[bryony]

You misunderstood me - you say you are androgynous, but in this matter you betray, to me, the fact that your male side appears to dominate your thinking and your feminine empathic side is taking a back seat. You chopped out the example to which it refer

Oh, I thought you meant I was going against my male side. I don't see myself as being masculine in this thread, rather egalitarian.

That may be your intention, but it came over to me as defence of the male because of a male viewpoint - but that could just be me.

Speaking of empathy, couldn't it be said that in your posts you express more compassion towards females than males?

Yes, of course I do, and for a very good reason. I see this sub-forum as a bunch of guys who desperately want to modify themselves, partially or completely into females. This desire would at one time have been indicative of mental illness, but the political activists howl at that. However, since the actions taken to deal with it nearly always involve the medical profession or self-medication, it shows that there is a problem.

This problem will always harm, to a greater or lesser extent, the qualitative nature of what should be a life-long commitment, when the sufferer is the husband of a woman who may or may not have bought into the issues at the start of the marriage.

Anyone who cannot feel empathy for such a woman, and yet is only reading this because they are in the situation of wanting to be partly, or wholly, a woman, adds weight to the argument that we are, indeed, suffering from mental illness.

After all, you've said you idolize women and regard them as better beings than us.

"Us"? So you do consider yourself primarily male?

I'm not sure you are quoting me precisely. I do idolise women in general though there are [specific] instances whose behaviour is abominable and repulsive; and on the whole due to evolutionary pressures, I think that their attitude to commitment is far, far better than ours, and in that sense at least (though there are others) they are better beings than those of us who still admit to being male.

B.