We Got Mail!

This well thought out comment comes from Dianne replying to the Transgender Due Diligence post here in Cyrsti's Condo.

"This is so good! Thanks. There are two schools of thought that love to clash in the trans community. First philosophy, Trans care is a commodity and should be accessible to all. You visit a shrink, go out of the country, snip, you live as a woman. A light hearted, free spirited approach that figures you will likely be OK. Second philosophy, you have to prove you are a "true" transsexual by suffering, then you change your whole life and leave everyone behind, then you deny you ever lived another way. Somewhere along the line you have surgery and then you denigrate everyone else coming along behind. You earned the right to be harsh and you will be as Bit%&y as you want! Obviously to some, the real world might be somewhere in between. The Middle Path. In both extremes the socialization and the acceptance in society seems to be an assumed result of surgery that will just occur by itself. In both extremes the people at the other end are viewed as stupid and don't get it. I'm not really sure anyone at either end can even SEE the far off horizon of the other extreme. Me, I'm in the middle so it seems like one half of the trans world thinks I'm a stodgy old worry wart of a thing. That I waited too long out of fear or something. The other half thinks I'm a know nothing that can't imagine how lonely it is to be so lonely so just stay the Heck away from me (just like everyone else does, see???) They think their experience is totally unique and completely unlike mine. I've never been at either extreme of anything. Actually, I'm a duck. I look calm on the top of the water but I'm paddling like crazy underneath. I paid 15 years ago when I broke my life up and almost transitioned (I got scared...). My socialization? The other day I looked back and realized that I have had, maybe, 4 or 5 close male friends in my entire life. My closest friends that I've shared the most with have always been women. I just waited a long time to join them!"

I love the final line! Plus at one point of time I counted a similar number of male friends in my life also.