trans/cis misunderstandings and what I can anticipate with SRS

I posed a question on facebook asking my cisgendered women friends what they would say if they had to write an 800 word essay describing why they wanted to keep their vagina and how it played into their plans for the future.

I got a response which I kind of wasn't anticipating. I hope she isn't mad at me for reposting it here.

short answer: while i enjoy certain activities with it, the thing it's designed to do as a result of that completely horrifies me. its potential to do that thing, reproduce, causes me discomfort on a monthly basis, and general anxiety on a less regular basis. so im not a hundred percent sure i'd want to keep it, or if somebody offered me a trade for something that didn't have the potential to create life but still was utilitarian in a sexual way, i might take it.

I think that there are actually a lot of trans/cis misunderstandings encompassed in this response. So I thought it warranted a little bit of a discussion.

It would be really hypocritical of me to claim that I knew what it was like to have a period or have the potential to give birth. I don't and I never will. And I think that fact, in and of itself, makes a lot of cisgendered women skeptical as to how legitimate a woman a transsexual woman actually is. I mean, I've often gotten, "you get all the advantages of being a woman without ever having to have a period." Well...I guess. I mean I think that this is a situation where both groups really feel their disadvantage to this question.

I'll try to explain my feelings from a trans perspective, which is all I'm really capable of.

My penis is not a source of pleasure for me. At best, I don't really think about it. A lot of the time it hurts when it becomes erect, though I don't particularly like having erections anyway. My penis isn't really a source of pleasure for me either. It most certianly isn't anything I would ever feel comfortable sharing with someone else. I have had sex in the past as a male and I did enjoy the closeness to another person, but I was rather detatched from the actual act. It just was never something I felt, so much as it was an action I performed. It's really complicated to explain, because I was attracted to my partner. I think the only way I can explain it is that my mind is wired for a different anatomy. I was capable of using my penis as a penis but I never really felt any connection with that action. 

I'm not going to get pregnant. I'm not going to get anyone pregnant as a matter of fact; I don't ejaculate anymore. But I have to say that the presense of a vagina does not make any woman fertile or give her periods. That has more to do with internal organs that I don't really have the option of getting.

One could argue that my penis is "utilitarian in a sexual way," but only for sexual acts that I'm not interested in and don't really enjoy.

On top of that there is such a connection between having a penis and masculinity in our society that it will always connect me with maleness. I wrote yesterday about how important it really is for me not to be regarded as male, because on a very deep level I identify as female. What cis women have that they will never understand or appreciate is that from the moment they were born they've been identified as female, they have never had to fight for that, they've never had that denied from them, and even if they were, or are occasionally mistaken as men they can dismiss it on a level that I that I can't.

It's easy to complain about being able to get pregnant and having a period, when you don't want to get pregnant and when your femaleness is above question in the eyes of the world.

For me, at 30, I wish I could have my own children. I really wish I could have my own children. Maybe I'm not ready for them right now but I wish that it was a possibility. Maybe someday I'll be able to adopt, if I move to state where being trans doesn't disqualify me on moral grounds. And that isn't quite the same, plus, until I get my surgery I can't change my birth certificate which means if I move across state lines I'll be identified as male.

I don't know. I can never explain this. If it were required and possible for me to have a monthly period for the rest of my life so that I could be regarded as female, I would without hesitation. Even though I haven't experienced it and have no way of knowing what it is really like.

That said, when I do go for in my surgery I'll have to stop taking hormones about a week before. That won't be pleasant. My atrophied testicles will not be able to produce testosternoe like they once did but they will produce some and testosterone, expecially when it hasn't been in my system for a while makes me feel like shit, kind of depressed and really irratable. After my surgery, I'll be completely bedridden for several days, after which they'll remove my catheter and several yards of bloody gauze and they'll teach me to dilate. I'll continue to bleed off and on for a couple weeks and occassionally when I dilate for quite a while. I'll be able to start homones again, which will be nice, but after a couple of weeks without them I'll be really moody for the first month. Peeing will hurt since my vagina will basically be an open wound, and since my muscles will have been realligned it will take me a little while to figure out how. Dilating will hurt for the first couple of months; I'll be stretching my vaginal tissue and making sure it doesn't close with scar tissue. I'll have to dilate for fifteen minutes a day three times a day for a year, and then I'll be able to scale that back a little. 

That is if I don't have any complications. 

After the first year my life will basically return to normal (except I'll still have to dilate). I still won't be able to get pregnant and I won't have any periods.

I don't know what it is like to be a cissexual woman, but the physical discomfort that my trans vagina will cause me won't be any walk in the park either.

So why do I want to go through all that?

That's what I'm trying to write 800 words about, and why I asked that question of my cissexual friends. 

about body image and trans feelings and trying to write another essay for the Jim Collins grant

I wanted to write about this essay I'm trying to write for the Jim Collin's Grant, and some about  the intesity of trans feelings, and about seeing some pictures recently that were taken of me in college.

I looked really feminine. Alot more so than I realized. I looked alot like I do now. I wasn't hiding this whole trans thing quite a deeply as I thought.

And then about my appearance. I don't think I'm shallow but looking like a woman is really really important to me, or at least believing that I do. I mean, us trans women sometimes get shit on about obsessing with our appearance and posting a thousand pitures of ourselves...but then again we've lived a significant portion of our lives being called men, and being told how masculine we look, and even telling ourselves that. It's not that passing is the end all be all, but our sense of gender really is.

I mean, if I were to here things like "he's really a man" all the time, or even just constantly being "he'd" I'd probably suffer from some form of depression. Actually, I think I did back when I did. 

I mean when you transition you have a stage of gender euphoria when you first allow yourself to express yourself as the gender you identify with, but it wears off after a while. It stops being something special, it's just how you dress and who you are. If after all of that, and even maybe years of expressing who you are through the clothing you wear you still have everyone misgendering you...it takes someone really strong. I mean for a trans woman to be called "he" is basically saying to her that you think that deep down at one of her deepest levels you think she is a fake. And since our gender is such an essential truth to who we are, something that we are willing to risk our lives for, it really really hurts.

I hope that someday we live in a society where neough people understand gender that it is easy to dismiss someone who says "that's really a man," but right now we don't. If that was something I heard all the time, or chose to hear all the time, or thought I heard all the time...I might just be a little suicidal.

I mean, it actually really affected me hearing that a trans woman my age, who I saw at Babe's regularly, and who I'd spoken with a couple of times, had committed suicide. I don't know her well enough to say what her reasoning was. Or even speculate. But I do know she dealt with the same condition that for the grace of God didn't take my life, and I wanted to write something about it.

I write this blog to give a sense about who I am as a person. I write it both so that people who are in the same place I was before I transitioned can read my experience and so that people who aren't trans, maybe can know that I'm a real person. I don't live my life in costume. I really am female, and being trans can really hurt.

The final thing I want to write about is this essay I'm in the process of writing for the Jim Collin's foundation. Basically I need to explain who I am and how surgery is in my plan for the future. Basically why do I want a vagina.

Okay, yes. I do want to have sex, sex that I'm not going to feel somewhat disconnected from, uncomfortable with, and for the most part dissapointed with. I know I need a vagina for that...

But I don't want to write 800 words about wanting to have sex. That will make me sound like a perv. 

I will feel complete, it will relieve an awful lot of discomfort I feel in my body. I'll be more comfortable at the beach, or at a pool, or at a club, or hell wearing blue jeans in the kitchen, anywhere it occasionally comes untucked. It will make things a lot more comfortable without having to deal with all the secondary issues of tucking all the time...not that it is painful to tuck, but it does get uncomfortble holding it all between my legs when it is supper hot outside. It'll be nice to be able to make out with someone and not have to worry about it poping out, I mean, not that anyone I ever make out with doesn't know but it kills my mood when that thing is present.

I don't know. It isn't really an easy essay to write. 

If you're a woman...why do you need a vagina.