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� In this diary, I record my life as a transvestite. Perhaps it will help somebody else, who finds their lifestyle doesn't quite match that endorsed by the 'tranny mafia'. Well, I've been there... and survived. The debriefing starts here.

�loves: All kinds of stuff that society thinks I shouldn't.

�hates: Microsoft. Obviously.

�reads:
secret-motel
artgnome
enfinblue
stepfordtart
ten-oclock
boombasticat
lawliiet
annanotbob
fifidellabon
my-serenade

Lynn Jones
Becky
Samantha

The trouble with moral support
9:51 p.m. -- 2008-06-20

In my last post, I mentioned the resources and sources of information that exist nowadays, to help the emerging transvestite (or tranny, or TV, or T*girl).

That's the thing about the Internet. It's a great medium for letting special interest groups communicate together. There might be only five hundred people in the world today who are interested in making flint arrowheads, say, but with the 'net, they can share ideas, techniques and all kinds of gossip...

The trouble with internet-based special interest groups, I think, is that there is always a danger that you can immerse yourself in your new-found community of like-minded people so deeply that you make two mistakes. Firstly, you might start to neglect people who ought to be close to you in 'real life', because the people you found on the internet are so much more compatible, so much more interesting in what they have to say, and it's all tremendously liberating and exciting having made contact with them.

Secondly, you might start to assume that this voiciferous community of friends reflect reality and normality. This is the real problem: you're now spending time reading posts and websites created by a subset of the population, who share a common passion.

Even if they're all being truthful, and none of them are trying to sell something, their opinions must (by definition) be biased. So, for example, you'll find a website, forum or diary ring for anorexics, who provide each other with moral support, exchange tips for dieting and (most insidiously, through no fault of their own) spread the feeling that what they're doing is okay, because hey - there are other people doing this!

Exactly the same problem I encountered when I first found the alt.transgendered newsgroup, when I first hit the internet in 1994.

"Gosh. Look at all these people, interested in the same issues as me. Look at all these new acronyms to learn. SRS. RLT. GG?"

But there isn't just an on-line community; there's an on-line culture. Certainly, you get the occasional lunatic, maverick, or hit-and-run heckler... but the newsgroups I found back then were actually quite formalised. Some 'big names' in the transgendered world had already staked their claim, and they dominated those information spaces. They posted well-intentioned messages and FAQs, I'm sure...

But the answers were wrong for me.

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