I used to find it difficult to sympathise with the transgendered, but then I read this interesting post in NCAP which went something like this:
Imagine you're a musician - its your passion, your art, it's what you trained for your entire life until its second nature. Then you wake up and you're working for an engineering firm; you have no capacity for numbers, you don't know what an engine is and you never took chemistry or physics. Even worse, you're under a contract and can't quit.
I haven't articulated it nearly as well as the original, but you get the gist.
As for the surgery, well the idea of it being done to myself is horrifying - for many thats a base psychological thing too. For example there was an experiment performed in the states where they showed a movie and they tried to fill it with flashes of a castration, but so quickly that your brain couldnt record it properly. Nearly every male in the audience reported experiencing an intense discomfort which they couldn't explain. None of the women reported the same thing.
Which I think is the major hurdle for the transgendered, alot of people, particularly men, will feel very uncomfortable around them because its like a 'sympathetic' horror. At the core of it people need to realise that there is a difference between the process and the person, and frankly someone else's genitals aren't your business unless you're in a sexual relationship.
So yeah, I don't like the process but it doesn't really impact upon the person ...
