My general sentiments

Is SRS worth it? In my case, yes. I chose to have SRS as my bottom dysphoria was detrimental to my mental health, tucking was quite uncomfortable, sex didn’t feel right, and because I wanted to. I chose PPV instead of other methods as the thought of douching regularly was not a thrilling prospect to me. However, while it has overall been a net benefit to my life, it was not without its drawbacks. So I’ll go over the benefits and the negatives of the surgical experience with a holistic viewpoint.

Benefits

It alleviated my bottom dysphoria
I don’t have to experience the discomfort of tucking anymore.
- It increased the range of comfortable clothing for me.
I don’t feel dysphoria nagging at me during intimacy. Although it is odd to have to learn how to use everything again.
It helped with my self confidence in general.
Safety, at home and international travel. Although, this never presented me with a challenge before.
I could get my gender changed in my home state.
- I filed the paperwork and a few months later they changed this requirement (lol).
I don’t think about my genitals anymore.
- It’s like how I feel about my gender. I don’t wake up feeling like a woman, I just feel like me, it’s more the absence of discomfort.

Negatives

Surgery was very painful.
It was a long, hard, painful recovery. It put my life on hold for quite a while.
It put me in chronic pain for a while but I’d still say it’s worth it. Hopefully this resolves after some more time to heal from revision.
Dilating is not fun for me, it is an annoying task.

SRS presented some emotional and mental hurdles to deal with. In one aspect, I felt like I had lost my “uniqueness” and what made me “special”. I think this is a result of the plight of trans women in general. We exist in a hypersexualised and fetishied limelight of pornography websites while in the daylight we are something to be seen as shameful. And although I am resilient, a proponent of us as whole people, and in general holding a lot of genuine love for myself and women that share my nature; it was still not enough to escape the echoes in my recesses of my mind. What I kept thinking while recovering and for a while after was that I had made a mistake, not because of how I felt but because I had spoiled what made me sexually interesting, made me dateable, made me worth the unstated scorn of others to be seen with. Now what? I was just a trans woman without the defining feature. A surgical mess. I don’t think those thoughts are true, but they do hold the weight of an upbringing absent of positive views of trans women, and even trans women in general. The media we consume and are exposed to has an effect on us, it becomes part of us, whether you realise it or not. I am a whole person, I love myself and my body, I exist for myself and no one else.

As well as coming to terms with these issues, I felt the guilt of being afforded this surgery and grappling with the reality that I was becoming a minority within a minority group. My ability to have SRS is a privilege, it is expensive both in money and time, and not everyone that wants it can afford it. In practical terms, this meant that I really had no one to talk to about the fallout of this process, at least until I moved to a bigger city and made some more friends a year or so later. All this to say, community is invaluable to your prolonged mental health and I encourage you to find it. We are stronger together, and although it may initially be our suffering that brings us together, it is our acceptance, care, and love that binds us.

Closing

After all was said and done, I didn’t feel happy, I just felt exhausted. It was an alleviation of a significant amount of dysphoria, but it felt like I had climbed a mountain of suffering to get what I felt I was owed at birth, and what I needed to move on with my life. Your reaction to this process is your own, you might be happy, you might be upset, you might feel nothing much at all. But regardless, you will have to learn to live with your new body –physically and mentally.

I wonder what I would’ve done if I wasn’t as capable of research and problem solving. If I was more anxious about talking to Dr Hart and even just thinking critically about what he was advising, would it have been okay? It makes me feel guilty that I haven’t gotten this resource out sooner.

We are privileged within our group to be getting this operation, but that is life, we are trans women, we are at the bottom looking up.

If you’ve read through this guide, you are more prepared than I was when I went through this. I hope everything works out for you.