What do they call him/her now?

She came back to work as a female after Christmas.  She dressed like a normal female, not some freak, and you could instantly tell that she was happier.  In fact she was a completely different person.  She was bubbly and cheerful, wanted to socialise, wanted to communicate with people instead of hiding away, was suddenly more productive at her job.  Basically she now wanted to live again.  I have never seen someone change so much over night.  It was so obvious that it had been the right decision for her.

She paid a big price for it though.  Her family no longer acknowledge that she exists and she did lose some friends who couldn't accept her as she now is.  She split from the finance but has weekly contact with her son who calls her Mummy.  He has no problem with having two mummy's and so far he hasn't been subject to any teasing or bullying at school.

The financial cost is exhorbiant.  She could not get funding on the NHS as there is limited funding avaiable for this treatment and the waiting list is years.  So she is spending several hundreds of pounds each month on hormone treatments.  That restricts her lifestyle a lot and she is struggling financially to pay for her treatments as well as her rent.  One day the NHS might take on the costs but until then she will be living in poverty even though she earns a good wage.  She is happy with that as she feels the price is worth it.

Last month she had the operation.  She had to go abroad to a clinic of dubious repute as she couldn't afford the treatment in a Western country.  Luckily she seems to have had a good experience with no infections.

As for sex, she says that this is the first thing that people ask her (she is quite willing to talk about her experiences if you ask her but otherwise she doesn't mention it).  She said that she never fully enjoyed sex as a man - she had fun at the time but it always came with a feeling of shame and guilt as she felt she was being disloyal to herself.  Now she is still attracted to women, but has accepted that she will never have a sexual relationship again as she is unlikley to ever find someone who is willing to accept her as she is, and the chances of them also having a compatible personality is even slimmer.

There was a lot of trouble and confusion in the work place as to how we should 'deal' with her, i.e. come to terms with it in our own minds.  Some people made a joke of it, which I found really offensive and I jumped down on them hard.  But most people where only curious.

An all users e-mail was sent around (it was a small company and everyone knew everyone) saying that she was going through this process and that from now on she would be behaving as a women, including use of toilet and shower facilities, and that we should call her by her new name.  Otherwise HR didn't give any guidance except where it caused a specific incident between individuals.

There was a lot of criticism as the email was sent out while she was on site, whereas she had asked for it to be sent the following day when she was on annual leave,as she wanted to give people time to come to terms with it and not be bombarded with it all on one day.  Otherwise she was happy with how it was handled.

Seems Elli's posts have been taken in, turned around and read wrongly.
I have at 1st hand had/having this happen in close proximity shall I say. This is the 1st time I have said anything about it as there are a few nasty other things going on in my family. These I have told friends on FB, some of whom are reading this, and commenting.
He has moved on from being a male to being female and he has a g/f that has held his hand all the way through the change. He has not gone downstairs yet, but has breasts and wears heels to work. His HR dept and people at work were told and workmates asked if they had a problem. As its been pointed out its 2012 and things move on in everything. What was taboo is now the norm in most places.

My view on his change of life????????
I don't care one iota, its his body not mine. His g/f is happy as she is actually bi, work are ok with it.
And he actually looks better as a woman than a man, so enjoy the rest of your life T. Your a stronger person than me. Well nearly, i've done an IM distance race you haven't

We were friends with a male/female couple who married and had children. Then he suddenly announced that he was undergoing gender realignment (it was 'sudden' to us because we do not live very close together and did not see the often. Clearly, this was not 'sudden' to them).

The children called the male persona 'daddy' but the female persona was always, and still is, called by her first name. Unfortunately, although the wife was very supportive and they remain friends, the marriage did not survive and the 'changee' moved to another area.

We still see the wife about once a year but haven't seen the ex since she moved away. I do remember discussing heels and make-up with her once though, which seemed a bit bizzare at the time. She encouraged us to ask any questions we wanted because she felt that we were not being judgemental. She still fancies women - her gender has changed, not her sexual orientation.

The children seemed to accept things well at first, but they have had some counselling since. They still see each other regularly though and she plays an important part in the children's lives (even though they are not 'children' anymore), it's just that she is not 'Daddy' now.

From my point of view, this person was the same inside, however the body was presented. If we believed that 'he' was a nice guy, it stood to reason that 'she' would be a nice woman too.

Going back to the original question, why not just call her by her new female name? Saves a lot of hassle. 

Easy for me it now has an I at the end instead of a Y  

A couple of months ago MrGFB got a phone call from a dear friend of ours...he said..."do you know where I am...I'm in the airport dropping off my father who is flying to England to talk to a surgeon about gender reassignment...!!!"  his mum and dad had called a meeting THE NIGHT BEFORE!  to tell him...100% out of the blue that..(a) they were splitting up and (b) that 67 year old father was coming out as transgender.

To say this was a shock is an understatment.  Apparently he had been cross dressing all of their married life, his wife and found out many years into the marriage and was distnctly unhappy with it. He then decided at age 67 that he could take it no longer.

Now some people will say that it was brave of him, that if he had been unhappy then it was the best thing to do.

All I can say is what I've seen from our friend's point of view...they are devastated, the father is living still in our town, dresses as a woman...his daughter has shunned him completely, his wife has since had a heart attack they say from the stress!  His grandchildren are broken hearted that their grandparents have split up and obviously because of the changes in grandfather!!  My friend, because he is a special human being, has helped his dad move home, visits him on a weekly basis, tells him that he loves him...but inside is full of pain and rage about it.

And apparently the National Health are covering the whole thing. (and I don't know what people will think of this point but... he will never, ever fit in...he's a short fat baldy man!! - it boggles my mind!!) 

kittenkat wrote (see)

Kwilter with a K wrote (see)

Wow! Can we all say "narrow minded bigot"?

Yes, thought so. And occasionally I wonder why I don't bother looking on RW any more.

Why would it make any difference at all to you what genitals someone else has, or they choose to do with them? If you're really that curious why not ask the person?

Fucking pathetic!

edit: Open minded?? don't make me laugh!

I think this post is rude, nasty and out of order.

I agree. 

Some people seem to have jumped on Elli's posts without reading them properly.

Where I work the toilets have been refurbished and we no longer have 'ladies' or 'gents' loos. 

We have separate, individual toilets which have a loo, sink and hand-drier in each, and anyone can use any of them.  They have both the normal signs on the doors.

GFB................i still think its really sad that someone feels they have to live alie all their lives.............hide who they are...........yes its hard when they realise too late to avoid marriage and kids...............but then I think its better to become the real you before death.however old that it...............i also think that i would accept any member of my family who had struggkled to come to terms with such a hard decision...........

young children usually are very accepting......but they take their cues from the adults around them ......and so will learn to be upset.........adults so often are more worried about what the neighbours think than the reality of the situation........

Kwilter with a K wrote (see)

gingerfurball wrote (see)

 

And apparently the National Health are covering the whole thing. (and I don't know what people will think of this point but... he will never, ever fit in...he's a short fat baldy man!! - it boggles my mind!!) 

At 67,  the guy clearly doesn't give a toss what anyone thinks of his decision but won't have the choice after meeting with the NHS. 

kittenkat wrote (see)

Kwilter with a K wrote (see)

Wow! Can we all say "narrow minded bigot"?

Yes, thought so. And occasionally I wonder why I don't bother looking on RW any more.

Why would it make any difference at all to you what genitals someone else has, or they choose to do with them? If you're really that curious why not ask the person?

Fucking pathetic!

edit: Open minded?? don't make me laugh!

I think this post is rude, nasty and out of order.

I agree, Elli didn't deserve that attack.  She was asking out of curiosity not being disapproving.  I have worked with people who have undergone gender reassignment, and both went from he to she.  I work in secondary school, so  it was a big deal to students and some parents, but one of them handled it by saying "you have questions... ask them, and if they're not to personal i'll try to explain".  That helped some of the students understand.  To me thats all Elli was doing, asking the questions to find out facts.

seren nos wrote (see)

GFB................i still think its really sad that someone feels they have to live alie all their lives.............hide who they are...........yes its hard when they realise too late to avoid marriage and kids..............

I think that now people are more aware of transsexuality, its been on television a fair bit over the last year, My Transsexual Summer, My Dad's A Woman, and the drama Hit and Miss most recently.

Chances are that now a lot of transsexuals will be able to seek help at a younger age when its possible to halt or reverse the effects of testosterone and eostrogen. Even more than that, then the impact on other people can be minimised by helping them before they get married, have children and all the other things that people do and which quite a few transgendered people end up doing.

JvR wrote (see)

seren nos wrote (see)

GFB................i still think its really sad that someone feels they have to live alie all their lives.............hide who they are...........yes its hard when they realise too late to avoid marriage and kids..............

I think that now people are more aware of transsexuality, its been on television a fair bit over the last year, My Transsexual Summer, My Dad's A Woman, and the drama Hit and Miss most recently.

Chances are that now a lot of transsexuals will be able to seek help at a younger age when its possible to halt or reverse the effects of testosterone and eostrogen. Even more than that, then the impact on other people can be minimised by helping them before they get married, have children and all the other things that people do and which quite a few transgendered people end up doing.

That's almost the same as my dad's generation. He is a gay man and when he was growing up it wasn't the done thing to be gay (think it was still illegal initially then age of consent was 21), so he got married and had me and my brother, but told me that I ruined his life because if I hadn't some along he wouldn't have been trapped in the marriage to my mom.  His issue, but with the gay rights movement becoming more visible, it is easier to be gay now than it was back then, and so there are more gay men and lesbians that can choose to have children within a gay relationship, rather than having to get married to hide who they are.

You ruined his life! As if you had any choice in the matter of your existance. 

Vixx, your dad may well have had a hard life trapped in a marriage he didn't want but to tell your child "you ruined my life" is inexcusable!

I know RicF and Wilkie. I have very little to do with him now, I perhaps see him once every 3 or 4 months. He only lives round the corner too, but I live my life in a way that he can't - and I think that upsets him. Apparently he told my mom to get an abortion (like you could that easily back then), and when I asked her she said he had indeed asked her that. She didn't know he was gay then. My brother is 9 months younger than me (we were both premature), so by the time he realised that being in a marriage wouldn't cure him of being gay, he had 2 kids. 

It's his loss, not mine.

I'm trying to imagine if my 65 year old dad up and told me he was planning to have gender reassignment surgery, and I just can't. I know it would upset me, but then any big unexpected change is upsetting to a certain degree. It wouldn't make me disown him or stop loving him or anything like that. But I imagine it would be fairly difficult to work through all the repercussions.My mum's always been VERY bothered about other peoples' opinions. It would probably see her off...

My boyfriends's cousin used to be a chick. I think he's been a bloke for years now. I've only ever known him as a bloke, I only see him at family functions and in nearly 5 years I've never been properly introduced to him. So while he has a 'new' male name, all his family still refer to him by his 'original' name, which is suitable for males or females. But I find it really weird. Occasionally they slip up and refer to him as 'her' which is even weirder. And I don't ever know whether to call him by his 'old' name or his 'new' one. I usually use his old name, just because that's what everyone else calls him, but I feel not-quite-right doing it. And I don't want to ask him what he wants to be called, in case he thinks I don't know about it and it would make him feel bad to find out that I did...

His family all make a big deal out of it - kind of like, 'Oh, we're so tolerant, N***** used to be a woman you know...' And sometimes they make jokes about it. I just think it's awful. His two sisters are (IMHO) a pair of loud twats and he seems way nicer than either of them. His parents are arseholes too. They're really quick to jump on other people for any perceived intolerance etc but they don't ever invite him to their own parties where they're going to have their work colleagues or their own friends there. It's like they think he's okay to be there as long as it's only family but anyone else, they don't want him embarrassing them.

That's awful to hear runs-with-dogs!

I'd be embarrassed to have them as 'family' and I'd be off choosing my own if that were me......