Thank you for your kind comments and respect. Thanks, Joe, for allowing the posts to stay. For some reason my first post came up with no text in it so here it is again.

If you take two axis and cross them, male/female and totally straight/totally gay, then we all sit somewhere within the confines of the areas made. Because everyone is so very different bilogically (even twins to a great degree) and have very different influences on their lives as they grow up, we are all so very finely individual. Transsexuality is formly fixed on the male/female axis, somewhere along it, though it does often get included within the sexualies of straight, gay male, gay woman. I think that is because, historically, the gay community have allowed us within it's ranks, so to speak, and because so many brave gay people took stands it all made it a little easier for people like me to survive. However. Transsexuality is most definitely about Gender and not about sexuality. All transsexuals have a sexuality like all other individuals.

I have read all the papers and books I can on the subject of transsexuality. Some I have agreed with. Some I have totally been against. Some just reflect the confused state of the research and many scientists mixed up thinking. Some are complete twaddle. The reality - of being transsexual and living as the gender you truly feel you are - can be very different from the writings of people whose only interest is from an experimental perspective. Being seens as some freak of nature is never helpful. I am just as individual as the next person and that is all that seperates us all.

I am not brave. It would have taken me bravery beyond heroism to carry on living as a man. I took my cowardly way out and chose to be the me I felt I was. It was selfish at times too. This is what I needed to do to feel whole. And now I can just get on with my life. It can be a hrash environment to live. Some people are cruel (though I reiterate that on the folk scene so far I have not been treated cruelly).

Fighting cancer is brave. Caring for someone with Altzeimers is brave and far more heroic than anything I have done. Losing a child and having to bury them is cruel. So many many things are far far worse than the life I have had and am living. It has taught me things I would have never known about nor encountered ever. I am lucky in so many ways.

I am blessed with those I have had in my life and those who are still in it. I am fortunate to have found out something about myself that had hindered me all my life, to get it corrected, and to now feel real contentment. Of course it could all be easier. But it will get there for those that follow because the more we all mix and it is talked about the more understanding there is. It is not really all that hard to understand. Just like or loathe the person for WHO they are, not WHAT they are.

If we ever meet out there just engage me as you would anyone else, or not. If my singing is cr*p, which I think it is anyway because my voice is not how I would like it to be, then tell me so. If you think I could improve by doing something with a song, tell me. Clap if you enjoy it. Just be yourselves around me and I will be myself around you.

I know what 'normal' feels like. I know what being treated 'normal' feels like. I still cannot define 'normal' but I sure know what it is. It's what all you make my life feel when you just treat me like anyone else.

I am not saying it's been easy. Nor that it is easy for others. But whose life is truly easy? I have a good life, I feel, and it is only good because of those in it. Welcome to my world... it's the same one you are in!

anon