[EDIT – For obvious reasons, I’ve decided stop smoking cigarettes, so please excuse the irrational outbursts. I’ll probably learn a lot about which is harder, changing gender, or quitting smoking, haha!]
You know what, if I’m going to be honest, I have to go the whole way.
I spoke with a private gender support counsellor last week, and the appointment is a painful 4 weeks away, for one appointment then she is on holiday for three weeks. She said if I go to my GP and get referred to the gender identity clinic that I wouldn’t be able to work with her. Like I said before, it’s the nuclear option….it’s the eventual option, my question is with timing.
But damn, I can’t handle it? Surely I need to go to my doctor? What in blue heck is Real Life Experience?! I have to act in a gender specific way before I can be more gender specific?! Do I have to be a crazy dude in stubble and a dress and a false squeaky voice before they’ll believe me? If I decided I was the kind of girl who wore the exact same clothes…..and had a beard and a penis and a deep voice then who can tell me what I am?
I have to think about things like freezing my sperm. I’m literally the last in my family line and I’m essentially consigning it to the dustbin, where the fudge do I get the money to pay an annual rate for a technology not guaranteed to work! I guess it calls for a fertility test to begin with.
I really don’t know what is the best choice to make, I’ll have to wait either way, but I don’t want to have to wait six months to even get started on something I’m trying to do now.
Please advise lovely humans 😦
Where do you start with all this?! What am I doing?!?!?! Why!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don't make me choose! 
I completely understand your post. Seeing your counselor will be worth the wait. She will help you through all of the hurdles the right way.
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I would start with the WPATH standards of care. Any medical-types who are respectable will be quoting this thing up and down. It basically sets your timeline and rules like what needs to happen when and who signs what in what order. Because this is Serious Business. If you don’t like the WPATH, you’re going to have to find some real live trans people and do the rounds of spectrum meetings and support groups, because we’ve made subverting the WPATH into a popular indoor sport.
Other than that, it’s purely up to you. The only thing I’d say is that you don’t want to do anything that will threaten your income because if you’re mid-transition and lose the means to pay counselors and doctors, laser techs, fashion consultants, hair stylists, and the like, you’re screwed – if you want to transition, that is.
Happy hunting!
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Hey thanks for all the comments! I have that in my reading list, I’ll bump it up and take a look. Yeah, I’m a temp for another year, but got savings, though I realise the risk is monumental.
Also hatching a plan to get my entire family smuggled to an uninhabited island so they can be considered dead and I get some inheritance, then I can bring them back and I would be the…..monarch. It’s not evil, it’s just business 😉
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Also, you should know that what you are doing is possibly the bravest thing you could do. It is also the slipperiest slope imaginable. Something as simple as thinking of yourself as a woman for a day can change you, perhaps forever. So be careful – if changing your gender is something that you are in any way personally uncomfortable with, stop. Then meditate on what you are doing until it becomes a sure thing, if it becomes a sure thing.
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Thanks, I appreciate that. Another probably not uncommon thing I’ve noticed is that it is inspiring the people I tell. They think that if I can deal with something as hectic and out there as this, then they can deal with their issues.
Heh, having been born in this gender is something I am very uncomfortable with! Though the idea of changing gender makes me feel similarly uncomfortable, but only in terms of it not being a magic button. Commit or repress….those are the options right now.
Your comments have been so helpful, I can’t thank you enough. *gush*
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