getting rid of all the clutter in life

[Perrinielle]

Hi,

I noticed I did become a completely different person since I started HRT. The person I am now is the person I love, I love the feeling of loving myself - this is just occurring to me.

But anyways, I have been on other forums before for a couple of years, made good friends there and kept diaries. (Why does no one on the US or Canadian forums keep diaries anyway?)

I have been involved with serious discussions on the other forums, we slammed doors, hugged and cried, you know how that goes. A couple of months back I decided that I didnot want to be involved in one of the forums anymore and no response came from those girls. Honestly, I didn't care because I didn't write there a lot.
The second however... people are still mailing me that they want me to come back. It felt good to close that door because it is part of closing that part of my life as well.

When I was in the car driving home from work I made up my mind that I want to leave the last forums I was on as well. All these three forums were Dutch forums as I am originally Dutch. This last forums is a site with a lot of transgendered people.

I am trans sexual -and God please don't get me wrong- but I have nothing with transgendered people. At this time in my transition I am trying to get rid of all the clutter in life and am looking just for information that is related to my own situation.
Besides the forums I was on I decided not to stay in touch with friends or family that never responded to mails or letters. I closed down websites and blogs I had, it is all part of what I seemingly need to do. And that also includes saying good bye to the people of that last Dutch forums. And I really hate to do that. I just need to focus on becoming a woman, because I am a woman.
So I am not sure what I am trying to say here and it sounds pretty selfish but I need (and want !!) to focus on transsexual matters more than anything else. It is just that if I tell people the real reason -being the difference between transgender or trans sexual it always ends up in a huge discussion and I feel misunderstood.

So just out of curiosity... People consider themselves crossdressers but people also consider themselves trans sexual or transgendered. But I really honestly feel myself a woman and don't even like the label trans sexual. Is it that selfish to tell people that? Is it selfish from me to feel that way? Is there a nice way of telling?

Leanne

PS I really honestly love this forum already big time !!

[AmberTG]

Well, when you get right down to it, the terms "transgendered" and "transsexual" are just labels for people who need labels. You can call yourself whatever you choose to call yourself, but if you were born with a male body and a female brain, that puts you into the category that most people refer to as "transgender". If you choose to alter your physical body to match your brain, that puts you into the category that most people refer to as "transsexual". Even the doctors use those terms a lot. Doctors need to put people into categories for treatment purposes.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that, to some extent, you'll have to learn to live with these labels until after SRS. Then you can go stealth and noone will know the difference. If you can manage to go stealth before SRS, even better.

[Teresa Amina]

Describing ourselves is a minefield of misunderstandings. While transsexual describes me better than transgender (as generally used) I don't like the word much either. Once upon a time it was a good scientific description but anything with "sex" in it becomes thought of verbally in popular culture. Yet saying we are women is what used to get people like us locked away in institutions as deranged individuals out of touch with reality. The public mostly still looks at it that way. Even in the Crossdressing forum here we read the occaisional posting of "we're all men". Well, some of us aren't. I have a peculiar birth defect which I am correcting- gonads:D. With other BDs society is helpful and sympathetic. But since most people are in love with their sexual organs we have a tougher time.