Wow! And I used to think that Sal Munella was dim.

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Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts after you have forgotten your goal.

You just have to except that you’re the oddballs. A man wearing a dress to council meetings (Besides being very very silly.) simply attacks the integrity of the professionalism of the position. Just look what Clinton did to the integrity of the office of president of the United States of America. The whole world knows his thingy twists when he gets an erection. I’m sorry, but this kind of stuff is embarrassing to normal people and it effects more then just his want to extend his personal life into the integrity of the community he represents.

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Only a liberal would know how hard it is to get a nicotine patch to stick to a monkey.

Which kind of stuff? TMI from the president? Sure, but that has nothing at all to do with trans folk. I'm not even sure how you got there from here- it's like knights move thinking.

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please click and help the eggs hatch!

"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love"
-Anias Nin

I'm not sure that it so much an issue of intellegence, as of the blend of tangentality and paranoia. The only bit that made any sense to me is 'you actually receive the world you make for yourself'. Of course. This is an excellent reason to approach even those who are different from ourselves with open hearts, instead of labeling them as 'oddballs' (or whaterver) and dismissing them.

I know it can be difficult to overcome prejudices that were learned early. I have the benefit of some experience in this subject; the man I love best in this world was born a girl. The transformation is really an amzing thing to see happening, and I can barely imagine what it must be like to experience. One thing that I really value is the insights that come from having stood on both shores, and lived part of a life as both sexes. Now *that* is something we all can learn from.

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please click and help the eggs hatch!

"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love"
-Anias Nin

Sorry, that isn't Dim. It is unbeleivably idiotic.

A lot of years ago, that dress was called a "Toga"

As for the twisty thing---- how do you know that??? I certainly didn't.

You seem obsessed with such things.

That is rather "Telling"

I don't know Mare Tranquility, but I have learned a lot from the stuff she's posted about being trans. Starting from some of the sources she has provided I have read a bit about the subject and I think I have just a glimmering of the difficulty of being a transsexual in a world largely run by people like Hank, people who are proudly ignorant and determined to remain that way, people who are willing to hurt others to protect their own ignorance and bigotry.

All the evidence I have seen suggests that Mare is correct and transsexuality is a birth defect just like Tourette Syndrome and the fact that people with a birth defect are targeted for discrimination by folks like Hank annoys me somewhat. Everyone has something to teach and Hank has shown me another example of how I don't want to be. Thanks, Hank.

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Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts after you have forgotten your goal.

I was trying to be diplomatic with my insult.

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Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts after you have forgotten your goal.

Reading this makes it easy to see where your focus in life is. "Twisted thingy" aside, Clinton did not reestablish torture as US policy, nor did he set up secret illegal prisons in other countries, nor did he lie to us in order to start a war that will end badly no matter how it ends. Unlike yourself, I do not think that the issue of sex is the be-all and end-all of human existence.

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Fanaticism is redoubling your efforts after you have forgotten your goal.

I didn't, I don't want to, and I will forget it forwith. Some images I don't need in my head.

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please click and help the eggs hatch!

"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love"
-Anias Nin

It never ceases to amaze me that, like racists, hetero-sexists don't care anything about a person except whether they are following hetero sexual-practices.

Hank has mentioned a fear of people laughing at him because of people in his area who are perceived as being non-heterosexual. Pretty scary when you're afraid of people laughing AT YOU because of OTHER people's activities or appearance.

The fact that most transpeople are heterosexual or after transition are non-sexual doesn't seem to matter to the Hanks of the world--why not? Is it the focus on the "twisted thingy" that becomes kind of a fear-fetish?

I am an intelligent, tax-paying, business operator, who has never been arrested, or dodged the draft, or given succor to terrorists. Why shouldn't I be able to get married? Why should my brothers and the Hanks of the world give me so much shit for a birth defect over which I had no control? I realize that the Hanks, Thanes, Sal Munellas, Kinetics, and Eagles of the world are just a vocal peanut gallery, but they seem to set the tone, the general population listens to them instead of the Non Sequitors. Just like with slavery, when the hardcore racists set the stage, the rest of the population went along with it like unthinking sheeple, today the same thing is happening with transsexual people. But as long as the better educated people remain silent the discrimination will not end.

I very much appreciate the intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, and curious responses I have received from the vast majority of posters on this site, thank you.

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.

I don't even think its a defect. it just IS. And if people weren't so busy wanting to put labels on people, we could just relate to people as people first and not worry about their gender or sexuality unless we were planning on having an intimate relationship with them.

men look great in dresses! some of my best friends are men who wear dresses!

For most of history the majority of men have worn dresses!

Fat men look better in djellaba, kurta or caftans than they do in shirts and trousers, and men with great bodies look fantastic in sarongs and lap laps ...

mind you, the scots used to take off their kilts when they went into battle, and just worse their shirts ....

Just when I'd purged my visions of Demis Roussos before the Great Slimming..........

Hank, I'll give you this, you're up front. I think sometimes prejudice held and openly expressed (but not acted upon to cause detriment to others) is better than repressed disgust masked by a veneer of tolerance. At least it's honest.

When it comes to people's sexuality tolerance doesn't cut it. What's necessary is understanding. That of course requires a bit more work than merely mouthing the usual high-sounding nostrums of mere tolerance.

Everyone, regardless of sexuality, should have the right to love and to marry of they wish. I'm undecided on adoption, I haven't dealt with that issue yet so, in Hank's spirit of openness, I'll admit it. In a society that still has to accept various forms of human sexuality I don't know if it works. But I don't want to hid my own confusion, I'm really undecided on that issue. But I know where I stand with love and marriage - admittedly after some thought. No-one should be denied the right to love and to marry just because their sexuality is different to the mainstream.

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"There were no D-Day Heroes in 1973" - Cold Chisel Khe Sanh

Good for you, I appreciate your honesty and open-mindedness. On the subject of adoption it might be interesting to note that enough children have been raised by homosexual couples now to make a statistical universe and the only difference from "normal" children is that the children of homosexual parents tend to be more broadminded than children from heterosexual parent families. The percentage of children who are homosexual is the same in both kinds of families.

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The apocalypse is coming... we're gonna need more ammo.