Rosa,

Can you talk about your experience in transitioning? How did you make the decision to do so, what sort of support you had, that sort of thing.

I know from your previous thread that you are in a long term relationship (assuming that it is still ongoing ) and that she met you before you transitioned - how did you deal with the transition within the relationship? Have you given any thought to how you would deal with dating and relationships should you and your partner every split up?

A casual acquaintance of mine is also transgender (I met her trying to find someone to guest lecture for a graduate level class on sexuality in counseling), and am very interested in what those with a different experience of gender and gender identity have to teach the rest of us.

Thank you for any insight you are willing to provide - it's not my intention to pry into your personal life, but I very strongly believe that it is only when more people start to become aware of these issues by meeting and interacting with the transgendered community that some of the societal prejudice can be countered.

oh yeah--and one other thing i forgot. there was a lot of talk about dsm iv diagnosis codes, etc. i want to be clear (and this is in the second book) that i don't have a diagnosis of "gender identity disorder" or "gender dysphoria." (though i appreciate people standing up for me and at least trying to EXPLAIN that medically people do exist like me who are women that are not natal women.) while my exact icd code is private, i personally view my issue as a hormone imbalance that i correct by taking estrogen and progesterone, which (ask any woman on the pill or on hrt) affects my mood and my senses and feminizes me. this is my stance as a policy wonk and is not necessarily in keeping with the mainstream views of the lgbt community.

whatever you may or may not believe, i am actually a happy and well-adjusted person with a loving family, numerous friends, a stable life, and without a mental illness. remember--the dsm is the same book that classified homosexuality as a mental illness until around thirty years ago. it changes with our understanding of our world around us as people "practice" medicine and the corpus of knowledge grows.

sgt rj:

transitioning is not hard if you accept that (a) not everyone will understand you, (b) if you use common sense and don't put yourself in harms way you will not be physically hurt, and (c) you will lose some friends and even family along the way.

personally, i believe that being a tranny is like having a sieve around me that only lets the right people through, such that i don't even have to engage (pardon my french) d-bags as part of daily life because i am incomprehensible to them. transitioning is a slow process. while i used a chemical called Lupron to go from being hormonally male to hormonally female in a few weeks (yikes!!!) the process of physically growing breasts, a rounder behind, and smoother skin and softer hair takes years. not only that, it took me years of informally studying female mannerisms, gestures, behaviors, and affectations. think about how women stand up and sit down, bend down, walk in heels or flats, walk in a group. how we hold our hands when we stand, when we sit, how to dress in a feminine way, etc. there's a LOT to this.

i made the decision to do it because it was the only solution. i'd rather be ridiculed by "people entitled to their opinions" online (i say this, because they are opinions and not facts) and in person than live life as a man. men just interact with each other differently than women do, and to live in the wrong social space is both maddening and masochistic.

i had at first no support, because it appeared that i was doing something crazy. but i trust in god (i'm actually a catholic in bible school) and His plan for me, and since i've been doing what i've done, my life has been more full and rewarding than i could have ever imagined. i have decided to live in a faith-based rather than fear-based reality, and in so doing, have reaped the rewards of a life lived well and of peace.

now that i am out and transitioned, everyone who knows me is fine with me. people also explain me to new people so that they get it. and if anyone had any concern that i was "not right" somehow, i have plenty of friends whom i've known for years and have raised their kids around me, and so it has been proven to me that provided the parents are open-minded, this is much easier for children to grasp than adults. i have support from friends, family, church, and community.

i won't talk too much about my relationship here. my partner is in a fairly-high-up decision-making capacity in a private equity firm and does not want her life posted online. re: if my partner got hit by a bus would i date men or women? my response is, "i'm attracted to attractive people."

lastly--anyone who's actually interacted with me personally knows that i do not have a mean or violent bone in my body. i can (of course) be catty with other women if they insult my hair or accessories, but i'm very happy to be a human being in 2011 and believe i was born this way and at this time for a reason. i spend my time trying to help other people understand not just me but each other. i speak regularly at area colleges to undergrad and grad students about this topic, and i never argue for special rights for transgender individuals, but for universal basic human rights for all individuals.

i know this didn't answer everything, but it was a start.

I was looking less for concrete answers (what is it like to transition) and more about what your experience was like (what was your experience transitioning), since it's not something I can ever understand on a personal level, not being transgendered myself. Therefore your answers were completely helpful.

I think it's interesting that you discuss how consciously you tried to learn and adopt female mannerisms - that's not even something that comes naturally to all women! My body language is often "off" when I'm in a group of nothing but women, I believe as a result of usually dressing in an almost masculine fashion and having some masculine habits and mannerisms. I was always a tomboy and spent much of my young adult life around men in male dominated professions (military and law enforcement). Although I am not a lesbian, I have been mistaken for one before, but as you alluded to, this is just who I am - a kind of masculine straight female, and sometimes that causes others to make snap judgements about me that are incorrect. Getting comfortable with yourself, which it sounds like you are, can be a challenge but is ultimately so much healthier.

FWIW, my post about the DSM-IV diagnoses was not intended to state that you personally have any clinical diagnosis, only that transgender is completely different from cross-dressing. There's a lot of debate even in the mental health field about the necessity of even having codes and labels for mental issues (to say nothing of the potential stereotyping of the "mentally ill"). That said, as the DSM-IV currently stands, most transgendered individuals would probably qualify for a diagnosis of GID at some point in their lives (most commonly in the pre-transition stage) simply due to the fact that they are transgendered, and almost certainly experience some distress because of it as a child/adolescent/adult. That distress will hopefully become minimized as society becomes more accepting of the concept that gender identity is not a binary, all or nothing dichotomy, so that transgendered youth can simply be accepted as such and be allowed to transition prior to puberty with a minimum of distress and societal rejection/bigotry.

Finally, I also respect the privacy of your partner, and I'm glad you have such a supportive person in your life.

Thanks for your willingness to answer some questions.

I deleted your last post because you are in violation of 2+2 rules by creating a gimmick account to post while your other account is banned. As such, I have extended the ban on your account, and it will be expiring on July 31st.

Your opinion is not the issue. The rude manner in which you choose to express your opinion, however, is the issue (particularly the personal invective directed at anyone who does not share your opinion). Also, sending abusive PMs to people is not very nice.

I am going to ban this account now, as well. Please do not make any more gimmicks, or all of your accounts will be permanently banned. Thank you.

Rosa,

Just wanted to say thank you for coming into this thread and sharing your story / knowledge with us. I am happy to hear that the folks from Wicked Chops extended an apology to you and have given you an outlet through which to speak.

What a great thread, mostly. Roasa thanks for speaking out in this thread. I hope you still visit this site (doubt it) as Id like to get in touch with you, since I too am transgendered (not transitioned). The previous thread about rosa (the big one filled with douchebags) almost made me cry because of the arrogance. I know those people are a bunch of idiots, but it still hurts me very much that people ridicule trans people sooooo much. Roas is a woman, a beautiful one I might add and anyone disagreeing with that is completely ignorant.

The article is very offensive, and unacceptable. Much respect to TWSS to supporting transgender people .

Kinda forgot about this thread until it got bumped, and it reminded me that I had some questions about it.

I was pretty shocked at just how rude the NVG thread was, and how much latitude was given to the posts there. Since I'm not a regular in NVG, it's hard for me to gauge just how "normal" the level of discourse was there. It just seemed to me that more posts should have been deleted and some more ban hammers wielded.

Compared to my own "coming out" post some years back in OOT (which at the time was considered a pretty wide open and lightly moderated forum), the level of personal attacks and bigoted remarks seemed rather high.

So, I'm curious, is it that forums in general (other than this one) moderated less these days? Is NVG just the "wild wild west" where it's considered a free fire zone? Did the mods just keep the trolls off my back in my thread because I was already a known and long time z00 denizen?

I just don't get why that thread was allowed to go the way it did. And frankly, I'd like to know that if my pic winds up in some article because I make a decent score that the greenies are going to have my back. I certainly wouldn't have had half the patience that Rosa had.

Shauna

IMO, the NVG thread was not as bad as I would have imagined. Don't get me wrong, it wasnt by any means respectful but still seemed like it couldve gone a lot worse (it actually couldve been, who knows how many posts were deleted).

The majority of people seemed to have a good laugh/tease about it (just as they would be making fun of say Gobbo or DN), quite a few seem genuinely intrigued and curious about Rosa's situation, and only a handful of posts (that didn't get deleted) were just downright vitriolic. Either way, I agree that the breaks should have been put on a lot sooner.

NVG is actually pretty well modded, from my experience. It's just a lot of it is behind the scenes. I see posts and topics get deleted pretty damn quickly, sometimes within a minute or so. A lot of the listed mods on that forum rarely show up, as I normally see only Sgt, Noah, TheEngineer, or Professionalpoker actively posting. Given the high volume of NVG, its only natural some of the material will slip though the cracks, but given time, they will be dealt with.

FWIW, I've cracked down pretty hard on any gay jokes in NVG since being modded, and I can say with complete confidence that if the Rosa Lee thread were to have happened today, it would have been modded much more aggressively by myself.

When you read the NVG rules sticky, you realize that, by the letter of the law, it should be much more contained, but the sheer volume is overwhelming sometimes.

I'm probably one of, if not the most, active mod in there and I've been trying to cut down on the nastiness without detracting from the goofiness.

I'm not always successful (I don't follow every thread), but I do what I can. Everyone can help by sending post reports when they come across an offensive post.

God, how can you honestly say that. There are so many posts that aren't just a good laugh/tease. That thread is so unbelievably offensive to all transgenderd people. I know you said it was still un unacceptable thread, however it "WAS NOT THAT BAD" really is ridiculous. There were SO many posts saying stuff like "wtf is that thing", "stop calling it a she", etc. I mean the people "poking fun" were insulting her gender, are you kidding me? The general consensus of that thread was rosa was a man and a weird one at that. I was pretty much in tears reading through some of that, even though its just a bunch of douchebags it really does hurt to see that stuff.

I apologize if I sounded like I was being callous or disrespectful, but I guess I have rather thick skin. Personally, I make the distinction between when people make gay jokes just to be goofy or when they are saying things out of pure spite and bigotry. I might have to read through the thread again, but it felt like the majority fell in the former category. It seemed like a small portion of people like El Kabong and Bronx Bomber were being the most genuinely antagonistic.

I'll admit though, I have VERY few gay friends, so I guess Im just used to the ribbings of my heterosexual friends. Some things that bother most homosexuals don't phase me at all. I realize we're talking about the plight of transsexuals though, so in that respect, I may be very well out of line and sound very ignorant.

I never stumbled across the NVG thread until this discussion got bumped, so I bothered to read it. Before Rosa showed up, it was mostly offensive by typical NVG offensiveness standards (people with the mental age of 13 post offensive **** that they think is funny, ldo). There were several exceptions that should have been modded and/or deleted, however. Overall, I think there were more positive comments on her boobs vs. questioning her gender (although it was close).

Once Rosa posted, a lot of the people backpedaled and commended her for responding to people openly on the issue. Personally, I thought she crushed the NVGtards with her openness and intelligence. To be honest, I have rarely run across posters whose posts sound more thought out as Rosa's. And the tone of her writing made them look like the idiots, and that if she was hurt or insulted by comments that she would be the bigger woman and look past it. The worst post of the thread from my scanning was by Lenny-T, which should have definitely been deleted/infracted.

A bit of good news...the NVG thread will become more buried into archives later this year.

Yeah this is what I meant. I felt it was NVG being NVG, where no one really gets a break unless you're Isildur or Dwan. As stated it earlier, a handful of dbags went especially out of their way to make Rosa feel bad. The most were "nice boobs, id hit that, this chick has balls" type of comments.