Do phalloplasties actually work?

Um.... they don't actually think they're not women.

That's the difference.

It's generally not considered acceptable to remove a limb to treat BIID, do you think we should? They also believe there is something massively wrong with their body and that causes them great distress but it's considered a mental disorder.

If it doesn't do those things, it's malfunctioning, right?

So is this what these girls are actually looking for? A malfunctioning penis?

The knots that people tie themselves into to argue that black is white and up is down….

I know, it's such a mad question 😂 Like "No, it's a fashion accessory".

Do we define a penis purely by ability to be erect and ejaculate?

Well, that is its primary purpose, and what it’s evolved to do. The fact that it sometimes doesn’t work for some men isn’t nice for them, but that’s not really relevant.

Do we define a penis purely by ability to be erect and ejaculate? To orgasm? How diminishing would that be to millions of men who cant.

Erection and ejaculation are pretty much what men want their penises to do, yes. It is fundamental to male sexual satisfaction. Of those millions of men who can’t, I expect close to 100% wish they could.

Oh good grief. I keep thinking it can’t get any worse but then it does.

In the past ten years, so many vulnerable teens and children were sold an absolute load of horseshit about how meds and surgery would 'fix dysphoria', based on a total paucity of evidence and a total lack of questioning that was the foundation of 'affirming' healthcare.

There isn’t a ‘total paucity of evidence’ though. The problem is the evidence doesn’t support what they want it to support.

Oh, I agree.

I’m afraid that most if not all surgical procedures have been trialled on animals at some point (happy to be corrected if someone knows otherwise), though in past times humans were often the unwitting guinea pigs

We reluctantly accept that if the outcome is to improve human wellness though.
It's harder to swallow when what's being tested so manifestly does not.

Reproductive organs you say? Never heard of those.
As to whether they can produce sperms, I would say never say never. There may be a 1 to 200 trillion chances but it's a chance. And there is always mutation. A chromosomal mutation triggered by ...hmmm....hmmm... sheer will? Read Rhonda Bryne. We can think things into being

Seriously though if you read my posts you would understand where am coming from but I appreciate that's not always possible. Or desired.

If to include sperms production then probably not 🤣🤣

Erm, definitely not! No surgeon can implant working testes with sperm vesicles and all the hormonal, chromosomal, nervous and vascular connections to manufacture sperm and ejaculate seminal fluid.

You realise these are reproductive organs, right? One sex (reproductive category) cannot become the other sex.

Unusually, I agree with Olive on this - in a generalised sense, at least. It's a surgical culture of "Be your best self!" when your best and even your self are fully predicated on how you look - to yourself or others.

Shallow doesn't even come close to what this is: it reduces people to sets of body parts. With older women in the public eye, for instance, you can often identify how they've stopped seeing their own faces and had a blepharoplasty here, a cheek lift there and so on, with no awareness of how the whole face now works as a whole.

Men are increasingly having penis enlargement surgeries, ffs, on perfectly average organs, and six-pack implants.

The physical risks of all these surgeries are quite high, though not as frightening as the 1 in 2 risk of severe complications to GRS. The psychological risks, I would surmise, are at least as high.

Agree re stonewall. They could have been campaigning for things that would truly protect trans identifying people. If they had campaigned for proper provision in things like rape centres we’d be 10 years down the line in that process. If they had campaigned for proper research into trans identifying children there would be much better systems of support in place. And if they had campaigned for improvement in surgery people wouldn’t be having these highly risky and often unsatisfactory surgeries. They really let trans people down by just focussing on gate keeping language and pushing women aside.

Thank you for the explanation @Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g !

Totally agree, @Seethlaw. Re the bathroom/WC, in the article it says that the bar Ben was visiting on the occasion of this eureka moment, there had been a problem of drug use so the management had taken down the partition walls around the toilet so there were urinals and a toilet in the same space. Sounds very grim. Not something I would say you could get away with in the ladies'!

How can they work? No erectile tissue for blood to engorge. You might be able to pee standing up, but probably not. And the complications are horrendous. As to sexual function, no, they don't work for that and the surgery itself plus the hormones mean that sexual satisfaction is unlikely and total sexual dysfunction the likeliest outcome.
We read, you know!

As a trans man, I really don't get it...

"An undefended toilet next to a urinal is not an ideal place for a trans man to take a leak,"

Does this mean a toilet out in the open? I've visited quite a few men's toilets over the years, and I've never seen this configuration. The toilets have always been inside a cubicle (whose door may or may not close, granted, but cubicle still). I'm not saying it can't happen, just that it must be pretty rare, ie. not something to base such a massive decision on.

"Even so, as Ben sat there pretending to go, he pictured a more hostile group of drunken men and how they might react to the absence of his penis."

They wouldn't look, so they wouldn't know. It's in the Rules. Ben literally created the problem out of thin air.

"Bathroom bills were on the rise, and every day for the rest of his life, taking a leak would mean managing risk. He was just 26 — still quite young. Looking ahead at a lifetime of this, the downsides of surgery suddenly seemed reasonable. Having a penis would help him feel safe, even if he still had to sit down in a stall. “I felt that any complication that would arise, including dying, was better than the alternative,” he says."

This is insane! How is having to use a cubicle (and I notice that suddenly stalls are back in this story?) more difficult to face that literally DYING???

This is such a blatant example of someone hyperfixating on something, making a mountain out of a molehill :( Ben just needed some therapeutic help de-escalating this non-problem. Therapists do that all the time!

Not rambling - so many good points.
You remind me of seeing the progress pride flag fluttering over Great Ormond Street hospital and thinking what a uniquely cruel message that is to send to some of the most physically disabled and unwell children in the country. "Your bodies are flawed but a sex change will cure you".
Unfortunately the GOSH charity prioritises trans rights over the needs of vulnerable sick children.

I’m afraid that most if not all surgical procedures have been trialled on animals at some point (happy to be corrected if someone knows otherwise), though in past times humans were often the unwitting guinea pigs. A fascinating book - The Matter of the Heart - by Thomas Morris outlines the hundreds of hours surgeons spent performing delicate heart surgery on dogs before operating on humans, particularly in the last century.

Quite possibly some trans people might think this - people with mental illnesses think all sorts of things that don't make sense to others. For example, my daughter thought that by starving herself she would be better able to control everything going on in her life (school, exams, bullying). I also knew someone who thought they had special powers and could control things with their brain (spoiler, they didn't and they were sectioned).

However in reality no one is born in the wrong body. You are born in the body you are born in, irrespective of physical or mental illness you are unfortunate to experience.

I wonder if anyone tells someone with muscular dystrophy that they were born in the wrong body, or type 1 diabetes, or MS or cancer? It's such a facile thing to believe.

IMO trans people with body dysphoria (rather than those that have a kink/are autistic), have an unfortunate mental illness that makes them feel a disconnect from their sex. This doesn't mean that having surgery is restoring what they've lost because they never had the genitals of the opposite sex to lose in the first place. They just have a illness that makes them think they are the opposite sex and that they can imagine what its' like to be the opposite sex (which they can't and which is why you see so many TW basing their look in outworn stereotypes).

They should be treated with empathy, but not at the expense of others rights and what is fundamentally wrong (surgery that leads to terrible life long health problems). Lets face it, the vast majority of people are not going to accept them as the sex they identify as. They will be humoured for sake of politeness and/or fear but most people will consciously and subconsciously 'other' them whether they intend to or not.

Years ago, before genderwang my husband used to work with a long ago transitioned TW contractor who was well respected and good at the job. DH and others respected the TW professionally but found it unsettling because they definitely didn't see them as woman, but it was weird seeing them dressed as one. I think it was the having to pretend which made it feel odd to him.

Anyway I'm rambling now and getting off the subject :)

I didn't even know they did experiments on animals for this, that's barbaric.

It's the ultimate medicalisation of psychological and emotional distress and the ultimate externalisation of internalised misogyny.
I also wonder who is funding these multiple complex surgeries? Are individuals funding (and getting into debt++?) Or is NHS and other country equivalents paying from taxes? Are there profits made from this by clinicians or organisations? The mind boggles.

Thank you for this link and share token. I read this and the other article by the journalist who wrote this one, which was about her own experiences. What leapt out at me from this article, which is about another trans-identified young woman, were these passages:

An undefended toilet next to a urinal is not an ideal place for a trans man to take a leak, but Ben was confident — and had to go. He walked past a guy using the urinal and quickly unzipped to sit on the toilet. The man kept his eyes to himself (the men’s room code), but as he left, he told the people waiting: “It’s going to be a while. That guy just sat down.” This was hardly an incitement to anti-trans harassment — he just thought Ben was taking a dump. Even so, as Ben sat there pretending to go, he pictured a more hostile group of drunken men and how they might react to the absence of his penis. Bathroom bills were on the rise, and every day for the rest of his life, taking a leak would mean managing risk. He was just 26 — still quite young. Looking ahead at a lifetime of this, the downsides of surgery suddenly seemed reasonable. Having a penis would help him feel safe, even if he still had to sit down in a stall. “I felt that any complication that would arise, including dying, was better than the alternative,” he says.
...

Ben’s primary goal was standing urination. He decided his next goals were penetrative sex and aesthetics, in part because he would be in a rural dating pool and would probably be the first trans guy most women had been with. At 4-foot-10 and 97 pounds, he felt he had certain disadvantages. “Women don’t like short men,” he said. “I kind of had to give myself all the edge up on the competition I could get.”

This poor, poor kid. I don't know what happened in earlier life to lead to to this result. The writer says Ben knew from a fairly young age that she was attracted to other women, but couldn't bring herself to believe she was a lesbian. Perhaps she had no role models to help with that process. There is absolutely no way at her height she will ever pass for a male, no matter how much facial hair she has or how deep her voice has become. Dating heterosexual women will be extremely challenging. Dating lesbians ditto.