Graphic: When I partially performed an orchiectomy on myself back in 2016, I made a single incision along my raphe, pulled out my testes, and began to sever my left spermatic cord a few inches above my left testis. And the hospital I went to after stopping stitched me up just fine, leaving me with a single vertical scar along my raphe. So even if I hadn’t seen plenty of pictures of other people’s orchiectomy results, I know from firsthand experience that it is possible to perform the surgery that way.
I've been fortunate to never experience violence because of my transness or queerness, so I can only imagine how terrifying that was for you. But I have been in plenty of unsafe situations where I was being threatened or harassed or sexually assaulted, and I thought about those experiences a lot during the years that I was denying myself HRT. I can understand why it would make someone want to repress themself or detransition, and I guess in hindsight I was doing a bit of that myself, even though I never stopped openly identifying myself as trans.
I don't think it's horseshit to be thankful. I do try to be thankful for the good things I have in my life. But sometimes those things actually make existence more painful. Sometimes I cry purely because I can see exactly how happy I could be if only I hadn't let my body become like this. I feel that my body taints every experience I have. Every time I am reminded of what my body is like, it takes me out of the moment. And I struggle to explain to other people how weird and awful that feels.
When I was a teenager, I coped with the effects of masculinization by thinking of my body as a shell I was inhabiting or a machine I was piloting. I told myself that it didn't matter what my body looked like or sounded like or felt like, because it was just a tool for me to use to interact with my environment. I was already used to separating parts of my identity or my feelings, so it wasn't hard to separate myself from my body, too. And when the changes began affecting my mind, I coped by thinking of those things as separate from me as well, effectively dissociating from my own thoughts and actions. That was dangerous though. You can do some pretty awful things when nothing you do feels like it's really you doing it. And it's hard to stop when you can't tell which of your thoughts are actually you. I think I might be describing depersonalization, but I'm not sure.
Anyway, these days I'm better at discerning which parts of my mind are the real me. But as I've gotten more in tune with myself, my body just feels more like a prison, to the point that I sometimes feel the urge to cut myself out of it. Because I've realized that most people don't think like that. They see their bodies as themselves, and they also see my body as me. I used to think that as long as I was true to myself (whatever that means for me), people would somehow be able to see past my shell. But they really don't. Even the people who love me most.
And I want people to see
me when they look at me, not just this shell. When someone touches me, I want it to feel like they're really touching me, not just the skin I'm wearing. I want to be able to look in the mirror and see myself, not just the increasingly not-me thing that I've become accustomed to seeing. There definitely was a time when I had those things, but it's been so long now that I've forgotten what it felt like. I just want to be able to feel that way again. It's my only remaining goal in life, which is why it's difficult for me to not put so much weight on it.
I appreciate the sympathy, though I don’t regret trying to perform an orchiectomy on myself 7 years ago. I only regret that I didn’t let myself finish it before calling for medical assistance. It would have saved me from a lot of future pain and preserved some of the things I liked about my body back then. I’d probably be a much happier and healthier person today.
That said, I hope you’re able to get an orchiectomy done by a doctor soon, because obviously that’s safer. But If you ever do attempt it on yourself again, please make sure you sterilize the blades and your scrotum thoroughly beforehand to minimize infection risk. And also make the incision along your scrotal raphe for less obvious scarring, in case you might want to preserve your scrotal tissue for a future gender-affirming surgery. I did a good enough job during my attempt that no one I’ve had sex with in the years since has ever noticed or commented on the scar.
Also, I know we all have different tolerances for pain, but for me personally, compared to my really bad IBS cramps or the experience of having a bowel movement during my first anal herpes outbreak, the pain of an orchiectomy is really not that bad. Even during my self-surgery attempt 7 years ago, the biggest issue was that my brain kept trying to make me pass out, not the pain, which was surprisingly low with me only taking a couple acetaminophen pills. I say that only to dissuade anyone from avoiding getting this surgery out of fear of pain if they really want it.
Because when I was 3 years old, I dreamed about cuddling naked with other boys. And now I live with my male partner and sleep naked next to him almost every night. I was a queer child and grew into a queer adult. What a twist!
I've known for pretty much my entire life that I'm attracted to boys/men. I just didn't learn that feeling that way meant I was queer until I was a teenager and discovered gay porn, because my parents and the other adults in my life never told me about queer people and shamed me whenever I expressed my queerness. If on the day I made a Valentine's Day card for another boy calling him cute, my father had a conversation with me about being gay instead of just telling me "don't do that," I'm sure I would have identified myself as queer from the age of 6, if not even sooner.
It's no different with being trans. I always knew that I was dissatisfied with being a boy, though certainly puberty forced me to think about the relationship of my body to my gender much more intensely. I never identified myself as trans though, because I didn't even know of the concept of being transgender and not being stuck with the gender you were assigned at birth. But as soon as I found out as a teenager that "sex change surgery" and living as another gender was possible, I knew that's what I wanted for myself. If any of the adults in my family had talked to me about my feelings concerning gender after I wrote, directed, and starred myself in a play in which I was a female character as an elementary schooler, and if they had supported and encouraged me to explore myself instead of restricting me, I'm sure I also would have identified myself as trans a lot sooner.
But I recently decided to pursue breast reduction, and I found it surprisingly difficult to schedule a consultation with a particular surgeon. The surgeon I want to see performs both "top surgery" for trans men and AFAB nonbinary patients and breast reduction for cis men with gynecomastia, but I was initially told that because I am AMAB and trans it would not be possible for him to give me a breast reduction. I repeatedly asked the staff members I was talking to over the phone to clarify what the issue was, and not only were they unable to give me an answer beyond "hormones" (which makes no sense to me because cis women can also get breast reductions), they were also insistent that there was a difference between "top surgery" for trans patients and breast reduction for gynecomastia, yet were unable to explain what the difference was. The only thing that seemed to get through to anyone was when I asked pointblank why if a trans man, an AFAB nonbinary person, and a cis man could all get a peri-areolar breast reduction, I couldn't do so as an AMAB nonbinary person, and also when I asked why there would be a difference between the breasts I developed from taking exogenous hormones and the breasts a cis man might develop from taking exogenous hormones.
I ended up convincing them to let me schedule a consultation anyway, but they also gave me referrals to few other surgeons who they said "do the kind of surgery I want." But after looking at the other surgeons they recommended, I can't see any difference between the surgeries those surgeons offer and the ones the surgeon I want to see offers. So either I'm completely misunderstanding something or the people working in this surgeon's office don't understand how these surgeries work.
I get kind of annoyed when I’m having sex with a guy and he gets focused on trying to make me hard or make me cum. And my penis also feels mutilated to me since my circumcision, which is part of why I want to get rid of it entirely. So maybe I’ll feel similarly to you once I have the surgery. I’m feeling kind of done with sex these days anyway.
I don’t want neovaginoplasty for several reasons:
- the surgery is much more complex and invasive, with a higher risk of complications
- I don’t like the idea of having a hole made in my pelvic floor that then needs to be forcibly kept open
- I don’t like the idea of having to work to maintain a part of my body, and I think I’d struggle to keep up with dilation
- I have less tissue to work with because of my circumcision and the size of my genitals, so I’d probably need skin grafts, which I don’t want
- I’ve already lost a lot of sensitivity and developed sensory issues in my genitals due to my previous circumcision and self-castration attempt, which would probably make penetrative sex less comfortable
- the loss of my mucous membrane also means I’ve already lost much of my self-lubricating ability, which would also affect how enjoyable sex would be for me
- my penile skin is still very fragile and tears easily, even with synthetic lube, and I don’t want to deal with tearing inside my body
- I have genital herpes and currently feel uncomfortable with any form of sex that risks spreading it, so I wouldn’t be having sex anyway
Also, I don’t particularly value having externally female-looking genitalia, so I don’t want the zero-depth surgical option either.
