Welcome to The Trib...

Happy new year girls. I do hope that 2008 will be a better year for us all. 2007 was not up to much. Hardly any of the projects we wanted to pursue got off the ground last year for a number of reasons. 2007 was also the year I had my first heart attack, which didn't help matters much.

I'm pleased to report that I'm feeling much better now though and I'm raring to go.

Once again, we have a number of projects for this year which we would dearly like to see actually happen, but it's all down to you dear members. Trannyweb is your girly club and it will be as successful as you make it.

This year we are going to focus on quality rather than quantity and we've started already. Please don't think we are in any way being mean about this, but a few days back we had a mass cull of member's accounts. In fact we were most unhappy to see them go but it had to be done.

Although Trannyweb was at one time the largest community on the web for TG people, we noticed that quite a lot of our members had moved on or just disappeared. Their accounts were still taking up space in our membership database, slowing it's reaction time a little but they had left for good and any attempts by us to contact them by email just bounced back.

So, rather than keep a large number of dormant accounts on the system and in an effort to make Trannyweb leaner and faster we decided that members who have not logged in within six months and who's email addresses are no longer working, should go.

For our members who are regular visitors, this should be good news as it should help the community site to work a bit faster and it will also be good news for our small but happy band of advertisers who can now be sure that they are not advertising their wares to nonexistent members.

However, even after the cull we still have over 21500 members onboard and there's nothing to stop those who have gone from coming back to us again. All our members have to do in future, to avoid losing their accounts, is log in at least once every six months. That's not much to ask.

Please remember that Trannyweb Basic Membership is 100% free and provides you with forums, blogs, live chat, instant messaging, classified ads, polls, surveys and much more and all absolutely free.

To help us pay the bills (and there are many) we also offer Full Membership which allows access to thousands of our members photos in over 430 picture galleries, access to our membership database giving you direct contact with all of your fellow members, your own web site, your own Trannyweb email account access to our popular TrannyGames pages and much more.

If you'd like to become a Full Member, please click this link to start your free 30 day trial now

Let's hope that 2008 turns out to be a better year than 2007 was. Happy New Year girls.

Hugs, Katie xxxx

Dr Sakura's Tranny Book Bundle

All four of Dr Mina Sakura's Downloadable Tranny Books are now available for one very heavily discounted price if you buy them together.

Buy "The Weekend Woman" and "Beyond the Weekend" and get "Steppin' Out at the Weekend" and "Day to Day Women" FREE!

Just click here to download them now

Tranny Tip Of The Week

About eighteen months back I tried to start a new mailing list called Tranny Tip on the Week. The idea was that we were going to send out really good a tip for being a girly, to each of our MtF member, once a week. It would have been a list that you could easily opt into and out of whenever you want.

However, it failed miserably because I just could not keep up. I just didn't have time to write a new tip every week.

I tried for about three or four weeks and then gave up. It was a good idea though and appeared to be very well received so I was a bit miffed that I just couldn't afford the time to keep it going.

Apart from that, although I personally have been trannying for many, many years, I am not the TG oracle and do not know everything there is to know about being female.

You do though! Between us, between our thousands of members, there is a huge knowledge and it's time that we tapped it for the good of us all.

So perhaps you can help. We have now created a forum so that every time you think of something that would be a useful piece of knowledge to pass on to our other members, you can write it up there for all the world to see.

We're looking for tips between 200 and 400 words long.

If you can think of anything useful, for beginners or lifers, this is the place to put it.

Perhaps you know a thing or two about applying make-up (or removing it). Maybe shoes are your forte, passing in public, body language, nails, wigs, eyelashes, driving in heels, whatever, you can post it here.

Then, when we have a few tips to get us started, we will reinstate our Tranny Tip of the Week, written by you.

Please help us to make this a successful service for our girls.

If you want to post an idea or a tip right now, or if you just want to take a look at the tips already posted, please click here.

Please be sure to post each new tip as a new thread.

Be totally accepted as a woman when you go out

PLUS - Learn how to find your own female voice

PLUS - Discover transgender's offline resources

Just click here to download your copy now

Tranny Town Groningen

Danique

Trannyweb girl, Danique Tate-Westerveld is putting together a Trannyweb birthday weekend in the lovely Netherlands town of Groningen, to celebrate our 8th Birthday (which was actually in December) and you are invited! Wherever you are in the world, go and buy yourself an air ticket now and drop Danique a line to let her know you want to come along. The weekend will take place on January 18th - 20th and subject to numbers attending, the program is as follows...

Friday 18th:
Arrival, check-in, meet and greet and in the evening a simple meal and then off to a pub or something like that.

Saturday 19th:
10am: Morning brunch (possibly with a special guest)
Noon: A girly shopping trip.
3:30pm: A make up workshop.
7pm: A fancy dinner in one of the many TG friendly restaurants in Groningen.

9pm: Dancing the night away at a TG friendly venue where girls can dance, but also have a drink and a nice talk.

Sunday 20th:
We hope to squeeze in a breakfast together before girls have to get underway again to catch their flights. The journey from Groningen to Amsterdam Schiphol Airport takes about three hours.

If you'd like to go, please drop Danique a line now by clicking here.

Also, Anyfer Darling is putting together a girly weekend for our UK members at Pink Punter's in Milton Keynes on the weekend of 15th/16th February. If you'd like to go along to that one, please take a look at this forum thread for more information.

20 Most Popular Forum Threads This Week

Chat Room Roundup by Maryanne Talmadge

Well, ladies, another year has passed, my 3rd at TW. Gosh time flies! Am really pleased to say the chat room is a little more vibrant and many of the girls have become confident enough to join us on our monthly
trips out.

I have heard that some members who normally avoid chatrooms have started popping in and I would recommended any new member to drop in on us.....come on in, the water's fine! 

It's been good to see some old members back and having fun. I would also like to thank the hostesses for their efforts in the last twelve months. You've done a fabulous job, girls, well done!

Maryanne x

Report author - Lee Middlehurst

This month some preliminary results for the surveys I have been conducting with Trannyweb are appearing in an edition of Rose’s Repartee magazine (see http://roses.repartee.tv/). This is an opportunity not only to show the kind of results we’re getting but also to give extra publicity about the surveys and maybe attract more people to do them.

This is a good opportunity to detail some of the results. Now because these surveys are so big I’ve been able to choose results that are largely different from those that will be featured in the Repartee magazine but there are so many I’ve not included here or in the magazine.

Now I should say first that there have been some major positive changes for transgendered people in recent years. The change in legal rights for transsexuals shaped by Professor Stephen Whittle and Christine Burns are a notable example. Significantly, there’s been a growing visibility of trans people in the UK and around the world through events such as Sparkle and Pride.

However we know there is still a long way to go. Legal protection does not completely affect transvestites for instance. There are still have outdated psychiatric assumptions about transgenderism. There’s been very little written about the power of the internet for trans people. Researchers within academia or media often end up gathering the outdated information or even using prior media assumptions about transgenderism.

Now Stephen Whittle and his colleagues recently made some online questionnaires. His laudable central research is around on legal issues. My research is more about how trans people interact and personal feelings. Additionally, the data is showing that my work now is truly international and that is different from many other surveys. So thank you to those who have completed these questionnaires for helping produce something significant. A third of the results given so far are from people who have joined Trannyweb this year (!) and I am very grateful for your help. Get others involved to do these surveys! These results can go towards showing everyone what kind of wonderful people we are.

At this stage the largest two groups completing these questionnaires are male to female transsexuals (‘MTF TSs’) and male to female transvestites/crossdressers/transgenderists (‘MTF TGs’) so I shall be discussing these results at this stage.

Now for MtF TSs the present international spread is:

For MtF TGs the international spread is:

As you can see that US transgendered people are the largest groups in these surveys. I am very appreciative for the responses (and want more!) but I would hope (J) that by the end of this study (late spring/summer 2008) we’ll have more non-US respondents so that we can effectively compare national differences.

Regarding the ages of the respondents - for MtF TSs:

For MtF TGs:

Age ranges are similar for both groups but there is a notable difference. There seems to be significantly more MTF TSs in the 50-54 age range than for MTF TGs. As yet why this is, is unknown. Perhaps further investigation may be useful here after the finalised results have been gathered.

I should emphasise at this point that these surveys have suggested a lot of similarities between both groups. There are some notable differences developing but there are substantially more likenesses. I wish to emphasise this because of the frequent and destructive oppositions between some different groups of trans people. There is more to unite us than to demonstrate that we are fundamentally different. All trans people show some extent of gender dysphoria. We are all just as important. We’ll be more successful in opposing prejudices if we work together than opposing each other.

Now the sections regarding sexual issues proved to be controversial amongst some individuals. The vast majority of respondents did not contact me with any misgivings. However, about five individuals emailed me at the start of this survey who were disturbed by my asking questions of a sexual nature, stressing that transgenderism is not about sexual feelings. I stressed to them and I emphasise now that my questions are not to pre-judge people but to find honest and open figures. Transgender sexual issues are fraught with psychiatric prejudices and it has affected our own views and those of many in the non-trans population. I completely understand some trans people’s disquiet but I stress that sexual matters are not things we should be wary of. Rather we should own our feelings and not be ashamed of them, however sexually powerful or asexual they are. I do not have any issues with people outlining that they do not experience sexual feelings or conversely, at the other extreme, that they are very sexually active. There are several choices in between the two extremes. I know some transsexuals who have powerful sexual feelings. I know some trans people who do not. Sexual arousal is clearly not exclusively a male phenomenon. There are some women who are completely non-sexual and others for whom sexual arousal is extremely important.

The internet was even more potent for triggering MTF TGs to ‘come out'

Sex in reality produces some similar results and some differences according to TS and TG respondents. 5% to 10% more TSs than TGs are not sexually active.

For those that are, slightly more TS respondents were “often” sexually submissive than TG respondents. However both groups were about the same in being sexually dominant. This is extremely notable.

About 50% of both groups are “sometimes” to “always” sexually dominant. This contradicts many preconceptions that those who are transgendered are always sexually submissive.

Now I stress that I don’t have any issues at all about a person’s sexual preferences. Nonetheless, I am intrigued by results that show that trans people show a lot more variation than psychiatric and media prejudices would suggest.

Not surprisingly, the questions regarding seeing psychiatric therapy/counseling seem to be producing interesting TS and TG results. 34% of TSs and 64% of TGs have never had therapy/counseling. However, for those who did, 64% of TSs and 59% of TGs felt that their therapy/counseling helped “a little” or “a lot”.

That is good news for many but that still means that 36% of TSs and 41% of TGs were not helped or even, in some cases, were harmed by their therapy/counseling For the latter figures there is a suggestion that some trans people do not get access to appropriate assistance here or perhaps do not require psychiatric help at all.

Again, this indicates possible reappraisals are needed regarding trans people’s psychiatric requirements and, certainly, regarding the assumptions by those in conventional society.

It is consequently not surprising that many trans people have stressed in these questionnaires how important internet support networks are. Amazingly there is little proper, methodical analyses of the significance of the internet for trans groups. These surveys go towards redressing that deficiency and include many questions regarding internet support.

From this small sample I think you can see that the results coming out of these surveys are becoming extremely interesting and informative. I’ve asked so many different questions (over 80) including acceptance and discrimination, sexuality variations, being confident while trans, family issues, shopping situations, various surgical matters, including SRS (I never define SRS as being cosmetic), internet use and support, social gatherings and the growing politicalisation of trans groups. However, the way I’ve designed these questions, anyone taking them will not take long to complete one of the questionnaires (about 15 to 20 minutes).
I hope that more transgendered people like you will take part in our surveys which can be found here. Their results are to show people out there that WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

Take care, Lee
PS My email address is keeray@hotmail.com