All that you ever need to know about genitals is that they are made up of flesh, blood, and millions of tiny, restless nerve endings - anything else that you read into them is mere hallucination, a product of your own overactive imagination.

The hardest part has been learning how to take myself seriously when the entire world is constantly telling me that femininity is always inferior to masculinity

Sometimes we do that to ourselves -- we pit our desires against one another. We insist unnecessarily on seeing one aspect of our personality as being at odds with the rest of ourselves.

When I made the decision to transition, I honestly had no idea what it would be like for me to live as female. The only thing I knew for sure was that pretending to be male was slowly killing me.

Evidence that [feminine aesthetic preferences and ways of expressing oneself] may be hardwired comes from the fact that they typically appear early in childhood and often in contradiction to one's socialization. […] This indicates that some aspects of feminine verbal and aesthetic expression precede and/or supersede gender socialization.

In trans women's eyes, I see a wisdom that can only come from having to fight for your right to be recognized as female, a raw strength that only comes fro unabashedly asserting your right to be feminine in an inhospitable world.

I am rather disturbed by the fact that so many people—who are neither medical professionals nor trans themselves—would want to hear all of the gory details regarding transsexual physical transformations, or would feel that they have any right to ask us about the state of our genitals.