Transgender man explains decision to have a phalloplasty

A transgender man has spoken openly about how having a phalloplasty made him feel like a completed person.

Phalloplasty is the construction or reconstruction of a penis using surgery, and some transgender people who are transitioning from female to male go under the knife for the surgery.

A 21-year-old man from Colorado, who wishes to remain anonymous, talked to The Independent about his decision to undergo surgery after living as a man for three years from the age of 18.

“For a very long time, I believed that I would be able to live without the bottom surgery. I only realised that it would be necessary as I approached the end game for the other aspects of my transition,” he said.

The surgeons took a skin graft from his arm to construct the penis, along with tissue from his genitals. The surgery took eight hours and an additional skin graft was taken from his leg to replace that lost from his arm, to aid the healing.

"Recovery was extremely intense in the first two weeks,” he said. “I spent six days bedridden in the hospital. I’m a very active, impatient young man so that was pretty unbearable […] After the first 10 days, I started to regain strength in a meaningful way. I was able to go to the beach... I was very much still in recovery but emotionally, I was recuperating well.”

His medical insurance covered the surgery and he returned home after a four week stay in a hotel by the hospital. He says since having the operation he no longer has gender dysphoria - the condition where a person experiences distress or discomfort from the mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity.

“I pretty much don’t have dysphoria anymore which has made a huge difference,” he told a Reddit AMA. “I feel like I can really see myself as an entire person rather than a mismatched set of physical characteristics.”

He was also open about his sex life, explaining that he actually experiences more sensation than he “had dared to hope for before surgery”.

Of course, not everyone who identifies as transgender has surgery and are happy to live as the gender they identify with without it. As well as encompassing those who identify as the opposite gender to the sex they were assigned at birth, transgender is also an inclusive term for anyone who whose gender identity falls outside the typical gender norms including people who are non-binary, gender fluid or genderqueer.

A spokesperson for the St Peter’s Andrology Centre in London, which performs phalloplasties, told The Independent they currently carry out around 10 each month but their numbers are increasing. There is approximately a three month wait for those currently on the list.

Last year, The Guardian reported only 10 to 30 per cent of trans men in the UK will opt to have surgery as opposed to 60 per cent of transgender women. In the UK, a phalloplasty usually requires more than one operation.