Writer’s Note: This conversation with my friend Stephen is, oh, let’s say, 75% fictional. Were it to have all happened exactly like this, however, it would’ve taken place over Gchat. I would’ve probably been flipping back and forth between this conversation, Facebook, and Nate Silver’s blog, while Stephen would have been flipping between this conversation and Wikipedia articles on comic books from the ’70s.]
Stephen: I was just wondering, are you gonna keep your cock?
Casey: I love how direct you are. Hi, how are you?
S: It’s been niggling me since lunch. I realized I hadn’t asked you yet.
C: Which I’m glad about. A few people have asked me right after they find out I’m trans. I want to be like “Well before we get into that, how’s your junk?” Anyways. I’m actually not sure if I’ll keep it or not. I’ve gone back and forth.
S: Seems like a pretty serious thing to go back and forth about.
C: I know. It’s frustrating.
S: I’m surprised. Maybe I’ve been wrong, but you’ve always seemed pretty okay with your junk.
C: I am. I thought for years that I wouldn’t get SRS, and then during last year, when it looked like I was transitioning for sure, I changed my mind and I thought I’d probably get it eventually, and now I am transitioning for sure, and uh, I don’t know.
S: SRS?
C: Sexual reassignment surgery. What ignoramuses call a “sex-change operation.”
S: I’m guessing you don’t approve of this term.
C: It’s just stupidly inaccurate. As if you can just walk in the hospital door in the morning as a guy and then you come out the next day and you’re a girl. Fuck, I wish it were that simple, but there’s more to changing sex than an operation, you know? It’s not a button-push, it’s not some fuckin’ switch the doctor flips.
S: I know man, calm down. So if you’re alright with your penis, what makes you want it?
C: Part of it is sex. I love having sex with my penis, but it’s been more difficult to get it up since I started the hormones.
S: Ick. Is this a permanent thing?
C: Jury’s out on that actually.
S: What?
C: Some people can keep having erections, some people don’t. It seems like that varies. If it stopped working completely that’d steer me towards surgery pretty easily. Though some transwomen do take Viagra.
S: The pharmacists would find you enthralling. So let’s assume your dick can stay working. Would you still want SRS?
C: Maybe. I don’t know. I just think of years in the future, of being a woman with a penis and that scares me, and I can’t put into words why that is.
S: Isn’t SRS like a big deal, logistically? It must be really expensive. And I’ve heard lots of shit can go wrong.
C: It can be twenty thousand, easy. Shit can go wrong, but it’s rare these days. Though I think “vaginal collapse” is on a list of possible post-op complications.
S: Don’t even tell me what that is.
C: No problem. That’s rare, though.
S: If you say “vaginal collapse” again, I’m logging off. Can we at least call it a “vaginal cave-in?” I like the thought that miners with head-mounted flashlights might be injured if that were to happen.
C: You’re hilarious and also not helping. Fistulas can happen too. Infections. Not everybody is able to orgasm. And that’s not rare, actually.
S: Yikes. Well look, girl, I’m not trying to tell you what you think. But it always seemed like it was the skirts and the hormones that mattered most to you, or burning your facial hair off, or worrying about how your family would react, or just coming out in general. You’ve talked to me a lot about being trans, but your junk has rarely been the focus.
C: Yeah. I’m reluctant to talk about it, honestly, as open as I’d like to think I am. “The surgery” just gets so much attention and focus. I hate that. As big a deal as the subject is, it’s not the focus of transitioning for me. Part of why I hate the term “sex change”.
S: Now that I’m thinking about it, I asked you a few months ago if you’d keep your penis (I dunno if you remember, I think we were drunk), and you said you’d probably keep it. But you said for the last year you’ve wanted it gone. Why do you think you’re waffling?
C: Well, you’re right, I hated my facial hair. I wanted that gone without a question. But I’ve never hated my penis. I’ve felt ambivalent about it sometimes, but never hate or dislike. But I’m going to have a woman’s body, dude. Think about the life of women with penises.
S: Not something I do most of the time, if we can be honest.
C: Well, there are women out there who have them, so you should get used to the idea.
S: Just making a joke. I guess hermaphrodites would have to deal with that too?
C: The word is intersex.
S: I know what intersex is. It’s hard to keep track of all these terms, man. You should write a dictionary or something. So you said “the life of a woman with a penis” scares you and you don’t know why. Do you think you will grow to hate your penis?
C: I guess that might happen, but it’s not really what scares me. What scares me is that the world’s not set up for women with penises, y’know? Like locker rooms, swimming pools, certain kinds of tight clothing. It’s hard to hide a package.
S: Can’t you tuck?
C: That shit hurts, man.
S: Bitch, bitch, bitch. Have you even tried?
C: Okay, no. Even still, I’d worry about them popping out. And you have to use tape, generally.
S: Ouch.
C: Yeah.
S: You should still try.
C: Maybe.
S: But still, it seems weird you’d consider such a drastic surgery as a way to fix that. I mean, okay, so you can’t wear tight clothes or go into locker rooms, for the most part you don’t wear tight clothes, and you can suck it up and tuck when you do. Some locker rooms have private areas, and for swimming pools you’ll just have to wear boy trunks, which, yes, will look weird, but big deal, you’ve made bigger sacrifices. And when I think about it, these are the kinds of solutions you’ve probably already come up with yourself, so tell me: If you don’t dislike your dick, and the potential downside of SRS is so huge, why is this even a question?
C: The potential downside isn’t that huge, dammit. Yes, it’s major surgery, but at the end of the day it’s pretty safe, and I could save the money eventually.
S: Casey. Why does keeping your cock scare you?
C: Maybe because it means not being normal.
S: … dude, that’s not something I know you to express a lot of worry about.
C: I know. I hate even saying that. I’m just—I’m really looking forward to the point when this is all over, you know? I live somewhere in-between male and female right now, and I love those who make a life out of that, refusing to be male or female, but for me personally I just really want to be another girl on the street as fast as fucking possible. I want all this transitioning crap to just be an interesting story that’s in the past. And I know that’ll never be completely true, there’ll always be reminders that I was born a dude. I’ll have to take those little blue estrogen pills every day for the rest of my life, among other things. I accept this. But a penis is so present.
S: And vaginas aren’t? Have you even seen a Georgia O’Keefe painting?
C: Har har, look, a cock is such a reminder. When I think about looking in the mirror a decade from now with a female body and seeing a wang dangling down there… just to get reminded of that every day, I don’t know, the idea makes me feel incomplete in this really sad way. It’s not really the penis itself almost, it’s more like what it represents.
S: Just something about being a chick with a dick?
C: Exactly. And I’m a big supporter of the existence of chicks with dicks, I love it when transwomen keep it and own it. But for me, part of me would still feel like I didn’t transition all the way, like I’m not that strong, like it wouldn’t be complete without SRS, like I’d be… God, I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, but a freak. I wish I could love being a freak, but I can’t, I don’t want to feel like a freak anymore, all this bullshit has made me feel like a freak enough of my life, I’m done with it, I’m fucking done with it.
S: Seems a shame you’re letting it affect you so much.
C: Dude, I can say this pretty confidently in a way I don’t say many things: It doesn’t matter if you’re trans, cis, male, female, or something else entirely, gender puts a heavy weight on everybody. Everybody.
S: Except for me.
C: Whatever.
S: What does “cis” mean?
C: Oh, like “not trans.” Kind of like how “hetero” means “not gay.”
S: Again, the dictionary.
C: Working on it.
S: Wait. So if you get your wang turned inside out, would you have an abnormally large vagina?
C: I don’t know. I didn’t even think about that.
S: I fucking hate you. And so do billions of other men. I want to cut you just for thinking about it.
C: I feel bad because of that, honestly. I wonder if I’d feel less conflicted about it if I was small, or even average.
S: Cry me a fucking river, Magnum.
C: Well if I get it removed, you can have it.
S: No I can’t, it’s going to become your cavernous vagina.
C: Oh, right. Well tell you what, you can admire said cavernous vagina any time you like.
S: Listen up, man. I don’t know shit about what you’re going through. And in the last year I’ve mostly just listened and tried not to tell you what to do. But if you’re okay with your cock, shouldn’t you keep it? If you’re good with it—even if you don’t particularly love it—keep it. I can’t guess at how difficult it would be to live as a woman with a penis, but what I’m hearing you say doesn’t sound… well, sound. You’re not a freak, you wouldn’t be a freak, and the way you’re thinking about freaks isn’t helpful. And you know that. Your anxieties about your cock don’t sound like they’re actually coming from what you want for yourself.
C: I know… but…
S: Yes?
C: But that’s what I used to do about the trans stuff in the first place. I used to just try and ignore it all and say I’d be fine, I’d get over wanting to be a girl. And it was never fine. So what if I just say I’ll be fine as a woman with a penis, when I’m really not fine?
S: But don’t you think you’re mostly talking about what it means to be out in the world? When you tried to not think about wanting a female body, you were denying something you felt from within you, your own relationship with a body you didn’t like. Now you’re saying you there’s something about your body you’re okay with, but there are these outside pressures, which, even if they’re mostly in your own perceptions (for now), are still coming from an external place.
C: That’s a good point.
S: Well thanks, I thought so.
C: It’s hard to tease those two things apart. Internal and external perceptions of yourself.
S: Probably not completely separate either.
C: Probably not. You know, there’s one other thing though. If I kept the penis, and then started dating a new person as a girl, there’s going to be a part where I have to say, “By the way, I’ve got a cock.”
S: Are you really that worried? You seem to have had at least a couple partners that were okay with your transitioning.
C: Yeah. I’ve been really, really lucky. I don’t know if I always will be, though.
S: You know, it sounds like this isn’t really a question you can solve in the immediate future. So maybe you should give it some time.
C: You’re probably right. Thanks for talking this through with me. I feel better.
S: Anytime.
C: Funny though, I worry about the penis so much, but I think the balls are almost certainly going to go.
S: Wait, what?
C: Well yeah. An orchiectomy. Castration, basically. Removes testosterone production, so that way I’d only have to take estrogen. That’ll probably happen eventually, when money allows.
S: I don’t know if I can handle much more of this talk, man.
C: Don’t worry; I’ll give you one of my balls. Gabriel and Carl can fight over the other.
S: That is… sweet, if slightly creepy.
C: Thanks.
S: Hey, go try to tuck. You should. You can consider it your thank-you for me listening.
C: Fine, but only because I love you. brb.