Back in May, I had my first intentional orgasm with my neovagina. I wrote about it. The piece was positively pornographic in its prose account of what it felt like. I seem to have deleted it or misplaced it by accident. But perhaps this is best, as I have been able to replicate this outcome multiple times since. Maybe I can craft a better account. Regardless, I think this is an important topic to write about, as there are many misconceptions about trans surgical results. First, let me note that I have had orgasms begining in the first few weeks after surgery; but, they were all based on dreams. This is interesting because this is not something I experienced before surgery . Intentionally, I have played around down there at points during the first year post-op, but I was always afraid to break it or push myself, for fear of disappointing myself — perhaps. And I got this thing for other reasons, I am not a very sexual person — I am asexual if that matters. So, I waited until I felt the time was right.
In the beginning I was very reluctant to look. After surgery I remember the nurse in the clinic asking if I wanted her to take a picture so I could see. I said “no!” I certainly didn’t want to look. I squinted when I had to learn to dilate on day four/five, the nurse and doctor guided me with a mirror, I grinned and nodded — grimaced more like it. This is not a commentary about my fatalistic views on the outcome of the surgery, but I rarely look at my body. I have gotten used to pretending. Why, well, it’s complicated, it has to do with the intersection of my OCD and dysphoria/dysmorphia (but that is a different, less joyous story). Because of my history of haptic hermeneutics, I got to know myself well through my fingers and dilating wands. But that was the end of my exploration. Nevertheless, from almost day one, there was a surplus of sensation down there.
Things changed in May. On the eve of a friend’s operation with the same doctor, which she selected because of my results, I figured it was time to bust out the mirror and poke around. Despite some issues with stitches, the scars are minimal, and she is red and fleshy, flushed with colour, sensate, and vibratory. Years ago I had a lipoma removed from my back and the doctor virtually hacked it out, a 4cm scar is the epicenter of much more widespread nerve damage, but down there, it is different. Not a finger width of skin feels numb to the touch. Her lips kissing together often makes my whole body quiver.
The mirror revealed what my fingers already knew, my pussy is bespoke, she is crafted with the care of someone obsessed with functional details. Inside, she opens up to hold 18+cm of Soul Source dilator. Still, I had yet to finger my clitoris and thus I met her in the mirror. It is an odd experience meeting your body for the first time. My fingers pressed on either side of her crescent hood, and she emerged from within her sicky fold, xenobiology throbbing to life. I closed my eyes and took her in through my hands.
At different times over the year, my vagina has felt both healed and then tight, but now she seems to expand effortlessly, as long as I dilate once every seven to ten days. In this moment I reached for the cheap dilator the clinic gave me, it looks like a blue popsicle mold, complete with a handle. The feeling of accommodating the dilator feels euphoric; feeling full has no analog in my previous anatomical form. My clitoris swells and shortly after I cum. It is deep — as if rooted in my spine. I contract, and then again, and again. I let go and rock a little as the feeling lingers in my body. The feeling stayed with me all night as I rocked back and forth in bed while falling asleep. It haunted my thoughts in the morning until I repeated the process. Now that I have done so multiple times, I noticed the g-spot built deeper inside of me. I essentially have two clitorises. I cannot speak for other people’s experiences, either cis or trans, but I can excite similar orgasms using penetration at the back of the vaginal canal and with the clitoris.
One thing I appreciate about my surgeon is his focus on crafting functionality. He sent me a paper outlining his methodology at our initial consultation. I skimmed through it, and though it mainly had heterosexual sex in mind, at least he was looking for function, not just verisimilitude. I appreciate the attention to detail, even if this is not why I got the operation. I know some girls are concerned about the feels. And this is why I am sharing, there isn’t much information on the pleasure of having a neovagina. It is quite the opposite; I have noticed that TERFs take aim at transsexual surgeries, calling the results “limited and poor.” In their eyes we are left with little more than a flesh wound. I think this is symptomatic of their transphobia in general. This perspective allows them to safeguard the essentialist ideologies they hold with regards to sex and gender. When in fact, the so-called immutable fleshy bits of the body can be rearticulated, cultivated into something else, a means instead of an end. This accounts for much of the current fixation on chromosomes which afford little more solidity.
While I have to admit that there are girls out there who have reduced sensation after surgery, or their clit falls out (I read that one Reddit), they are the rare exceptions. Studies suggest that 80+% of trans feminine surgical outcomes report sexual functionality. But a statistic like this feels cold and empty. It does not describe the atomic bomb(s) I possess between my legs — both in her ability to create magnitudes of sensation and her ability to disrupt signs and symbols.
Unlike Baudrillard, I do not find the trans body to be a fitting place to hang fear of postmodernity upon, to suggest we are all transsexuals, as Andrea Long Chu might call us all females. Instead, the trans body, especially that of the transsexual — I use this term intentionally, to indicate the embodied trans experience — becomes a site where solid matter changes form into something more effervescent. Perhaps we are all transsexuals, but Baudrillard means this as a condemnation of (post)modernity. I envisage a more neutral usage. Something we can embrace, the symbol of that which indicates how we are all merely historical assemblages, certain manifestations of mutable flesh and culture. Nothing permanent remains for long. We are 20/21st century ukiyo-e. The fact that the solid foundations we observe in the world are evanescent is a truism at this point. And I will happily embody this. Regardless, I am straying into theory here, and all I mean to say, is that my vagina works. And if anyone else makes you question the validity and functionality of trans postoperative outcomes, they don’t know what they are talking about.
