[smc]

Please excuse me in advance for my academic bent (being a trained classicist and professor) in this posting.

Transjen is on good ground, language-wise, to choose alteration -- as a comparison of two words shows.

Regarding the English word mutilation: it comes from the Latin infinitive verb mutilare, which means "to cut off" or "to lop off." Mutilare, turn, derives from the Latin word mutilus, which translates as "maimed." There is some consideration that the Latin word may be a cognate of a Greek word, transliterated as mytilos, with means "hornless" or "without horns." (I will forego commenting on the obvious joke that could be made.)

Of course, while mutilation generally refers to an act taken against something physical (a penis, for example), there is common usage referring to non-physical things. For example, this sentence: George W. Bush's way with the English language is nothing short of mutilation.

To alter something is quite a bit different. The word comes to us from Old French, altérer, meaning "to change something." Before that, it was alterare in Medieval Latin, derived from oder Latin alter, meaning "the other" (of two things). Notably, beginning way back in the late 16th century, there are references in English where alter was used to mean "to become otherwise" -- which is rather nice usage.

I like to think that someone who has willingly and with full understanding undergone SRS has "become otherwise" -- namely, to transcend the constriction of what transjen so aptly called a birth defect to reveal the true self, as self-defined (self-definition being the key). I look forward to the day when each of us, and our governments, consider this of no more consequence than dying one's hair -- and when all the pseudo-moral restrictions that exist today are eliminated.