I have a question that I'm not sure you or anyone can answer. Like
most other tranny girls, I still cry myself to sleep some nights
thinking that I will never be a real mommy - only an adoptive mommy.
Your writing tell me that this is probably a problem that I'll never
really get over. My therapist refuses to help me on the issue -
focusing instead on how it may be possible in the future. Especially
on hormones, the feeling that I would rather die than continued to be
denied the life and youth I deserve, beats me down. How do I learn to
accept and be happy with myself?

In a nutshell, learn to value your differences as assets rather than as liabilities. Look around you, look at all of the boring, mundane, cowlike, obedient, unquestioning, dull, mechanical lives of ordinary human females. Think, really think about it. Do you really, truly want to live exactly like that?

That is what happens to people who have no major issues or Big Problems to wake them up. Even folks with cancer and serious medical threats often fail to wake up, and just  -if they survive- go right back to the Grind. Gender stuff has the power to make you question without directly killing you. If you make use of the unique experience that has been dumped on you. Sure we miss out on stuff...like having babies, but we gain stuff too.

Personally, I do not think the probability is high that within our lifetimes carrying a baby to term will be an option for TS people. It is not impossible, but I do think that a lot more needs to be learned before it becomes possible. In my opinion, your therapist is not doing as good a job as they could by ignoring this issue. Of course, they may have their reasons, such as that there may be other issue more immediate that are more important to your survival. That is very possible. After all, there is plenty of time to deal with issues of baby blues, if you can get your life stable, safe, and functioning fully. Survival first, then everything else!

Now, as TS people, we do miss out on a lot, but please remember how much we also gain. Being TS is not like being armless and legless and blind from birth. That kind of defect is just plain all bad. The stuff a person can learn from that kind of experience is pretty limited. No real trade-off.

But being TS has a pretty decent trade-off, a kind of recompense for the trouble, if you make use of it. Knowing and using this can make a world of difference. Being TS provides the potential to truly be free, make unusual choices, and understand things about life that most ordinary folks could barely grasp if it were explained in a children's picture book.

I do not live a 'normal' life. I know I am FAR happier than the average woman. I was able to make choices that the average person, much less the average woman could not. I know this is due to only one thing: the fact that I was burdened with being TS.

So, might I suggest that when you feel the worst about being stuck being TS, try doing two things...remember that you have a birth defect that has compensations, that you CAN look forward to eventually getting fixed (unlike our blind quadriplegic example), and you are -by virtue of your experiences- able to live a uniquely suited life if only you make the effort to.
 
 
My friend Pseudonyma is charming, sweet, and passive as a boy - but really fun as herself. She is married to a woman named Offalina, and they have at least forty-three children. Pseudonyma loves them all. Offalina was raised by her parents to be an LDS, a Mormon, housewife - to have children and live off the husband like a leech. Offalina uses Pseudonyma, especially for her own sexual gratification - hurting Pseudonyma because of her gender dysphoria.
 
Pseudonyma refuses to go Full Time, although she has been on horomones for 18 months, passes, and has bigger boobs than her wife! She is miserable. She refuses to leave the house that she built by hand, the children she loved and raised, and the genetic girl that she made so many promises too. I just want to see her happy. What can I do?
 
I care about the suffering of T folk, or I would not bother to continue updating my site, now that it has given me the shame-killing benefits I built it for. But I have to say this:

You cannot save ANYONE. Especially those that need it most.

Folks have to save themselves. A person determined to be miserable or trapped will do so no matter how hard you try to help them.

Now, if Pseudonyma has any real (as opposed to professesed...some 'losers' can argue for hours about how they intend to improve their lives -eventually. Someday. Soon. Except for. When this. After. Any day now.) desire to improve her life, she might need to know that she has options, she might need emotional support to feel strong,  she might need to learn to give herself the freedom to choose. These are things you can help her with.

But eventually, she WILL need to make some serious, life changing, ethically complex decisions.

Only she can do that, and if she does not, if she cannot, then there is nothing to be done about it. It just has to be accepted.

Now if things go that way, what can you do about it? Shrug your shoulders and get on with your OWN life. Try to learn from her failings and avoid the same mistakes. The ONLY life you can ever truly save is YOURS.

Most people in the world are like cattle. Being TS gives the opportunity to learn true individuality and freedom....but it does not guarantee it. Being an outcast, different, has benefits...but the individual has to actually make use of them. Those that do not, well, nothing can be done. Move on. Go where the food is.
 

Last week I was reading an article about this gentleman who decided to attend college wearing a skirt, just for one day.  He said he wanted to make a statement about the unequality that prevails in society when it comes to matter of sex and gender.  Although I haven't had any problem expressing who I am as an individual, I found it really interesting when he expresses the fact about women not having any problem with acceptance if they want to aspire to look and appear manly.  Then, I read your article and still the question was in my mind:  Why are  transgender, transsexual, and related words only or mostly applied when it implies man wanting to express who they really are?

This is a perceptive question.

The dominant cultures of our species are all patriarchal and highly tribalistic. There are exceptions to this rule, but the societies that do not meet these terms are uniformly non-technological, powerless in the world, and very, very few in number.

The very most powerful cultures are also dominated by various forms of monotheism, which is at it's heart a war-based single-value belief system.

The bottom line is that the technological cultures are uniformly warfare-based, hierarchical, highly polarized ("we alone have the TRUTH!") and male dominated. This makes sense in terms of history, in that in order to become the most powerful of cultures, other cultures must be crushed, eliminated, stolen land and resources from, and otherwise made less or absent. The alternative is equality, and that does not leave room for absolute domination.

In order to rise to such power, the early forms of these dominant societies had to form rules to support the rise to power. The standards of behavior promoted efficient, ruthless and fanatical militarism. How else can one conquer all others and make one's own tribe supreme?

To accomplish this, 'feminine' behavior and traits (a standard litany would include compassion, cooperation, sharing, nurturance, and conflict avoidance) had to be made despicable, and masculine virtues of strength, glorious violence, and allegiance to one uniform leadership had to be promoted. Religion also plays into this, strengthening the effect incredibly. It is one thing when the tribal leader tells everyone that war and male domination are the rule, another when there is One Single God, all powerful, capable of inflicting eternal damnation for disobedience, abd possessed of Infallible Absolute Truth, backing up the tribal leader's rule. The population fears not only the present world, but the afterlife as well. This creates fanaticism and almost complete uniformity of values and beliefs.

The end result of this, is that now, in the 20th century high tech world, the dominant societies still possess much of these values.

In such a situation, is it at all surprising that the single most awful thing would be a male dressing, appearing, or in any way becoming at all feminine? This cuts to the very heart of the patriarchal/monotheist structure. It is the horror of the powerful succumbing to perceived weakness and degradation. The shock to the society is that males might do this willingly, even claim to not be males at all. This creates fear. The fear is that such a thing might be contagious, and the dominant ideal destroyed utterly, the 'tribe' weakened, and ultimately conquered by the 'enemy'.

A female acting male is more tolerated -to a point- because it is a perceived rise in power. However, if the female takes this too seriously, and lays claim to male privilege, she will be struck down. A polarity cannot exist without it's opposite. Without the weak and degraded, the strong and supreme have no meaning: they exist only by contrast.

Thus it is, by ancient conquering tribalism, male domination, warfare, and monotheistic assurance of Absolute Truth, that it is the greatest of sinful mortal evils is to see a man in a dress, but not that big of a deal to see a woman in pants and a tee-shirt.

I understand that there are many women who also experience difficulties
because they don't know how to express their feelings of wanting to play the real roll they feel they should play; why aren't they covered or, yet more, why is it almost never mentioned in any discussion having to do with sexual or gender conflicts?

Again, primarily because in our society, for the reasons given above, males breaking gender rules is a much more serious 'crime' against God and Man. The bigger the 'crime', the more horrifying the transgression, the more attention it receives.

By comparison, the fuss over women transgressing gender laws is minimal.

This was not always so...just a handful of decades ago, almost no male would dare to break the gender rules of western society, and those that did were openly and often legally killed. Then, the spotlight of attention could fall squarely on women who transgressed gender limitations. In our current day, after so much social change and questioning of the basic rules of western civilization, so many males are bending or breaking the tribal rules that all of the attention goes to what is felt to be the biggest problem, the greatest disaster to the status quo.

Thank you for asking these questions. I forget sometimes that the answers, which are so blatant, may not be obvious to everyone. It took me time and experience and observation to learn them. Steeped in the culture, it is hard to see the culture. Really, only by being forced outside the culture, is it possible to truly see the mechanisms that shape it.