MNHQ: I'd like to start a thread about the reality of phalloplasty without it being deleted

[BarrackerBarmer]

MNHQ has already deleted one thread "not in the spirit".

Fair enough.

Please lay out exactly how I can start a thread about phalloplasty, with images (of arms, not of penises).
This is important. Thousands of girls are identifying as boys, and the medical pathway for those girls includes breastbinding, double mastectomies, hysterectomies and phalloplasties.

Guidance from many institutions is unquestioning affirmation.

I want to discuss this. Truthfully.

Tell me how I can do this without MNHQ deleting my thread and I will follow your rules to the letter.

Or tell the thousands of women on this site that we are forbidden from discussing the outcome of SRS for girls entirely.

What are your rules please?

It reminds me of that travelling show that consists of skinned human bodies.

Barrack - I think this thread is really important. I think that it's more than possible that people with reasons of their own might post on it in order to change its tone, with the hope of getting it deleted.

would you consider asking for it to be closed to new messages then start a continuation thread so that if things go pear-shaped we don't lose all the important information? just a thought.

I saw it and wondered what had happened to the thread. It was horrific, the kind of injury and scarring you’d expect following an awful accident.

I had no idea that that type of surgery would leave someone with such deep scarring and I think that should be talked about.

From that Guardian article with the phalloplasty -

I can still orgasm, but it’s different, it takes a bit longer. I can have an erection for as long as I want, because it’s a mechanical pump. I still have a lot of issues around using the penis. I haven’t had a relationship that would allow me to build up the confidence, but I have been a little bit experimental. I climaxed with one woman.

I’ve also experienced lots of unhealthy rejections. I’ve just had enough. I hope for love. I want to be desired.

Oh poor love. That's really sad.

I'm not sure how it all works. When surgeons sew back on a detached finger there's a lot of loss of sensation - and the finger is back where it came from and doing what it was designed to do!

I'm not sure how it all works. When surgeons sew back on a detached finger there's a lot of loss of sensation - and the finger is back where it came from and doing what it was designed to do!

Until this thread I had no idea FtM went through so much.

I've asked five other people and they also had no clue this was even possible nvm available.

We condemned foot binding and fgm roundly yet this barbarity is going unnoticed.

Thank you for highlighting this.

Oh no.

We know so many FtM girls at the moment, aged 14 to 22. If any of this is what's in store for them, it's heartbreaking.

I guess it partly answers the question of why there are so very few late transitioners FtM. By 30s to 40s, you tend to have lost the naive feeling of 'just do it, it'll work out', and start looking suspiciously at success rates and statistics.

In the 1980s, the social contagion was anorexia. No-one proposed sending anorexic young women to Slimming World and for liposuction

This interests me because I think there is an expectation around anorexia that it might not be something we can cure. Some people relapse repeatedly and sometimes anorexia kills. Even patients who have ill a very long time do not get offered liposuction. Perhaps because it's mostly a female disease, we don't say to sufferers, 'oh go on then, we'll surgically remove your fat,' simply because they are suffering severe emotional distress.

I appreciate it isn't as simple as someone trying to lose a lot of weight but still, whatever the level of distress but surgery is never an option. It's interesting that gender dysphoria is so hugely different.

Bronners If a child is put on puberty blockers & does not go through puberty, surely their brain does not mature as it would in a healthy adolescent. So even though SRS is not legal in this country until age 18, isn’t that meaningless? Drs are effectively mutilating the bodies of girls with a lower mental age than 18. Is that the case-can anyone confirm?

Quite, Datun. We're back to the "sunk cost" fallacy. If your parents socially transitioned you at, say, age seven, you started taking puberty blockers at thirteen, you're coming at the reality of surgery at eighteen with over ten years of reinforcing your desire to transition behind you - that's going to be like reversing an oil tanker. If someone had sat those parents down with photos of a flayed forearm, and talked them through the risks of necrosis in the neo-phallus back when the child was seven, they might have opted for watchful waiting and neutral counselling rather than instant affirmation.
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he were sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to, but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
So if you worry for your child's health in the future, you are accused of neglecting it now; if you acquiesce to their feelings now, you're basically throwing away their future health. If you do nothing you are told there's a chance they could kill themselves, and this is repeated often enough to have an element of self-fulfillment, if you play along with social transition in the hope your child will desist, the chances are small as affirmation of the social transition makes physical transition much more likely. If you go all-in with Lupron your child can suffer bone density issues, if you go with cross-sex hormones there's little chance of going back.
Honestly for a parent of a trans child there's no way to win. I think if I had a child who stated they were trans I'd have to emigrate somewhere that didn't support childhood transition.

"I think if I had a child who stated they were trans I'd have to emigrate somewhere that didn't support childhood transition"
yep. I also hope that if there was even a whisper of that with any child I knew, I would say, that's interesting dear but girls can't become boys, silly people say that. Now what else would you like to do/be?"

The child in the Express article video was kicking back against having long hair so 'wanted to be a boy'. Who the hell insists on girls having long hair? (That is one of my bugbears as I see the gendering of hair is now so severly enforced, at least among white children.)
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That is correct happydappy

I guess it partly answers the question of why there are so very few late transitioners FtM.
I'm biased here, caveat caveat.
But.. surely there has to be a difference in late FtM transitioners versus late MtF because of two factors: no equivalent condition to AGP, and that it is broadly socially acceptable to dress entirely as a man all day, every day, and very few people will challenge that or even notice. So sexuality notwithstanding, being able to present as masculine in a way that avoids triggering dysphoria is entirely possible. I mean, technically I do it. Apart from bras I don't wear or own any female clothing whatsoever.
I guess that might be why I find it so difficult to understand why women and girls have that surgery, and the trans man in the Guardian article is a sad reminder that the reality of life after invasive major surgery isn't a bed of roses either. I might have hated my body as I went through puberty (and I did, so much that I'm sure I could get a trans diagnosis if I was a teen now) but (and I'm sorry if this seems shallow) some fantastic and some not so fantastic women have loved my body, and in some fantastic ways, too. If I was a short beardy man with no penis or one that was the result of phalloplasty I'd be a: fishing in the straight girl pool b: wouldn't have the support of what was then an actual community of lesbians and c: would have had fewer interested prospective partners. That last point would have meant I'd have either spent more of my adult life alone, or more of it in an unhappy relationship. Let's face it, nobody wants to be unattractive to most people, being a butch lesbian means being unattractive to many people, and I firmly believe being a trans man means an even smaller pool of potential partners.
I wonder if there's a "nice" way to communicate that to young people considering transition. I can't imagine how it could be done without sounding either mean or creepy - but an inability to find a partner leads to lots of mental health issues, which leads to even less chance of finding someone, etc etc. We might choose to be single but never having a partner is very unfortunate and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. I realise this post is too long now so one last question: do AGP trans women come out as trans more readily if they were in a heterosexual marriage than if they were single males? Just wondering whether the emotional support a wife gives makes the trans woman more confident etc. and might not be replicated in FtM late transitioners?

To gendercritter, I do not think there is an expectation that anorexia is something we cannot cure, more a realisation through experience that treatment does not always work. However, treatment focuses on psychotherapy, unless I am wrong, and it is possible to recover, even though recovery may be just managing the illness so as to stay alive rather than being rid of it, if that makes sense.

I also think to Lancelottie that the reason there are so few (no?) FTM middle aged people is that because the reasons for gender dysphoria in young women are social. For complex reasons, young women are growing up in a society where the manifestation of emotional distress and not being comfortable with ideals of femininity (female objectivity) is to say one is transgender. It is not an accident it is affecting women in their formative years and not across all age groups. I really do not think it is a case of older women saying no, the risks of hormones and surgery are too great, but that the causes do not effect them to the same extent. It is a generational thing.

Surely the answer has to be an end to allowing people to believe either medically or legally that they can change sex. They cannot.

One of my (many) problems about the GRA/GRC is this: if you're a transman legally classed as male - how do you get access to smears etc this is clearly what happened with Buck Angel as above. If he'd been in the UK, classed as female on the NHS, he would have had smears, his internal organs would have been checked routinely and not led to the state they're in now. Similarly, trans women won't get invited for prostate checks. Would they? There was that comment (tweet maybe?) from a trans woman about how pleased she was to get a letter for a smear so seems like they'd fall through a net.

I'd be v interested to know if with a GRC the NHS would still keep a record if you're trans. If they do then, I'd argue they become more privileged than biological women by getting to retain their own distinct class.

I can't help but see this as practically bad for transpeople as well as an utter catastrophe for women.

Oh God the hatred you must feel, to do that to a little girl.

It's horrific.

There are some pics here: goingawaytocollege182.tumblr.com/ (horrifying, obviously) These are shared by the owner of the mutilated arms & legs in the interests of education, so I don't think this is breaking any rules.

There's a video from them here explaining the next steps (lots and lots more surgery to follow on from the hysterectomy, double mastectomy, etc.), including erectile rods, 'testicles', and so on.

Due to horrific complications in 'stage 1' it seems that they shouldn't connect up' the 'penis' so that it functions for urination. But they may still do so, I don't know.

But it seems like none of it really works very well.

Oh dear Lori really wish I hadn't clicked on that Tumblr link

Actually, WeWantJustice I don't think it is hatred. I agree with this Gillian Flynn quote: "They don't care about us enough to hate us. We are simply a form of livestock."

Oh that's even more depressing.

But sadly true.

I can have an erection for as long as I want, because it’s a mechanical pump.
I have no desire at all to have sex with someone whose erection is a mechanical pump of flesh from an arm or leg! No wonder he hasn't been able to have a proper relationship.
This is what some people are condemning their children to. This starts with telling children that they can change sex.

But do they have any sensation? As a friend said of a c-section 'it's like someone rummaging about in your shoulder bag when you are carrying it'z

"But do they have any sensation?" any sensation would be similar to having your arm touched - ie not the equivalent of touching a clitoris or glans. And the nerves will likely have been damaged in the transplanting. The sensation is all the head, the fantasy.

I've just looked up prosthetics. Here's one such supplier -NSFW. t-mens-junk-shop.myshopify.com/pages/about-us

Of the choice between that sausage-like Donkey Dong and one of these, why spend five years of pain and possible lifetime damage? Give them this on the NHS, I'm happy for my taxes to be spent on that.
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I just got DH to stroke my forearm. It's quite a pleasant sensation, and I guess in the right setting it could be erotic, but it's not an erogenous zone for most of us and I doubt many people can orgasm solely from having their arm stroked