Hey, Gang!

I found this thread very interesting, since it was an opportunity for members to say how they feel about their relationships insofar as they affect their CDing. A lot of people may be aware that I personally prefer evidence to speculation and hard evidence to the flimsy sort. So I've gone through this thread and at this point, since the thread seems to be pretty well played out, attempted to quantify what people are saying.

We all know about the pitfalls that statistics present. So I'm fully aware that the evidence I'm presenting here isn't nearly as hard as I'd like it to be. But you do the best you can.

There were a total of 113 replies. These I grouped under five categories:

[1] The situation couldn't be worse. Perhaps the member's SO is still in the dark, perhaps she's vehemently opposed to the member's dressing, perhaps they've split up over the question, that sort of thing.

[2] I considered a DADT situation to be a good yardstick.

[3] In the middle. (Duh!)

[4] I considered, "Accepting but not participating" to be a good yardstick.

[5] The situation couldn't be better. The member is totally happy with the SO's handling of the situation.

These categories are of course subjective, as was the manner I went about classifying people's replies. Furthermore, I rated a reply according to the member's subjective feeling about the situation, not according to the situation itself. That is, A and B might be in a very similar situation, but A seemed happier about things than B. Therefore A would get a higher rating than B.

Finally, I would adjust a rating where it seemed appropriate. E.g., a member might be in a generally DADT situation, but might say something that made the situation appear to be a bit more positive than a 2. So I'd bump it up to a 3.

In other words, my whole procedure here was very subjective. If someone else wants to have a go at it, they might come up with results quite different from mine. If you feel like having a go, be my guest. I won't complain.

Anyway, things panned out like this:

Category 1 = 15
Category 2 = 18
Category 3 = 24
Category 4 = 18
Category 5 = 38.

These results are largely positive. Note that the largest category is 5, while category 1 is the smallest. (Could this be because those who are happiest about their situation are more eager to talk about it?) The average score here is 3.41, which is a bit on the plus side.

So we can conclude that when we consider the situation of a transperson in a relationship, on the whole there are more positives than negatives to report.

Best wishes, Annabelle