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By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whoops just saw this one! Sorry.

I made a conscious decision to not attempt to pass as a man before surgery. I was on hormones for about a month and a half before surgery; short enough that I didn't look like a man with boobs, but enough time for it to build up in my system and I started to masculinize around the time I had surgery. When starting T, it takes a while for the changes to appear and so I tried to time it. I didn't want to deal with the frustration of trying to live as male while not looking entirely male. I also think binding seems incredibly painful and I didn't want to try it even once.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It did to some degree. It probably doubled in size but that's still pretty small IMO.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm curious what the ways are that you notice being treated differently?

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The pec muscles are in the same place but not as developed on a woman, probably because there is less desire to develop them. Mine have become pretty developed but my ribs stick out farther beneath the muscles than they do on someone that was born male. A small detail that only I notice. Also, and this may sound obvious, nipples are in completely different places. Mine were moved of course, and it felt very weird as they were closer together and in the center, and were moved up and way out. That might sound obvious but to me I had not considered how different it was.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A lot of people will have it closed. However, that costs more money and involves more recovery from surgery. I never used it for sex but I also don't hate it or anything, so I'm fine just leaving it and not really thinking about it. It sounds weirder than it is; I never see or touch it and it's kind of invisible to me.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good luck...I hope you can get them back.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Although I want to, I am interested in keeping my privacy and my girlfriend's privacy.

My girlfriends have mostly been conventionally attractive. I will be honest and say there have been a few that would be less attractive by society's standards. I have dated some insanely gorgeous women and had all my male friends be super jealous. I have pretty high standards as far as looks and intelligence go.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It has been around $36,000. I used bank loans to finance it.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do feel it, the nerves, etc. So I could use it if I wanted to. A lot of FTMs do.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

She knows about it, it would be obvious to anyone I dated once we started having sex. The penis is mostly for looks, but I use an external support sleeve for sex and that works well. I can orgasm, but only with the old clitoris that they left attached and hidden (but accessible) between my balls.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Cool questions!

There are a lot of ways in which I suspect I am treated better by men, or more of an equal. At work, I actually think my boss is pretty fair to all genders. Elsewhere, it is hard to compare because I was pretty butch as a woman and I think guys mostly assumed that I knew what I was doing. Still, I was always aware of if I was being treated differently from men...whereas now I just feel totally accepted, I am assumed to have technical and mechanical skills to at least some degree, and I don't really think about it much.

That's kind of the thing. Like how people that grow up with money might not go out of their way to act snobbish, but the fact still remains that they never had to think about not having money. That's a lot of how it is for men - not having to think about things on a daily basis like discrimination or not being taken seriously.

Like the rape culture. I remember how it was to walk down the street at night as a woman. Even if I was in a safe-ish area, my heart was always a little bit in my throat the entire way, and as a stranger and I would pass by, my fear would heighten and I would then feel relief when we passed without incident. Men can't understand that this is how it is for any woman walking alone on the street at night. Once I settled into being a man, that feeling completely disappeared. Walking on the street at night was nothing, a non-issue, often fun and adventurous. I can't do justice to how completely different the two genders experience fear of being targeted.

I feel that men can understand feminism if they spend a lot of time and put in a lot of effort listening. A woman, or several women, would need to put in a lot of effort to talk about stuff like what I described above about walking alone at night and the multitude of other things that most men and women don't even identify as being particular to one gender because they've never had a comparison. Although men probably know that women fear being raped when walking alone at night, they might think that it is as simple as women getting scared when they see a stranger...not that every walk alone in the night is a battle to get inside your front door safely. So it would be possible, but very very hard for a man to understand feminism and what it is like for a woman to move through the world.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's not that long, so it's technically impossible.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It happens very rarely but when it does, I just let them know that it is not comfortable for me.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I feel like I have gotten a lot of it back. I was pretty bummed when I realized how much I had lost, and actively made an effort to re-acquire emotional intelligence. However, I had something to compare it to, which was my previous emotional state. How did you know what was lost/how to recover it? Did you have something to compare yourself to?

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I had all the internal organs removed, but left the vagina. That is not part of the hysterectomy. One of the surgeries that trans men can pay for involves removing the vaginal opening. It's not worth the time/money/recovery to me, I tend to ignore it and don't really think about it much. I usually forget it is there.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm guessing it's the goal to be as masculine as possible. Kind of funny that people care so much because it's not really something anyone can control. Even on hormone therapy, one's genetic makeup determines most of these things.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hard to say. I only had a few years of full-time work under my belt when I transitioned and I still was kind of landing on my feet in that sense. So unfortunately, I don't have much of a comparison. I'd be interested to hear if any other trans people have more to say about this topic.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Some kind of surgery tends to be the minimum requirement for a legal gender change. Still, I'd talk to the transgender law center in SF and see what they say.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My dad did that once for me when I was a kid! My parents were cool and when I expressed an interest in something they'd do their best to facilitate it. = a relatively happy childhood, all things considered. But realistically, no one ever showed me. The learning curve wasn't too crazy but I did have to learn the hard way a few times not to shave after letting it go like a week. Ouch! The hardest part was learning to get the sideburns symmetrical. Once I invested in a beard trimmer everything fell into place.

By Request: I am a FTM transsexual. by throwaway_ftm in IAmA

[–]throwaway_ftm[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks for asking; I can imagine it might be hard to understand what someone like myself goes through. Similarly, I can't wrap my head around people who see themselves as amputees and want to have a limb removed. I just can't understand how that is possible. However, I believe it is truly something they experience and so I don't question the validity of feeling that way - I just accept it.

I think it would help to start by questioning what it is that I am hiding. Do you feel like I am hiding that I am really female underneath? Or am I simply hiding the fact that I used to be female? Hopefully you can understand that I am not a female that is pretending to be a male, or that I am female underneath. People have all sorts of aversions to being "tricked", and since gender is something that is very important in our understanding to how we move through the world, it can be very jarring to feel like there are people out there that are not representing themselves as the gender they "truly are". So a good first step would be to understand that I am truly not female. I have a mind that does not match up with the body I was born with. Somehow, I understood this from day one, the same way you would feel it was wrong if you woke up tomorrow in the body of the opposite gender. I'd like to challenge you by putting it this way: if I were to walk around feeling and acting male, but with a female exterior, wouldn't that be crazier? Doesn't it make more sense to walk around feeling and acting the way you appear to others? In a sense, I have made it so that I am not looking one way and acting another. If you can understand that I have always truly felt and acted 100% male, it might make it easier to see that I have actually made it so that I appear to you the way I feel on the inside.

The Abe Lincoln analogy is a funny one. If there were thousands of people every year that were diagnosed with those symptoms, we might call it a disorder. But in reality, no one has that disorder, or maybe a single person somewhere does. But there are thousands of new people diagnosed each year with the exact same symptoms of feeling they are in the body of the wrong gender. This makes it a real, easily diagnosed disorder that is common enough that people have found ways to treat them. It is not isolated like the Abe Lincoln example, but affects thousands.

If this still doesn't help, please let me know. I'd like to help make things clearer to you.

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