Thanks Natalie for kicking off this thread and giving yourself the time to talk with us and enlighten us about transsexuality (in the sense of living with a wish for permanent sex change; transgender, to me, is a larger umbrella concept that covers all those who don't, overall, feel unequivocally at ease with the social/sexual gender that their current bodily sex would assign them, and who have in some sense a desire to move beyond that "vanilla gender").
Hope no one will mind me adding a link to this truly interesting, honest and commmunicative blog of a trans woman's journey through her sex change to become what she had long felt she should be, from the first meeting with a psychologist/therapist in 2000 to now, seven years and hundreds of hours of electrolysis (hair/skin) treatment later:
http://membhtml adding links to other forums is againt the rules --sorry