A TO Z OF SEXUAL HISTORY: T - TRANSSEXUALS

The idea of someone stretching my clitoris into the simulacrum of an impotent penis sends a little contraction of horror through me. Equally, I'm guessing most men don't want to rehash their dick into a neo-vagina unless they're extraordinarily drawn to having a pussy. For around 100 people a year with extreme gender-dysphoria, the pain is worth it for the genitals of their dreams.

These days, sex changes are pretty effective as far as man-to-woman goes. Surgeons skin the penis much like pealing a banana, and use it to form the walls of the vagina--it's called penile inversion. The head of the penis is molded into a clitoris, the scrotum becomes the labia and the urethra is chopped down to girl size. The main problem with this type of surgery is the neo-vagina's tendency to obliterate itself. For months after surgery, something called a vaginal stent--basically a dildo--must be inserted daily to maintain depth and stop it from healing shut. Once sealed up it's near impossible to rebuild. Other complications include the development of a fistula, a hole between the vagina and rectum, which seeps turd all over the place. You can also make a vagina out of your colon, which being mucosal makes it soft and wet, but if this goes wrong it can leave you shitting into a bag for the rest of your life. However, a good surgeon can make a pussy that passes without raising the slightest suspicion.

There is evidence of men attempting to realize their vaginal desires since the Romans--see Emperor Elagabalus, who asked doctors to fashion him a vagina. The feminizing effects of castration were well known with early transsexuals removing penis, balls and scrotum. The earliest form of hormone replacement was drinking the urine of pregnant mares--mentioned by Ovid in the 1st century and said to be used by witches to turn men into women. Horse piss is in fact the source of the estrogen replacement drug Premarin developed in the 1940s.

In almost every culture throughout history there has been a community of men who take on the gender identity of women, like the Kathoey of Thailand now known as lady boys, the Hijras of India, and the Two-Spirit community found in most indigenous North American tribes. Among the Mohave the alyhas--male to female transsexuals who were often powerful shamans--would imitate the entire physiological existence of women. Their penis was called a clitoris, the testicles their labia, and their anus the vagina. One account from the 1930s by a man describing his alyha wife reads:

"You may play with the penis of your alyha when it is flaccid. I often did, saying 'Your cunnus is so nice and big and your pubic hair is nice and soft'. My alyha wife liked to be told about her cunnus. When alyha get an erection, it embarrasses them. They used to have erections when we had intercourse. Then I would put my arm around them and play with the erect penis, even though they hated it."

An alyha simulated menstruation by scratching her thighs until she bled, and, when she decided she was pregnant, would shit in the woods and ceremoniously bury her turd-baby as if it were stillborn.

Surgical options didn't develop until the 20th century. Originally they used skin grafts to make a vagina at the expense of pretty much all sensation. The idea of sex change as an option went mainstream after the case of Christine Jorgensen, born George, in 1952 who became an international celebrity when the headline, "Ex-GI Becomes Blond Beauty" hit America. But early neo-vaginas were pretty basic affairs until the late 1950s when a French plastic surgeon invented penile inversion. While men could get operations in Europe, in America transsexuals were considered to be psychotic deviants and were subjected to electro-shock therapy. Many such as Playboy bunny Aleshia Brevard, born Lee, self-castrated to stop the male hormones and to qualify for sex reassignment.

These days sex changes are offered on the NHS, (costing around £10,000), after it became a right in 1999 when the Appeal Court recognized that those who believed they were born into the wrong body were suffering from a legitimate illness. The amount of people seeking sex changes has tripled in the last eight years, with 853 men and 12 women undergoing the operation since 2000. An estimated 87 percent are thrilled with the results but for those that are misdiagnosed as transsexual it's pretty irreversible.

Some post-ops still feel their erections like a phantom limb and for those who had surgery prior to electrolysis, the hair from their scrotum will grow inside their vagina. Some even choose to remove their artificial vagina and enter into a genderless no man's land. I'll leave you with a tragic quote from Alan Finch, founder of the Gender Identity Awareness Association, who had male-to-female surgery at 21 and has since resumed his life as a man. "I have this little pouch, like a kangaroo has. They've made a little hole and they try to make out it's this really complicated, mysterious magical sort of life-transforming male-to-female surgery. But I've never been a woman, just Alan."

CAMERON KING