Reflections a year on – Part 3

This post continues with my review of the kinds of things I considered before pressing on with surgery (continuing from Part 1, Part 1a, and Part 2).

Being authentic

How do you feel about people knowing that you’ve been castrated?
Write a story about how you might tell a close and trusted friend about your choice and motivations; try to pick a friend who doesn’t necessarily understand kink or gender issues; try to imagine their reactions honestly.
Surgical choice is the hardest for other people to understand, you may well encounter hostility and judgement. How will you prepare for the stigma associated with your choice and defend against it?
Is there anybody you should tell about your desire/need for castration? Break it to them gently – it’s likely to be one hell of a shock and they mightn’t handle it very well. Give them time and talk about it with them – you’ve been thinking about this for a long time; it’s likely to be new to them.

I usually don’t care who knows – I’m not going to be ashamed to be me! I don’t scream it from the rooftops, but neither do I go out of my way to hide my status.

I a little more open about being non-binary, and if asked what that means for me then I will include the fact that I am a eunuch as part of my explanation.

I wrote a story at one friend’s suggestion (an online friend who was trying to help me understand what I wanted); I then sent it to another friend by way of coming out to her. I am going to publish it in my blog after this post. The way I told my husband was a shock to him, but I have been more delicate with subsequent revelations.

It doesn’t seem to have been too difficult for the people I have shared about my surgical experience with to understand that I felt it was necessary; each one of them has offered words to the effect of “you are happy, that is all that matters”. I was very much afraid of rejection, the most I have had to tolerate really is being ghosted by an old friend … clearly, not really a friend!

Safety first

Are you prepared to accept a mundane yet safe castration option (professional surgery) rather than attempt to realise your fantasy by some DIY job or backstreet cutter?
How do you imagine your life will be if you do not get castrated?
Do you have somebody objective to help you, with whom you’d be prepared to discuss your answers to the questions?

Well, I went to Mexico for surgery, so that answers that one!

I am not sure that I would have survived without surgery – I was in serious danger of “fixing” myself, so surgery really was the only option … I did consider finding a cutter, but was persuaded away from that by my husband. I did have some kinky castration fantasies, but they were fantasies – and whilst they’d have made for a super-hot story to share with my friends, they were dangerous if ever they were to come to pass.

I had a counsellor with whom I discussed things before surgery, and I had a few sessions with a psychologist. Sadly, he wasn’t a diagnosing psychologist, but he did help me solidify my thoughts and set me up with some defensive skills to help me manage my dysphoria.

Its worth noting here that I have never had a formal diagnosis of dysphoria: it seems that there are no “standard diagnostic tools” approved for use in the UK that would have diagnosed me with a eunuch gender dysphoria.

Anticipating problems

Are you prepared for possible erectile issues after you are castrated?
Have you explored how the body reacts to being castrated? (You need to be prepared for the possibility of some level of depression as you adjust to a different level of testosterone).
Write a list of pros and cons; you can weight the items by relative importance to you.
Write a list of reasons not to be castrated.
Ask questions; find people who have been castrated and find out how they felt about themselves beforehand and afterwards. Are they happy? Would they do it again? How well do you relate to the feelings they had before they were castrated?
How long have you been thinking about it? How has the thinking changed over time? What makes the urge stronger?
Are you prepared for any stress/complications in obtaining your chosen hormone treatment?

I knew that erectile problems were a possibility, however, I almost exclusively bottom so erections are nice but unimportant to me. However, they are important to my husband and he was rather upset that I should risk something that he enjoys without involving him in the discussion.

This is difficult. Is it my body or not? Maybe it was just that he needed me to hear and acknowledge this feelings.

Castration itself didn’t make me feel depressed. Having a broken marriage that I had been the one to damage was the problem.

However, being without hormones made my already difficult to manage emotions much harder to cope with, which resulted in an overdose of sleeping pills. It was that which saw me prescribed antidepressants.

I believe that if castration is right for somebody, then depression isn’t very likely because the act of castration is an affirmative action.

And that’s the issue: how does one know whether castration is the right solution to a case of dysphoria? By taking to people, journalling, and meditating deeply on this very serious body modification.

And here’s my list of pros and cons!

Pros	Cons
My body will look how it feels it should be	Testosterone injections
I’ll feel better about myself	It’s an operation
I already feel like ending my life sometimes	No more chastity!
I’m at risk of self harming myself seriously	Risk of depression and suicidal thoughts
Comfy in tight jeans	No more bulge
I’ll be noticeably different	I love the smell of my nuts!
	Hormones can be chore especially if they are allowed to get low
	Artificial hormones don’t always work as well as real ones

That makes interesting reading!

Most of the pros are true, however, the absence of a scrotum isn’t immediately obvious! I do feel so much happier naked now!

On the cons side, I discovered Testavan gel since then, and so haven’t had to inject testosterone, however, I have to have regular blood tests because there are more risks with artificial testosterone (see here for some more info). Since I don’t like injections, I am not fond of blood tests either! That’s something for people to think about!

I don’t miss my bulge; actually, I the little guy is always pointing upwards these days because I got used to him being arranged that way after my surgery, so I do have a bulge, but its a little higher than of old.

I do miss the smell of my testicles! Sadly, since hubby and I aren’t being intimate very often, I am not able to breathe his manly aroma either.

Finally, on the pros and cons – I have been lucky that the artificial hormones work at least as well as the ones my body produced. I have to say that I have been extremely lucky in all of this, I am reading this a lot as a warning in the eunuch fora:

Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV)

Meaning that there are guarantees of getting the results you want from surgery or home replacement.

… there is, of course, the future: what works now, might not work in the future.

My list of “reasons not to be castrated”, as a bit short:

My husband is finding it stressful.
My husband likes my balls.
My husband is afraid I’m going to want a penectomy or breast removal.
I don’t want trouble with my hormones and to grow breasts or get fat.
I don’t want erectile dysfunction.

Most of the reasons are specific to my husband. I wasn’t very considerate of how he felt – I didn’t have the space to be. I wish that I had had the capacity to consider him more.

I haven’t grown breasts on my period without hormones, well, nothing to speak of! I am a little “curvier” than I was, although as I get back into exercise and the sweet-fatty cravings of the menopause are left behind, I am starting to regain a leaner frame.

The last one I covered above under the pros and cons.

Almost everybody I spoke to who had been castrated was extremely happy with the outcome, however, there was a small number of guy who were really very unhappy with the outcome and sought to dissuade me from pursuing surgery.

I had to listen to them: there were no guaranteed outcomes. Also, I am bright enough to know that the online communities serve as echo-chambers: you will only find happy people in them. Those who rock the boat (I suspect) are evicted for bringing the mood down.

Listening to the people who had negative feelings about their castration made me decide that I had to really embrace the identity – I became Eunuchorn.

If that’s a piece of advice I would like to pass on it is embrace the new aspect of your identity.

Hormone stress! Yes, I had to deal with the difficulties of getting referrals, getting rejected, bullying the GP to make the referral again, living with testosterone (ladies, you have my sympathy: the menopause sucks).

I would do it again. I might even go cold turkey from testosterone again one day, because there are aspects of being without that particular hormone that I rather enjoyed!

Never having children

This was never something that I was asked about!

I’m fifty at the time of writing and I had many years ago ruled out the possibility of having children.

Its not that I didn’t want them, but my husband had already had a brood and didn’t want any more, so I kind of adopted his.

Now I have nephews, and I can give them so much more love!

Children is an important question – if you are thinking about this kind of body-modification, you really have to consider this carefully.

I have some other posts from last year that I am going to review, but this the end of the Reflections a year on series.