Transfem
A community for transfeminine people and experiences.
This is a supportive community for all transfeminine or questioning people. Anyone is welcome to participate in this community but disrupting the safety of this space for trans feminine people is unacceptable and will result in moderator action.
Debate surrounding transgender rights or acceptance will result in an immediate ban.
- Please follow the rules of the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated.
- Gatekeeping will not be tolerated.
- Please be kind and respectful to all.
- Please tag NSFW topics.
- No NSFW image posts.
- Please provide content warnings where appropriate.
- Please do not repost bigoted content here.
This community is supportive of DIY HRT. Unsolicited medical advice or caution being given to people on DIY will result in moderator action.
Posters may express that they are looking for responses and support from groups with certain experiences (eg. trans people, trans people with supportive parents, trans parents.). Please respect those requests and be mindful that your experience may differ from others here.
Some helpful links:
- The Gender Dysphoria Bible // In depth explanation of the different types of gender dysphoria.
- Trans Voice Help // A community here on blahaj.zone for voice training.
- LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory // A directory of LGBTQ+ accepting Healthcare providers.
- Trans Resistance Network // A US-based mutual aid organization to help trans people facing state violence and legal discrimination.
- TLDEF's Trans Health Project // Advice about insurance claims for gender affirming healthcare and procedures.
- TransLifeLine's ID change Library // A comprehensive guide to changing your name on any US legal document.
- Rainbow Railroad // A non-profit international humans rights organization helping at risk LGBTQ+ people relocate to safety.
Support Hotlines:
- The Trevor Project // Web chat, phone call, and text message LGBTQ+ support hotline.
- TransLifeLine // A US/Canada LGBTQ+ phone support hotline service. The US line has Spanish support.
- LGBT Youthline.ca // A Canadian LGBT hotline support service with phone call and web chat support. (4pm - 9:30pm EST)
- 988lifeline // A US only Crisis hotline with phone call, text and web chat support. Dedicated staff for LGBTQIA+ youth 24/7 on phone service, 3pm to 2am EST for text and web chat.
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You won't regain penile function after you go off HRT, afaik - and the way to retain function (particularly erections) is to ensure you have sustained, full erections every day. You have to replace the erections that testosterone causes your body to have naturally when you would be asleep. Without testosterone, you lose those involuntary night-time erections and thus lose capacity to hold as much blood and thus to be as erect, so the way to reduce loss of function is to manually give yourself those erections.
But yes, SRS is amazing and I highly recommend it - once I transitioned and lived as a woman it was very bad for my mental health to use my genitals like they were male, I actually wanted atrophy as much as possible and learned to wear underwear and use a vibrator to treat it like a clit. That worked much better for me. But SRS was much, much better for my sexual health.
You'll have to pay attention and notice what causes you to dissociate or lose connection with your body, dysphoria can be tricky to notice or catch (or at least it has been for me, esp. because I lived so long in denial, I learned to dismiss, ignore, and rationalize it away).
If you are gatekept in your country's medical system, you might also consider making a goal of earning and saving money so you can get SRS in Thailand, which is the go-to option for most people in the world who don't have access through their country's healthcare system. That might be easier and faster to make happen than waiting over a decade for potentially worse outcomes (and at this rate who knows whether that healthcare will still be offered that far in the future).
EDIT: oh, and your headline says losing fertility, but "fertility" is particularly about the ability to impregnate and your sperm's viability, which after a year on HRT has probably been already significantly reduced. Rather than fertility, maybe you meant penile atrophy and erectile dysfunction? Personally, I feel like penile atrophy gave me better sexual function, because it made my penis more like a clit. It's only if you think of the penis as serving a role as erect and penetrating (in a traditionally "male" kind of sexual role) that we think of atrophy as a "dysfunction" - and I just reject that, I think a female penis doesn't need to be penetrating, and functions well just the way it is (if not better).
From what I've heard (but no proper sources) about once a week is enough, but that's all I have to add
I lost function / had penile atrophy despite multiple erections per week. Once a week absolutely will not replace the multiple, long erections that happen every night on testosterone - I'm not even sure once a day is sufficient to prevent atrophy, to be honest. (That certainly doesn't mimic or replace the amount of time the penis spends erect at night.)
Nobody told My body that! I was on HRT for five years before I had bottom surgery, and I got boners all the time! It was super annoying
And I'm not some high T alpha male, I've never been able to grow a beard, thankfully
That sounds like to T levels were too high during that time.
I hope you don't mind me asking, but on the topic of MTF SRS, are the "consequences" as bad as they're made out to be? I've heard stories about having to dilate daily for years, surgeons not being able to agree on how to take care of it in the long run, leading to infections, and so on. It made me pretty cautious of it, even though I think it sounds pretty cool in theory.
to be honest I haven't heard what the "consequences" are that you're referring to (other than debunked lies from TERFs about a vagina remaining as a permanent, open-wound, etc. - but I'm not even sure how widely those lies are believed at this point).
What kinds of infections did you have in mind?
A vaginoplasty fully heals and absolutely is not a long term risk for infection; the only way I could think it might increase infection risk is by not managing your microbiome through douching or other means, which does leave potential for increased UTI risk (this can happen in cis women as well), but I can't tell if that's what you are talking about or not. Either way, I would just say that no, vaginoplasty does not result in long-term risks of infection.
Vaginoplasties are very safe with low rates of complications and extremely low rates of regret, but it is true you have to dilate the rest of your life if you want to retain the canal at a particular width.
Dilation may not be as big of a deal as it sounds, e.g. eventually (at least >1 year after surgery) you can dilate once a week, and it's up to you how thick you want your canal or what to prioritize, lots of women stop dilating many years after their surgery and continue to have a canal and are able to enjoy penetrative sex. If you stop dilating much later in life, it can also be possible to regain some width by going back to dilating with larger and larger sizes - you can stretch the canal back open (but there are limits to this, and in the first years of healing there can be stenosis that you can't overcome).
I see, thanks for the response! The problems/consequences I was referring to were based on a post, I think even in this exact community, about someone who had bottom surgery and was having lots of trouble with it, from the hospital staff during the initial recovery being absolutely unfamiliar with it, to having to concoct their own cleaning solution to avoid infections and bad smells. It made me pretty concerned.
lol, that was probably me?
The "concoting their own cleaning solution" might have been making a lactic acid douche instead of using a vinegar douche?
But for context, that's so I can cultivate a microbiome that is friendly to lactobacillus - not to prevent infection. It did improve the smell, but tbh there was a stable microbiome (not lactobacillus dominant) that stabilized over time without my regimen which was maybe not as good-smelling as the lactobacilli, but was also not an overtly bad smell like it could get when there was something going wonky down there. Also, none of it is relevant if you just follow the doctor's orders: douche every other day with vinegar solution during recovery (eventually I think you can reduce frequency to "as is").
The hospital staff issues I had were particular to the hospital I had my surgery in, and because that wing was short-staffed and had to pull staff from other wings. But those issues were in the end inconsequential and I recovered fully without issue. I don't know how typical my experience was, and since my surgery that hospital no longer provides gender-affirming surgeries, so even that specific hospital's problems aren't relevant to future trans patients there.
Either way, none of this really bears on how safe and successful vaginoplasties are - I am very thankful I went through with mine despite the hardships I endured before and after the surgery.
You need to dilate for the rest of your life yes. The frequency will become less with many trans femme people dilating only once a week after a couple of years. Also, penetrative sex counts ;)
For people that aren't interested in being penetrated (at least vaginally) and that don't want to dilate there is also Zero Depth Vulvoplasty (also called Minimal Depth Vulvoplasty) where no vaginal canal is created and it's "just" the vulva (the visible parts on the outside) that is sculpted.
As for infections: there is a trial and error period that is highly personal. For some people it involves douching regularly, especially in the beginning and inserting lacto-acid pills to encourage a sour-ish millieu that is close to a natal vagina's.
would just add that the width & hardness of what you are penetrated with matters here - you can lose width / have stenosis from no longer dilating with a hard dilator and just relying on penetrative sex, if the width of your partner or your toys are not comparable
Excellent addition/clarification, thanks!
I've had bottom surgery and I never needed to dilate even once, since I don't have a vagina. I had nullification surgery. I've got nothing down there but a uritty.
Nulloplasty isn't for everyone, but it's the absolute lowest maintenance bottom surgery and I love the results. I wear leggings all the time now. No bulge, no camel toe, no nothing.
I'd really like to go streaking at a protest and get arrested for exposing nothing. I want to go to cout and establish some precedent!