so, I should start by saying vaginoplasty significantly reduced my genital dysphoria, and in general has helped me feel more like a woman - it’s overall quite clear it was the right choice for me (and same with transition overall).

… but I’ve struggled a lot with continued bottom dysphoria and anxiety that I made a mistake or the surgery was problematic or wrong in some way

for example, my labia continue to look and feel like scrotal tissue, and I feel insecure about this - they can sag and look wrinkly at times, which makes them look scrotal to me.

I also seem to have no labia minora as far as I can tell, or perhaps it’s too early post-op to tell, the clitoral hood is just a tighter part of the same labia majora - so maybe as swelling goes down there will be more of a sense of inner folds vs outer folds?

Anyway, lots of insecurity and concerns that my genitals are still male. Any time I’m aroused and my clit becomes engorged, it feels so much like an erection that I become dysphoric and I struggle to stay in the moment and maintain arousal.

Last night I had a dream that a stitch popped or something changed in my recovery overnight, and I woke up with my labia sagging even more and bunching into an empty scrotal sack, and my clit when engorged would become erect and push out several inches into an erect penis. It was very distressing in my dream, I was panicking and trying to find a private place to capture photos to send my surgeon. (In some ways this nightmare was clarifying or affirming - knowing my unconscious is not secretly coveting having male genitals again makes me feel more confident I made the right choice.)

I guess I never expected to have so much bottom dysphoria post-op, or to struggle so much to see my vagina as female. Sometimes I even wonder if this is what it’s like to be a trans man, to “feel male” internally and to have female genitals (though obviously this isn’t how trans men feel, trans men generally want to feel male in body and mind, something I don’t experience - and my “feeling male” is more like insecurity and imposter syndrome than whatever trans men experience).

It still hasn’t been six months since my surgery, and I’m so early in my transition in general - I just trust it will get better over time … but right now anyway, I am struggling more than I expected with challenges I perhaps naively expected or hoped the surgery would just immediately solve.

I have noticed that the dysphoria I would feel when I lay on my back and twist my lower body in a way that allows me to feel the length of my clit embedded in me, and it would feel like my penis was sewn onto me, has gone away - with the healing I think inflammation has gone down and I no longer notice that sensation of length in me, and when I do twist or pull in a way that seems to engage my clit, it feels more “normal” and doesn’t create dysphoria. So already the dysphoria I had earlier in my recovery is subsiding, which is good!

I think this was mostly a vent post / brain dump, but I did want to ask about others’ experiences - I wanted to invite general sharing of what surgeries were like for others (esp. what wasn’t expected or isn’t commonly discussed).

If anyone has advice for me, I’m completely open. Thanks for reading 😊

  • boobs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    3 days ago

    Not all cis women have inner labia and imo your result looks pretty good.

    As for the sensations in your original post, that’s really just how it is. It isn’t going to suddenly feel different because they’re the same nerve endings. You have to give yourself time for your brain to do a couple things, primarily stopping the internal mental remapping of sensations back to your old anatomy and instead perceiving them as part of your new. During my recovery, I had to reckon with and come to the realization that the sensations I feel are largely just the same sensations cis women feel. The difference is they don’t have the context for a different configuration that we do. Additionally, things will physically change a bit over time as healing continues and things settle. It took quite a while before the feeling of being constantly tucked went away for me, a common feeling early in recovery because of the way skin is being pulled and things need time to settle.

    Try to embrace the arrangement as it is and trust that that is simply what women’s sensations are. In some ways, we actually have a bit of an advantage imo because you can most likely do a revision to move / reshape things especially in the clitorial area to your liking with a revision. My surgeon was specific that there are limits in what she can do visually in the original surgery and that things like inner labia are more doable in revision, which doesn’t necessarily even have to be in an operating room. I asked for and got significant changes to my clitoral hood and inner labia definition just in her office with local anesthetic, it took like 45 minutes.

    • dandelion (she/her)@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOPEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      Not all cis women have inner labia and imo your result looks pretty good.

      while it’s true that not all cis women have inner labia, it’s rather rare and is even considered a condition, labial hypoplasia.

      Labial hypoplasia happens often with intersex individuals, usually something goes wrong during puberty to cause it.

      Anyway, your message is kind and helpful - there is no reason to be particularly normative about this part of the anatomy, since it is harmless and plays no major functional role …

      I guess my fears are of being outed as trans by my genitals, though probably my surgery scars are a bigger threat of that than the lack of inner labia.

      During my recovery, I had to reckon with and come to the realization that the sensations I feel are largely just the same sensations cis women feel.

      I guess I struggle with feeling this is true - I suspect cis women have different qualia for lots of reasons … but still, the overall gist is probably right, and it’s certainly true that it’s more similar than different.

      It took quite a while before the feeling of being constantly tucked went away for me, a common feeling early in recovery because of the way skin is being pulled and things need time to settle.

      yes, omg! This was such an adjustment for me, I hated feeling like my penis was still there, just sewn into me - such a weird and awful feeling. It really has gone away as I have healed, I suspect because the inflammation and pain around the phallus has gone away and thus so has the constant sensation generally.

      In some ways, we actually have a bit of an advantage imo because you can most likely do a revision to move / reshape things especially in the clitorial area to your liking with a revision. My surgeon was specific that there are limits in what she can do visually in the original surgery and that things like inner labia are more doable in revision, which doesn’t necessarily even have to be in an operating room. I asked for and got significant changes to my clitoral hood and inner labia definition just in her office with local anesthetic, it took like 45 minutes.

      Unfortunately I moved far away from where my surgeon is, and I am currently having to fly back for post-op appointments (very expensive) … it’s very unlikely I will have access to revision surgeries, and the current plan is to discharge me 6 months early and not bother with the follow-up appointments I would have otherwise had.

      Really interesting that they were able to do out-patient revisions with local anaesthetic in such a short time - thanks for sharing that, I didn’t know that was a possibility.

      If I were to prioritize surgery now, it would be FFS or potentially a VFS, as my face and my voice are the two biggest sources of dysphoria for me. Revision to form labia minora would be nice, but I’m too pragmatic to prioritize it, given that it doesn’t create dysphoria for me as much as my face or voice.