What escapes me

What I don't understand about women who transition is that not all of them want Sex Reassignment Surgery (vaginoplasty) to have a vagina. They like and want to keep there penis. Why?

This is what escapes me, to live in between where your presentation and sense of being is as a woman but your body is still basically male. I know the younger generation have accepted this idea about transwomen, and two states have now legalized the change of birth certificates without SRS.

And while I can understand this is important to the many who want to complete their transition even with SRS but can't afford it or can't have it for medical reasons. But to consciously decide they don't need SRS and keep their penis?

What the changes in the law is allowing is women who live between male and female where anyone living and presenting as a woman, perhaps under some level of transition can skip SRS and still be legally recognized as female.

It's a hmmm..., to me, and raises the question, exactly what defines a legal female and a woman? The old standard of a vagina, or really no penis and testicles, seems a thing of the past, or at least in two states now (CA and IL).

But what also seems to me is what happens if these women are discovered, and as often happens, arrested if not beaten, raped and even killed, all because of their gentalia. And few outside the transcommunity cares, even to call them women.

I won't argue they have rights to be women and do everything every woman does, but isn't this exactly the opposite of what the transcommunity has been fighting all these years, the right to be women because they have the same physical body, ie, a vagina.

In the end this is where one of the distinctions exist within the transcommunity, those who view a transition as something through SRS because it's what women want, and those who view it as a choice.  The quetion is if the two are compatible in the greater society.

This is because the former can be and often are seen as the latter, often describing those who did transition through SRS as all the other transgender women who didn't want to transition or complete their transition, just want to live as women and kept their male genitalia.

As one blogger asked, "Isn't being trans about your gentalia and changing it to match your mind?"

They went on to say, "It’s true, if you LOVE your genitals, the likelihood is, you’re not transsexual. ", which is my point and what escapes me, and makes me ask, "If you want to live as a woman with male genitals, then what makes you a woman other than your looks and clothes?"

And isn't this exactly what womens' organization, especially radical feminists groups, cite as the reason to exclude transwomen from any distinction as women and especially any legal recognition as women? Isn't that what they argue, women with male parts aren't women?

And there are those who argue this perpetuates the binary gender roles. Ok, to a point but we do need a way to accommodate those who want to pass through between genders as well as those who want to live in between gender roles.

The problem is that the law doesn't accommodate those in between, you're either one or the other. And society reinforces the binary roles. So what's the answer to those in between? Force them into one side or create the space for them?

This is where I don't have answers and why it escapes me. Personal choice versus everyone else.