Hi Patti,
thanks for your peacemaking!
Karen, I hope you can take the trouble to read this, because it comes from the heart.
(04-12-2011, 08:12 AM)PattiJT Wrote: I ... can't understand this talk about a "happily married man with a loving wife" wanting genital surgery and not the "full Monte". This conjures up an absolutely insanical picture! WTF would anyone want to be masculine in general appearance, but possess female genitalia?? Guess it would be sorta like a FTM who has almost completed transition?? Please tell me I got the definitions wrong. Surely I did.
Probably my confusion too. I guess I use SRS and GRS synonymously.
It's also a problem when I assume other people have read my previous postings. To clarify, please let me state my
opinion more clearly:
The only TS who do not
care about male function, (in my
opinion), are either:
a) Homosexual in the first instance, wanting to be made love to by a man, or
b) someone who has unfortunately become widowed and doesn't want another male-style heterosexual relationship;
c) someone whose wife is
genuinely bisexual (how many of them are?);
d) someone whose wife loves them so much they let them persuade them that being a lesbian is "ok", but _may_ be desperately disappointed and secretly grieves for the lover that she once joined as one body for the sake of love, not sex. (More likely, in my
opinion)
I have no problem with a-c. (Apart from the risks to health and the possible loss of a loved one to their family due to premature death, but, oh well.)
It is (d) that I have the problem with, and if I am being judgemental, here, then I am happy to admit to it.
Because, although the TS may not personally care if they ever have a male-style orgasm again, simple compassion for a partner who has enjoyed penetrative sex with them for decades should make them care on their behalf. If anyone disagrees with this simple, logical train of thought, then our thought processes are so alien from one another that it makes any discussion of "opinion" or "judgement" moot.
It naturally follows on from that, that I, personally, cannot understand a TS proceeding towards clitoroplasty and vaginaplasty if they have a wife that will grieve for their lost husband not only in appearance, but more importantly, in lovemaking.
I think it is important to me, personally, not to be able to understand it. I never want to, any more than I wish to understand the perspective of the paedophile or psychopath. It is alien to me, and long may it remain so.
My notion of loving someone also does not include the ability to suddenly decide, as so many do now, that after several decades, and a blood relationship sealed by several children, that one partner can decide "I'm not getting enough out of this marriage; I want a divorce!"
Maybe I'm just weird, romantic, someone from another age, but that kind of selfishness sickens me.
Everyone has a moral frame of reference. I could not live with myself if my own selfishness resulted in the unhappiness of another whom I claimed to have loved hitherto; that does not come under my definition of love.
I happen to be an atheist, but I often wonder why I find myself behaving more like a Christian than some people I know who loudly profess themselves to being so.
Likewise, as a TS who has
sufferered from being a man for most of my 59 years, I will continue to present as a man, because my empathy for a real woman will not let me destroy her happiness. Who is more like a real woman? Someone who nurtures and cares for another woman, or someone who wants to prove to the world that they will do all they can to look like one without considering the feelings of the real woman they married? Which one is more the misogynist?
Karen,
If you cannot agree with this, then any future argument will be fruitless, and I would at least appreciate your commitment to "keeping the peace" by refraining from any further attacks. I, in turn, will try to ensure that people know that I am uttering "opinions" that they are free to ignore, maybe preceded with a "health warning".
Bryony