Following a discussion with a friend regarding this year’s BigBrotherUK, namely concerning a post-op transexual named Nadia, I am interested as to what happens when one surgically transfers from he to she. What happens to the male genitals? Are they reversed into the body or removed? And testicles? Also does the post-op transexual experience any feeling in their newly acquired organ, and if so, to what extent?
I would like to hear from those of you who have experienced this first hand, though all comments are welcome.
I apologize if any are offended by my blunt questioning, but it’s all in the name of the Pursuit of Knowledge!
I’m sure that there are entire websites devoted to this, but the info has been in print in the popular press ever since everything You ever Wanted to Know About Sex came out. I’m sure they’ve made improvements since.
Sexual reassignment therapy (including but not limited to surgery). Lots of stuff on it. A couple of members here are reassigned – and have talked at length about it. Put the hamsters to the test – search for it.
Sure. You can slog through page after page after page of pornography, advertisements for surgeons, religious screeds on the evils of transsexuality, news articles discussing the acceptance or lack thereof without going into the details, etc. on a websearch, or you can come to the SDMB and get knowledgable information and possibly even first-hand accounts if anyone cares to share. Which would you rather do?
I saw this on TV once- They removed the patient’s penis, skinned it, and then used the skin to make a vagina. During the whole operation you could see the skinned penis sitting in a tray on a table. Eww.
KwikwittyDo a web search on “vaginoplasty”, “colovaginoplasty”, and “penile inversion”. Note that to many transsexuals, and the medical professionals working with them the title of this thread is offensive. He does not become she through surgery. She was born with various physical defects (lack of ovaries and uterus, a penis and testicles, etc). Sexual reassignment surgery (not sex change surgery, that would imply the patient is male until the surgery makes him female. The patient is already female.) simply corrects some of these defects. For information on sexual dimorphism in the human brain, and evidence supporting the view of transexuals as having a brain of one gender and the body of another, do a web search on ‘sexual dimorphism in the human brain’ or ‘termina strialis’.
Sassafrass
Even in the earliest penile inversion techniques I know of, the skin was removed from the shaft of the penis, before the penis was amputated. This kept the nerves and blood vessels attached to the skin, and meant less stitching. Name a surgery which doesn’t have an eww factor involved.
These days, the most common technique leaves at least the glans, with blood supply and nerves intact, as a clitoris.
There are many penile inversion techniques, each with surgeons arguing over which is best.
Colovaginoplasty is a more complicated procedure in which a small segment of intestine is used to line the vagina. This provides a vagina which is self lubricating.
I have a packet upstairs from Drs. Menard and Brassards that goes all into the gory details, which I haven’t opened yet because I can’t afford it and it’ll just depress me to think about it further.
To answer your specific questions: In virtually all techniques, the skin of the penis is used to line at least most of the neovagina. Parts of the scrotum are used to make the labia and, in some cases, to supplement the neovagina lining when inadequate surface skin is available to make a sufficient depth. The glans is resculpted to form a clitoris. The rest of the shaft and the testicles are discarded. Except when complications arise, most patients will experience sensation and a sizable fraction are capable of orgasm post-surgically; the specifics vary with technique. Nerve-sparing procedures are the rule these days.
I would reinforce DocCathode’s comment that the title of this thread is offensive. A male-to-female transsexual is female from birth and is a “she” from the moment of transition, which generally predates sexual reassignment surgery by at least a year and sometimes decades.
Forgive me if this is overly nosey, Kelly, but would you mind sharing how much the surgery costs? I know that it is extremely pricey and clearly not covered by insurance (which bothers me greatly) but I’ve always wondered just how much, and if the amount that my husband and I have considered giving a friend toward the expense is reasonable or just frustratingly (and perhaps insultingly) low considering the grand total.
Thanks for all your help people. You’ve given me enough to go on for starters. I’m sorry if I have offended anybody by the title, though no one’s explicitly stated so. Though I would like to add, that regardless of whether someone feels they are male or female, we are all categorized into sexes by our sexual organs… if you have a penis you are male… a vagina, female… it’s that simple. I could say that I am a severely deformed snake, and that I am just waiting for my corrective surgery to ampuatate my useless limbs… but it don’t make it so.
Moderators, please feel free to delete this thread if it is considered offensive.
I’d rather use the internet. If you can search properly, you need only find porn when you want it.
If you have trouble getting good search results, here are various ways to improve your results:
Limit your search to certain TLDs (in Google) using “site:.org” for example - this will only produce results from the .org TLD - these sites are (99%) certified as non-profit sites. This one trick on its own will remove most of the shite from your search results.
Use Boolean searching
Use “Quotes” where the search engines allow
Check the URL BEFORE you click it
Beware of websites hosted from bizzare TLDs, e.g. “.tv”, “.nu”, “.ee” et cetera - trust me, most of the important info on the web is not hosted from Tuvalu.
Never click “pop-ups” - not even to close them, use “ALT + F4” to shut unwanted windows.
Put a bit of thought into your search terms - I don’t mean take 60 seconds over it, just a few seconds to think of words that your website is likely to contain, and include them.
Finally, if you’re getting a load of porn results from any search, just pick some of the most common phrases (nude, blondes, pics, et cetera) and put a minus " - " sign infront of them in the search - this will specifically exclude any websites that feature these words. (This works in Google)
Achilles, you’re being very unhelpful. This is GQ, aka ask a question and people will attempt to answer it. Not GQ, ask a question and people will tell you to find it out yourself with google. I’m sorry for acting like a junior mod but your answer really, really stuck in my craw and is anathaema to what this board stands for.
Kwikwitty it seems perfectly logical that a few unfortunate people wound up with the brain chemisty for one gender but the actual plumbing for the other. On the other hand, no-one is born with the brain chemistry of a snake.
Google for ‘srs thailand’. You’ll find plenty of detailed stories (some with photos) from people who have gone to Thailand for this surgery, where it’s apparently a lot cheaper. IIRC, the total cost of the trip, surgery, hospital stay, etc. works out to somewhere between $10k and $20k.
The show I saw was pretty damn interesting. Sorry if I got the actual order of the skinning/penis removal confused.
The only ewww factor was the fact that the penis was just sitting there the whole time…
Prices range from around $8,000 (in Singapore) to upwards of $30,000. The doctor I’m looking at, in Montreal, is about $17,000. Most insurance policies do not cover SRS, although more and more are covering it these days. However, all of the surgeons require payment in advance so even if your insurance does pay for it, you still have to find enough cash to pay the surgeon and then wait for the reimbursement, so even when I had insurance that would pay I still couldn’t afford it because I couldn’t float $17,000 in cash (my credit isn’t that good). I just changed jobs and I haven’t had time to scan the fine print on the new plan to see what it covers (but the fact that it’s BCBS-IL is a good omen, as most recent BCBS-IL plans have had the exclusionary language removed).
Speaking as someone who is in need of cash to pay for surgery: every little bit helps. If someone were to send me a donation of any size earmarked for that purpose, it would go into the fund I have been setting aside for the past couple of years for that purpose (a fund which has rather little in in, I’m afraid; financially things haven’t been all that stable of late).
Kwikwitty it seems perfectly logical that a few unfortunate people wound up with the brain chemisty for one gender but the actual plumbing for the other. On the other hand, no-one is born with the brain chemistry of a snake.
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I’m not disputing the fact that some people are born with brain chemistry that does not match their plumbing, as I too believe this is perfectly logical. But those unfortunate few are still classified as male or female at birth on the basis of the sexual organ they own, as are the rest of us.
Therefore, the title ‘He becoming She’ should not cause offense, because in the eyes of society and it’s classifications, one undergoing realignent surgery is a He becoming a She, or vice versa. I’m only calling a spade a spade.
Also KellyM, I would not agree that all male-female transexuals are female from birth, and are certainly not categorized as so. That is a generalisation. As stated before, I believe it plausible that someone could be born with thebrain of a woman and the body of a man, but it cannot be true of every case.