boingboing (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 14, 2012 1:53 am I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers. According to this guide (http://www.google.com/url?q=http://tran ... yvJnVMOLQg), 63-94% of post-op MTFs can have orgasms. In most cases, retaining orgasmic potential is one of the primary surgical goals.
Almost all of the post-op trans people I happen to know are female-to-male. Only about one has chosen to have genital surgery.
Note: most FTMs want chest reconstruction, and many want hysterectomies with oophorectomies (largely to prevent cancer, but also to allow them to use a lower dose of testosterone without reactivating the ovaries), but relatively few have any interest in the genital surgeries that are currently available, since they tend to give rather poor aesthetic results, and may also lead to loss of sensation. Many of those FTMs who do choose genital surgery have a minimally invasive one called metoidioplasty, which has a low risk of reducing sensation.
Boing(ity boing)
This is where I got my information, along with every transsexual I personally know. While all the doctors and people who promote the surgery say that most people can achieve orgasm after surgery, I have not seen this. And when I talk to people who have had the surgery, they say the same thing. Most TS women can't/don't orgasm. Now if you know some TS woman who could/would contradict that, I would love to be wrong about this.
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/ ... .html#Dani
I can speak the transgender party line that I was a female trapped in a male body and I remember feeling this way since I was 4. But, it's never that easy if you look at it sincerely and without preconception. There's little question that a mid-life crisis, a divorce and a cancer scare were involved in at least the timing of my sex-change decision. To be completely honest at this point (3 yrs post-op) is not easy, however, I'm not sure I would do it again. I'm now concerned that much of what I took as a gender dysfunction might have been nothing more than a neurotic sexual obsession. I was a cross-dresser for all of my sexual life and had always fantasized going fem as an ultimate turn-on. Ironically, when I began hormone treatment my libido went away. However, I mistook that relief from sexual obsession for validation of my gender change. Then in the final bit of irony, after surgery my new genitals were non-orgasmic (like 80% of my TG sisters).
Elizabeth