quote:

ORIGINAL: stellauk
Thing is I've checked TOS and there's nothing in it to say that we have to agree or even express an opinion which is right. You have as much right to come here and express your opinion just the same as me and everybody else.

But this is the problem when you hold rigid beliefs about gender identity and roles. People are all individual human beings, there's lots of exceptions, no set standard, and when you try to generalize and impose a standard on everybody else based on your own opinion and perception it makes you look ignorant and bigoted.

Oh and before you assume I'm calling you a bigot here check out the bolded part of my sigline. It's there for a reason.

Thing is this is really no different to gay rights, is it? The assumption that someone who is different from you must be different because they are making a choice.

But homosexuality isn't a choice, it's discovery. It's like smoking two packets of cigarettes a day day in, day out, year in, year out, and then discovering that you've got heart disease. Now common sense dictates that if you want to continue living you need to modify your thinking and behaviour and become an ex-smoker.

It's no different with homosexual men. Common sense dictates that if you are attracted to people of the same sex then maybe you need to be developing relationships with those who accept this and want the same thing. Most homosexuals are accepted and supported by heterosexuals. You might be heterosexual, homosexuality might not appeal to you, you might regard it as a sin, and that's okay too. But thing is homosexuals are not expecting you to embrace homosexuality or condone it, they just want you to accept their reality that homosexuality is their thing and the way they need to be.

Same difference with trans women. You might not agree with their claim that they are women, you might think that they are men trying to be women, but the bottom line is is that you are not them, you don't share their reality, you don't have to live your life in their shoes.

It's the exact same principle with women and how women appear and present themselves. Some are unhappy and unhealthy, and some aren't.

I'm a touch under 6ft tall and just under 300lbs. In the past I have been 480lbs. I can explain why. I am a genetic mosaic and my being female isn't just a psychological thing, or an emotional thing, it's also pretty much physical. I have the curves of a woman especially in the lower half of my body, most of which is female, but not entirely. I have broader shoulders than most women.

Thing is being a genetic mosaic and being born of atypical sex to the degree that I experienced puberty characteristic of both sexes - which is when it's believed my pattern of DNA changed - I never had any sort of real sense of identity or self, and always lived not knowing who I was in concrete terms and for much of my past have incorrectly perceived myself to be bi-gendered when the reality was I was more of one and less of the other.

This required years of self-discovery and self-knowledge to try and overcome numerous doubts and fears of who I am. I went off to Poland to do the 'man thing' and spent years living in denial of myself. I dated women, women who noticed consistently that I have feminine curves which they saw as a turn off, and the only way I could overcome this was to overeat and put on enough weight to develop an overhanging belly and flesh out everything so nobody could tell. What I never got to grips with was not being able to function sexually as a male and later even function at all. I just didn't feel it. Sex was traumatic and I felt the act of penetrating a woman with my penis to be repulsive. You hear of sub drop, dom drop, well I had sex drop.

This created a pattern of binge eating and comfort eating which I managed to cope with to some degree but then when I started to crumble and break down psychological and emotionally turned into depression, apathy as a coping strategy and further bouts of comfort eating. I never purged or made myself sick, but just starved myself afterwards.

Throw into this mix that I was an unwanted child, abused throughout childhood by both parents and it's given me numerous issues and hurdles and hoops I have to jump through to complete my transition. Coping with coming out, transitioning and being street homeless all together put me through further psychological trauma and brought back the same coping strategies - apathy and comfort eating.

At the moment I am working hard on these issues because these are all that are holding me back. It's not just about the HRT, the hormone implants and the surgery, when you transition the determining factor is what goes on inside your head and you need to transition internally before you transition externally or physically. I'm at the end of the psychiatric program and deemed emotionally and psychologically ready for surgery.

And I'm working hard, because I know 30% don't make it. They die, many through suicide and some through blood clots and liver failure. Late transition is physically demanding and the surgery is traumatic. I've seen post-ops struggling basically because they continued the drinking, the smoking and the lack of effort with socialization and integration into society.

Now if you want to take a look at me and make a judgment that I'm deluding myself, lazy or don't take care or pride in my appearance then be my guest. You don't know me, you haven't walked the same path I have walked through in life, and probably have no concept of what it's like standing in my shoes.

Do I perceive myself as beautiful? In some way yes, it's a relatively new concept for me after years of perceiving myself as the Ford Edsel of the human race but I know my beauty is something which is more internal and external and I accept this.

Do I see myself as physically attractive? Personally speaking no I don't, though I accept some people do and they are a minority among the many people who don't see me as any sort of serious potential for a relationship. I'm a work in progress, I'm still 'under renovation' and this I accept, and I also accept that in my mid 40's I'm never going to look universally appealing to everyone.

Does it matter to me? No it doesn't. Not one bit. I accept who I am as a person, so too do other people, and this is enough for me. I mean, let's face it, the final version of me is probably going to look much better than today, but it's also going to be lifeless and lying in a coffin. I'm far more interested in the journey and what feelings, experiences and memories I leave behind for other people. This is what my life is really all about, sharing stuff with other people.

But unlike most people here I know what it's like to be stigmatized as a male from my own experiences and I also know what it feels like to be stigmatized as a female, also from my own experiences.

This is where I see the fallacy in your argument. You make the statement that maybe the Big Beautiful Woman maybe isn't all that beautiful. Okay, you have a right to that opinion and to express it here and I applaud you for doing so.

But then again you are not a Big Beautiful Woman, you don't wear her knickers and you don't see things the way she sees them. Not even I can see it, even though I am female.

I'm the lucky one here I guess, I wasn't born with a vagina, I haven't had to cope with all that stress and pressure to conform to a social and cultural stereotype of what is feminine and what is beautiful right the way through childhood. I cannot conceive what it feels like to go through pregnancy and childbirth or what it feels like to have a period. The only thing I can relate to are the hormonal imbalances and the menopause because I get something similar, I get the testosterone rushes, the sudden weight gain for no apparent reason, the mood swings, the sudden drops in self-esteem and self-confidence and the days when I feel like crap.

The logic is the same on both sides of this argument. If a woman weighing 300lbs chooses to call herself beautiful so what? What's it got to do with you or anyone else? Who gets to set the standard here?

And furthermore, her perceiving herself to be beautiful carries far more weight in my eyes because it's more than just an opinion, it's an opinion based on self-knowledge and individual life experiences and no matter what, opinions on such a basis trump every other opinion - even the ones based on scientific evidence and statistics.

My previous posting here wasn't directed at you or anyone else, and I actually appreciate and enjoy so many different people coming here with different opinions. So much more interesting than if everybody thought or felt the same or agreed with each other all the time.

That posting, like this one and so many others is just me sharing my thoughts and feelings and my experiences so other people have the opportunity to step in my shoes for a while and try to see thing the way I see them.

Whether you do or not is your choice, and whether it changes what you think, feel or understand about any given issue or topic is your own individual matter and decision.