As much of a cluster-f as this thread is, I'm glad it's still open, because I think that any discussion on the topic is better than none.
I'm just about to leave, so I can't say much, but there is one thing I wanted to mention, something that has legit bothered me in these latter pages of the thread: can we please stop with the "men who become women aren't real women" thing?
Somebody who was born as a male physically, but who is mentally and emotionally a woman, can never truly become a woman, no matter how many hormones they take, how much surgery they get, how much money they spend, or anything else. Until sciences comes up with some amazing new breakthrough in technology, or until magical wishes are finally granted, no matter how many steps a person takes they can never fully change what they were given by nature.
And you know who is aware of that the most? That person. Every single day, of every single week, of every single month, of every single year of their life, they wake up in the morning and go to bed at night knowing that. Unlike becoming rich, or landing that dream job, or marrying a hot porn star, or whatever else, the thing they want most in life can never, ever truly be realized. There is never a point of "I'm done, I'm who I really am supposed to be now"; the only point they'll ever reach is "at least now I feel more comfortable in my own skin than I did before."
So please, I wish we could get over that argument. Transgender people who transition aren't delusional or kidding themselves; they know they aren't biological women, and they never will be. They'll never be able to experience some of the things that real women do, they'll never be able to fully find acceptance and just blend into society like real women do. Their main hope, their goal, is to at least be able to live a life where they don't want to slash their wrists and end it all because their physical side and their mental/emotional side are so incompatible with one another. All they want is to at least be accepted as a woman, even if they know, and everybody else knows, who they were in the past. That isn't meant as any offense to genetically-born women, it isn't meant to take anything away from them or at all diminish their own worth and value as women.
It's not a question of asking you to accept the fact that a few surgeries can turn a man into a women, it's asking you to just have enough respect for the person to accept them for who they are now and not constantly remind them of who they once were.
(And, of course, this goes for the other way [female to male] as well.)
Edit: Oh, and for the comments of "transitioning is a choice"... when the choice is undergoing something that is painful, expensive, and which may end up alienating you more in society, or killing yourself because you cannot go on any longer in a situation where it is absolutely impossible for you to have even a small amount of happiness, I don't know that that's really much of a "choice".
