Even with all the practical and emotional hurdles the woman
must undergo to transition, and the ongoing practical and legal
difficulties she faces from time to time, her new life can be
full of wonders and joy and amazing experiences. However, this
can take some time. She must undergo a further period of post-transition
adjustment, during which she rebuilds her life. She must either
re-establish or move on from family relationships, learn how
to deal with loneliness , find new acquaintances, and start over
in socializing and dating. During this phase, she'll be gradually
compartmentalizing her stealthiness in various ways. She'll also
be having her first experiences with love and lovemaking as a
woman. She'll also be trying to stay physically active and healthy
for the longer term. In this section, we'll examine some of these
key social, personal and internal adjustments the woman must
make during her early post-transition years.
Family relationships:
Before the woman can really move on in her new life, she
usually tries to come to terms with the reactions of close family
members to her transition. It may be easy to drop old friends
and acquaintances who don't want to be friends anymore. But family
members are different. Most women feel a longing for "acceptance
in their new gender" by their families, and often try hard
to gain this acceptance. Sometimes these struggles persist for
years.
However, it is a sad fact that those closest to you before
transition are the least likely to be able to cope with your
transition. Once you've been strongly "gendered" by
someone and known them for a long time, it is almost impossible
for them to "regender" you in their minds, no matter
how successfully you've transitioned. Even those who appear to
accept you will often signal with little "tells" that
they still think of you as "the old you". The more
someone loved and imprinted on the other person you had appeared
to be, the more they will struggle to still see that other person
when they see you.
Therefore, relationships with parents, siblings, close relatives
and close friends usually suffer life-long strains from transition,
strains that may never be resolved.
There are exceptions to this rule, especially in the cases
of young transitioners whose initial gender was not heavily imprinted
in family members' minds. If you transition as a teenager or
very young adult, some families may be able to adjust to the
transition as it is occurring and project a newly gendered future
for you. However, all transitioners should steel themselves to
the possibility of family rejection, and count their blessings
if it doesn't happen.
To those outside the family who have no long-term connection
with a transitioner, it can be heartbreaking to see these rejections
occur. It is so sad to see a beautiful, warm-hearted, loving
girl emerge after gender transition, only to be hated and excommunicated
by all her family and relatives. Even in cases where the girl
gets married, adopts children, and is totally and lovingly accepted
by everyone in her new life, family members who knew her in the
past may completely shun her.
Family rejection can be a bewildering and crushing experience
for the girl after transition, but this is something she absolutely
MUST be prepared to endure. If the woman knows that this can
happen, through no fault of her own, then she may not be hurt
so deeply by it if it occurs.
The extreme levels of family denial of a transsexual woman's
corrected gender is seen in cases where families seize the remains
of a deceased TS woman, and hold a funeral wake and bury her
in male attire under her birth name (as happened to Rexanne in
A Tragedy's Tragic End ). Some
TS women break all contact with their families specifically to
avoid such a fate. This possibility of family intervention to
rewrite your gender history is another reason to be SURE to leave
a will, name an executor, and leave some funds so that your remains
will be properly laid to rest in the correct name and gender
when the time comes.
However, TS women must remember it's not their fault that
such things happen, nor is it their family members' fault. Instead,
these rejections are caused by deep aspects of human nature being
acted out under extremely trying circumstances. What we witness
is an almost animal-level reaction to something that seems incomprehensible
to close family members.
The more successful that a TS woman is in her transition,
the more superstitiously emotional and profoundly shocked a reaction
she may get from her family. This should not be surprising, being
a natural reaction to witnessing one human being disappear forever
and a completely different one replace them.
Try to put yourself in their shoes. Think how you would feel
if a beloved son or brother of father transitioned. It's a terrible
quandary for family members, especially if they didn't have a
clue this was coming. Some family members may try hard to still
"see the boy" in the transitioner and cling to the
past, and thus alienate the new girl. Others will suddenly "don't
know this new person who seems to have killed the boy",
feel grief at the loss of their loved one, and feel great anger
at the "stranger" (the transitioner) for making this
all happen.
I've seen many women struggle for years in hopeless efforts
to "gain acceptance" of parents and siblings who either
can never regender them as women - or else can't get over the
loss of the male family member. Trying to gain acceptance of
such family members is like trying to make real an unrequited
love. It just won't happen, and can only make the love-sick person
feel even sicker inside. For some of these women, their failure
to gain family acceptance causes a deep lingering sadness that
hurts their chance for happiness after transition. At the same
times, these families grieve for the one they lost, and this
gried is resurfaced every time the see the "replacement".
In such cases it would be much better to "let go",
grieve, move on and never look back. Otherwise the newly transitioned
woman will carry a heavy burden for years, and that burden will
interfere with her efforts at building self-esteem and assimilating.
I myself fell into the trap of struggling for years to "gain
acceptance" by a family member I loved. During the sometimes
lonely years of my early transition, I visited my younger brother
and his wife and two boys at least once a year. Sometimes it
would be for Thanksgiving or Christmas, other times it would
be to go on camping or canoe trips. We never talked about what
had happened to me. They were very "nice" to me. I
assumed they were gradually seeing me as I now was. The visits
were usually fun events, even though usually a bit stiff. This
went on for over thirty years, seeing them once a year or so,
even though there were telltale signs that things weren't right.
For example, they spent three weeks each summer at a vacation
home in the Finger Lakes area of New York, along with many of
my brother's wife's family members. They always raved about how
cool a place it was, yet never asked me to visit there - not
even once in thirty years. I already knew I was never invited
to the summer place to avoid other family members "seeing
me". And on and on it went, one tell after another. I just
tried to push these tells out of my mind. After all, they were
being nice.the
Finally in 2000, just as my story was coming out, I visited
my brother again. We'd planned to talk about my past, so he'd
have a current perspective on the TS condition and treatments,
and be better able to interact with the journalist doing the
story. Upon arriving, I was shocked to learn that he hadn't read
anything I'd sent him. He "didn't really want to talk about
it", and instead had gone planned an "outing".
All of a sudden everything became clear. I could now see all
the obvious "tells" I wouldn't let myself think about
before, all the tells that he still saw me as the "big brother"
he'd so looked up to years ago. To him I was now his big brother
who had had a sex change, whatever that was. To him I was still
a guy, and when I tried to talk to him about what had happened
to me, it just resurfaced grief that he'd never gotten over.
I wasted a lot of energy over years of trying to gain the
"acceptance" of my brother and his wife. They were
the only family I had, so it seemed important to maintain that
connection. I'd felt a lot of emotion about our relationship
during those years, a feeling that they were "there for
me" and the I was "there for them". When I realized
that they didn't even know me, all emotion evaporated. I felt
no loss. I felt nothing except a feeling of stupidity for trying
to "gain the acceptance" of people who out of fear,
shame and ignorance wouldn't make an effort to get to know me.
I let it go. They are now strangers to me, whom I won't see again.
I've heard such stories of non-acceptance repeated over,
over and over again by other postop women. Stories of loved ones
who can't "see us" as who we are now. Some still see
and refuse to let go of the old person, hurting us to the very
core of our souls. Others suddently do see the new person, but
don't have a clue how to get to know her - and resent her for
killing off their loved one. Either way, the longer we try to
"gain acceptance" and grasp for a loving connection
with someone like that, the more we give them power to hurt us,
and hurt us they will. And they too are hurt by the situation.
If you're in one of these situations, it's best to just let it
go.
One useful mental trick that can help us deal with the strange
and quirky things that happen to us is to remember that "it's
all data". One can cope with family rejection and other
difficult realities of postop life by simply observing these
things unemotionally, "taking notes", and realizing
that you are an observer of very interesting ethnographic data
about transsexualism and how people react to gender changes.
The behaviors you observe are natural reactions to events that
seem mystical and inexplicable to most people. Since no one "is
to blame" for these reactions, this helps take some of the
sting out of things. It can also help you "let go",
and not try to regain the love of people who are now lost to
you, and instead look forward to bringing new people into your
life.
There are exceptions to this old rule of "loss of family".
As people become more knowledgeable about gender transitions
and less fearful of "what the neighbors might think",
some families ARE now able to get to know and "regender"
a family member after her transition, especially those who transition
while young. It is much easier to regender a girl who transitions
when she is young, because there are fewer memories of her as
a post-pubertal boy, and fewer forward-projections of her future
as a "man".
There is some very important lessons for families here: Families
have great difficulty in regendering a close family member who
transitions as an adult. It is just a fact of human nature and
of the way our minds work, of how we remember someone's gendered
past and project ahead their gendered future. Therefore, if at
all possible families should strongly support a TS girl's early
transition. This way they are much more likely to end up having
a daughter, and knowing that daughter, after her transition.
In cases where a close family member transitions as an adult,
it's best to be very honest and forthright with them, and tell
them if you are having difficulties seeing them in their new
gender. That way you give them the option of moving on, and not
being hurt year after year trying to hold onto a connection that
is not meant to be.
Dealing with loneliness:
The first few years after transition can be lonely ones.
Having to break many ties with one's past, and having to start
over again in a new gender, in a new job, maybe in a new city
where you don't know anyone yet - all this causes many new transitioners
to feel like they've been dropped on the earth from another planet,
without knowing a soul here.
As a result, the woman may face periods of severe loneliness
and have few people to turn to for emotional support at those
times. This is especially true if she has been totally rejected
by her family and past friends.
This is one reason that many women stay stuck back in the
"transitioners' world. Out of loneliness and a lack of confidence
in making new friends, they tend to continue hanging out with
their transitioning friends and TG/TS social groups. As time
passes, their transitioning friends increasingly tend to be the
ones who themselves are stuck in transition and can't move on.
This tendency to fight loneliness by staying in the transitioners'
world can greatly hold a women back from moving on and finding
her place in society.
Another trap that many postop women fall into is remaining
obsessively bound-up in TG/TS e-mail groups and chat-rooms. They
develop these habits during transition, as a way to get information
and make important new contacts, and find it difficult to "let
go" and move on into a real life after transition. This
is especially the cse during periods of isolation and loneliness.
Postop women should keep careful track of how much time they
spend on-line each day interacting with other "T's",
and try to wean themselves from spending so much time there.
Any reductions a woman makes in the "amount of time on-line
with other TS's" could then be yet another measure of "how
well she is doing". That's not to say that she shouldn't
have a few really close TS friends, and maintain contact with
TS web activity as a valuable source of information. It's just
best to avoid spending hours each day in chat rooms and e-mail
groups as a substitute for getting a real life.
Some productive ways to fight loneliness are to focus very
hard on finding employment. Then, once you are working, getting
really busy at work. Once you are sure of your employment situation,
you might then think about moving to a really good new location
where you have access to lots of interesting things to do. Where
you live has a huge effect on your lifestyle, and on how many
things are nearby for fun things to do outside work. It can be
far better to live in a bustling upbeat diverse urban environment
where there are tons of things to do, than, for example, in the
socially sterile landscape of suburbia (even if you had the money
to live there).
focusing on learning how to make new friends - - - forcing
yourself to join clubs and activities - - until you find some
good ones and start making new friends - -
- - - joining clubs based on recreational or hobby interests
- - and doing lots of traveling - - are also good ways to fight
loneliness too - - -
- - - these things can help a woman snap out of loneliness
- - - and help set the stage for starting over socially and making
more new friends in the larger world - - - however, she will
have to force herself to do lots of new things in order to break
out of her social confines and meet lots of people and gradually
gain an identity in new social circles - - -in the meantime she
must recognize that loneliness may stalk her for quite a while
- - -
Pets as companions:
- - -
Experiencing and coping with gender shifts in one's
dreams:
- - -
Starting over in socializing and dating:
Starting over - - making friends- - - going out with the
girls - - - going to parties, clubs and singles bars - - - beginning
to date men as a woman - - - gaining confidence through lots
of casual dating - - -
finding dates via the web - - - using Match.com
and Yahoo personals
- - - methods for initial meetings and staying safe - - -
- - - the advantages of having common interests - - -
meeting people who share the same hobbies and recreational interests
- - -
- - - fully adjusting to one's new anatomy and sexuality
after SRS - - - experiencing another "puberty" - -
- learning from "how-to" books and women's magazines
about how to fully experience your new female sexuality - - -
"turning on", masturbation and learning how to reach
orgasm as a woman - - - and with feeling more confident that
you are ready for sensual encounters with others - - -
- - - getting comfortable with feeling sexy when around
others, and with being warmy responsive to flirtation by others
- - -
- - - many things to discuss here - - - [see more details
in the Section entitled "Sexual Arousal, Lovemaking and
Orgasm in Postoperative Transsexual Women" in Lynn's
SRS Web page] - - -
Early experiences in lovemaking and partnering:
- - - getting comfortable with fully expressing one's
new sexuality in intimate relationships - - -
- - - but do be sure to engage in safe-sex! - - - always
be prepared - - - don't just let sex "happen" when
you didn't expect it to - - -
- - - one thing to remember is that your genitals look
"just fine", and no one is going to notice anything
weird about them - - - although women are a lot more likely to
notice little details that might give away that something has
happened down there, and thus lesbian relationships are more
likely to require some sort of "explanation" - - -
on the other hand, most men will almost never notice anything
amiss, even in cases where the surgery was pretty basic, and
even when going down on you - - - so relax, don't worry about
it, let yourself go, and enjoy yourself! - - - (coordinate this
section with details in the SRS page) - - -
Partnering presents postop women with some challenges,
especially that of "when to tell" a lover about one's
past. This can be one of the most traumatic periods a transitioned
woman faces - - - right when she should be happiest and on "cloud-nine",
she realizes that she can lose her lover if her past comes out
the wrong way - - - or if her lover otherwise reacts badly to
the news.
There is no best rule for when to tell. Some postop women
tell right away or before there is intimacy, while others wait
until there is a deep emotional bond. Newly transitioned women
tend to tell way too early, even on a first date, and often obsess
with "being honest". This is especially true of women
who are dating men and yet are afraid of men, and who are fearful
of "violence" if a male lover were to find out later
and feel "deceived".
However, most long-term postop women have learned that
it's best to wait until there is a real reason to tell. We've
seldom heard stories of "violence upon finding out later".
If there is rejection, which isn't usually the case, then it
is just usually via words. And, after all, did their date tell
them all about his past when they first met? In many cases a
man may not have even told the woman whether he is married or
not, and this may not matter to her under some circumstances.
Thus there are not hard and fast rules on when, or even if, to
tell. Each woman has to use her own intuition and judgment in
each case.
Unfortunately, transsexual women often lose promising
relationships if they are honest with a partner and tell about
their past, whether they tell early or wait till later. A woman
can compensate for this disadvantage by being more active and
getting better at starting relationships than most other women
are. Nothing ventured, nothing gained - - - and what counts in
love is eventually finding someone - - - even if there are some
heartaches along the way - - -
- - - finding and losing love - - - dealing with temporary
loneliness and heartbreaks - - - bouncing back and finding new
lovers - - -
- - - think about it this way: someday you will have to
talk about your past with someone you REALLY love and don't want
to lose - - - so an important thing is to do in your early relationships
it to "practice telling" and learning how to do it
well - - - to increase your odds of success when it really counts
- - -
Exploring your sexual orientation as a woman:
Most women who transition have a sense of what their postop
sexual orientation will be.
For example, many early transitioners who are attractive
will have gained the attention of young men and have lots of
warm experiences in being sexually turned on while flirting with
men. Many of these young TS's will have taken male lovers while
pre-op (functioning as "girls") and will know for sure
they'll be heterosexual once they are postop. Other women, especially
later transitioners will feel very uncomfortable around men and
are sure that they will be attracted to women instead.
However, experience is teaching us that things often don't
turn out as expected in this area, and that it is wise to stay
open to all possibilities. Many postops find that they have a
somewhat fluid "bisexual" orientation, at least for
a while, until they settle into long-term partnering habits.
One reason for this is that the profound experiences of transition
through RLE and on through SRS often seem to liberate a TS women
from the usual hangups about minor details like sexual orientation,
and many women feel free to openly explore those issues once
postop. After all, whether one is straight or lesbian doesn't
seem like such a huge deal to someone who undergone a sex change!
For example, some women who are "sure they are going
to be straight" may find that they are visually attracted
to pretty women once they are postop, and are surprised to discover
that they may passionately enjoy a love relationship with a woman
as a woman.
Others who are "sure they are going to be lesbian"
before completing transition may discover that, when men find
them attractive and begin to flirt with them and turn on to them,
this causes a powerful turn-on in them too. To their surprise,
they may be overwhelmed by yielding to joyful, passionate lovemaking
with men who find them attractive.
This can happen even to later transitioners who've had little
experience being out socially and looking attractive to men.
They may never have flirted with men or had men come on to them
until they are postop and socially assimilated. These women may
not realize how much the attention of men can turn them on. It
may even come as a bit of a surprise! They may have assumed that
they will be lesbian, because in the past while on testosterone
they may have liked to look at pretty girls, and may have been
turned on by looking at girls - while never have been turned
on by "looking at men".
Ah, but girls don't turn on when looking at men the way guys
do when looking at women. Girls are not so "outwardly visual"
that way. They don't look at someone and get aroused and want
to go touch and caress that someone. Instead they are more "inwardly
sensual", getting turned on by affectionate advances and
flirtatious behavior of others, and turning on inside by the
approach of others who desire them! The female turn-on when sensing
male attention can very powerful, and can get a woman feeling
really "hot" inside. Such experiences may surprise
the postop woman who never felt this attention before, and it
can make her aware that she might really wants a man to make
love to her after all.
All of this is exactly like the uncertainties of any youthful
puberty, only that it occurs later in life for the postop woman.
And only time will tell how it will turn out, as you experience
the wonders of being able to fully enjoy your body and engage
in joyous lovemaking as a woman.
Compartmentalizing and adjusting one's stealthiness:
As time passes and a woman's new life becomes more complex
and full of activities, she will often make many adjustments
in her stealthiness. One of the common ways she can do this is
to carefully "compartmentalize" major zones of life-activity,
and not have ANY overlap in people from different life-compartments.
She is then free to be more out in some areas and more stealth
in others, and can make adjustments in one compartment (for example,
coming out to someone there) without affecting or risking the
others.
Some of the important "compartments" a woman may
keep separate are her career and employment scene, her dating
scene, her church friends, interactions with her family members,
interactions with other trans people, her hobbies, her recreational
and sports activities, etc. Many postop women carefully avoid
any overlap in people in these separate "compartments".
For example, a woman will carefully avoid dating people at work,
and her hobbies will not be connected with her work or her dating
scene, etc.
Sometimes women reinforce such compartmentalization by trying
where possible to do separate things in somewhat different locales
within their city. Or they will do things that fit into different
classes, or social levels, or social communities that don't often
overlap. For example, Lynn's whitewater canoeing and motocross-racing
avocations didn't socially overlap at all with her career work.
The great advantage of compartmentalized stealthiness is
that the woman can be open in some environments (with family
and T-friends for example), and yet be very stealthy in other
compartments. If she is ever outed in one major compartment (such
as at work), it won't ruin her sports scene or her dating scene,
and vice-versa.
It can be a very big mistake to build up most of one's important
life-compartments from one original pool of people, such as from
friends at work. If a woman dates people at work, and all her
hobbies and recreational activities involve friends at work,
then she risks losing everything if she is ever outed at work.
That can easily happen, for example, if a woman breaks up with
a lover at work whom she has told about her past, and he later
outs her to everyone at work.
It is common for many postop women to develop and employ
to a high degree of skill and sophistication in the creation
of many separate compartments of stealth. They can then carefully
tune the degree of stealthiness in each compartment, depending
on the risks vs returns of being stealthy or open there. This
is analogous to skills employed by spies and espionage agents.
It takes some time and practice to learn how to keep things straight,
and to avoid any information flow between life-compartments.
However, this doesn't mean that a woman doesn't tell people
in various compartments about her other activities in life. To
the contrary, she will usually informally reveal the existence
of several compartments to people in the others. She will about
her hobbies at work, and about her work and her hobbies in her
dating scene. It is good to reveal these things, because the
more extensive her visible socialization, the more interesting
she is to people and the less likely people are to suspect her
past. At the same time, she'll try to avoid having any people
in different compartments actually KNOW each other, and thus
be able to pass information about her from one compartment to
another.
By compartmentalizing and adjusting her stealthiness as needed,
a stealthy postop woman can gradually relax in the comfort of
knowing that her life can't be completely unraveled by being
outed or having troubles in just one area of her life. If anything
goes wrong in one area, she'll have the people and activities
in the other areas to fall back on for social and emotional support.
Staying healthy and being physically active:
A very important dimension of postop life is taking care
of yourself physically and staying healthy. There are many dimensions
to maintaining your health, including getting plenty of exercise,
maintaining access to a primary care physician, having regular
physical exams (especially as you get older), getting regular
dental care, and carefully watching your diet and managing your
weight.
There is an old-time notion that exercise "isn't feminine",
and unfortunately many postop women buy into this old notion.
Way back in the 1950's women thought that way, and you'd hardly
ever see girls or women out exercising back then. Most GG women
know better nowadays, and realise that exercise can make you
look even more feminine and cool, rather than "make you
too butch".
However, many postop women avoid almost all exercise and
physical conditioning, out of fear that it will bring back masculine-looking
musculature. Remembering how the muscles used to build up in
themselves and other guys, they're often terrified that exercise
might cause some of those muscles to "come back".
However, once you have been castrated during SRS and are
on estrogen, your capability for building and maintaining male
musculature and muscle strength diminishes rapidly due to the
absence of testosterone and presence of the estrogen. Anyone
who has known physically active postop women has seen this inevitable
musculature transition in those women. The initial changes are
quite rapid, and are mostly completed over a period of about
two years, somewhat like the time it takes for breast development
to complete. After that time the woman is no more able to bulk
up with male-form musculature than is any other woman, no matter
how much she exercises. (The only postop women or GG women who
can bulk up would be those who took steroids.)
Therefore, contrary to many postop women's intuitions,
those women who exercise and are athletic often look much more
"female" in form than those who don't.
The postop women who exercise can often maintain nicely-toned,
well-developed female musculatures, instead of getting "flabby
" and having poorly defined shapes. This is especially noticeable
in the arms and legs. If you doubt this, look at young women
athletes, or cheerleaders, or dancers, or Vegas showgirls for
that matter. Compare the bodies of those women who are physically
active to those women who are sedentary and never exercise, and
you'll see an amazing difference.
Thus we see an important yet generally unrecognized fact:
A postop woman's physical conditioning (or lack thereof) during
the early years after her SRS can play a very important part
in the final "overall shaping" of her new female form.
Exercise can also help a lot in maintain proper weight levels,
whereas a sedentary life often leads postop women to become very
overweight. Being overweight can then ruin a woman's chances
at feeling well, feeling attractive, and feeling and looking
feminine.
Many women (whether GG or TS) struggle with their weight.
The old-fashioned notion that "exercising isn't feminine"
is one big factor in this. Many women also habituate into eating
as a way to sooth their emotions. In most cases, all it takes
to lose weight is to eat less and exercise a bit more, and do
that every day. It's just that simple. However, although tha's
easy to say, it can be hard to do. In many cases it's as hard
as quitting smoking.
It can take a lot of will power for someone who is overweight
and out of shape to get fit and into a healthy lifestyle. You
have to eat less, and exercise a lot more, and you must do this
with sustained drive and passion, the passion that comes from
a deep need to achieve a new body form. This is analogous to
the kind of need and level of will power and huge effort it takes
to transition. Given their experience at transition, you would
hope that postop women should be able call up similar levels
of will power to get into good physical condition, since that
is so important a part of looking and feeling good as a woman.
Once you are reasonably fit, there are many wonderful activities
that women can get into to stay active and fit - walking, golfing,
jogging, aerobic exercise and running - swimming, hiking, backpacking,
canoeing and kayaking - working out at YMCA's,
spas and health clubs - bicycling, cross-country skiing and horseback
riding. Many of these activities are not just healthy fun in
themselves, but are also great ways to join into new clubs, make
new friends and expand one's social horizons.
Getting into new sports, and becoming very physically active,
and then discovering that this helps, not hinders, one's physical
appearance and presence as a woman, can be very rewarding and
validating and can greatly boost one's morale. It brings on a
new sense of complete freedom as a woman, especially freedom
from the fear that one has to be very sedentary and not at all
"physical", or else one will "bulk-up" again.
The development of a more female form by getting fit and healthy
then further confirms the reality of one's physical gender transition.
In addition to these many benefits at the time, staying fit
and controlling one's weight is a great way to ameliorate the
aging process, and to stay looking and feeling much better and
much younger than your years would suggest.
Participation in competitive sports:
Many postop women have experienced fulfillment through being
physically active in sports. As they become more physically fit,
some enter and enjoy competitive sports too. Lynn know many postop
women who engage in competitive sports such as running, bicycling
and golf, and who do well and have lots of fun.
Working hard at learning a physical skill and at physical
conditioning, and then doing well in athletic competition, is
a great builder of self-esteem and confidence in modern liberated
women. This feeling of working hard at something and then achieving
success by objective measures can carry over into many other
parts of life. Competition has many other benefits too, including
enjoying the wonderful comraderie among participants that is
present in many sports.
Following are some women from the TS Successes list who have
been active in competitive sports. Their stories will help readers
gain insight into the challenges and rewards of those sports:
