I think the press was not unkind to Chaz Bono when he underwent his transition, so hopefully Bruce will be treated kindly.
It is my understanding that in a Male to Female transition, the person has felt for most if not all of their life that they are a woman trapped inside the body of a man. They want to be a woman, the person they are inside. Thus, they will be interested in having male partners.
I read the story of a man who transitioned to female late in life. He said he had some "homosexual" relations with men as a young man, but that they did not feel homosexual to him, that they felt normal. He then stopped any homosexual behavior and consciously adopted "being male". He married a woman whom he loved and they had a child. But the internal feeling of being a woman inside him never went away. Eventually he and his wife divorced. He remained male due to feeling that his elderly mother, to whom he was very close, could never handle him undergoing a transition.
Eventually the mother died and he began the transition by taking female hormones and undergoing electrolysis to get rid of his beard. Eventually he began to develop breasts. (I noticed in some photos that Bruce is developing breasts also)
The former man - whom I will call Jim - eventually announced to co-workers what was taking place. He then began polishing his nails, wearing makeup and dressing as a female. I'll be honest and say that based on photos, he was no raving beauty of a woman. But, he was a heavy set man in his sixties with a bad haircut who didn't know anything at all about tweezing his eyebrows! Maybe things got better later on.
Eventually, he had his legal name changed and also went through the legalities to have his gender changed.
So, legally, he became a she. As far as surgery, while she - I'll call her Cindy - talked about perhaps having the below the belt surgery at some time in the future, she did not have it done. It is my understanding that these surgeries are extremely expensive and don't always turn out perfectly. Besides, an underlying health condition she had might lead to complications.
Cindy seemed happy enough with where she was at that point. She enjoyed buying clothes, especially fancy underwear it seemed. Her daughter, her ex-wife, her grandchild, her friends and her co-workers all accepted her transition. One brother did and a second brother did not. She placed great value on having "girlfriends" and getting together to "do girl things". She would have liked to have a "boyfriend" but that did not happen.
About two years after her transition, Cindy died suddenly and quite unexpectedly from the underlying health condition unrelated to either sexuality or the transition.
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There was an Anderson Cooper special called "Lady Valor" about a 40 yr. old highly decorated Navy Seal with a wife and two children who ended up transitioning. His story was very similar in the sense of him always having felt like he was a woman inside a man's body.
This man was a younger, tall, broad-shouldered good looking man. He looked a bit strange as a woman. Very muscular in the chest/upper arms area. Oh, and as a woman she liked pearls. (Does anybody still wear pearls?)
This special might be on youtube.
Transgendering is just one more facet of the human condition. We need to all educate ourselves on this because 1.) then we will be able to answer our children's/grandchildren's questions about it 2.) in case any of those same children/grandchildren need us to support them through such a process.
