller portion of the population than straight men, and tend to be, in my experience, very unaccepting of MTF transsexuals. Feminist activists tend to be the same way. The most commonly stated reasons are that MTF's are men who are trying to "infiltrate their sex" and not really women.

First, she's post-op by a couple of months now.

I don't know the details of her intimate sex life, as she doesn't share that with me, and I wouldn't repeat that here if she did. That's a matter for her and the young gentleman, or her and her therapist.

However, crudely though you may have put it, your assumptions regarding how a pre-op transsexual has sex are probably fairly accurate. Most, if not all, young transsexuals do tend to be bottoms in their relationships with men. Many find discomfort at getting erections, and take medication to reduce or eliminate them.

Yes. During the school year, the weekend when she doesn't have a date is quite rare. She tells the boys when they reach a level of emotional intimacy where that is warranted, and always does so either in a public place or most often with me and Grace present for her protection.

Enough young transsexuals have been raped or murdered upon the discovery or revelation of their birth sex that there is now even a legal defense to this specific motive fore assault/murder, called trans panic. It's been successful at least twice. On average, one transgender woman a month is murdered, a small number on it's face, but a huge proportion. Transsexual women have the highest murder rate of any demographic, three times that of young black males.

That's up to her.

Personally I think the same standards should apply as to a natal woman. Under what circumstances should a woman reveal to her partner the intimate details of her past, especially those that are emotionally sensitive? That's the standard I think should apply.

I think she should before forming an emotionally intimate commitment to a man, as I think being honest about your sexual history is important to forming a strong relationship.

Again, I'm not going into Sissy specifically, but I can answer in general terms.

I assume you're asking about lubrication. The answer is that the glands that produce lubrication in a natal female, chiefly the Skene's glands (also responsible for female ejaculation) are absent in transwomen. The tissue that forms these glands in women becomes the prostate gland in men. Also, the interior of the vagina in a transwoman is bare skin instead of a mucous membrane. So no, in the vast majority, no natural lubrication occurs. Some small number do report some, but it isn't clear where this comes from.

If the lining of the neo-vagina is formed from a section of colon, then there is some natural lubrication as a result, as the colon is itself a mucuous membrane. This procedure is rare, however, with the penile inversion being much more common.

Immediately post op, the neo-vagina does tend to excrete fluids and bits of tissue as extraneous tissues and fluids involved in the healing process are eliminated, but after the neo-vagina is fully dilated and healed, this stops, and typically no further secretions or excretions will occur.

Yes, it was "caught early", at about the age of four. The fortunate thing is that we were able to begin medical treatment when she was 16, and in medical terms the earlier you begin, the better the physical results.

It was a team effort, and Sissy did the most difficult part by far. But I agree, being able to transition did very likely save her life, and without a doubt made her a happier, more well adjusted person.

Maybe it helped me to sympathize, maybe not. Many lesbians have as much, if not more difficulty accepting transsexuals as women for reasons stated above.

Grace has never had any problem with Sissy's condition, and she's never had any gender or orientation issues.

Katie was bisexual as a teen. Growing up, the two of us were both delighted to let Sissy do girl stuff with us, so I have no doubt that she would have been neither surprised nore would she have objected to Sissy's being transsexual.

No pictures of Sissy for reasons of privacy and personal protection, but there are two of me in my profile. But I can say that you wouldn't read her if you saw her on the street--nobody ever has--or for that matter in any other context. Intimate partners wouldn't be able to tell unless she told them. Short of a chromosome test or gynocological exam, she is indistiquishable from any other teenage girl. Except that she's smarter, prettier, and nicer than most. And I'm not saying that just because I'm a biased big sister.

Thanks. I think I understood all of your questions well enough. If there's anything I misinterpreted feel free to clarify.

Gilda

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I'm against ending blackness. I believe that everyone has a right to be black, it's a choice, and I support that.

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