Some questions for any transsexual Dopers

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am starting this thread because I am curious, not because I want to attack or belittle anyone in any way.

The gay and lesbian community here is very open about their experiences and thoughts (see the numerous “ask the gay guy” and “ask the lesbian” threads). However, I have not seen an “ask the transsexual” thread.

If this thread turns ugly or into a debate, I would like it closed, please. Also, please excuse any ignorance on my part or other well-intentioned posters.

That being said, on to the questions…

  1. What gender did you chose?
  2. How long did the process take?
  3. How old were you when you decided that you wanted surgery?
  4. How old were you when you actually went through with the surgery?
  5. Do you regret your decision?
  6. Do you find you have a hard time being accepted by the general public, and how has this affected you?
2

1) What gender did you choose?
It chose me, I didn’t choose it. Male-to-female, though, if that’s what you’re asking.

2) How long did the process take?
4) How old were you when you actually went through with the surgery?
I started on hormones when I was about 18 or 19; I had to cross-dress for one year and live as female, which I did from 20-21. Had the surgery about five minutes after my 21st b’day, as soon as I was “legal.”

3) How old were you when you decided that you wanted surgery?
The first time I remember the lightbulb going on over my head (“Oh, that’s what it is, I’m a girl!”) was in second grade. By the time I started hearing Christine Jorgensen jokes, around 6th grade, I knew that was for me.

5) Do you regret your decision?
Not for one minute.

6) Do you find you have a hard time being accepted by the general public, and how has this affected you?
Feh. I’m very lucky that I can “pass,” and I have always lived in rather cosmopolitan areas. So, no, I have not had a particularly hard time of it.

3

Thank you for responding, Eve, and I would like to add one more question…

  1. What do you do about excess hair (facial, chest, etc)? Do you shave, wax, or have you had it permanantly removed?
4

For my face, I had several years of very expensive and painful electrolysis. As for the rest of me, I have less hair than my sister. And don’t think she’s not pissed-off about that . . .

5

Well, we’ve heard one side of the story from Eve… guess it’s time for an alternative and complementary story…

1) What gender did you choose?

I am yet to choose any gender. I just am. However, I think you’re asking what transition I’m making?
I was ID’d female by society, and am journeying away from that. Not necessarily to “male” because I don’t see myself as one, although by merit of the hormones I’m on I am slowly accepting that that may be what society sees me as. I don’t seem to fit into the binary gender system which is popular in this society.

2) How long did the process take?

I expect it will take the rest of my life, because it’s a journey not a destination.
I started the process the first time in 2000, got scared and decided I needed to do more self development… Started the second time in mid 2002… I had to see a psychiatrist for 10 months before I got approval to go on hormones. Should I want surgery, I need to spend a year on testosterone before they’ll approve me.
As for how long before any physical change… There are changes within a couple of days of starting on testosterone, but on average it takes 3-4 months before anything major happens that others will notice physically, although the mental effects start straight away. Most of the physical changes happen within the first two years.

3) How old were you when you decided that you wanted surgery?

I haven’t actually decided whether or not I want surgery. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I don’t want any lower surgery/phalloplasty because, quite frankly, the techniques suck. As for chest reconstruction, I’m still considering my options. I don’t know if I need that in order to feel whole, although the doctors are pushing me to do it because they think a “man” with “breasts” will look very strange shrugs

4) How old were you when you actually went through with the surgery?

Haven’t had any, see above.

5) Do you regret your decision?

Not for a minute. I feel great!

6) Do you find you have a hard time being accepted by the general public, and how has this affected you?

So far I’ve been fairly lucky in that I live in a large city and mostly hang out with queer folk who are pretty cool. To the uninformed, I just look like a teenage boy (or a rather butch lesbian) so I don’t get too much trouble. However, I’m moving to the country for work, and that may be a different story. Also, once I start becoming more obviously masculine (less like a 14 year old boy), the seeming incongruity of breasts and facial hair may cause problems, but I’m not going to stress too much about that until it happens. I may never get any facial hair, most men in my family can’t manage more than about 3 or 4.

6

Actually, the only thing I regret is that my singing voice is dropping like a stone.
I want to be able to sing along with Abba and Justin Timberlake forever if I want to.
I love singing, and I await with trepidation the day my voice finally breaks, instead of just being husky and a little deeper than before.

7

Eve - Electrolysis is painful? I never really knew what it was - I just figured they somehow killed the root with electricity. May I ask how you funded the surgery? I think I’ve mentioned before that my best friend is a pre-op TS. She ended up having to do breast implants because the hormones did just about nothing there. She’s just paid off the boobs. She’s far happier living as a woman, even without the surgery, than she was as a man. Lonely, though. She’s a lesbian and has found it hard to make any sort of ramantic connections. Still, she didn’t become a woman for sex, but because it’s who she is.

She’s going through an unrelated bout of depression right now, but the psychologist (who sees a number of TS patients) said she’s one of the most well-adjusted she’s met.

StG

8

Just a teensy woonsy bit off topic…

Pass?

Pass!?!

You do more than just pass Eve, you can knock some socks off!
Gorgeous! :slight_smile:

~aqua

9

I’ve always wondered how transsexuals handle the dating and mating aspect of life. I assume that they run the gamut from celibate folks all the way through the spectrum to promiscuous, so I’m not going to assume that one speaks for all. But I would be interested in individual experiences and coping strategies. How does one tip-toe throught the minefield of initimate human relations? It can be pretty unnerving even for those of us who feel our genders and bodies match from birth and have conventional sexual orientation.

10

liirogue, I recently read an interesting book on the subject - She’s not there by Jennifer Finney Boylan (formerly James Finney Boylan). I picked it up because he was one of my professors while I was in school, and I’d heard the rumors - but I wanted a first person view of what the process was like for her.

11

. . . You tell me, honey, and we’ll both know. That’s the major reason why I simply stopped dating more than ten years ago. You’re damned if you tell them and damned if you don’t.

Oh, money: I was lucky enough to have my surgery back in the 1970s, when some insurance companies still paid for it (I understand from KellyM that some are starting to do so again, which is wonderful news). And electrolysis? They put a needle into the hair follicle, then zap electricity through it. “Give her another jolt, warden, there’s still a faint heartbeat.”

As fpr me “knocking socks off,” that’s sweet, but I have no illusions about my appearance: I’m a rather plain (as in “ordinary,” not “ugly”), stout, middle-aged woman. Two Dopers, after meeting me, made a point of saying here on the Boardss that I was in fact quite ugly, looked like a man in a dress, and shoild have major facial plastic surgery.

But I think they were being a tad uncharitable.

12

Ahem. I remember that incident, and once again Eve is reaching new levels in understatement.

I’d like to say that while I really have nothing factual, anecdotal or otherwise to contribute to this thread, I’m finding it very interesting. I knew there was such a thing as transsexual people, of course, but before arriving on the Dope I never really understood exactly what it meant. My ignorance has been fought. :slight_smile:

13

I’m droppin in here too. I am a lot like phraser I suppose. Outwardly I am very definately female 40DD. I have given birth to two children. Inwardly shrug somedays I am feminine, other days there’s a 16 year old boy fighting to come out. I am very butch and wouldn’t know how to accessorize to save my life :smiley:

Maybe if I had been braver when I was 20 I might have gone the transexual route but now it just seems a hassle. “I could go but I’ll just stay, all my stuffs here anyway” Thanks BNL. And I am not sure that acquiring a penis would solve all my hang ups anyway. Eh, and I most definately like guys, both in my feminine and masculine phases. And I know I have mentioned before if I could switch genders physically at will I’d go back and forth so much I’d look like a freakin flip book!

14

Eve A few years back I watched a young man go through the process of becoming a young woman. He was a student of mine who happened to be pre-med. He went above and beyond the ‘I want to understand exactly what is happening to me’ cliche and became a wonderful female Physician now residing in Boston with her life partner - a man. Watching this young person of 18 enter my class his freshman year, I knew there was something special about him, he was simply different than the other boys entering straight from high school.
Now a happily functioning woman, she often stops by campus to say hello when she is driving by. I have been lucky to keep up with her, and my wife and I do drop into the hospital where she resides from time to time.
Anecdote over, You Eve are quite the strong woman. I commend you. :slight_smile:

15

1) What gender did you chose?
I didn’t choose my gender; I was born with it.

2) How long did the process take?
Define what you mean by “process”. I’m 34, so I suppose “the process” has taken 34 years, but as I am not yet dead it’s not really finished yet.

3) How old were you when you decided that you wanted surgery?
I still haven’t decided that I want surgery. I’m pretty certain that I do, but I haven’t committed to it yet. I knew I was “different” when I was about nine, but the nature of that difference wasn’t made clear to me until I was in my early twenties. It took me another ten years to finally accept the truth and finally start to do something about it.

4) How old were you when you actually went through with the surgery?
Obviously, I haven’t yet. I’m kinda vaguely planning to do it in the next year or so.

5) Do you regret your decision?
Which one of the many decisions I’ve made are you referring to? The one I haven’t made, or any of the ones I have had?

6) Do you find you have a hard time being accepted by the general public, and how has this affected you?
I don’t have much trouble with the general public. Whether this is because I pass well or because I live in Chicagoland, I don’t really know.

16

Oh, and there is an Ask the Transgendered Person thread, although it’s quite old (over two years since the last post).

17

7) What do you do about excess hair (facial, chest, etc)? Do you shave, wax, or have you had it permanantly removed?
I’ve had three $400 sessions of laser photolysis, which removed about 60% of my facial hair; the rest we’re slowly removing with electrolysis (I had over two hours worth of it yesterday and my face is a bit sore at the moment). My girlfriend waxes my chest about once every other month; eventually, we’ll probably electrolyse that area, or at least the ring of hair around the nipples. The density of hair on my chest dropped substantially once I started taking spironolactone. I shave my legs whenever fashion requires it.

18

I actually have very little to offer on this point. lee and I came together by accident. I had resigned myself to be “an old lady with cats,” but fate had other plans, I guess.

Most of my trans friends who have intimate attachments are still with a pretransition spouse or spousal equivalent, are with another transsexual, or met their current paramour online (which gives one an opportunity to become emotionally attracted without the physical factors getting in the way). This is probably a biased sample, because most of the trans people I know I know through online connections, and most are “late transitioners” who began their transition after age 25 (unlike Eve, who is an “early transitioner”, having begun – and completed – transition before age 25).

19

Do you think you’d fee like your gender in any culture?

20

Electrolysis is my hobby now. I am making good progress on KellyM. She falls asleep while I zap most bits of her face, but there are a couple areas that wake her up: just below the nose and just below the lower lip. With the home kit it takes about 30 seconds per hair, sometimes less. We have been doing this on and off, at most about 7 hours a week. The results are permanent, but since the hairs grow at different times, you end up clearing the same areas about three to four times. She also had laser done. That did kill about 50 percent permanently, much more in some areas. Before any treatment, her chin hair was the densest I have eever seen. The hair was so thick and so closely set, that it deformed the shape of her face; plucking several hairs from the worst parts seemed to let the skin flatten or sink in.

The only home kits that work are the ones that have fine wires to go below the surface next to the hair shaft. Ones that have electric tweezers or the like are not effective. Any method that touts being painfree is a crock. Studies I read show that purely galvanic electolisys has a better kill rate than blended methods (heat and electricity.) Most professionals use a blended method because each hair surrenders more quickly. Scarring is a big consideration. Whatever method you choose should be tested on a non-prominent place. Kelly has very little scarring from hair removal. We tested on her nipple hair before going to her face. The trick is to not zap a hair longer than needed to kill it, and not zap already dead hairs. How long to zap each hair has to be tested each session and is difficult to tell on many face hairs because they reside in fine pores and many have a thick gelatinous sheath that comes out with the hair. With practice, I have gotten to know the feel of a dead hair coming out from a live hair, but those sheaths make it difficult. As we get a large enough area clear, she can go without shaving it and I can get new hairs as they pop up. Patches on her face are completely hair free without shaving some or most of the time. Her upper lip has very few hairs left at all. Eventually I will get all the visible hair on her face.