ABSTRACT
These painful realizations and discussions brought members closer together. Emotional defenses seemed irrelevant, as members witnessed their peers dying with such sadness, anger, and frustration. They rallied around one another to guarantee that they would all die as women. They made a pact to go to one another's funerals and ensure that biological families and church congregations would not dress their corpses in masculine clothes. As members made these promises to one another, their relationships became more intimate. Instead of mistaking intimacy for erotic love (as in the first year of the group), members translated intimacy into more comforting terms, into female-enhancing terms. Members viewed the "maternal relationship" as the ultimate female relationship. Consequently, they felt comfortable becoming surrogate mothers to one another. More experienced members adopted younger members as their daughters. The motherdaughter relationship safeguarded members from any erotic feelings and underlined every member's female identity. Recently, one member looked around the group and stated, " I have two mothers in this room. Gabriella is my hormone mother. Gina is my other mother. And Gabriella has two daughters, Crystal and me. It's like we've become a family."
