Hi - this is my first post. Please be gentle!
By way of introduction, I'm 34yo genetically male, physically present hypermasculine, but feel intersex. I've never felt especially male (at most, like 30% male, at least 0% male), and over the past half decade I've realised I have a feminine part I can't ignore anymore - started small at 5%, but it's grown to be about 30%. Yes, that doesn't add up to a whole 100% single gender identity, but that's me. For a long time I repressed my emotions (all of them) due to childhood emotional trauma, and only in the last 12 years have I felt anything resembling what real humans do. I expect that given time, my feminine side might grow to 50%, and my male side will stay about the same.
One thing I've noticed is that my male side is my public side - it's an obvious one since my job involves lots of social interaction (I'm a professor of engineering). But only my personal private friends know my feminine side. It may seem obvious from a "hiding difference from the world" perspective, but to me it's as if there are two selves. My partner sees this with great clarity, as I will literally shift gears as soon as I'm out of the spotlight.
This poses me an issue, since as part of my "private gender" identity, I strongly desire SRS to that my own personal self is reflected by my body - for a long time I have felt like I needed and was missing a vagina and that my penis wasn't really... mine. But I don't care to tell the world - getting a vagina is just something "for me" and those who are inside my private sphere. I'm perfectly content to present as a male in public. Ie, I don't want to fully transition; I'm not a male, but I'm not a woman either.
Doing my homework, it seems that an SRS mtf variant exists where the testicles are not removed, but shifted up into the inguinal canal (where ovaries would be), so that testosterone continues to be produced, but the vagina is functional. Great! Just what I want... except my reading also seems to indicate that psychologists are not going to recommend for surgery unless "you can't live without it". Well... I can live with out it, I guess... but it's not me.
I worry that doctors will tell me I'm "not serious" because I'd like to keep my testicles (beats having to go to T HRT following orchidectomy of almost-perfectly-functioning testicles*, amirite?). There seems to be a tacit expectation that SRS is a capstone all-or-nothing procedure for people who are "committed". That said, I would happily get the orchidectomy too, if that's what it took.
How do I get lived experience when the only major alteration to my lifestyle will be sitting to pee?
I'd love thoughts on how to work through this.
-Kell
*Almost-perfectly-functioning because I suffer from testicular cysts that fill, burst and drain painfully every four weeks or so. It's like being kicking in the groin suddenly and then takes hours to stop aching. Surprise! Nature gave me a period, but not a vagina. "Oh nature, U so crazy!"
