[bryony]

Hi P,

I'm not sure what the difference is.

Well, my interpretation is that I have no desire to go 'all the way', I truly am in the middle. Whereas, I think ( and I apologise if I've misunderstood) that you've indicated that it is your love/concern etc for your wife/family that makes that a no-no for you.

Primarily, true, but I've also said quite a bit (though there's no reason why you should remember) that the other factors are age and passability. I would have no interest in being an ugly old man masquerading badly as a female. I'm also governed by aesthetics!

On the other hand, if you had been born more recently, and your parents , having noticed your predilections pre-adolescence, offered you the chance to delay puberty to make up your mind about what you would prefer to be, can you honestly say that you would have reached your current age as a male?

With PM, I'm contented too. However, you yourself have said that when you go off PM, the desire to cross-dress returns. What if you came off PM and denied yourself the cross-dressing for an extended period of time? Have you ever done this? I'd be interested to know the result.

No I haven't done that as such, although there have been 2 or 3 previous occasions when I stopped dressing for extended periods of time ( as much as 7 years), and truly thought the need had gone completely. Those times were always as a result of intense personal emotional stress which somehow seems to have overridden whatever else is there.

So really, it's an unknown, as the stress you experienced, as you say, would have made the gender anxiety invisible. Well, in that case, you may find, as I did, that not being able to express your gender via dressing or ingesting estrogen that you would start to develop the same kind of depressive anxiety that I have had.

The full name of what Vitale refers to is "Gender Expression Anxiety"; you've never really had a problem expressing your feminity have you?

That could be read two ways, so to give you both answers: I've never had a problem internally with who/what I am, but I have always been dead scared of others finding out.

I meant the opportunity to dress either at home or elsewhere... though you do by your reply seem to fit the G3 description somewhat (as do I).

The thing is, I am coming to the conclusion that my anxiety symptoms were caused by the inability in my situation to express my internal gender via clothing, and this manifested as "true" anxiety. You on the other hand have been using cross-dressing for a long time and it was only after taking PM you ceased to feel the need to do so.

I think I see where you are coming from, but I'm not entirely convinced it is the same thing. Yes, for me the dressing was, I'm sure, the way that I expressed my feminine side, and taking the opportunity to grow boobs was just an extension of that. However the phyto-hormones have apparently now balanced out the natural imbalance in my body-brain and I'm fine with it. If I take too much PM, aside from the headaches etc, I also don't feel right and get the "Why am I doing this?" feelings which make me stop taking it for a day or two, then I get the panics about losing growth and start again at a lower dose. If I just stop, then I get the panics anyway! So I really am balanced in the middle.

But that's the exactly the same thing!

I think we are getting hung up on terminology here. You seem to take the label TS as someone who would normally move on to transition, whereas I am taking as the congenital brain disorder caused by insufficient androgen exposure at the foetal stage, which I think you agree that you also suffer from. The evidence is your ability to ingest estrogen without ill effects.

I suspect you prefer the label TG to indicate someone who is in the "middle" partial transition area and content to stay there, is that so?

It's just a problem with labels. I really don't think there is a difference between us, apart from the mental problems that I have had.

I think the only difference between me and the other "middle-grounders" is that I have not been in a position to cross dress for some decades now.

Anyway - not really worth arguing about... I think our relative positions are of a marginal interpretation! I'm not a quibbler... (honest! )

Well, that comes back to whether you would go all the way if there were no other personal restrictions? ... and I'm not quibbling either, I think this is a fascinating area for a sensible discussion.

Only if I looked like this:
Andrej Pejic

Or had been the lucky one here:
transgender twin

Otherwise it's a pipe dream!

All the best,

B.