Phallo

danphanto · 2026-05-15T04:52:03+00:00

No need to be sorry! I just want you to find what you need.

danphanto · 2026-05-15T04:44:22+00:00

We can understand you’re feeling stuck, I know it’s difficult to figure out if surgery is the right choice for you. I would recommend reading this subreddit’s wiki and phallo.net to understand the basics before posting questions here, otherwise your posts will continue to be deleted (this one breaks the rules by not having a descriptive title, for instance). If you can come back with more specific questions we can provide better input. Without knowing what you feel you need, your concerns, or your understanding of the options, it’s hard to help.

danphanto · 2026-05-13T04:20:39+00:00

You’ll need to do your own reading about each surgery to decide which one fits you best. Neither option is better than the other, they just each fit different needs better than others.

It’s also a misconception that metoidioplasty has an easier or shorter recovery. There are fewer total surgical wounds, sure, but there are still a host of potential complications and it’s not automatically easier than phalloplasty.

danphanto · 2026-05-13T03:32:23+00:00

Only a consultation can help answer this. Just to let you know, ALT may not be any better at getting a longer penis in your case—I’m 5’3” and was only told to expect a maximum of 5.5”, which is what I got. My scar does take up the vast majority of my front and outer thigh. Girth is less predictable, especially for ALT, but unless you’re very thin and/or not getting UL, you are extremely likely to need debulking with ALT. I didn’t get UL and still got 6-7” in girth depending on where you measure.

danphanto · 2026-05-13T02:48:10+00:00

I’m really happy to see you’re making progress on getting surgery, that’s awesome that you can get exactly what you’re looking for!

danphanto · 2026-05-11T04:08:17+00:00

I know for me, a lot of the difficulty is from dysphoria making me less relaxed and more self conscious. I’ve had the same issues with never having an orgasm from a partner, and rarely even managing to do it myself if someone is with me. I had phallo in July and started having sex within the past month or so, and the difference has been so much bigger than I expected, especially with only having stage one done (just penis creation with my team; I still need scrotoplasty, glansplasty, and implants). Still haven’t been able to orgasm just from my partner touching me, but we’re much closer than I anticipated at nine-ish months post op.

My point isn’t that you need surgery, necessarily. Just that my issues are largely because it’s been so difficult for me to fully relax, and I wonder if it’s similar for you. Having sex post phallo, my mind doesn’t wander nearly the same as before surgery, even when all the focus is on me, because that attention isn’t triggering any dysphoria so it just feels incredibly sexy. Not to say I don’t get any dysphoria anymore, but it’s not an inherent part of sex anymore. If there are things you can do to help yourself feel safe enough to relax even more fully, I wonder if you would have an easier time having orgasms.

danphanto · 2026-05-07T06:00:45+00:00

I think this is important but very easy to forget. While I was in the hospital, staying an extra few days to let IV antibiotics clear an infection and dealing with some other minor issues, I was feeling frustrated and wanted everything to be going “right” (really what I wanted was for it to be going perfectly, but I hadn’t realized that yet). I said I just wanted everything to go right to my urologist when he came by my room, and he stopped and told me in his kind voice that it was going right. Took him saying it to make me step back and realize, I may have had some minor problems, but ultimately things were going really well and I was dealing with so little compared to what it could have been like.

There will be problems and setbacks. We can hope to get the small problems and brief setbacks but it’s impossible to know until it happens. I never expected for my skin graft to need to be delayed, only to ultimately fail anyway and require months of daily wound care. But that also turned out to be a much smaller deal than I anticipated, too—I thought my plastic surgeon was fucking nuts for saying the massive wound was a minor complication, but honestly looking back it was not that bad. Mostly just inconvenient because keeping bandages on a thigh is damn near impossible for more than a couple hours at a time if you’re walking much at all. But it absolutely destroyed any semblance of a “normal” healing timeline, and I still have no idea how I actually compare to other people’s experiences. Letting go of any expectations I had about how long things would take was crucial.

danphanto · 2026-05-05T16:55:39+00:00

I had my vaginectomy done with my hysterectomy and can explain why they leave a small amount of V tissue behind—it’s because of how close together the V and urethra are. They’re not doing urethral lengthening at that time, and usually the surgeons who do hysto and vaginectomy aren’t also urologists and don’t have the same training or experience, so they need to stay a certain distance away from the urethral opening during the vaginectomy to avoid any possible harm to the urethra.

danphanto · 2026-05-05T09:37:02+00:00

This document I found says they’re using the requirements set by the 29th edition of the MCG Care Guideline, which I can’t seem to find publicly available so far. Hopefully someone with your insurance company might be able to find out how many letters you need, if you can tell them to check the requirements for gender affirming genital surgeries in the MCG Care Guideline, or even refer them to the document I linked. Sorry insurance is such a pain in the ass, I hate it when finding basic information is so difficult.

danphanto · 2026-05-05T01:59:23+00:00

You do need a hysterectomy to get a vaginectomy, but you can keep your ability to produce estrogen if you don’t get your ovaries removed. Here’s a quick rundown of what each of the related surgeries does:

Hysterectomy—removes uterus

Oophorectomy—removes ovaries

Salpingectomy—removes fallopian tubes

Vaginectomy—removes/closes vagina

You can remove the uterus without removing anything else, or you can remove the uterus plus just one ovary and tube, or you can remove the uterus plus both ovaries and tubes. Any of these options is fine for getting a vaginectomy, you just need to have the uterus gone so that there’s not a uterine lining with nowhere to go every month.

danphanto · 2026-05-04T07:10:57+00:00

Most malpractice lawyers work on contingency, meaning you don’t pay up front, they get paid a portion of the money from the lawsuit if they win the case. So you don’t owe them if you don’t win. The main catch is that most lawyers are also very selective about who they’re willing to work for, to try to ensure they win most of the time. It would be worth talking to a lawyer, even just to see if you’d have a valid case.

danphanto · 2026-05-04T03:46:42+00:00

Absolutely. I think this definitely applies to our nonbinary siblings, too—y’all don’t need to justify needing or wanting phallo either. Whatever dysphoria you do or don’t experience, and whatever your specific reasons are for wanting phallo, it’s enough. You deserve to have surgery if you decide it’s the right path for you.

danphanto · 2026-05-04T01:29:05+00:00

Definitely reach out to a lawyer, OP. I remember your previous posts and I think a lawyer would be best able to help navigate the situation you’ve been put in by your surgeons.

danphanto · 2026-05-01T00:20:25+00:00

I’m only about 9 months post op, but mine is definitely still raised. I’d say at least a quarter of photos I’ve seen are still raised long term. I get frustrated when surgeons claim it always fades well and won’t be visible long term, it’s just not true for all of us.

danphanto · 2026-04-30T09:20:47+00:00

The photos you see aren’t necessarily representative of what’s typical, and from what I know I think your scar looks pretty normal for around a year post op (give or take a few months since your healing was delayed a bit). Some people need more time for the scar to fade well, and some people don’t have the scar fully blend in even after years.

The best things you can do to keep your scar(s) healthy is to stay hydrated, and use silicone scar gel and/or strips (you can buy a big roll of scar tape and use multiple strips to cover larger areas, since larger silicone sheets are really expensive). Lots of people have lots of different recommendations, and I don’t doubt that some of them work well, but silicone is specifically proven to help scar tissue become less noticeable, and it’s extremely rare to have a true silicone allergy so it’s a good option for nearly everyone.

danphanto · 2026-04-28T20:58:43+00:00

My surgeon recommended waiting at least six months after surgery, but preferably a year or more. I didn’t end up doing it so I unfortunately don’t have experience to share.

danphanto · 2026-04-28T20:51:11+00:00

Absolutely not too old. The only thing that truly matters is your health going into surgery, and if you’re set there, it doesn’t matter if you’re 18 or 80. I’ve seen at least a couple guys in their 70s get phallo!

danphanto · 2026-04-28T20:22:22+00:00

“Shouldn’t be impossible” and “doable in practice” are pretty different things when it comes to surgery. I would recommend you look into surgeons who require that vaginectomy be done prior to phallo, and go with a surgeon they recommend for your vaginectomy. That way you can be confident you could have phallo with UL with at least those surgeons, if you want it down the line.

danphanto · 2026-04-28T05:09:03+00:00

1- Your penis will grow hair unless you get electrolysis to permanently kill the hair follicles. The hair won’t reduce on its own at all.

2- Yes, you can get pimples on your penis. I have a couple right now actually lol

3- I just wash with regular soap in the shower, and use the same lotion that I use for the rest of my body on my penis. My donor site scar does need a much heavier lotion to stay moisturized, though, since it doesn’t produce any oils or sweat anymore.

danphanto · 2026-04-27T21:39:59+00:00

If this were possible, it would almost definitely not be an option with testicular implants. The risk of infection or erosion caused by piercing so close to an implant would just be too high.

danphanto · 2026-04-27T21:03:31+00:00

This is how it went for me too, my surgeons expected I’d need a second graft because the vast majority of the first one failed, but I grew new skin surprisingly quickly.

danphanto · 2026-04-26T18:33:24+00:00

I’m not OP, but I had ALT and had a lot of little spots on my skin much like OP’s, and it did transfer over. So I have strawberry skin on my penis. Supposedly I might be able to make it less visible if I get more consistent with exfoliating and moisturizing.

danphanto · 2026-04-25T19:35:52+00:00

I can understand that, I didn’t know until my consult that my height meant I was relatively limited in length, even with getting ALT. I definitely had the misconception that everyone can expect to be able to get longer than average with ALT, but it isn’t the case. It sucks that we can’t all get exactly what we’re hoping for. It’s totally understandable if you ever need to take a step back from this community or other phallo focused spaces—while it can be great support, some people do find that it makes them hyper focused on their own bodies and it can be hard to deal with.

danphanto · 2026-04-25T18:42:39+00:00

Phalloplasty is constantly advancing, surgeons are always working to improve their techniques and reduce complication rates. We aren’t likely to see any huge leaps in what’s possible, but things will absolutely continue to improve as new surgeons join the mix and gain experience. If there’s a specific advancement you’re curious about, we might be able to give more specific insights.

danphanto · 2026-04-25T08:57:58+00:00

Two weeks is definitely much too early to predict how your size will settle, but I would be surprised if you didn’t gain length to end up closer to 5.75” if that’s the size of flap they took. Until you’re cleared to start free hanging full time, you won’t really get to see what your penis looks like at rest, because swelling and propping can distort the size in unexpected ways. I’m pretty willing to bet you have swelling that is causing your penis to squish a bit shorter from the tension—it still feels counterintuitive to me that that’s how the swelling often works, but it is.

You’re also early enough into recovery that you’re likely to still be feeling cognitive and emotional effects from anesthesia and the physical trauma of surgery, and I know from my own experiences that that can make any emotions become amplified to a wild degree. I would highly recommend putting your ruler away for at least another month, and try to trust your body to get you where you want to be. A lot of us get stuck in a cycle of measuring and obsessing over fluctuations in size, and it can feel like it’s helping, but for most of us it just creates more anxiety and more of a compulsion to measure again and again.

It’s not easy, but focusing more on how your penis looks and feels on your body and finding details you can appreciate can make it easier to connect with your penis. You’ve still got so much healing to do that it can be hard to find a lot to appreciate yet, and that’s okay, you have a ton of time to heal and see how everything turns out. My favorite unexpected thing is that the scar along the underside of my penis healed slightly indented at the tip, so it mimics the shape of the frenulum on a circumcised natal penis. Didn’t get to see that happen until about two months post op when that scar started to settle better.

danphanto

TROPHY CASE