Is electrolysis really the most painful part of transition?
Trigger Warning: this post contains material that deals with transgender bodies and issues faced in surgery. Separately, I use the terms “cis” and “trans” which have become increasingly politicised of late.
Every now and again you read about the transition process for those of us who either do or intend to have surgery—in my case this is male to female, creation of a neo-vagina, or vaginoplasty. One theme which seems to come up, and which is a basic requirement for this kind of surgery, is the need for full and permanent hair removal in a very large swathe in the genital area. If I am not being too graphic, this is along the shaft of the penis and “up” the chest by an inch, and then all the way around and including the scrotum and down between the legs until just before the anus. All in all it is an area a bit larger than 100 sq centimetres. I haven’t counted, and please someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that there are roughly 50 hairs per square cm down there…that makes 5,000 hairs to remove.
Well, I used to scoff at the idea that hair removal could possibly be more painful than a major operation, one that can take as long as 10 hours. Used to. Now, I just hope they are right.
I have begun a required cycle of hair removal that sees me at the “salon” which I have come to regard as a torture chamber, every two weeks for electrolysis and laser treatment. Geez, when I thought waxing of my underarms or privates hurt, I had no idea. If waxing off your genital hair on a ten-point scale is a two, then this is most definitely a ten.
I have never been whipped to anything close to a pain level like this. Not even close.
As I was lying on the bed as she worked on the hairs covering “lo scroto” (everything sounds better in Italian), for once I was really quite happy that she just never stops talking, constantly interrupts, is so utterly opiniated about everything. I could just try and stop thinking. And this time, I had said, “no laser this time, it was too painful last time,” and she refused to believe me, saying that it was just because we had done so much, and had combined electrolysis and laser on the same locations.
I didn’t do my face at all this time as it is still healing from two times ago. But in the plus column, as she pointed out, all of the brown spots that have appeared on my face since taking estrogen have disappeared, and my face has taken on a more youthful appearance. Now she wants at my forehead. I wonder about the slippery slope of beauty treatments, how we can get in there and do more and more, a bit like my wife, whose face began to look unnatural. I thought on this as I arrived home and was waiting for my luggage in Milan airport, and there was a woman who was staring at me whose face looked like the Heath Ledger’s in The Joker, so distorted and plumped up was her smile and lips.
I am contemplating FFS (facial feminisation surgery) which in my case would have the effect of making my jaw a little less masculine…but I am torn because I have been a “beautiful” man, and to do such things in a way changes how people see you. My nose, however, has been a forever “issue” and the people who have said unsolicited nice things about it have been completely ignored or forgotten, in the sense that I never believed. Why can we be like this? Why can a physical trait we are born with be so unliked? I suppose I could ask the same thing about gender.
The trans woman with a penis
The sorry state of British politics is that both main parties, Conservatives and Labour, are anti-trans. I am not judging this particular tidbit, but Sir Keir Starmer, head of the Labour party, has just come out affirming that sex and gender are different things. This is good. But he also said that “a woman can’t have a penis.” The Lib Dems, however, have said such is possible.
I get the confusion. And while I happen to agree with this point of view for my own case, even going so far as to say that after I have a vagina, I will still be a trans woman, not a woman. That diminishes me not one bit. But I think that Sir Keir has it wrong and so too do the Lib Dems (the Conservatives, of which I am a card-carrying member, or at least used to be, are just bigots). The discussion was about female spaces and whether cis women have a right to single sex spaces.
One of my closest trans friends is a female. Her passport says so. She has been living as female since her mid-teens, only partially ever experienced puberty as male, and is a gorgeous trans woman. She lives completely female. But she still has a penis. We can’t always know why someone might choose this as the outcome, and in her case, it is because she can’t afford to have the operation, but she is under the law and in my eyes, 100% a trans woman (and in her own too…she is the one who taught me that being trans is a worthy end goal). The argument and these points of view would exclude her from using a female labelled bathroom. And the issue around female or male spaces is not about intimacy, at least I don’t think it is, or in being a member of some club, or of having experienced a level of discrimination which has led to feelings of sorority which would be diminished by a “less-than-purely-female” presence there. No. It is about the threat of male violence. Pure and simple.
A little anecdote from this trans woman’s life. First, I am only “partially” transitioned. Who knows how far oestrogen will change me, and I have very mixed feelings about feminising surgeries as I will never pass, and so don’t want to turn my body into a failed pastiche of trying. Second, the desire to “pass” bugs me—it seems representative of everything I am trying to escape, the tyranny of social and political gender positioning and the fundamental inequality of society. I will never have female power the way a woman in her sexuality has, and I will certainly never wield male power again. It is too late for that.
What I am saying is that I still look vaguely male, perhaps even mostly male, even if I look fabulous in a dress, especially clingy ones that show off the changes in my body. So there I was with a bunch of women, and one of the women boasted to the others about how hot her outfit was and one of the others urged to show. And she looked at me, standing in front of her, as she hesitated for a split second before opening her coat, and she saw me as trans which made it okay for me to look, for her to open her coat, because what she wore underneath was totally and utterly revealing. And in that split second, I felt acceptance, but also realised that what is in our hearts can sometimes be seen in our eyes.
The pictures above are of my body pre-transition. I have cut off my head to maintain privacy. I have gained some weight since then (this is from roughly 18 months ago), which I will lose again, and have also taken on some slightly different curves. Additionally, I have modified my chin and hair so as to make me somewhat harder to spot, but if you know me, you will see me. I have added these to this post as one of my readers asked.
She could see that I wasn’t a creep. That on seeing her in such revealing attire would not be some “thing” for me, and that I could appreciate the clothes, the fit, her beauty, without a desire to take or possess.
Meanwhile, back on the beauticians table, her chatter took me back to my first sessions with full-body waxing three years ago (I had actually done it before, just infrequently…it is only the past 3 years where I have been always completely waxed). And she was telling me about one of her clients, “a sociologist” and what a shame it was that he couldn’t admit to his wife how he was.
“Are you a masochist?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I answered.
“Some people do this because they like the pain.”
“I don’t like the pain. In fact, are we almost done?”
“Shh,” she went, “I have a client who is a masochist”
“How you do you know?”
“Because he said so.”
“Oh.”
“I am just a beautician. If you don’t want hair, I’ll take it off. But I am not part of all of that. Do you know about submissives and dominas?”
“You see,” she said, “he comes her with his domina. Do you know about such things?” She asked.
“A little,” I said.
“Well, they come together, and the domina tells me what to do to him, and I just do it.”
“Is he trans?”
“No, he says no.”
“Is he a transvestite?”
“No, but he is female.”
“What does that mean?”
“He receives.”
“I see.”
“But lately, he told me that now she wants him to be male.”
“What, for sex?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
“He is a submissive.”
“It sounds like it.”
And as she was talking, I was thinking about how this same conversation two years ago would have had me hard, utterly erect. But now, that physical manifestation of desire is gone. In this way, I am like a baby again. I decided to talk to her about it.
“I wish that he would just tell his family.”
“Does it matter?”
“He’s a sociologist. It seems so sad.”
“What about it?”
“To live a lie. His wife doesn’t know, she only sees his body.”
I told her about chastity cages, that these are popular, and that such people often “play” in this way. She had never heard of them.
“He becomes aroused when I wax him.”
“The first times I went to get waxed I was so afraid that I would, but thankfully I was able to control it.” I thought of the one time where it was difficult, mainly because of how much contact the beautician was having with me down there, and how ex-Mistress at the time was so on my mind, but I managed to stop it from happening by beginning a conversation about God and politics…it’s funny how the things that are inappropriate to speak of with strangers can be things which keep us appropriate!
“You’re different,” she said.
“Well, I’m dead down there,” and she would know because she’s flopping it around.
“Yes. But I don’t want to be a part of someone’s sex fantasy. I understand you, or people like you, where do you turn for these services. For waxing, electrolysis. So much of the community won’t touch male bodies.”
Then I gave her some marketing advice. Solicited of course. We did the math. There will be approximately 10,000 trans women within an acceptable drive time of her clinic. Nobody advertises trans acceptance in her business field. I suggested she update her site and reach out to the nearby surgeons and distribute her card. After all, electrolysis is a given, and it is a very lucrate part of her practice.
Anyway, thank goodness for the charged conversation. I was lying there. My legs spread wide, opened like a frog, to give her full, unfettered access. There is dignity in this position. And with each shock my legs spasmed involuntarily. I found I had to dangle whichever one was being affected by where she was working off of the table, to keep myself from jerking around too much, which could interfere with the electric needle she was using, and break the contact, and mean she should have to do it again.
And why a War of Attrition? Because even if electrolysis is definitive, only 30% about will die on each pass. So every two weeks, you try to get them again, and again, and again. A long-term process of thinning. I have to get this done by October, for that is when I will open my legs for the surgeon who I hope will be giving me this greatest gift, and she will check to see if I am ready. This process normally takes a year, but I don’t have the time, which is why I am doing such long and painful sessions. Maybe the beautician knows something I don’t know? Maybe I am a masochist.
And this is one thing they will not mess around with. For having hair growth in the vagina is a real problem. So I lie there and suffer through it, because the one thing that I want above all others is to come as close as possible to feeling female pain. Existential and otherwise.
Thank you for reading.
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As always, I enjoyed reading your post… but my eyes were hungry to see your beautiful body! Thank you for sharing your beauty with us, as well as your story <3
You are so sweet! Thank you. It has become so much more difficult to keep fit and in shape on female hormones. Women have to work harder at everything it seems. Thank goodness all the blessings come too.