Hello Jennifer,  I am 56yrs, Post-op 4yrs m-f.  I  enjoyed reading the information on your Web Site.  I took the COGIATI even though I am Post-op, and my score was  215. Which placed me in the majority of diagnoised  Transsexuals.  I was wondering if you have taken the same test(?) and if so,  what your score was.

Well, my score was 480, which puts me in the middle of Class Five. I am afraid I am pretty much an off-the-shelf, 'classic' style, Benjamin-would-have-loved-me kinda transsexual. The old model generic, if you will. Now I guess I am a rare 'extreme' type trannie, in modern wisdom. Who knew?

Also, unless I missed it, there wasn't any bio on your parents  or siblings, and what kind of relationship you have with them, if  any.

I had no siblings, I was an only child. My mother was from a rich, greedy, Oregon ranch family, and my father was a desperately poor and insanely ambitious product of the union between a prostitute and a murderer who was later hanged in prison. My mother, who had me at the age of 48, always claimed that my father had raped her after getting her drunk, and that her pregnancy -myself- was what forced her to marry my father. My father wanted her inheritance, but she always kept it from him, in hidden accounts, so that he would not dump her and run away with the money. I was raised in a household of constant shrieking fights and physical violence. Eventually, my mother, who by now was an utter recluse because of the shame of marrying beneath her status, was a prime target for what was very likely murder by my father, some three days after her will was changed, relieving me of any burden whatsoever of inheriting all her wealth. Just before this unhappy event was the moment in my biography that my father held the gun to my head, if you remember.

 I think it's really wonderful that we can Love one another  WITHOUT putting conditions on that Love.  We just accept each other the way  we are.  Well, drop me a line if you get the time.

I think that the concept of 'unconditional love' is a temporarily comforting but ultimately destructive lie. The fact is that every person, indeed evey animal, has boundaries, limits, needs, requirements, judgements, and a whole host of conditions that must be met before even minor trust may occur, much less love. 'Unconditional love' is a harmful ideal, because it demands self-sacrificing behaviors that are too extreme in the face of reality, thus forever causing broken hearts, feelings of inadaquacy, unhappiness, failed expectations and doomed faith. I think it far wiser, and much more compassionate and noble, to admit that love is always conditional, spell out those conditions honestly, and make an effort to honorably live up to a reasonably, and rationally, constructed relationship.

Love, ultimately, is trust, and unconditional trust is dire foolishness at best and suicidal idiocy at worst. Trust, and love, must be earned, or it becomes cheap.

I love only those who earn my love, for my love is precious, and of great worth. I expect only to be loved if I myself make the effort to be worth loving. Fair is fair, after all.
 

Could you tell me how the change has changed your
outlook on life? I would really like to know.. granted for me it's not an
option cause it wouldn't be the same.. but I would like to hear your
testimony on how this has changed your life? has it gotten better? has it
gotten worse? do you think it was worth it?

Hmmm...perhaps the best way I can put it is the difference between heaven and hell.

Before my transition, I was in hell. Dante could write of no worse, every moment was suffering for me, humiliation for me, even at the best I felt out of place, wrong, and a total freak. I was in the wrong body, the wrong physical sex for my gender, and it affected absolutely everything, inside and out.

After transition, I suppose that the intellectual outlook would be that I have finally gained the ability to persue life like any ordinary woman. However, the emotional reality is very different than this. Everything matters so very much more to me, and I am so grateful for finally having not just the right physical shape, but far more importantly the correct social 'role' or set of social interactions within the world, that simply being alive is a joy. It's like finally getting water after nearly dying of thirst in the desert. Or finding a warm fireplace and hot cocoa after nearly freezing to death. Water and cocoa are ok if you have them abundantly, but in the situations described, even crappy cocoa and dirty water would taste like manna from heaven.

Wonderfully, I enjoy first class metaphorical water. I am utterly accepted and have a very loving family now, as well as a pretty darn neat life and career. Of course, I still have sorrows and pains, I cry and get depressed, and piss and moan about stuff I cannot afford or having the flu, or not getting my way or whatever...but even then, I cannot help but think to myself: "hey! I may be all depressed but I am ME!" Whatever my problems, they are not the problem of being locked away inside the wrong body, and the wrong life.

So, silly as it may sound, I even cherish my own pain now, because it is MY pain, and I am experiencing it as MYSELF, as the woman I always was, only now all over, not just inside. That make any sense?

I am free. Free to be me, unaffected, without having to lie or be fake, or be false. I can be true, I can be honest, I can be sincere and heartfelt, without fearing death or violence because of a perceived conflict between my sex, and my gender.

Of course, I must also add that I cannot help but hold my self tightly before I sleep, feel the soft contours of my own body, the body I always felt but lacked for so many years, feel the rightness, the correctness of it, and offer a silent prayer of thanks just for the privilege of being able to finally be 'right'.

Now I am personally am agnostic, I neither accept nor deny the existence of any gods or spirits, but my feelings of gratitude and happiness are so overwhelming that despite my much valued reason, I still pray my 'thank-you' every night to whatever, or whoever, saved me. I am that happy about it. Being a post-op transsexual helped me so vastly enough as to actually make ME pray in gratitude at night. It's slightly embarrassing to me. But I do it.

Now I still have problems, just like any person, but great goodness, it is so very, very much better to face the problems, and the joys, of life with a body that matches my internal gender! Transition was my 'Get Out Of Hell' card, though it certainly was not free, either in money or in pain. But getting out of hell was worth it. Utterly. Totally.

So, if I have not gone on long enough already for you, going through transition made everything better, even stuff like sorrow. It makes all the difference in the world to be allowed to be genuine and real, and to live front-row-center in life, rather than seeing everything go by from the dim back row. They say 'always be yourself'. It is not just nice advice, it is the difference between heaven, and the deepest pit of hell. At least by my comparison! So my transition changed my outlook on life by making life worth living, existence itself worth valuing, and made me grateful to even exist day to day. It made me even appriciate the sad things, because they are part of life too.

Transition made me value life. That, I think, sums it up.
 

Before I tell you what happened I will give you a little backround on me.  I am 14, and in my dreams I am a heterosexual female. Well what happened in my dream last night was that I was with a man and giving him oral sex, and I had an orgasm, but what was weird about it is that it wasn't like a "shot gun" (just one big bang in a concentrated spot), but spread out.  And, when I woke up in the mourning there was no semen, so do you think its possible I had a female orgasm?  I just know I actually liked the feeling of this unlike the "shot gun".

It definately sounds like a 'female-style' orgasm, at least as I know them. Orgasms are not just in the skin, of course, but are manufactured and experienced in the brain. In effect, they are a dream-like event in the brain, and they can be triggered, with retraining, from any stimulation on any part of the body. Quadriplegics, for example, can train their brain to achieve orgasm from the skin on the back of the neck. It is a neurological 'virtual' experience, within the computer of the brain. Interesting, ne?

Obviously, if any of the brain is organized along female lines, female orgasms are possible, and no human is ever completely male or female -though clearly we tend to lean in one direction more than another on average.

So, yes, it is entirely possible for you to have female orgasms..even multiple orgasms. You may well have experienced a female orgasm. It's all in wiring of the brain, after all.
 

Having just completed the psychological test tool on you web score and scored 135, I still have doubts about being or whether I am a TS. I know I suffer from lack of confidence but how will I know for sure, or will going to a psychiatrist be the only way?

Tests and psychiatrists and such are useful tools, but there is absolutely nothing in existence, outside of your own self, which can tell you for sure whether or not you are transsexual.

There is only one, real, valid determination of transsexuality: your misery.

Are you miserable with your current physical sex, and with the accompanying gender role that you are percieved as, and must act within?

If you are miserable with these things, unhappy enough that it ruins your life and plagues your existence, that you consistantly feel cheated of your own, true life, then you are transsexual precisely to the degree you feel motivated to make things better, to fix your misery.

That is all that there is, all that there is to 'know for sure', in all of time and space.

If you are not unhappy with your body, your sex, your gender expression, your very life, then you have no real problem, and are not a transsexual, because you will have no motivation to change anything.

And that is tbe bottom line, you see, the need to change. Transsexualism is all about being so unhappy that change MUST be accomplished.
 

I have a question regarding "tucking": I almost constantly tuck everything inside me, I hate having it "all hang out". Apart from reduced/diminished fertility, do you know any adverse effects of that? I have checked some material on cancer in the testicles, but have nowhere seen mentioned higher temperature (as when keeping them inside) as a cause. It would be nice to know of any risks related to (nearly) constant tucking, so I can make educated choices.

Short term 'tucking' of the male genitals per se has no common serious medical problems associated with it to the very best of my understanding. There are some clear minor problems, such as:

Skin irritation and bruising
Abrasions and ulcerations
Lowered fertility or semi-reversable infertility

However, if one were to perform tucking continually for many, many years, it is very reasonable to consider the following:

Blisters, running sores, necrosis
Irritation induced skin cancer or precancerous lesions
Possible urinary tract infection
Permanent bending, curvature, or deformation of the erect penis
Permanent damage to the erectile supports of the penis
Permanent infertility

 
Why do you not address the issue of preserving sperm cryogenically like other sites about being TS do? I would think this would be an important concern?

Regarding the issue of preserving sperm prior to surgery, I quite fail to understand the point. It seems very like some sort of clinging to lost virility to me, an inability to let go of the masculine. One cannot have a uterus or produce eggs, so the best one could hope for is to be a father via the turkey baster approach. Being a father is not particularly of interest to my comprehension. I suppose some people might have some attachment to passing their genetic code on, but this too fails my comprehension: in only 12 generations, the genetic contribution of any one individual is only (on average) 1 in 8000, and of course, by 12 generations, one is utterly forgotten as though one had never existed upon the earth (unless, of course, one becomes incredibly infamous, like Hitler or Gengis Khan.

Genetic immortality would best be served only by never going through transition, becoming the father of hundreds or thousands of children, and being a mass murderer of historic proportions. Even then, the best one can hope for is being diluted to 1 in 8000 after only 12 generations. I see little point.

Consequently, fussing over storing the last vestige of having been a man in cold freeze seems quite morbid and ultimately ridiculous to me. I say get on with life, and with being the correct sex, and leave the genetic legacies to the endless, unknown, faceless breeding bulls.