Diddly,

I think we can safely assume that Mercedes has adequately thought out the issue. It's one of my pet peeves how people (often other trans people) insert themselves into trans people's medical decisions. It's perfectly fine to have a complicated view on the matter. When a patient undergoes any other kind of surgery, it's generally okay for them to have doubts yet still think it's a good idea. I don't think this surgery should be any different.

I agree that SRS won't solve all your problems, it won't make you not trans, and it won't make you binary-identified any more than not having SRS will make you non-binary identified. But I guess this is giving my flashbacks to when a trans woman was practically shouting at me that I shouldn't start hormones if I was genderqueer identified -- that unless I had the right kind of dysphoria it would cause more problems than it solved.

Also, as a side note, many folks do change their race. Maybe not their skin color, but I've spent a lot of time in mixed race spaces, native spaces, and light skinned PoC spaces to see it. Even I spent a few years white-identified back before I had the race consciousness I do now. So the whole, you-can't-change-your-race metaphor tends to ring false for me.

Can a person change their race, or their natural hair and eye color?

Well, my eye colour changed as part of my anomalous transition. I lost the "salt and pepper" look in my hair too, though it's started to make a comeback. It's about where it was 10 years ago.

So YMMV when taking your statement literally.

Biologically speaking, I'll always be Intersexed.

Currently there's a debate as to whether I should be classed as an Intersexed female with a TS past (so only entitled to an amended birth certificate), or TS with severe endocrinal anomalies (so able to get a new BC - but only if I divorce). My opinion on the matter is immaterial, and there are quite serious legal consequences depending on the outcome.

This illustrates the arbitrary nature of such classifications when the gender line is blurry. Not even the TS/IS line is well-defined for everyone, let alone m/f.

Surgery, as you said, doesn't change the essence of the person. It may, however, allow the possibility of growth in areas that were stunted and atrophied before.

Our life history and body morphology shapes us, and may even constrain us, but it cannot define us. As you said though, our past is part of us, we can never be cis-sexual. How important we allow that to be to us is up to us though.

I figured it was something like that after reading your bio. I think it's the word "pioneer" that sets me in that direction, as it's hard for me to separate it from it's original meaning. That and I'm so used to seeing white folks pick up the term Two Spirit as a fascinating concept which they totally *love*, but in reality, it's just the name that they love and they barely know a paragraph's worth of the concept or history -- not that I'm an expert myself, but being Native and first finding acceptance as trans in Native space I tend to find that kind of cultural insensitivity frustrating.

Then I wish you the best of luck with your surgery, and highly recommend Montreal, Bassard is absolutely a wonderful person, and very skilled surgeon.

In the end, it all comes down to being your decision, only you live your life, no one else. As long as it is something you have decided, and not something that someone else has decided for you, then go for it.

Women in this society, hell in this world, are faced with the problem that too many times we are coerced by others into making life changing decisions, or having those decisions made for us, by family or "loved ones". The pressure to just shut up and go along with what someone tells you is constant, but then you have lived as a woman long enough to know that.

Best of luck on the completion of your transition, and the start of the "second phase". I have not really figured out what kind of catchy name to call it, I just know it is not "transition" anymore but something else, something similiar, but different. You have been writing about these type of things far longer than I have, maybe you can think of something to call it once you start to experience it.

I will just call it, "getting on with life" for now.

It's a personal choice, and you go, girl!

As to the modern definition of two-spirit, Whatever! Much like the modern European Pagan religions that had a blossoming in the last century, it's mostly conjecture as to what the original practitioners did, how they believed and how they lived. Who today can say that if the two-spirit people of every generation past had access to ANY kind of remedy to their physical differences, that they would choose to stay blended or to what degree? Effectively those people who believe in the essentialism of labels and attack others for not having the same definitions they have constructed are insecure and need to get over their own crap.

Every person's path is different, every person deserves to live their lives as they choose. Thank the God[dess(es)] we have options now beyond non-sterile self castration. Nobody has the right to box you in, nobody has the right to shame you for your personal decisions, and you owe no one an explanation or apology for those decisions.

"Follow your bliss." -Joseph Campbell

Sophia, one of the very few advantages of straddling the IS/TS line is that you get to meet all sorts of interesting people.

I know too many women - the GG factory model variety - who have CAH - congenital adrenal hyperplasia - and to put it bluntly, are far better endowed than I ever was, even when the rest of my body looked male.

Some have borne children. Some can't.

It's not always about identifying as TS or whatever, really. Some are content having nonstandard bodies, or at least, prefer the devil they know. Still, you did say "likely", and you may be right.

Is it possible to be a natal woman, and have un-female genitalia? In my experience, yes.

Of course, wild horses couldn't have stopped me from getting genital reconstruction. But that's me, and I although I'm a monster of arrogance and ego, even I don't expect everyone to feel the same way.