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.
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