How your own views of GLT issues have changed

[Alyrium Denryle]

Believe it or not, I was religious until I was 14, and a homophobe until I started having some awkward thoughts at around 13. I was actually virulently homophobic, mostly as a reaction to a combination of religion and the treatment I received at the hands of those who knew I was gay since I was 10. I realized I was in fact gay late in my 13th year and came out after a good amount of coaxing from friends at 15.

[Kanastrous]

Always been nothing more than a massive so what? for me. Noticed at (eight? ten?) that I liked other boys, then noted by about twelve or thirteen that girls were attractive, too. Didn't really internalize that everybody isn't wired that way until I was about fifteen or sixteen.

[JCady]

The only exception I have to this is a singular occurence, as seen on TV (Bawbawa Wawa IIRC), of a transgendered male who still had functioning female bits deciding to have a child! My main issues with this are 1) c'mon, make up your mind, are you a woman or a man!

I believe that the reason for that was that his wife was infertile, and they wanted to have their own biological children. Also, I believe that for FtM GRS, there's no requirement to get rid of the uterus/ovaries. As it turned out, all of his sexual organs were completely functional even after years of hormone therapy.

It's a bit more complicated than that. Unlike MtF transsexuals, FtM transsexuals are generally not required to have sexual reassignment surgery in order to be legally recognized in their gender -- most states consider mastectomy to be sufficient proof that someone is "really" FtM. Many MtF men never get a phalloplasty because it's expensive, painful, and doesn't work very well.

Apparently that was quite surprising. I think my transgender friend still has a pussy (and a penis! that's the best of both worlds!). It's just the way GRS works. . . . He also had a girlfriend (now a wife) who had no problem with him not having a penis at the time (he has one now though - lucky them!).

It's more likely that he had transitioned but hadn't had a phalloplasty yet at that point, and got a phalloplasty later on. The labia is normally converted into a scrotum during phalloplasty -- I think it's at least theoretically possible for it to not be, but I've never heard of any surgeon willing to perform a partial operation like that. Most surgeons who do sex reassignment surgery are more than a little obsessed with "making it normal".

[Broomstick]

I may be wrong on this, but I've heard the hormonal therapy for FtM can cause clitoral enlargement all on its own and, in some cases, this may result in something like a small penis even if that's not exactly what it is. If that's true, that could be the source of some confusion.

[JCady]

I may be wrong on this, but I've heard the hormonal therapy for FtM can cause clitoral enlargement all on its own and, in some cases, this may result in something like a small penis even if that's not exactly what it is. If that's true, that could be the source of some confusion.

More or less, yes. Hormone therapy for FtMs consists of testosterone, wheras hormone therapy for MtFs consists of estrogen /and/ testosterone blockers.