From a very early age, I can remember believing I was a girl. Of course being named with a girl's name was an indication. Actually, it was Gwinn, but it sounds like Gwen to Americans, and mother frequently said I was so feminine when I was a toddler. Would it have made any difference if the males in my life had not been such jackasses? They were gruff, rude, brutal, coarse, abusive and um not loving. I did not wish to be anything like them.

After puberty, the sole source of good feelings was masturbation, though everyone around me tried to make it and anyone who did it out to be repulsive people. I have been doing research on Eunuchs and in the cases I have read about, some of them have gotten castrated or self castrated because the sex drive was too distracting. Though I had been told I had GID, my original reason for castration was to get rid of that oppressive drive, though I intended to stay with my family. I planned to have the Orchiectomy in secret, not telling anyone, and had the appointment booked before it all blew up in my face by the overreaction of the County Psych Nurse. I was very depressed and just needed to talk to someone. She got me put on an involuntary 5 day psych hold and that immediately led the Christian fundamentalist family to throw me out.

At the time I was on very heavy doses of experimental Psych Medications that made me extremely suggestible. They still use those medications but at greatly reduced dosages. And yes, the medications I was taking made me more suicidal. I've been off them since 2008.

After I had been in my own apartment for a couple weeks, I decided to explore my feminine side, and started dressing like a woman. I'd already been messing with illicit Estrogen for almost 10 years, since about 1995. Yes, sure there was something going on but in retrospect, what ever it was perhaps was exacerbated by living with a man hating, feminist woman for 39 years. The diagnosis of the psych folk at the time was that I was a worn out caregiver, that my family was sucking me dry.

I miss my abusive family so much that I have tried to live as a man twice and found it so crushing that it was either suicide or live as a woman. Yes, I am likely very masochistic and perhaps had a Dependent Personality Disorder.

I'm currently with a very supportive Mormon community that is only comfortable with me as a woman. I've spoken with the Bishop about living as a man and he does not support that. Interestingly, my own family will not engage in any sort of dialogue with me aimed at reconciliation. So much for "Chrisian" love.

At present, the treatment of GID is undergoing a lot of scrutiny and lots of ideas are being tossed about. I will continue to live as a woman, though I do not think the full SRS is always needed. Our Puritanistic roots are the root cause of the problem. We have a distorted and unrealistic idea of what roles males and females are to fill. I would likely have done fine living as a very mild and effeminate male. And we need to abandon the idea that only females wear dress like garments. To me pants are terribly uncomfortable.

I expect the whole transgender thing to be greatly altered in a generation or two, perhaps disappearing entirely. There have been cultures in the world where gender roles were greatly blurred or altered. The Mandean culture in Southern Iraq is one example, and the Tuareg of North Africa is another, though I do not know much about them.

We each walk our own path though often alone. It is my path and I walk it freely.