First off all, if this is offensive, let me know and maybe delete this post.
This is a thought both me and the SO had while we were just in bed.
We were talking about phantom pain, and how the brain can still feel pain from body parts that have since been removed. Think leg amputations etc.
You can see this coming, im sure, but do any trans have phantom pain after surgery? Like, pain in balls, penis, boobs, … After they have been removed?
We legit want to know, as we are very intrigued in this stuff and (and i quote) “are freaky people” :p
Signed: cishet and queer
Edit: thanks for all the replies! Very insightful and interesting! Sorry for the ‘freaky’ comment, that was not intended to be hurtful. We are weirdos to even think of this stuff, but please remember we see you as human beings and not as freaks. We wish you all the best and a happy life!
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While healing from full srs, yeah I absolutely had a lot of pain that my brain interpreted as in the balls. Once the pain subsided it never returned and it feels weird to remember my body was ever like that. That said, I had phantom sensations of a more feminine body before I started transitioning. Both phantom breasts from around early puberty until I grew my own, and a phantom vulva until bottom surgery.
I had SRS. Full orchiectomy/penetctomy/vaginoplasty/vulvaplasty.
I’ve never felt any phantom sensations. If anything, I sometimes felt the opposite, like a phantom vag before I got surgery. But afterwards? Nothing. The only similar effect was a bit of neural remapping that took a few days. Your body has an internal 3D representation of its own shape. That’s why if something touches your skin somewhere on your body, you can instantly know where it is. SRS is basically genital origami. Things get cut, shifted, repositioned, and sewn back together. Individual bits of tissue and nerves end up in radically different locations than pre-surgery. And this requires a bit of spacial neural remapping. For example, in the technique that was used on me, a clitoris is formed from the head of the penis. Initially when I felt it, there was incongruity. My eyes could see that I was touching something right on the surface of my body. However, the spatial awareness part of my brain was saying, “this nerve correlates to a location several inches outside the main body.” This mismatch was quite uncanny. However, thankfully it only lasted a few days. After a few days the body learns the new locations of all the relocated nerves and the uncanny sensation disappeared. I’ve never had anything that could be described as a phantom penis sensation. And I had SRS back in 2013.
Oh wow, thats uncanny! Thanks for sharing that experience. Makes perfect sense now that i ( and we, SO thinks the same of it ) think about it further and you explain it so nicely.
Thank you!!
I haven’t.
It’s worth noting that male and female genitalia are analogous; it’s all the same parts, basically, just arranged differently. Bottom surgery tries to preserve the analogy where possible, so parts aren’t removed so much as rearranged.
Also, I don’t give a fuck if you’re “freaky”. I am a normal person and don’t wish to treated like a sideshow, so maybe be a little more respectful if you’re going to ask questions to a frequently maligned and othered community.
That makes sense! So no phantom pain because the nerves are all still intact and there!
Thanks! ^^
We legit want to know, as we are very intrigued in this stuff and (and i quote) “are freaky people” :p
While I appreciate your curiosity, I just wanted to point out that thinking about the experiences of transgender people is not “freaky,” nor are we freaks ourselves. I assume it wasn’t your intention to be demeaning, but please try to consider how your comments will come across. This is our life experience, not just some kink or fetish.
If I’m being generous, I think what OP meant was something like “sitting around talking about other people’s penises, vaginas, and breasts would be considered ‘freaky’ in just about any other context and we can’t shake the feeling that even in this context, spending this much time talking about other people’s sex organs is freaky”
I think you misinterpreted that comment, so let me clarify. This is not meant as freaky, the sexual thing, and more as freaky, the weirdos thing ( because we thought of this and decided to ask the question ). We are generally intrigued in science and psychology which is why we had that question.
I get what youre saying, but you are probably misunderstanding us from past life experiences and always having been seen by others as freaks and having to defend yourself.
We do not consider you as freaks, and only wish for people to be happy.
this would be more on topic here
For transgender women, postop phantom pain and phantom sensation are way rarer than in male patients after e.g. cancer-related orchieectomy
I haven’t had any phantom pain since my bottom surgery, no. It just finally felt right after a long, long time of it feeling very wrong.
I did have the opposite prior to getting bottom surgery. Basically a phantom vagina, which is one reason I was absolutely sure I wanted the surgery. But as to what you mentioned, for vaginoplasty specifically, since the nerves are mostly not removed, just rearranged, it might be more common for ftm than mtf since they use tissue from other parts for bottom surgery and remove a lot of nerves in top surgery.
Oof, sounds weird. Good thing you went through with it then! Thanks for sharing your experience! We are thankful that you did ^^
Haven’t as of yet.
