Transexualism is just a part of transgenderism.To be transgendered is to be someone exploring the boundaries of gender. Transgendered is just a collective noun for transexuals, transvestites, crossdressers, shemales etc,etc. I am transgenderd and I am transexual.

Sex and gender is a fairly emotive issue amongst transexuals. Basically I take the view that I have a biological sex and also a brain sex. My biological sex will always be male. The internal organs I was born with produce male hormones. If I want to be female I can only do this artificially as my body will never produce estrogen or other female hormones. The reason I am transexual is due to my brain sex being at conflict with my biological sex. My brain is essentially feminine and has always been that way. This makes it hard for me to accept the male physique I have because it just feels completely wrong. The artificial hormones that I take can make me female. I have developed breasts, hips and other feminine attributes. I can be coached to speak in a feminine manner. I can have all of my male body hair lasered off. I can even have plastic surgery. To the outside world I can appear female. I will never be a woman. I will never be able to be a Mother. I do not have a womb and if I stop taking the artificial hormones I will develop male attributes. This I believe is the real difference between sex and gender. I can be as female as any biological female but I will never be a woman.

I can understand the society issue. In countries such asThailand and Samoa, it is really refreshing to see trans people openly accepted as part of their culture. This country has not got such a liberal attitude. I still get young guys shouting "Hey look, it's a bloke." or at the other end of the spectrum have had arguments with feminist women who will never accept me as a woman because I was born as a man and brought up as one in our male dominated society. Because I was never subjected to this male dominance from an early age they will never accept me. I find this hardto stomach but it is a widely held view amongst certain circles. This view would not probably hold sway in Thailand or Samoa.Another friend of mine has said wouldn't it be my ideal society if we all became genderless and were basically androgynous. This sounds horrific to me. I am a feminine person, and having surpressed that for years, the thought of a society where there was no masculinity or femininity would put me in a worse position than I am now.

My reasons for wanting to go ahead with Gender Reassignment Surgery are probably quite different to a lot of other transexuals. Most of the other transexuals I know, identified as gay men prior to surgery and as a heterosexual woman after the event. I basically see myself as a lesbian woman which is something a lot of people find hard to comprehend. Theoperation is a sexual release for a lot of transexuals, however I see it as little more than a piece of corrective surgery. A bit like a nose job!! 95%of being transexual has nothing to do with surgery. Before I sit on that table, I will be living as a woman, working as a woman, be accepted by friends and family as a woman and the only thing that won't be female is the fact that I have something that shouldn't be in my knickers. That's all the operation is to me. It will make me feel complete but unlike a lot of"girls" I won't be waiting with baited breath for my first man after the stitches come out. The whole thing has been very confusing for me. As not only have I had to come to terms with the fact that I am a woman. I have also had to come to terms with being a gay woman. People tend to get confused at this point! Myself included. I am the same as everybody else in that I would like to meet somebody someday to share my life with. Logic tells me that I am more likely to meet a woman as a man. In fact I gave up hormones for one month to see if I could handle this scenario. Hoping that personal happiness might overcome the internal conflict. This was a recipe for disaster. I am a terrible liar and at the end of the day, any relationship formed on that basis would be a lie to myself and to my partner. I felt I had to do this to confirm that I wanted surgery and aftera month off of hormones I had to go back to taking them. I have even considered the option of being a full time transvestite in the past. But that is all an illusion. Transvestites are essentially male and I'm not. The only conclusion is to go for surgery and start living my life.

Why do I consider my brain to be feminine? This is a combination of a number of things. Firstly I have only really concluded this over the past couple of years but having started taking female hormones, the subsequent suppression of what little male aggresiveness I had left a very feminine thinking person. It is hard for me really to analyse this. I guess I have always thought the same way. What really made things sink in was something my Mother said after I had come out to her. She just turned round and said"Well that explains a lot. I always thought you should have been a girl." It is something deep in the psyche, but a couple of people I have known for over thirty years have said similar things to what my Mother said.

What is male and what is female? This is essentially down to society. In the Seventeenth Century it was seen as being male to wear make up. In some societies the female is the food gatherer. This is a totally cultural thing.However your question regarding a third gender is interesting. In India there are some babies castrated at birth who in effect do become an asexual third gender. My own feeling is somewhat different. I would say that gender is a continuam with macho male at one end and girly female at the other. Iam a Kara and I'm somewhere to the right of centre in this scale. I like a pint of beer, I like football and I was captain of the University Cricket Team. All very "male". I am not ashamed of this, in fact I think those transexuals who turn their back on their male past are stupid and in the main appear false. I get told that I pass socially because I am a real person. That is because, although Kevin (my former self) is dead, a lot of him is in the new me. Those transexuals who become over girly and refute everything male often give the impression of a man impersonating a woman. Ialways give the impression of being a human being. Hence I don't see myself as male or female. I am me, which is somewhere slightly back from female.

Negative comments can be very hurtful. I am a very self conscious person and take things to heart very easily. I have yet to meet a transexual who passes100%. Having said that, it is not really a visual thing it is a confidence thing. If you go out and give the attitude of "fuck everybody else I'm a woman" you will get a lot further than if you go round looking at the ground feeling ashamed of who you are. That is the theory. In practice it is a lot harder. The first time going through the door dressed as a woman was petrifying. It really is the hardest thing. Once you hit the street everything seems fine. Some people say a positive comment counters five negative ones. I would argue that and say one negative comment can cancel a lot of hard work in confidence building. This is why we all do a real life test. Some men just can't hack it as a woman and fall away. This is really down to society's negative attitude towards us. The media, although getting better, tend to group transexuals with transvestites and drag queens. So isit any wonder that the less educated amongst the masses find it amusing.Things may well improve, but to be honest, until a trans person gets in to a position of authority or at least in to the public eye, the masses will never see us as anything other than men in frocks.

The feminist situation is really annoying. A Trans friend of mine recently tried to join the Brighton Womens Group but was told she was not welcome because of her male upbringing. No amount of intellectual discussion couldchange this situation and it seems that amongst certain women, the view isthat once you have had a penis, even if you never wanted it in the first place, you are labelled male. Tell me what would happen if Germaine Greer walked in to a rugby club and was told to get lost. Would she accept this calmly? I think not.

The most hurtful thing about being trans is the children issue. I actually love kids and the slow realisation that I would never be able to have my own was a painful and confusing issue. In a way i seem to act maternally to a few local trans people starting out. In a way this helps and is a sort of surrogate family. It will never be the same though. I am told I could adopt.But is this fair? One of the most selfish things I have ever seen on television was an Everyman programme in which a trans man and a trans woman had a baby before having surgery and then getting married. Whereas i am sure they love the child and the child loves them, what sort of life will the child have. Children can be very cruel and word will obviously get around.That child will have fun poked at it throughout it's school life. Is that fair? I would say not. If you need to accept your role as a trans person,you need to accept that you will never biologically be able to mother or father a child.

The fact that in most transexuals there seems to be a part of the brain that is larger or smaller than what should be the norm in our body sex is something that a lot of us have latched on to. Up until recently we were all seen as psychiatric cases and it's not too many years ago that if you admitted to being transexual you either got a lobotomy or ended up being sectioned. If we can conclusively prove that transexualism is caused by a physical difference it will go a long way to show that ts should be treated in a similar manner to any other medical condition. I am not arguing that gender reassignment operations should jump the queue and be more important than major heart operations (some transexuals would argue this case but I put this down to selfishness on their part) but a better support network on the NHS should really be in force. The vast majority of trans people in thiscountry choose to go private. This is not because all trans people are inherently well off, but more to do with the fact that we are treated so badly by the NHS. However this causes me a great concern. I have used both routes. Having concluded I was ts I went to see a private psychiatrist who after an hour and £150 gave me hormones as a diagnostic test. His view isthat if I make an appointment to see him again in three months time, he was right and I am transexual. If I don't decide to go back, he was right and I'm not transexual.This is all well and good if you are a well balanced individual but I have seen some major cock ups as a result of this policy.This doctor claims that up to 90% of the people he sees never come back for a second appointment. These, it is claimed, are just transvestites with a fantasy to be transexual. Three months after seeing the private psychiatrist I applied for an NHS appointment. Whereas I can afford the £70 consultation fee, the £5-12,000 surgery costs are somewhat beyond me and the NHS is theonly option. Going privately meant I got hormones straight away and as a result I could become Kara as soon as possible. If I had had to wait two years for an appointment, which is normal, and not have hormones I would have gone nuts. The problem with the NHS is that the majority of transexuals registered with them are sent to Charing Cross Hospital in London. TheCharing Cross Gender Identity Clinic has the highest suicide rate of any NHSdepartment in the country! Having said this I still say that this is the preferred route for me. Whereas a private psychiatrist will take the money,give you the pills and encourage you, Charing cross actively try and dissuade people. A lot of transexuals say this is unfair and cruel but I disagree. I wouldn't wish being transexual on my worst enemy. It is not something to be taken lightly or have as a fantasy. If the psychiatrists at Charing Cross can talk someone out of going for surgery or taking hormones it is a good thing. Because that person was not committed enough to go through with it. The fact is that there are a lot of failed men out there who may be transvestite, who feel the grass may be greener on the otherside. These people need to be routed out. If these people have the money to go privately it can ruin their lives. I will compare and contrast a couple of examples to try and show this.

I first met Angie about six years ago. At the time we both identified as transvestite and often went clubbing together in London. Occasional late night chats found both of us, seemingly, coming to similar conclusions about our gender. The problem being that Angie is very competitive ( a male trait!) and all of a sudden it became a race. She had to go to see a shrink first, she had to go and get hormones first, she had to have her op first. This seemingly made her feel somewhat superior to other people, however Ialways had my doubts. She was 45 when she had her op. Until six months earlier she still lived at home with her parents who did not know what she was doing. She planned a midnight flit from her parents house! She said that she was still a virgin with either sex and listening to her comments about relationships and sex it became very apparent that she was very naive on that front. Whilst she was transvestite she would never admit to being attracted to men but never seemed attracted to women either. The nearer shecame to surgery, the more camp she got and quite frankly more drag queenlike. Trying to pull men in tranny clubs and not being very successful it has to be mentioned. She had surgery in June and her first comment afterwards was I want a man to try this new bit out! Unfortunately she still acts like a drag queen and hangs around tranny and gay bars. The only “women” that get pulled in those places have got something between their legs.Another trans friend of mine said to me a few years back that she thought Angie was nothing more than a repressed gay man. I think the evidence supports this. Despite having paid over £9000 on surgery she has since spent periods living as a man and is very unhappy.

I first met Jenny in a bar in Brighton three years ago. She came and introduced herself and said that she had seen my website and found it to be so inspirational (big blush!) that she decided to come out as transexual and live the role. She seemed very passable and very confident and over the months we chatted a fair bit. Jenny was not well off and had lost her job after coming out to her employers. Therefore the NHS route was the only viable option. Everything seemed to going fine. She was accepted by everyone but it seems there was something deep down that wasn't quite right. It is a brave decision to admit you are transexual to friends and family. But it isa far braver one to have done that and then stand up and say I made a mistake and I can't go through with it. It wasn't the NHS shrinks who talked Jenny out of it but it was a realisation in herself that it wasn't the right thing to do. If she had had money for private surgery she may well have gone through with it as there is an initial adrenaline rush that lasts a very long time. If you go privately you only have to do one years RealLife Test ( living and working solely in your chosen gender role), the NHS insist on two years. I have no problem with this, as I have stated before,for me being accepted as the person I am is the most important thing.Surgery is the icing on the cake. But if you ice the cake before it is cooked properly, as Angie did, the end result may leave a nasty taste in the mouth!

It is extremely annoying that we are often lumped in the same category as gay men. I look at some very camp men or drag queens in clubs and just treat them with disdain. I actually find drag queens quite offensive, especially as the general public tend to lump people like me in the same group as them. I had a relationship with a girl last year that really screwed me up at the time but is probably a good example to prove this point. She met me as Kara and was attracted to me as Kara. So far so good! But basically over the next few months it became obvious that she wanted me as a man rather than a woman. Or at least a woman who was a man underneath. She had gone out with drag queens in the past and at the end she admitted that I was too feminine for her. Which goes to show that although Drag queens are over the top, they are still acting as men rather than women and that what she wanted was a man pretending to be a woman rather than a woman! In a sense,these  transvestites and drag queens are doing little more than portraying a male ideal of what a woman should look like.