Dallas Denny Dallas Denny is a transgender activist and woman of transsexual experience. Inc. She is licensed to practice psychology in Tennessee. It may be freely distributed and reprinted, provided that all author information remains intact.
Sex reassignment is one of the most radical and disruptive things that an individual can do.
It strains and often severs social relationships, imposes economic hardships, involves a good deal of physical pain and a great deal of psychic pain, and requires study and hard work in order to even begin to hope to pass in the gender of choice. Transition must be pursued in the face of the general disapproval of society and the specific disapproval of loved ones, the reluctance of the medical community to provide services, a scarcity of resources, and countless legal and social obstacles. The body of one sex must be somehow whipped into the semblance of that of the opposite sex, generally after puberty has wreaked irreversible somatic changes. Old behavioral patterns must be unlearned and new ones added. A new life must replace the old.