[MissC]

My life experience from birth, in a nutshell, is of a girl who walled herself off from the world and herself incredibly deeply in order to protect herself from a world who insists she's a boy.

Okay, you had a dysfunctional childhood. Welcome to Earth. Thing is, you are now an adult, and you are entitled to tell anyone you are whatever you want to be. If you wish to live as a girl, you may. It's a free country, or so they say. My parents wouldn't let me be a girl either. I couldn't even have hair past my ears.

They said I could do what I wanted when I grew up, though... so I did. I don't hate them for it; children need some direction in life, and I happen to think my parents were better than most. They just didn't really know what to do with a kid like me.

OK... Let's see what these contradictions are. I'm suspecting most of them are only your failure of understanding.

Yes, that's pretty much what I said. I cannot understand how you can believe some of this nonsense. I do fail to understand. Damn my logical brain.

Uhm. Not exactly. Yes. We're saying that our gender's aren't a mental illness, but we're not saying it isn't a "real" medical problem. Thing is, it's not a medical DISEASE, but a medical BIRTH DEFECT.

Oh, I was hoping you'd bring this up. A birth defect! Being born male is a birth defect! That makes as much sense as saying that being born black or Chinese is a birth defect. Maybe it is... maybe that's the explanation for Uncle Toms -- they're white people born into the wrong color body! Do you not see the absurdity of this line of thinking?

I mean, really!! "Oh, why won't they help me?! I was born in the wrong race!"

Birth defects are a broad category. They can be something simple and easily treatable, like harelip. Or at the other end, we have stuff like Down's Syndrome. No one would argue that Down's is a correctable birth defect.

While I'm having fun with stretching the limits of conclusion, I could suggest that mentally retarded children should have their birth defects treated with brain transplants... or in your world, we could surgically "correct" their bodies to be mangled and useless like their brains?

Poppycock, you say.

When medical science comes up with a way to correct me truly and completely, with home-grown female bits grown from my own cell cultures, I'll be signing up to be a test subject.

That would be interesting... and as a nerd myself, I do love watching the progress of science. It still wouldn't change your DNA or your chromosomes though, so you still wouldn't be "corrected completely".

No. No we're not. I'm not mentally ill. And there's nothing to cure. My BODY needs CORRECTED. I never EVER once said I need someone to "cure" anything did I?

So it's like alcoholism, then, wherein it is thought that someone who hasn't touched a drink in 20 years is still an alcoholic? No cure?

Well, if SRS isn't a cure, then why bother? The point is, it is a medical fact that you can't make a genetic woman out of a genetic man. There won't be anything "corrected", at least, not as I understand the definition of "corrected".

No. You didn't "change" your mind. You came to accept yourself for the way you are. I've come to accept who I am a long time ago. Unfortunately for me, that's not the end of it but merely the beginning.

I most certainly did change it. About a lot of things, actually. I've gone from being a working drone to a business owner, and from a wallflower to a magnetic personality. I won't say it's simple or easy, but it really boils down to the fact that I made decisions as to who and what I wanted to be, and then made it happen. Who are you to presume how my mind works, anyway?

Now you, then... I can with confidence say you have NOT come to accept who you are. Your whole thing here is not about what you are, but what you are not. Or, to look from a different angle, you have accepted that you are something you are not but wish to be. Either way, your assertion makes no sense.

What you are, as you say, is a girl with a boy's body. That's then what you ARE, NOW. But you do not accept this. How can you say you accept yourself? It's as if a paraplegic were to say he accepted himself as an Olympic sprinter. Do you see the logical failure here?

That said... You are right though... The mind CAN be reprogrammed. But is it the right thing to do? Especially when all you're really doing is forcing someone to be who they're not

Nowhere did I suggest force. I have changed the person I am through the force only of my own free will. I'm not going to say that coercion doesn't work -- or advertising wouldn't work like it does. It definitely works. But it's temporary. To achieve lasting results, the changee must be the changer.

In a nutshell, the process was this: I am unhappy. Why? Because I don't have x, y, z. Can I get them? Aha! I can have two of them. How do I do it? Who do I know who does? What do they do? I shall learn this! (That sounds a bit silly... but it is an analytical thought process.)

But, I do not think you yet understand the power of your own mind. You feel trapped in a box, a box of desire which you have not learned to control.

And thus we get to the crux of things. You're right. I will never be entirely happy in this life.

But you said you'd cured yourself of depression. Way to self-actualize, there.