Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Hello , Im passable mtf transgender . Ive been on hormones for 8 months. Im very interested in these surgeons
1.Harrison Lee
2.Facial Team-Spain
3.DiMaggio
What im looking for is a surgeon who beautifies the face and balances other natural feautures with the surgically constructed results. Please feel free to give me advice,share your personal experiences.

I'm sure you'll get a lot of responses to your post but I'll just say you probably can't go wrong with any of those options. From all the posts/experiences I've read on this board, they're all among the best. Your list is ordered from most expensive to most affordable (Dr. DiMaggio is the most affordable of them even when you consider travel expenses). Facial Team has been getting pretty popular and they do transplants at the time of your ffs, which most other surgeons, if no others, do - that's unique to them. I've read Dr. Lee is fantastic with jaws - see Caitlyn Jenner. He did some really aggressive work on her jaw.

- Ruby

If you go to Facial Team do NOT allow Dr. Bellinga to touch you (rhinoplasty or lip lift)

I should have paid more and stayed local with Dr. Lee, but FT doing the transplant made me decide to go to Spain

Hi again Shoko,

I am sorry to hear that you have had a bad experience but I am happy with his work so far and so were all the other patients that I have met here in London and in Marbella who have had surgery with him.

Take care

Paula

Quote from: shoko on June 10, 2016, 01:38:59 PM
If you go to Facial Team do NOT allow Dr. Bellinga to touch you (rhinoplasty or lip lift)

I should have paid more and stayed local with Dr. Lee, but FT doing the transplant made me decide to go to Spain

Hiya

First FFS is very unlike GRS in that you can get a brilliant surgeon who had zero sense of style and beauty.

Facial team, Van de ven, Suporn, Cardenas, Kaushik, Spiegal etc all good but not in any way exhaustive!!

Now each face is unique and we are ethnically diverse in skin tone, skull shape, common flaws etc

Do bear thus in mind.

So first, contact minimum 10 surgeons with photos of your face from various angles.

Get their advice. If anyone says "you need everything" call b.s.!

Then pay to get your face mocked up in Photoshop and decide which procedures will give you the result you require.

Only then pick an FFS surgeon!! Check out reviews & if they can't produce enough proof skip them.

I contacted American, Mexican, South American, British, European, Indian  & far East.

Narrow down your top 3 then post on Susan's your choices to get opinions.

Good luck!

:)

Kindnesses
Victoria xx

I would have a hard time getting together a list of 10 names that I consider good enough to be contacted. Interestingly,  of the 4 I contacted (Di Maggio, van de Ven, Facial Team and van der Dussen), only di Maggio recommended "all", van der Dussen recommended almost all procedures, the other two were much more conservative and recommended one or two procedures and the rest was marked as optional

Quote from: MasterSifuVictoria on June 11, 2016, 01:40:39 AM
Facial team, Van de ven, Suporn, Cardenas, Kaushik, Spiegal etc all good but not in any way exhaustive!!

Check out reviews & if they can't produce enough proof skip them.

What do you mean with "not exhaustive!" ? - I do not understand. Do you mean there are more peopple that should be on that list or do you mean that there are surgeons doing better work than those in the list?

One issue I have with reviews - they seem to be so random. I had an eye on this for a while and for all surgeons there are many who are feeling great, are so glad they went there, are totally happy about it - and then there are some who say that they were botched and that the surgeon is no good, has not enough experience, charges too much money for what they do, had to do something three times before getting it right, has not enough training... I found it extremely hard to determine who is right. Its like choosing between 10 articles on Amazon who all have a 4.5 star rating with most people loving them but some people being utterly disappointed. Ok, maybe a bad comparison, but in a way thats how I see it. If I meet people in person, I am more confident that they tell at least their experience right, but that still leaves open if this is a proper reflection of the outcomes of that surgeon so far.

How did those here who have made a choice based on exhaustive information gathering rather than simply trusting some few people have found their best surgeon and how did you deal with the massive reports of good and some bad results?

I think there is only one way to know: meet them, interview them and get a feeling about them. I think trust is the most important aspect. Ask about their work, see if they are passionate about it, and how they feel about operating on a face. Try to understand how passionate they are. My SRS surgeon (virtually unknown) was incredibly passionate. When I asked him: why are you doing these kind of surgeries. He told me: he loved doing those, he enjoyed the complexity. Immediately he started to pull up pictures of him working on a SRS, closeup and the way he talked to me was fascinating, I saw his eye lit up. Then, and there, I knew he was the "one"  ;D I've picked him based on that. Not on reviews. He knew all techniques, and does something similar as suporn. Just a local SRS surgeon.

Another interview idea: ask them about something that isn't related to the surgery, like something specific about hormones he doesn't have to know. He should say: I don't know anything about that. This means that he is a specialist, and isn't some poser. Any scientist is hesitant to speak about something they don't know.

I think personal sympathy is not always a good judge. I know a number of patients who had SRS with a particular surgeon and are very sad they did this, but when they met that guy, they loved him because he was so kind, talkative, nice, enthusiastic about doing the surgeries - sadly his surgical skills were a gamble - he does some good results and a lot of bad ones. So I am careful about this.
Plus, it seems like a bit extreme to fly to the USA or Argentina from Europe several times to get face to face interviews with surgeons there.

When I stop and think about all the research into this that I've done, looking at surgeons, places or clients, I come back to someone I know who went through PAI. I think she is the best example of FFS I've seen anywhere. Her name's Warlockmaker on here and PAI did superb facial work.

What is PAI?

My list currently is Facialteam, Maggio, Spiegel, van der Dussen although I did not have a consultation with the last two of that list yet and had a consultation with van der Veen, who I have cut from the list, though. I also cut out Dr Zuchowski. I am undecided if I should add some new names to that list that I did not yet consider - DesChamps (who apparently is a bit secluded though, it's far from easy to get information, and maybe this Dr Lee, although I do not really think that his surgery on Jenner is that impressive - but then she had not the best face to start with - but generally I am a bit unimpressed by surgeons who mainly get their rep from doing surgeries on stars and starlets or who are claiming to be the worlds best...

I also considered Asia, mainly Suporn, but do not yet see if there is any advantage in that while some surgeons from asia seem to asianize the face a bit too much.

Interestingly the price range is huge - DiMaggio recommends "everything" because he sort of has a flatrate surgery, apparently - you pay a rather low price beloe 20000 EU and get as many of the standard procedures as you like. The top range in terms of finances seems to be DesChamps with the standard FFS procedures going well above $45000. I wonder if those price differences really are in any way representative of a different quality of work and if so in what way.

Speaking of this - what are the parameters to judge a surgeon? Usually people say its mostly about personal sympathy and trust for them, plus of course if the surgeon is willing and able to do the procedures one desires. But I find it hard to judge the quality of the surgery or the outcomes or the risks involved, since this information is not transported a lot. Some surgeons show pictures, this can give an impression, but usually there will be some impressive results in those portfolios and also some that seem to be too subtle of a change - the individual makes much of the difference, if its a very masculine face its harder to feminize, except if there is only one big masculine feature, in which case it may be easier to feminize this than a more androgynous-masculine face. And no one likes to talk about risks and few like to talk about details in the surgical procedures (plus most of us cannot really judge if this or that type of incision is better or worse). So I wonder how do I choose the best?

Quote from: anjaq on October 10, 2016, 06:24:45 AM
What is PAI?


I also considered Asia, mainly Suporn, but do not yet see if there is any advantage in that while some surgeons from asia seem to asianize the face a bit too much.

PAI: Preecha Aesthetic Institute http://pai.co.th

Dr Preecha trained pretty much everyone who is anyone in Thailand, including Dr Suporn.

Could you possibly be specific about what you mean re. Asianizing the face? I've seen results from there and thought they were stunning but I'm intrigued to know specifically what you would see as Asianizing tendencies?

x

I personally did not see this, I have it second hand from older texts from 2006 that at that time some of the asian FFS surgeons had a tendency towards asian aesthetics. I guess it is not an issue so much today and not with the higher priced and internationally known surgeons - and no one goes to one of these places that offer FFS for 2999,99$, right? ;)

PAI is high end, state of the art. They use Piyvate hospital for their major ops which is also superb. They have a steady stream of western clients, particularly I notice, eastern Europeans. I love the actual PAI clinic building: it's really lovely.

They're $15,000 compared to around $22,000 for the same op in Europe.

The best FFS surgeon for you is probably not the best for me.   There are so many factors that go into making a choice.  You have to identify your needs and order your priorities, then look for a surgeon who best matches them.

For example, I had fairly strong brow bossing.  I knew that a lot of bone had to be removed.  Getting a good feminine forehead contour was at the top of my list.  When discussing this with various surgeons during consultations I learned that some surgeons could not convince me that they could achieve my goal.  They all claimed they could, but the evidence was lacking.  I think we can assume that all surgeons post their most impressive results on their B&A galleries.  If I couldn't find at least one patient whose strong bossing was fully removed, I removed the surgeon from consideration.  If during a consultation, the surgeon couldn't/wouldn't explain how he/she would burr down my forehead without perforating the anterior wall of the frontal sinus and NOT use bone filler, I crossed that surgeon off my list (Zukowski, Leis, Weinzweig, Meltzer, and others).

I narrowed my list down in descending order of price:

DesChamps
Spiegel
Facial Team
DeMaggio

These four routinely do full forehead reconstruction where the frontal sinus anterior wall is cut out, the forehead burred, and the bone piece replaced and secured with titanium plates/screws.  I crossed off DeMaggio because he routinely fills the frontal sinus with bone filler which I did not feel comfortable with.

Choosing one of the remaining three came down to trust and price.  Dr. DesChamps is relatively new to FFS having taken over from retired Dr. Douglas Ousterhaut, and was the highest in price.  Dr. Spiegel is an ENT, not a certified plastic surgeon, performs his work in a teaching hospital, and I encountered too many complaints about aftercare, one from a personal friend who went to Spiegel.  The doctor never bothered to personally check on my friend after surgery.

Facial Team had many clear examples of beautiful forehead work on their website.  My consultation with Dr. Luis Capitan was thorough, his recommendations were consistent with an independent FFS assessment, and I didn't get any sense that they were cutting corners on the quality of care I would receive.  Finally, I got very positive report from a former patient who had similar work done by FT.

My point is everyone needs to go through their own personal selection process to find the best FFS surgeon for them.  Some girls want subtle, natural FFS work done; others want more aggressive modifications.  Some want to stay close to home while others are willing to travel far to have their work done.  No one should claim that one surgeon is the best for everyone. 

Very good points Clara.

My only advice - go to the one you think is the best don't settle for the cheapest. I committed the mistake of going to one famous but cheap one outside the USA but close ;) but I ended up redoing everything. More expensive in the long run and some damage has been done luckily can be corrected. I din't go to him because he was cheap I chose him because I was fooled by fake reviews or paid/ biased reviews from some girls. When I got there it was no where near as advertised... The surgery was done in a slaughter house like delapidated old hospital where the nurses does not practice aseptic technique, can't start IVs, do not understand or speak english and you'll have to give the nurses money for you to get care otherwise you'll be begging, yell all you want but no one will come to help you.....

Yikes, Miss Lux, that sounds awful. But I guess its hard to turn away and walk out once one is committed in that hospital and is afraid one would not get a refund if one cancels due to the state of the hospital...

Clara - that sounds like you had a good plan. I myself am honestly less clear in what I really want. I have no special feature that I need to fix - no extra strong masculine part that I need to check for if some of the surgeons can do it or not. I am androgynous and so basically I would need to find a surgeon that can work with that and is not just good at making very masculine faces more female, but one that can make an already androgynous and in some parts feminine face look absolutely female and beautiful ;) - ok, thats the maximum wishlist of course ;)
Most surgeons show cases of people with big bossing or strong jaws and all that - to show how good they can change that, but rarely I see pictures of people that start out more in the middle and if they add makeup in the pictures its even harder to tell how good the change really was.

Sadly it is hard to find independent sources. Even Alexandra who does the VFFS has a tendency to be in tune with FacialTeam, since they adhere to similar principles about facial feminization, which lead them to start working together. This is ok, but of course it also tends to result in Facialteam being usually the best match in respect to the procedures she suggest, because they just think about FFS the same way in terms of priorities and approaches. Still, her assessment matched that of the 4 consultations I had so far, so she will not tell you something that is not true, its not really a bias but more of a parallel thinking, I believe.

I am uncertain about the advantages or disadvantages of filling the frontal sinus - I wonder if filling it may actually be a good thing because of stability and also because one would not have to worry about sinusitis in that part anymore - but then again, I can imagine it also has downsides? Did you research about this?

Dr Spiegel being originally an ENT may actually be a plus, I just realized. So maybe I need to get a consultation with him, because my sinuses are always an issue - maybe he could resulve some functional issues alongside doing FFS - although this seems something other surgeons also claim to be doing.

So overall I am not sure if I want "more agressive" or "more subtle" work, because I am not sure what a modification of a face from androgynous to female would be considered - is it subtle because one has to change less - or is it more agressive because unloess you do more than just a bit, the change will not be noticed?

I personally also think that travel distance is a secondary issue - after all , one spends a lot of money and time for FFS - what is a bit longer flight or some more hotel costs in comparison...

Dear Ladies/ Dear Clara,
I wouldn't have crossed Di Maggio out on my list, for  a simple reason. He has recently been chosen at Mt Sinai NY as a member, I would say star surgeon, and one of the reasons is the results he obtains on forehead remodelling. As far as I know, only 5 to 10 % of the cases are filled for prevention, but in my case, 90% of my frontal sinus keep functional and without being filled, this is not part of his routine.
Good luck. Kind regards.

My take on this is that Dr Rossi, Di Maggio and Bart van der Ven do varying degrees of forehead reconstruction from dramatic (the former) to often less invasive but no less risky (the latter).

I'm sure places like PAI in Thailand do that kind of work too if you really need it but my impression, based on my own observations and research, is that they're much more open and honest about what the patient actually needs rather than forcing unnecessary procedures on everyone.

As I read it , Di Maggio was not off the list because of the sinus filling but for some other reason?
I think di Maggio does good work on the forehead, but when I look at pictures of his patients, Dr Spiegels patients and Facialteam patients, I see that it seems rather similar. In most cases they manage to smoothen out the forehead very well, fit the nose well to it - but all of them have some samples as well where they did not manage it so well, I have the impression it is mostly those faces that are having some very masculine features, so there are just limits to the technique, I suppose?

Regarding "unneccesary procedures" - In the end only oneself can determine that. If the goal is simply to "pass", some do not need any FFS or just forehead or some other part changed. But to make the face female in all aspects (for example in order to be able to see a female face in the mirror without anchor points to the previous maleness of it), maybe more procedures are needed.

I think DiMaggio is a fine FFS surgeon.  He was my second choice after Facial Team.  I mentioned his filling the frontal sinus cavity as the main reason for not selecting him, but there were other reasons.  One is that my communications with his office pointed to a potential language barrier problem.  One's patient coordinator should have good English language skills.  There was a lot of back and forth e-mails to clear up confusing statements.  Second, it became clear that Dr. DiMaggio is very meticulous in his work, but also quite slow.  I don't remember the hours I would have been on the operating table, but it was a couple of hours longer than what the other surgeon's customarily take for the same work. Seven hours under general anesthesia is about as long as I wanted to risk.  Finally, the flight to Buenos Aires was by far the longest and most expensive for the two of us which pretty much cancelled out the savings on the price he quoted for the FSS.

Ah - ok, I did not read that, apparently.

I also noticed the language issue - it took me 3 emails to clarify what procedures he really recommends and why, after I sent the photos. Also he had surgeries on the list that I clearly do not need, so he offered a trach shave and cheek implants as an option, even though those are my best feminine features - of course it was not in the list of strong recommendations but he had in in the list anyways - I suspect it was sort of a standard list. I would not want to rule him out from that , though. I know someone who was there and the result is great, but I also know that he takes long time - some had 2 days of 8 hour surgery each with him, which seems a bit too much, event hough they had a lot of things done.

One major difference about Facialteam is the coronal incision for the forehead work. It seems to me no one else does that and there is a debate about if this is a better or worse approach. This is sort of a deciding factor when going for Facialteam or not, in my opinion. I saw some post op pictures and met some patients from facialteam and hairline keeps being an issue for many, as the coronal incision raises the hairline even more and does not change it at all. So when going for that option, I think hair transplants are basically a requirement, which adds a significant amount to the price they charge for the surgery, evening out their otherwise lower prices. I am not totally decided about this yet, but as I see it, this is THE unique feature of FT - if one wants the coronal incision, one should probably choose FT as they do this all the time and are most experienced in it, if one does want a hairline incision, one should not choose FT as the rarely do it but rahter some of the others who do it routinely.

Lots of FFS surgeons do coronal incisions, however only FT does immediate hair transplants using FU harvested from strip of skin during coronal incision.

Quote from: anjaq on October 12, 2016, 04:15:04 AM
Ah - ok, I did not read that, apparently.

SNIP
One major difference about Facialteam is the coronal incision for the forehead work. It seems to me no one else does that and there is a debate about if this is a better or worse approach. This is sort of a deciding factor when going for Facialteam or not, in my opinion.
SNIP

I've been looking at FFS recently, and I've noticed that they have very few complaints about them. The only one I found is from Shoko here. Even when you ignore all the testimonials published by Facial Team there's still a lot of positive reviews. It seems like a very good record.

All that marketing does put me off, but I'm interested in spite of it.

The one "negative" I hear about them is that they are very conservative in what they will do. Along the lines of if you don't need it they won't do it, and they know best. Better than the surgeons who push you do do everything so they get paid more but I'd worry that its not enough.

What are the pros/cons of a coronal incision vs forehead?

Does it prevent your hair from growing where the incision is made..?

I guess one big pro is the scar is hidden. What else?

Well, at least those surgeons on top of my list - di Maggio, Spiegel, DesChamps, Suporn and slo the ones I have now basically cut off the list van de Veen and Zuchowski all seem to use hairline incisons... The main reason of course being that the hairline can then be modelled in the same step as forehead reconstruction. Which of the well known surgeons do use a coronal incision?

Quote from: AnonyMs on October 12, 2016, 07:12:23 AM
All that marketing does put me off, but I'm interested in spite of it.

The one "negative" I hear about them is that they are very conservative in what they will do. Along the lines of if you don't need it they won't do it, and they know best. Better than the surgeons who push you do do everything so they get paid more but I'd worry that its not enough.

Well, the Marketing is something a lot of the surgeons do. FT travel a lot and show up at a lot of conventions to sell their FFS, van de Veen travels a bit and does consultations wher eI also had the impression he was mostly trying to sell. DesChamps has a more "viral marketing" tactics in that he does not give email adress or makes online consultations, but spreads a bit the aura of being exclusive, di Maggio had sort of a flatrate marketing offer with one cheap price for all the procedures in the standard list, Zuchowski seems to be almost like a car salesman I was told by someone who had FFS with him - his webiste is also a bit of an agressive marketing... its all a big business to provide surgeries for us who so desparately want this.

FT seem to be a bit conservative in their suggestions compared to others - but its always a matter of how much one self wants to achieve. They told me I do not need anything at all if my goal is to be "passable". But they still said that I do have some slightly or moderately masculine features that they could change for me if I want this - its all optional though. So they will do it if I ask for it, others pressed more to do all of these things. Since the prioritization of the procedures and the list of procedures was the same in all surgeons and VFFS as well, I assume they judged it the same way, they just left it more to my own judgement, what I feel that I need and want and also they told me which parts are less risky. Also they had the simulation photos so I could see which of the changes I see more important. I actually liked that approach.
What I am not sure is, if they are also "too conservative" in their surgeries? Do they change the face less strongly than others would do?

Quote from: Ellement_of_Freedom on October 12, 2016, 07:28:34 AM
What are the pros/cons of a coronal incision vs forehead?

Does it prevent your hair from growing where the incision is made..?

I guess one big pro is the scar is hidden. What else?

So far I had the impression of the folloging:
coronal incision pro:
scar is hidden, less nerve damage as the main nerves are more to the front of the head, hair can be harvested to correct hairline by transplant (FT only?)
con:
no hairline rehaping with incision - need transplants, possible bald spots at the incision (needs transplants), hairline moves back a little, making the transplants almost non optional
hairline incision pro:
hairline remodelling at the same time as forehead surgery, hairline advance is possible
con:
possibly more nerve damage, visible scar at the hairline (needs transplants), strong limitation in amount of hairline advance (may need additional transplants)

Quote from: anjaq on October 12, 2016, 07:47:21 AM
Well, the Marketing is something a lot of the surgeons do.

I don't like it because it makes it difficult to work out if they are popular because they are good surgeons or good at marketing.

I don't know much about FFS but I spent a lot of time researching SRS, and for that I like Suporn partly because he's one of the most highly regarded SRS surgeons and does no marketing. There's other SRS surgeons that do a lot of marketing and I don't like their work at all. Its a lot of work trying to sort though it all. I'm not confident about Suporn for FFS because I can find so few reviews of his work, and that increases the risk.

What bugs me a lot is that next to direct marketing by FFS surgeons, which is to be expected of course, although it too does not help, nowadays a lot is done with "social marketing", so there are a lot of former patients around, or people who claim to be former patients or claim to have done a lot of research into FFS surgeons, who will promote a particular surgeon online - there are apparently few independent groups where everything can be discussed - the Yahoo group died, so here in the forum one can read, but its still a bit restriced as it is public, so its not a good idea to talk too negatively about a surgeon - and also even though I read a lot here, I find it very hard to decide on a surgeon, as the opinions differ widely and are often repeating the opinions of one surgeon or another.

Yes absolutely. There's a combination of:

- Imposters who work for the clinics either directly or indirectly as agents earning a commission

- People with an axe to grind

- The threat of legal action hanging like a sword of Damocles

- and finally genuine people who wish to share their experiences

It does make it very hard to sift out what is valuable insight and what isn't. I probably differ from you slightly Anjaq in that I am interested in personal experiences as long as I know the person is bona fide. In some ways I'm more impressed by that kind of thing than before and after images which clinics post up. It's too easy to manipulate those these days.

Well what I really would like to read is experiences of people who had the surgery and talk about it a year later when its all settled and one can for sure say that some complpication is gone instead of not mentioning a complication in the belief it surly is not an issue eventually. And I like real pre and post images that are not modified or tained too much with makeup. The ones at the surgeons presentations or website are of course somewhat cherrypicked and often I see that post op pictures are done with a different makeup than pre op (often pre op no makeup is used).
So I get the impression it is next to impossible to get an objective opinion and one has to accept some sort of diffuse feeling of many people speaking well of a surgeon, the surgeon giving an impression to be honest and professional in a consultation and not hearing too many bad stories by chance and then make a choice from that base, which is not objective and can be menipulated, but there is nothing else to use as a base for a decision.

I'm going to be in BA this week for a hair transplant with Dr Szyferman and was thinking it would be worthwhile having a chat with Dr Dimaggio re having a rhinoplasty on a future visit.

Can anyone give me rough indication of the possible cost prior to me speaking with him?

Thanks.

J

Great info here! Just to share a couple of very minor things.

* A transition friend had full FFS with Suporn and she had a truly gorgeous result. I don't know what type forehead she had. As I recall, he did the hairline scalp advancement technique.

* I had rhino and lip shortening with Dr. Suporn. In post-op recovery, I could see my lip was different but I could not see the incisions. Only some months later when I got a bit too much sun one day could I see the tiny incisions that curved up into my nostrils. He truly works skin like nobody's business!

* I was fortunate to have Dr. O for the full meal deal. Retired now, he was the facial bone master and anyone who attended gender conventions back when he was still practicing probably saw one of his presentations. He also did free consults — and honored his quoted prices even years later. I was passing and living "stealth" before but he changed my life. Now I don't see any hint of "him" in the mirror anymore.

Dr. O did scalp advancement technique. I did have numbness but feeling is mostly back now and still getting better years later. And when I had the numbness, it bothered me for a couple of days and then my proprioception seemed to grow accustomed to it. I can't comment on the other hairline techniques. I can say that I do not need plugs or transplants to cover any scar. (I suppose if I shaved my head there'd be something visible.)

Hope this helps.

Quote from: Amy Rachel on October 18, 2016, 10:28:05 AM
Great info here! Just to share a couple of very minor things.

* A transition friend had full FFS with Suporn and she had a truly gorgeous result. I don't know what type forehead she had. As I recall, he did the hairline scalp advancement technique.

* I had rhino and lip shortening with Dr. Suporn. In post-op recovery, I could see my lip was different but I could not see the incisions. Only some months later when I got a bit too much sun one day could I see the tiny incisions that curved up into my nostrils. He truly works skin like nobody's business!

I wonder why we hardly ever hear of his FFS results these days.. why do so many choose to go elsewhere?

Quote from: Ellement_of_Freedom on October 18, 2016, 08:40:15 PM
I wonder why we hardly ever hear of his FFS results these days.. why do so many choose to go elsewhere?

Perhaps because there are more options now. Perhaps because his SRS procedure itself can take 9 hours, which makes FFS a difficult choice for an oh-by-the-way add-on procedure. Perhaps because he's not the bargain he was decades ago. My sense is that in general the SRS surgeons are soft tissue surgeons. The best FFS surgeons master bone and cartilage work. Not many do both well, affordably, and in the same anesthesia session.

Quote from: Ellement_of_Freedom on October 18, 2016, 08:40:15 PM
I wonder why we hardly ever hear of his FFS results these days.. why do so many choose to go elsewhere?

I wonder that myself. I'd definitely choose him for SRS, but not at all confident about FFS. The lack of reports increase the risk for me, and I really don't like taking risks.

A friend of mine had partial FFS with him. She says it was great. But I guess his main focus is on SRS. I doubt it is advised to combine both in one surgery, but he seems to be an option for both procedures individually - I read very little about people going there for FFS alone though, I have not heard any negative reports about this.

Quote from: AnonyMs on October 19, 2016, 03:47:08 AM
I wonder that myself. I'd definitely choose him for SRS, but not at all confident about FFS. The lack of reports increase the risk for me, and I really don't like taking risks.

I'm in the exact same boat!

For me, facial surgery was more about erasing the old features that made me dysphoric in the mirror than anything else.  No one can tell you what you "need" -- not when it comes to dysphoria.  If something makes you dysphoric, well, there's your answer.

So I do recommend that if your face makes you dysphoric, even if you're passing, just get the whole thing done.  Because it's just so transformative.  It really does help to bring the "real" you forward.  And get it as radically feminine as your bones will allow, while still acknowledging that, given the overall configuration of your face, some aesthetics may "work" better than others. 

Here's something that isn't often talked about: our bones can limit the work available, particularly the jaw, because of how the facial nerve passes through it.  That entry point pretty much sets what contouring can be accomplished. Which can still be a lot, but not always as much as we'd like.  Likewise, some foreheads are very thin, and a shave isn't going to work -- it has to be removed and either broken up and rearranged, or replaced with filler.  None of this can be determined without X-rays.

Back when I transitioned, all I'd ever heard about was Dr O.  It was only when I met a few Meltzer patients in my local community that I even knew he was also doing facial work.  His early results were... not very impressive.  His later results, though... one girl, pretty young, was completely unclockable in her result.  I really liked and preferred his rhinoplasties and how naturally he'd get the nose to join the forehead.  Whereas Dr O's typical aesthetic was a kind of ski-slope that I found a bit too flat.  I do think I lucked out in going to Meltzer, as I got a great result even though it's not his forté.  But then, I was able to clearly articulate and delineate my exact aesthetic preferences, and he was able to match them -- it really does help when communication isn't an issue, and when you have your own well-researched opinion of what you really want.

I don't have any opinions on the current slate of surgeons -- it all looks very exciting, I'm seeing so many good results, all over the world.  Make sure you're going to a place with great aftercare, as recovery can be quite grueling.  More importantly, though, do your research.  Study your face, and figure out everything that isn't working for you on an emotional level, and figure out what it will take to correct.  Consider everything.  Go to your consultations knowing what it is that you want, and then it's a matter of seeing if they can deliver the goods, rather than being passive and being presented with emotionally uninformed recommendations that might not fully address your underlying issues.

And if you're young, understand that your youth helps to pass, and that while it's ultimately fleeting, you can always go back for FFS further down the road, when you've actually got, you know, money. 

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 20, 2016, 11:54:26 PM
And get it as radically feminine as your bones will allow, while still acknowledging that, given the overall configuration of your face, some aesthetics may "work" better than others. 

I am not so sure about this. Getting too much done seems to be awkward and some trans women who had FFS look a bit odd because if that, because either too much was changed and it just shows - or because the FFS can after all just change some of the facial features and it is not complete. Some features are not changeable with FFS and if you feminize those parts that can be changed to the max, but have other parts unchanged, it is a weird puzzle. I especially see this if people have a rather large and long head and get the usual things forehead, nose, chin, jaw done but the shape of the face overall is still a bit masculine - then there is a face with very delicate features that is shaped more like that of a woman who would have a bit less feminine features. There seems to be various priorities with different surgeons but of couorse in the end if the patient goes there and tells them to do the face as much feminine as they can, they would probably try to do so...
Why do you suggest this - do you think there is a bigger benefit of doing more radical work?

(Personally I am still undecided on how much I would want to change - its such a hard balance between looking like "me", looking natural, being as feminine as possible, risks of damage fro surgery,...)

QuoteGo to your consultations knowing what it is that you want, and then it's a matter of seeing if they can deliver the goods, rather than being passive and being presented with emotionally uninformed recommendations that might not fully address your underlying issues.

This is not always so easy to say. If you have some part that causes dysphoria - like your big jaw or the brow bossing, its easy. Sometimes the dysphoria is more diffuse in origin and maybe it also comes and goes - its sometimes sadly not so easy to pin it down.

QuoteAnd if you're young, understand that your youth helps to pass, and that while it's ultimately fleeting, you can always go back for FFS further down the road, when you've actually got, you know, money.

This is of course true, but I think if you have the means and you have some dysphoria over it, but think you can after all get away with it, because you pass well enough - it makes sense to think about the future and maybe its better to get it done then rather now than later and enjoy the benefits of it a few years earlier - if it is coming anyways. This for me is a big thought now. I transitioned at age 25 and passed well after 2 years or so. It started to get less good over the years and now at age 41 it still works ok, but I am still feeling dysphoric about it ins ome ways and I fear that at age 50 or 60 it will probably rather get worse, so I consider doing a FFS rather now than in 10 year - basically I tell mysefll now or never - I would hate to have to do FFS at age 55 and then curse myself over not doing it at age 41, getting rid of dysphoria much earlier.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 20, 2016, 11:54:26 PM
SNIP
Here's something that isn't often talked about: our bones can limit the work available, particularly the jaw, SNIP

Not just the jaw, frontal sinus anterior bone location also limits how much setback can occur.  This occurred with me, my eyes are still setback some.  However it is genetic, my sister and mother both have deep set eyes.

Quote from: anjaq on October 21, 2016, 02:51:16 AMI am not so sure about this. Getting too much done seems to be awkward and some trans women who had FFS look a bit odd because if that, because either too much was changed and it just shows - or because the FFS can after all just change some of the facial features and it is not complete. Some features are not changeable with FFS and if you feminize those parts that can be changed to the max, but have other parts unchanged, it is a weird puzzle. I especially see this if people have a rather large and long head and get the usual things forehead, nose, chin, jaw done but the shape of the face overall is still a bit masculine - then there is a face with very delicate features that is shaped more like that of a woman who would have a bit less feminine features.

Yes, actually, all good points.  What I was trying to convey is to go all out given the constraints of your face.  Now, I have a bit of a long face.  And due to the particulars of my mandible, only so much work could even be done there -- it is here I got as much as I could, as it was my weakest link.  This starting material subsequently informed how to approach the rest of my face.

My rhinoplasty, for example, was done with this in mind -- I now have a "straight nose" because that's the sort of nose that women with long faces tend to have (as opposed to the super-cute turn-up nose we often see on shorter faces) and it was likewise narrowed not as thin as possible, but in proportion, the most feminine proportion that would "work."  I had my forehead completely reshaped, as that's probably the most important facial feature in which people are read, but it's not like I have completely flat orbits -- again, that just wouldn't work given the starting material.  Likewise, I had a scalp advancement, but only in proportion to the rest of my face.

So when I say "radical" what I'm really getting at is a more esoteric understanding of that word -- of "getting to the root" or the "fundamentals."  Feminize every feature, with respect to the whole.  Which likewise means, leave no stone unturned, but I'm not recommending a piecemeal approach.

Think of it this way.  Our faces aren't atomized when people look at us.  The whole is seen, and everything works in concert. Now, if you change one feature, the worst feature -- say it's your brow bossing, which you get down to the root -- then what is the impact on everything else?  It probably makes sense to subsequently adjust your nose and how it joins up at the bridge.  And how does this confluence of features reflect on the lower portion of your face?  Remember, we can't really shorten the distance between the eyes and the mouth, so this informs how much we can shorten the chin -- though maybe it makes sense to taper it a bit, and round out the back of the mandible, and smooth down the line between the two.

QuoteWhy do you suggest this - do you think there is a bigger benefit of doing more radical work?

(Personally I am still undecided on how much I would want to change - its such a hard balance between looking like "me", looking natural, being as feminine as possible, risks of damage fro surgery,...)

Perhaps a better word is "comprehensive."  The reason is because of the effect it can have on identity.  After having everything done, I no longer kept "reading" myself in a way that would lead me to clocking myself.  There was a sense of "grace" that I could finally subconsciously bestow upon myself.  If I had left, for example, my chin undone, it would still have been a point of internal contention.

But then, I really needed every trace of "him" gone, because it was getting in the way of seeing "me" in the first place.  I struggled to identify "me" in the mirror, just couldn't see it until I had all this done.

The grace I could give myself subsequently made it much easier for everyone else to do the same. 

I've seen one result where the transitioner was too subtle, because they still wanted to look like "themselves" -- like, the jaw was still square, just a bit softer.  The brow bossing was still there, just softer.  And so her face still ended up looking kind of square and masculine, but more like an adolescent male rather than an older female.  The effect was androgyny, rather than full feminization.  Now, maybe that's the whole point for someone who identifies as androgynous, fair enough.  But she wasn't purposefully androgynous -- no, she was someone who was trying to hold on to as much of her previous life as she possibly could.  She just couldn't let go.

Your mileage may vary.

QuoteI transitioned at age 25 and passed well after 2 years or so. It started to get less good over the years and now at age 41 it still works ok, but I am still feeling dysphoric about it ins ome ways and I fear that at age 50 or 60 it will probably rather get worse, so I consider doing a FFS rather now than in 10 year - basically I tell mysefll now or never - I would hate to have to do FFS at age 55 and then curse myself over not doing it at age 41, getting rid of dysphoria much earlier.

By "young" I meant those in their early twenties, so yes, this is exactly what I mean.  Age is not kind to our faces, and what works in your twenties isn't quite all that in your thirties, let alone your forties.  You're entering middle age.  Do it now. 

A good friend of mine had facial surgery over twenty years after her transition; she was also middle aged by that time.  And for her, it was like lightning struck.  She lived pretty much stealth the entire time, so it's not like she "needed it" to pass; nonetheless, the world shifted after she got the works done.  It was like death and rebirth.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 21, 2016, 08:52:52 AM
Think of it this way.  Our faces aren't atomized when people look at us.  The whole is seen, and everything works in concert. Now, if you change one feature, the worst feature -- say it's your brow bossing, which you get down to the root -- then what is the impact on everything else?  It probably makes sense to subsequently adjust your nose and how it joins up at the bridge.  And how does this confluence of features reflect on the lower portion of your face?  Remember, we can't really shorten the distance between the eyes and the mouth, so this informs how much we can shorten the chin -- though maybe it makes sense to taper it a bit, and round out the back of the mandible, and smooth down the line between the two.

Perhaps a better word is "comprehensive."  The reason is because of the effect it can have on identity.  After having everything done, I no longer kept "reading" myself in a way that would lead me to clocking myself.  There was a sense of "grace" that I could finally subconsciously bestow upon myself.  If I had left, for example, my chin undone, it would still have been a point of internal contention.

This is rather difficult to evaluate and decide. I think one has largely to hope for the surgeons to make a good judgement over this? But I know that this seems not to be enough as I have seen some surgical results where I would see this effect - some part looks feminine and another part seems like it was looking androgynous before but now looked more masculine than the rest. How do you determine this - what really is needed. I tried to make a VFFS but honestly it is not helping a lot in that sense because all the changes are so subtle that its hard to see which parts are making sense...

Quotesult where the transitioner was too subtle, because they still wanted to look like "themselves"

This I do not really understand, I would hope to rather see "myself" more after such a surgery.

QuoteBy "young" I meant those in their early twenties, so yes, this is exactly what I mean.  Age is not kind to our faces, and what works in your twenties isn't quite all that in your thirties, let alone your forties.  You're entering middle age.  Do it now. 

A good friend of mine had facial surgery over twenty years after her transition; she was also middle aged by that time.  And for her, it was like lightning struck.  She lived pretty much stealth the entire time, so it's not like she "needed it" to pass; nonetheless, the world shifted after she got the works done.  It was like death and rebirth.

Wow ok - thats a strong suggestion in favour of doing it. This is what I think - I either have to do this now, even though even surgeons tell me I do not need it - or I have to forget it for good. Is this at all possible - to relly let go of this thought , once it has been there for a while?

I read the journals of Melanie Anne Phillips, she described something similar and also phrased it as sort of a deat and rebirth scenario (well more like purgatory and afterlife). I am fascinated that I read this now several times that people who had a good "passing" still did FFS and then experienced a huge change in how they feel and their personality. I am not sure if this would happen to me, but it sounds like something desireable for sure ... I had something similar with voice surgery - a sense of liberation and feeling more confident to express female impulses which I did not allow myself to do  before.

Did your friend write something about this experience as a blog or something? I would love to hear more on this, her situation seems to be similar to mine...

Quote from: anjaq on October 21, 2016, 02:13:28 PMThis is rather difficult to evaluate and decide. I think one has largely to hope for the surgeons to make a good judgement over this? But I know that this seems not to be enough as I have seen some surgical results where I would see this effect - some part looks feminine and another part seems like it was looking androgynous before but now looked more masculine than the rest. How do you determine this - what really is needed. I tried to make a VFFS but honestly it is not helping a lot in that sense because all the changes are so subtle that its hard to see which parts are making sense...

Well, yes, and this partly why we go to consultations.  But it doesn't hurt to do your own research.  Look at instructions on how to draw faces, for example, to get an idea of proportions. Or google the differences between male and female skulls.  Get your X-rays and CT scans taken, so you can see what you're actually dealing with. 

(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2F1.bp.blogspot.com%2F-cODhY93AGi8%2FUI_0MGhduKI%2FAAAAAAAAAAo%2FLYUaawO_ix8%2Fs1600%2Fblog3.jpg&hash=9832ed5f2e11ad63d373860b0ec82ea3a075938a)

See the dots in the chin?  Those are traversed by the facial nerves.  If you were to redraw that jaw, the new line must still be outside those dots.  And in the back corner of the mandible, sometimes it flares -- it may not be possible to completely cut it down, or you'll end up with an inverted corner cut out.  Nonetheless, the female chin is shorter proportionately than the male, not as wide, and doesn't drop down so far in the mandible, which itself takes a flatter angle, or rather a more direct line towards the mastoid process.

In these skulls, the male's brow bossing is a bit slight, but it's made more pronounced by the flat slope of the forehead.  Sometimes shaving down the bossing isn't enough -- the entire forehead must be reconstructed to produce the desired effect, because the top of it needs to come forward while the bottom needs to be set back, with a smooth transition between the two.  It's much easier to do this with a prosthetic than taking out the bone pieces, breaking them down, and putting them back together again.  Not to mention the fact that bridge of the nose is set further back in the female skull than in the male skull.

There's nothing that I know of that can be feasibly done with the bone between the nose and the upper teeth.  This is a hard limit, which will in turn determine the proportions of the chin and forehead. 

And all this is going to vary tremendously from skull to skull. 

Getting back to general proportions -- in most "attractive" women, for a frontal portrait, we typically see about the same vertical difference between the center of the eyes and the center of the mouth as we do from the eyes to the hairline, while the distance from the center of the mouth to the bottom of the chin is about 62%. 

Looking at your avatar, then, for example, we'd want to see the hairline advanced significantly (scalp advancement can take it down 1 inch, 1.5 inches at the very outside) while the mouth/chin distance probably only needs to be reduced by like 6%.  Roughly speaking.  I mean, 6% isn't going to make or break anything, but every little bit helps.

The chin itself needs to be tapered -- right now it's too wide and flat. There might be limits to what can be accomplished here, depending on the where the facial nerves are, and how flared the mandible is.  However, even just rounding down the shape of it is going to make it look more feminine. 

I can't tell about the brow, of course, because the picture is so blurred.  That's actually the most important, I think, because we are so drawn to looking each other in the eyes.  However, even here the shadows in the orbits would be lightened up, bringing out the eyes, I think. 

QuoteWow ok - thats a strong suggestion in favour of doing it. This is what I think - I either have to do this now, even though even surgeons tell me I do not need it - or I have to forget it for good. Is this at all possible - to relly let go of this thought , once it has been there for a while?

You know your face better than anyone.  You see it in the mirror every day, and I'd expect you have pictures of your profile as well.  Do you see what's actually going on in your bones, and knowing what you know, does it make you dypshoric? 

What I saw in myself made me dysphoric.  I passed okay before facial surgery, I didn't get clocked, but I could tell there was a slight subconscious disconnect in how other people were reading my face before realizing a woman was standing in front of them.  "You pass fine!" friends and family would say, and I wasn't getting clocked (it certainly helped to have an excellent voice), but after the facial surgery it really was a whole new world.  Because if I could discern, with conscious attention, those aspects of my face that went against the grain, so to speak, it's sure darn tootin' that the general public was picking up on it too, even if it was all subconsciously. 

And all that went away after facial surgery. 

QuoteDid your friend write something about this experience as a blog or something? I would love to hear more on this, her situation seems to be similar to mine...

I have no idea if she's around, or would share.  The way she put it to me, though, was that facial surgery was "the real sex reassignment."  Hopefully some others with similar experiences will chime in.

And of course, even "subtle" work is still radical surgery. It's expensive, and there are risks, and recovery is time-consuming and is often quite painful.  Expect to be out of commission for several weeks, and not quite right for at least a couple months.  Balance all that out with your dsyphoria.  As far as I'm concerned, it's that feeling that's always driven my own decisions about transitional work -- well, that and material reality. 

As always, your mileage may vary.  The hard part is really figuring out what you want.

Quote from: anjaq on October 21, 2016, 02:13:28 PM
This is rather difficult to evaluate and decide. I think one has largely to hope for the surgeons to make a good judgement over this? But I know that this seems not to be enough as I have seen some surgical results where I would see this effect - some part looks feminine and another part seems like it was looking androgynous before but now looked more masculine than the rest. How do you determine this - what really is needed.

Piping in again, I do think you have a very good point. Proportion and balance play into it.

People read faces in two major ways. One group reads overall shape, hair, structure and identifies the person. The other sees all the details of the eyes, the nose, the lips, but miss the overall structure. Ever see a man come in to work having shaved off his years-old beard and some people don't recognize him while others don't notice anything different? That's how all over the map people can be in seeing and recognizing people.

The best surgeons will understand this. I will talk about Dr. O because I consulted with him, and he's retired now so advocacy is not part of this. In his consults, he used measurements. For him, it was about measuring reference points on your face and identifying what would need to be done to bring your bone structure into the proportions that fit within the common female range of facial proportions. Knowing what to measure is key.

Growing up, I think many of us probably focused on our jaws as a center of horror. Especially during puberty. Too big, too square, too rough. But it turns out that while jaw is non-trivial in how people identify others, it does not weigh as heavily in the scale of things in how people gender others. The forehead, as it turns out, is a much bigger deal, and becomes all the more so as we age.

With an excellent surgeon, then, I'd suggest submitting to their full analysis, listen to their reasoning, research their results, and then go with the full deal. Fixing brow bossing alone may make the nose appear more masculine. Changing the nose may have no effect on gendering. Major jaw work with nothing else also could have little effect on gendering, just making a "strong" man's face into a weak-jawed-man's face—as others read it.

Also to note: The forehead is a complex area of the skull, with many variations of structure among us all. Dr. O classified them as Type I, II and III. Type I was solid and could be simply shaved down. Type III, on the other hand, has a hollow sinus cavity which can't just be ground down. You'd end up with a big dent in your forehead. The doctor in this case would carefully cut out a front plate, reduce the framing skull material, then re-set the front plate, thus retaining the integrity of the cavity. So be sure that your FFS surgeon is very expert in these areas. (Dr. O began his career working with children with extreme cleft palates and other severely disabling birth conditions, so his FFS work was really an outgrowth of that and based on a deep understanding of how facial bones should work together.)

One more comment about hairline: Don't obsess to much about a high hairline. Further back is another matter, but if you look at women around you every day, many have hairlines that seem to go halfway back across their skulls, and yet they look completely female. That's because of the bones underneath. On the other hand, sometimes you see a woman with very bold bone structure but the rest of her comportment, complexion, style, hair, etc. take her squarely into female gendering. It's a gestalt thing.

But I agree with the other comments. If you can have both, it can feel like a life reboot!

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 21, 2016, 06:06:34 PM
Well, yes, and this partly why we go to consultations.  But it doesn't hurt to do your own research.  Look at instructions on how to draw faces, for example, to get an idea of proportions. Or google the differences between male and female skulls.  Get your X-rays and CT scans taken, so you can see what you're actually dealing with. 
......
You know your face better than anyone.  You see it in the mirror every day, and I'd expect you have pictures of your profile as well.  Do you see what's actually going on in your bones, and knowing what you know, does it make you dypshoric? 

What I saw in myself made me dysphoric.  I passed okay before facial surgery, I didn't get clocked, but I could tell there was a slight subconscious disconnect in how other people were reading my face before realizing a woman was standing in front of them.  "You pass fine!" friends and family would say, and I wasn't getting clocked (it certainly helped to have an excellent voice), but after the facial surgery it really was a whole new world.  Because if I could discern, with conscious attention, those aspects of my face that went against the grain, so to speak, it's sure darn tootin' that the general public was picking up on it too, even if it was all subconsciously. 

....
The hard part is really figuring out what you want.

Indeed this is the hard part. You saw my real photos and why it is hard. Some of these things listed only apply slightly but of course they all do apply somewhat. And apparently to even change my forehead, most of the surgeons suggested taking it back with a type 3 surgery. Not sure why.
I sometimes feel that disconnect, that other people seem to think a bit - but it can also be paranoia. Same when I see myself - I feel it is not so good at times, that I look maleish - the next moment its gone - and then it comes back again...

I think with my face the question is less about how strongly it can be feminized because there are these hard limits - I doubt I would have to go to all those limits to get into a regular female range - but of course if I want to see change, I would have to go further than just that.

Quote from: Amy Rachel on October 21, 2016, 10:26:34 PM
With an excellent surgeon, then, I'd suggest submitting to their full analysis, listen to their reasoning, research their results, and then go with the full deal. Fixing brow bossing alone may make the nose appear more masculine. Changing the nose may have no effect on gendering. Major jaw work with nothing else also could have little effect on gendering, just making a "strong" man's face into a weak-jawed-man's face—as others read it.

Well so far the comments of the surgeons ranged from "you do not need FFS" to "your face is faminine but also somewhat masculine, but to remove the slight masculine features, we would have to work in all areas".
Some gave me a list and basically said I could choose, because all of it is optional. So that was not a tremendous help - lol

Quote from: anjaq on October 24, 2016, 01:24:49 PM
Indeed this is the hard part. You saw my real photos and why it is hard. Some of these things listed only apply slightly but of course they all do apply somewhat. And apparently to even change my forehead, most of the surgeons suggested taking it back with a type 3 surgery. Not sure why.

Perhaps the bone itself is quite thin, in which case you can't just shave it down, you have to take it out and either break it down and put it back together, or replace it with a prosthetic.  If you want the most dramatic change, Type 3 revision is the way to go.

QuoteWell so far the comments of the surgeons ranged from "you do not need FFS" to "your face is faminine but also somewhat masculine, but to remove the slight masculine features, we would have to work in all areas".

Yeah, it would have to be all or nothing with what you have.

QuoteI sometimes feel that disconnect, that other people seem to think a bit - but it can also be paranoia. Same when I see myself - I feel it is not so good at times, that I look maleish - the next moment its gone - and then it comes back again...

The ghost in the mirror.

Here's a question -- how much has this feeling grown, if any, in the past five years?

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 25, 2016, 09:57:50 PM
Perhaps the bone itself is quite thin, in which case you can't just shave it down, you have to take it out and either break it down and put it back together, or replace it with a prosthetic.  If you want the most dramatic change, Type 3 revision is the way to go.

So far I only have limited X-rays and the surgeons decided this more on experience, I guess. One surgeon said they basically always assume a type 3 since the other methods are rarely enough.

QuoteYeah, it would have to be all or nothing with what you have.

This kind of sucks as it is a lot of surgery for subtle changes in all these areas.

QuoteThe ghost in the mirror.
Here's a question -- how much has this feeling grown, if any, in the past five years?

Yeah - its a bit ghostly... which makes me often think that its more in my head - since the feedback of others is that they see nothing therelike. So the ghost is possibly only haunting me and maybe I need a ghostbuster or a therapist or something that gets this feeling out of my head.

In the past 5 year this improved, actually. I have radically changed my hormone therapy and its working much better now and I lost 30 kilos. Also after the voice surgery my confidence level went up and this also changed my perception. But since these changes, things stayed about the same.

Quote from: anjaq on October 26, 2016, 05:23:25 AM
This kind of sucks as it is a lot of surgery for subtle changes in all these areas.

I don't think the forehead/nose would be all that subtle, though, because of how much it would bring out your eyes. In your 3/4 shot, for example, your far eye would not be occluded by the bridge of your nose. 

QuoteYeah - its a bit ghostly... which makes me often think that its more in my head - since the feedback of others is that they see nothing therelike. So the ghost is possibly only haunting me and maybe I need a ghostbuster or a therapist or something that gets this feeling out of my head.

Your ghost is only visible -- and barely, at that -- when I was actively looking for it, and even then only at certain angles. (Another reason for non-disclosure, of course, people look for the ghost because of that narrative.)

So, if I had to look for it to see it... is it possible that you yourself are looking for it?  And if so... why?

Yes, this is probably something I do - for some reason, maybe because of being too self-conscious or not enough slef confident or anxiety - I may subconsciously look for it. I know that I will sometimes check my face to see if it is looking good or not and then this happens. Of course if I do not look at my face I will not think so much about it. If I see my face, there is always an  impulse to see how it looks like and then I often get this stupid dysphoric feeling...

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 21, 2016, 06:06:34 PM
Or google the differences between male and female skulls. 

Some male skulls and some female ones.

They are not absolutes and there are many cis males with more so-called female shapes and vice versa.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 27, 2016, 04:50:54 AM
Some male skulls and some female ones.

They are not absolutes and there are many cis males with more so-called female shapes and vice versa.

I'm not speaking in absolutes, but in generalizations -- because it's the general case from which categories are constructed (automatically, subconsciously) in the first place.  In other words, there's a spectrum, with two different bell curves, and we want to get on the right curve (and the right side of that curve) if at all possible. Especially if there are other non-correctable obstacles in consideration.

And of course, those generalizations will shift from one population to another.  A typical male Asian skull might fall closer to the female European distribution -- which plays well in Europe, but not so well in Korea. 

Again, my concern is always about eliminating dysphoria, which is caused by misgendering from self and others.

Quote from: anjaq on October 26, 2016, 08:43:17 AMYes, this is probably something I do - for some reason, maybe because of being too self-conscious or not enough slef confident or anxiety - I may subconsciously look for it. I know that I will sometimes check my face to see if it is looking good or not and then this happens. Of course if I do not look at my face I will not think so much about it. If I see my face, there is always an impulse to see how it looks like and then I often get this stupid dysphoric feeling...

How do you feel about doing this to yourself for the next ten years?

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 27, 2016, 08:16:39 AM
I'm not speaking in absolutes, but in generalizations -- because it's the general case from which categories are constructed (automatically, subconsciously) in the first place. 

Not forgetting the constructions and, indeed, reconstructions on this topic made by surgeons like Dr Ousterhout who then, surprise surprise, made an absolute packet out of the grand theory.

I've no doubt heavy engineering can help with some people greatly and that's fabulous. But much more can be achieved through hormones and skin and muscle lifts than people give credit for, as they know full well in Thailand which has the most beautiful MtF's I've ever seen without ever having skull reconstruction. And I'm not speaking solely of Asians either.

yours a slight sceptic ;)

x

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 27, 2016, 08:16:39 AM
How do you feel about doing this to yourself for the next ten years?

:embarrassed:
Not fun, no. I wonder if I can stop doing this to myself without something radical as surgery. If its only in my head, maybe I can somehow cure it in my head, I hoped.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 27, 2016, 08:24:11 AM
I've no doubt heavy engineering can help with some people greatly and that's fabulous. But much more can be achieved through hormones and skin and muscle lifts than people give credit for, as they know full well in Thailand which has the most beautiful MtF's I've ever seen without ever having skull reconstruction. And I'm not speaking solely of Asians either.

Hormones are bascially a mus - I would never want to be without them. Soft tissue work to feminize a face is limited though, in my opinion. It may work in some people, but I think it is time limited - so it will fade with time, and some of it basically is beautification and since beauty is considered female, it works. I believe the reasons why there are so many well looking Thai Trans women are different ones. First of all, many Thai trans women have access to hormones at a very young age, so they feminize more, this will get better in western countries in the future, I hope. Then, a lot of the depictions of thai trans women are about women in their 20ies or 30ies. In that age, I did not worry so much about my face, i was feminine looking - its the age that gets you eventually. Also I believe the trouble trans women in thailand endure may be different. The are nor per se shunned and bullied by everyone, maybe they will not get so much hardened, which also changes the looks of the face. Instead they may have to endure being a sex worker to py for surgery, but this leaves a different effect on the face, possibly...

I guess its all different factors - bones, muscles, soft tissue, fat, style, hormones - sometimes it is enough to have some, sometimes it is not. In my case it is enough without bone work - enough to "pass" and live normally without being bullied or bothered. Not quite enough to be happy about myself, but that is a question I will have to answer to myself - if this justifies a big surgery. I bet a majority of trans women in the west would trade my looks with theirs immediately because of that "passing privilege". They call me crazy for even considering doing any surgery (except mabe if I really want to I could get my nose done or some lipo).

But I am curious - what procedures do you think are so effective and common in Thailand that make the Thai trans women look more feminine while avoiding bone work? Maybe those can be an option to push things far enough for me to not need bone work.

Quote from: anjaq on October 27, 2016, 01:49:46 PMI wonder if I can stop doing this to myself without something radical as surgery. If its only in my head, maybe I can somehow cure it in my head, I hoped.

If we had that power, we never would have needed to transition in the first place.

QuoteI guess its all different factors - bones, muscles, soft tissue, fat, style, hormones - sometimes it is enough to have some, sometimes it is not. In my case it is enough without bone work - enough to "pass" and live normally without being bullied or bothered. Not quite enough to be happy about myself, but that is a question I will have to answer to myself - if this justifies a big surgery. I bet a majority of trans women in the west would trade my looks with theirs immediately because of that "passing privilege". They call me crazy for even considering doing any surgery (except mabe if I really want to I could get my nose done or some lipo).

They called us crazy for transitioning, too.

Anja, have you ever considered the fact that you were always female?  That what you see in your face is not a reflection of "him" -- because there never was a "him."  Perhaps what you see is not a ghost, but the memory of a false persona that you constructed to survive, until you could do what you had to do to simply be yourself.  Perhaps that image is a reminder of your strength, and courage, and resiliency, and what you really need to do is let go of the past, or at the very least to reconfigure it.  That there's a different story here.

Or maybe you're Ripley in the escape pod, and there's an alien that needs to be ejected out the airlock. 

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 27, 2016, 03:47:14 PM
If we had that power, we never would have needed to transition in the first place.

Well I am not sure of that - Its a different magnitude. The dysphoria about th whole thing back then was massive - now the dysphoria about the face is more a nuisance than that big life threatening matter ...
And if FFS would not exist, I would probably be able to deal with it. Just as I have to deal with having wide shoulders and short legs and other things that I do not like about my body

Quote
Anja, have you ever considered the fact that you were always female?  That what you see in your face is not a reflection of "him" -- because there never was a "him."  Perhaps what you see is not a ghost, but the memory of a false persona that you constructed to survive, until you could do what you had to do to simply be yourself.  Perhaps that image is a reminder of your strength, and courage, and resiliency, and what you really need to do is let go of the past, or at the very least to reconfigure it.  That there's a different story here.

Or maybe you're Ripley in the escape pod, and there's an alien that needs to be ejected out the airlock.

Well I must say it does not even remind me of some "him". I see old pictures and feel nothing - I feel like its not me in that picture even if I know I was there. Its something else - I think its not "him" its maybe "it" - the "transwoman" I may often have considered myself to be after transition. You know - I knew I was a woman but being mean to myself I considered myself to be a second class woman. And my face was one of these things that made me see myself as second class because of the masculine elements in it.

I am not sure I get the Alien metaphor though, although I like the movies a lot ;)

Quote from: anjaq on October 27, 2016, 01:49:46 PM
I believe the reasons why there are so many well looking Thai Trans women are different ones. First of all, many Thai trans women have access to hormones at a very young age, so they feminize more, this will get better in western countries in the future, I hope. Then, a lot of the depictions of thai trans women are about women in their 20ies or 30ies. In that age, I did not worry so much about my face, i was feminine looking - its the age that gets you eventually. Also I believe the trouble trans women in thailand endure may be different. The are nor per se shunned and bullied by everyone, maybe they will not get so much hardened, which also changes the looks of the face. Instead they may have to endure being a sex worker to py for surgery, but this leaves a different effect on the face, possibly...

Good points Anjaq

Quote from: anjaq on October 27, 2016, 01:49:46 PM

But I am curious - what procedures do you think are so effective and common in Thailand that make the Thai trans women look more feminine while avoiding bone work? Maybe those can be an option to push things far enough for me to not need bone work.

They do a lot with lifts: brows, full facial. But they also do work like soft implants into the upper forehead. Warlockmaker explained it to me: in effect it produces the same or similar feminine female contouring as the heaving grinding beloved by some western surgeons without any of that invasive work. They do similar implant work on cheeks.

By the way, re the Thai kathoeys and hormones I've had many conversations with them and have been surprised at how many say they no longer take hormones, or only occasionally. The reason is that they have achieved a lot of feminisation and do the rest with makeup, at which they are absolutely brilliant. See, I think that touches on a big difference. Do we want to be female or look female? An over-reliance on makeup to achieve our ends means it can be a bit of a shock in front of the mirror late at night with those wipes. On the other hand, I guarantee that every cis woman on the planet over the age of 40 has the same issue.

I think I'm just feeling that for some MtF's there may be a different, less invasive, means to achieve at least the same ends as those angle grinding machines.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 28, 2016, 01:55:52 AM
They do a lot with lifts: brows, full facial. But they also do work like soft implants into the upper forehead. Warlockmaker explained it to me: in effect it produces the same or similar feminine female contouring as the heaving grinding beloved by some western surgeons without any of that invasive work. They do similar implant work on cheeks.

Well but soft Implants are not really a permanent solution, are they? They can get old and they can shift or if the skin around it shrivels and get sold, one can see the implants, like one can see my breast implant now that I have aged a bit... then you get those older trans women who look like it because one can see they had "work done".

QuoteBy the way, re the Thai kathoeys and hormones I've had many conversations with them and have been surprised at how many say they no longer take hormones, or only occasionally. The reason is that they have achieved a lot of feminisation and do the rest with makeup, at which they are absolutely brilliant. See, I think that touches on a big difference. Do we want to be female or look female? An over-reliance on makeup to achieve our ends means it can be a bit of a shock in front of the mirror late at night with those wipes.

Well "Kathoeys" are not the same as transsexual women. It is maybe more something like "trans" - an umbrella that even includes feminine gay men in Thailand, as far as I know. For me, having to use Makeup to appear female but knowing that underneath it is not so, and seeing this in the evening causes dysphoria. If this is not happening because the main dysphoria would come from being seen as male by others - well, different story.
If I would learn how to do good makeup - somethin I did not learn in my past 18 years since transitioning - I am sure I could make my face very feminine with it. But it would not change much for me, I guess, since the "ghost" strikes more often in the bathroom at home when there is no makeup involved anyways.

Regarding hormones - of course if you start hormones as a teenager and keep taking them until puberty is over, not taking them afterwards will do less damage and only slowly reverse the effect over years. Especially if there was an orchie involved or the hormones have done that, no testosterone will do harm, then this can go well for years. I am not sure what the life expectancy of kathoeys in Thailand is - One rarely sees images of elderly kathoeys....

I never wear makeup anymore.  Makes me feel fake.

Quote from: anjaq on October 27, 2016, 04:43:39 PMAnd if FFS would not exist, I would probably be able to deal with it. Just as I have to deal with having wide shoulders and short legs and other things that I do not like about my body

Just because we can deal with, given no alternatives, doesn't me we should deal with it, given alternatives.

If there was a pill that cost $100,000 that would change nothing, except for rewriting my DNA, I'd take it.  If there were surgeries that would effectively make me proportionately smaller, I'd get them.  Something to reduce the breadth of my shoulders?  Absolutely.

No, these things don't bother me, and don't get in the way of living a woman's life.  But they'd still make me more comfortable.

QuoteIts something else - I think its not "him" its maybe "it" - the "transwoman" I may often have considered myself to be after transition. You know - I knew I was a woman but being mean to myself I considered myself to be a second class woman. And my face was one of these things that made me see myself as second class because of the masculine elements in it.

I am not sure I get the Alien metaphor though, although I like the movies a lot ;)

The Alien in your particular context is the "transwoman," while you are Ripley, simply a woman.  At the end of the original movie, Ripley escapes in her escape pod, but the Alien has stowed away on board, lurking in the shadows.  She has to figure out how to eject the Alien out of the airlock before she can truly sleep.

This is a post-transition metaphor -- the denouement after escaping the Nostromo.

Personally, and this is just my view, use of the term Alien is as inappropriate as it is unrealistic.

I've never believed this idea that the 'me' that was Richard was not me, or in some way didn't exist. That way lies delusion.

Cis women use makeup and, given half the chance, many would have facelifts and botox etc. Beautification is not something unique to MtF's and, again, I think it's unrealistic to think otherwise. There's nothing 'fake' about this. It actually plays into the very thing you are seeking to avoid. All human beings are somewhere on a continuum of maleness and femaleness. I consider myself a woman and like most every other woman on the planet I enhance my appearance by using makeup. It's not an issue for me. The idea that that is fake is as absurd as suggesting I shouldn't wear beautiful female clothes to look good.

Anjaq, kathoeys is a very broad term as you know, encompassing both pre-op transsexuals and post-op transwomen and women. I've talked to many many of them down the years and it's a massive umbrella term. By no means all, by the way, are involved in the sex industry either. I've quizzed people on this and had figures from 10-25%. Certainly a great many kathoeys have nothing to do with that industry. I think we need to be careful not to impose western categorisations like transsexualism on a long-established Asian tradition. That way lies what Edward Said called 'orientalism.'

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 28, 2016, 01:55:52 AM
Good points Anjaq

They do a lot with lifts: brows, full facial. But they also do work like soft implants into the upper forehead. Warlockmaker explained it to me: in effect it produces the same or similar feminine female contouring as the heaving grinding beloved by some western surgeons without any of that invasive work. They do similar implant work on cheeks.

You have been pretty harsh in your characterization of western surgeons who do bone work.  Essentially accusing Dr. O of running a "racket" or something similar for doing forehead remodeling of the bone structure.

Consider this: Most good facial surgeons, that actually know how to also do both implants and bone work  ---   will tell you that implants are a distant poor 2nd choice to doing bone work.  Lots of negatives associated with implants.  There is a significant rate of short and long term infections associated with implants.   Often you have to end up taking antibiotics before (and after) every trip to see the dentist,  to protect against blood born infection locating in /around the implant(s).   Often the ONLY treatment for an implant infection is to remove the implant.   

Then what ?  Do that again ?    Isn't that the definition of insanity?   What are you going to tell your co-workers when you show up for work - - 10 days after the implant removal?

Aesthetically,  part of the reason for doing the type III foreheads is because the eyes are set so deeply in most western men - - compared to females - -  that adding forehead implants to mask the brow ridge does nothing to change the gender marker associated with the deep set eyes.  In many instances, a camafloge implant above the brow may make that marker more significant.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 28, 2016, 08:48:20 AMPersonally, and this is just my view, use of the term Alien is as inappropriate as it is unrealistic.

I've never believed this idea that the 'me' that was Richard was not me, or in some way didn't exist. That way lies delusion.

And if that's your truth, more power to you.  I'm not saying you should change your truth.  If that's your truth, then of course you should embrace it.

What I'm saying is that not everyone who comes down this road has the same truth.  For me, the constructed persona of the past was a lie, and the temporary persona of transition was, well, temporary, and discarded once I no longer needed it.  Both were tools necessary for survival, nothing more.

As for metaphors, well, of course they're unrealistic -- they're fictions.  But they can certainly help to put a different perspective on things.  That's the thing about fiction in general -- sometimes a fictional story (whether it's pretending to be "realistic" or engages in high fantasy) can get closer to the truth than a purported "history" which refuses to acknowledge its own fictionality.  Yes, history is also fiction -- not only because it's impossible to capture all the events that have happened with perfect accuracy, but more importantly because the past no longer exists.  And not to mention the fact that it can never partake of one's "spiritual" understanding.

In the end, what's really inappropriate is imposing our own truths on other people, simply because we've come down the same road.  But of course, there will be many people who share a similar truth, and can walk together.  I'm hoping to find people who can see a fork in the road, and let them know that others have come down this (now) less-trodden path, as someone helped me to realize so many years ago. 

Some paths are a one-way-street down which you can never go back, which would be melancholic if it was never your path in the first place, and you only took that route because you missed the fork in the road.

QuoteCis women use makeup and, given half the chance, many would have facelifts and botox etc. Beautification is not something unique to MtF's and, again, I think it's unrealistic to think otherwise. There's nothing 'fake' about this. It actually plays into the very thing you are seeking to avoid.

Again, I was speaking personally, not generally let alone universally.  I'm a hippie chick -- of course I eschew makeup (and I don't eat meat, either).  My mom, on the other hand, doesn't feel like she's truly herself until she's put on her face.  I completely respect her feelings for herself on the matter, and I certainly don't think she is fake for her makeup rituals.  On the contrary.

What I really like about not wearing makeup (aside from the time and money I save, and my concerns about animal testing and environmental impact) is waking up in the morning, rolling out of bed with my groggy lover, padding over to the bathroom, and seeing my true face in the mirror right from the very start.  Whether I'm sick, or hung over, or sore and aching from the previous night's activities, what have you.  There's no haunting.  The Alien has been kicked out of the airlock.  I feel so free.

Quote from: oneoftwo on October 28, 2016, 09:55:12 AM
You have been pretty harsh in your characterization of western surgeons who do bone work.  Essentially accusing Dr. O of running a "racket" or something similar for doing forehead remodeling of the bone structure.

Consider this: Most good facial surgeons, that actually know how to also do both implants and bone work  ---   will tell you that implants are a distant poor 2nd choice to doing bone work.  Lots of negatives associated with implants.  There is a significant rate of short and long term infections associated with implants.   Often you have to end up taking antibiotics before (and after) every trip to see the dentist,  to protect against blood born infection locating in /around the implant(s).   Often the ONLY treatment for an implant infection is to remove the implant.   

Then what ?  Do that again ?    Isn't that the definition of insanity?   What are you going to tell your co-workers when you show up for work - - 10 days after the implant removal?

Aesthetically,  part of the reason for doing the type III foreheads is because the eyes are set so deeply in most western men - - compared to females - -  that adding forehead implants to mask the brow ridge does nothing to change the gender marker associated with the deep set eyes.  In many instances, a camafloge implant above the brow may make that marker more significant.

Back when Andrea James was getting the word out on facial surgery -- the radical bone work necessary for so many European women, at least -- she got a lot of flack.  Some objected to the whole notion of trying to look female, as opposed to visibly transgendered, either out of a sense of "you're not really a woman" or from their own insecurities -- because it's expensive and hence out of reach for so many.  Or because different choices were made, and those choices needed to be justified.  And of course, some never needed it in the first place -- at least, not to be gendered correctly. 

The thing about this kind of facial surgery is that it isn't additive -- it is taking material away.  Which is literally a "letting go," certainly a scary approach for some people who are so used to "holding on."  And hey, if you want to hold on, I won't stop you.  If you want to add on, if that's what you need, so be it.  For me at least, the path has always been about letting go, along with a lot of refinement and rebuilding.  For me, it's been about death and rebirth, which is why I like spiritual metaphors so much (though I'm actually a materialist, how ironic). 

But I continue to stand in my materialism.  Changing my body has changed my interiority, and the most radical changes have had the most profound effects on my spiritual well-being, though it's always been my spirit in the driver's seat.  The body and the spirit are not separate, I believe.  But that's just me.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 28, 2016, 07:53:06 AM
Just because we can deal with, given no alternatives, doesn't me we should deal with it, given alternatives.

If there was a pill that cost $100,000 that would change nothing, except for rewriting my DNA, I'd take it.  If there were surgeries that would effectively make me proportionately smaller, I'd get them.  Something to reduce the breadth of my shoulders?  Absolutely.

Yes - I understand. And this is why those surgeries are in my head now. voice surgery was a no-go when I transitioned. The option simply was not viable, so I never really thought of it and it worked ok. Yet now I wanted this because it was possible now. FFS is similar - it was a rumour back then and now it exists and is widespread, so it has become an option. All that keeps me from doing it, and the same is true for potential future surgeries to shape body proportions or shoulders, is what the risks involved are. I am not a good risk-taker. I took risks when I had GRS and BA and both time I was hit in the face for it, so I have become very careful with surgeries... I think actually I would not change my DNA - unless it would mean that my body would also change. The DNA does nothing in respect to my gender now.

QuoteThe Alien in your particular context is the "transwoman," while you are Ripley, simply a woman.

Ok, yes I get that now. Indeed - Melanie Phillips described it as "deleting the parts of the personality that came to be in transition or before and are no longer needed and reboot those systems from the built in ROM memory" - more of a computer analogy, but similar in the content.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 28, 2016, 08:48:20 AM
Cis women use makeup and, given half the chance, many would have facelifts and botox etc.

Particular women yes. Asian and US women, maybe. European women are very critical about plastic surgery...and many even are not using a lot of makeup. But of course makeup is used a lot.

QuoteAnjaq, kathoeys is a very broad term as you know, encompassing both pre-op transsexuals and post-op transwomen and women. I've talked to many many of them down the years and it's a massive umbrella term. By no means all, by the way, are involved in the sex industry either. I've quizzed people on this and had figures from 10-25%. Certainly a great many kathoeys have nothing to do with that industry. I think we need to be careful not to impose western categorisations like transsexualism on a long-established Asian tradition. That way lies what Edward Said called 'orientalism.'

This is not what I wanted to imply. I said kathoey is maybe closest to what the term "trans" means now - a group of rather different people who have some sorts of gender and sex issue. And of course that does not really match either. Just saying that for many of them , just as in the west, hormones, genital surgeries and such is not a desire. And the 10-25% sex workers is still much higher percentage than in Europe. Just wanted to say that there are different situations here and there leading to different desires and paths in life regarding the gender expressions

Quote from: oneoftwo on October 28, 2016, 09:55:12 AM
Aesthetically,  part of the reason for doing the type III foreheads is because the eyes are set so deeply in most western men - - compared to females - -  that adding forehead implants to mask the brow ridge does nothing to change the gender marker associated with the deep set eyes.  In many instances, a camafloge implant above the brow may make that marker more significant.

Yes - they do have this, I believe "type II forehead" where they use fillers instead of shaving much of the bone. But it tends to look odd. In my case this would be useless since my problem is not at all a brow ridge - I have none, basically - it is the deep set eyes that give me a bit of an angry/mean/dark look. Maybe a brow lift or a eyelid surgery could change that as well but that would be temporary

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 28, 2016, 10:18:14 AM
Again, I was speaking personally, not generally let alone universally.  I'm a hippie chick -- of course I eschew makeup (and I don't eat meat, either).  My mom, on the other hand, doesn't feel like she's truly herself until she's put on her face. 

I guess I am in the middle - on many days I do not use makeup at all - I also like to be camping or diving or hiking and thats not a place for makeup. But when I am at work or maybe going out in the evening, I do use some - but nothing like the full makeup some women do. I am lazy - I use mascara and eyeliner and kayal and maybe sometimes a lipstick. Thats it then. And I do it to be more pretty not to be seen more female or to "pass" better... same with clothes like skirts or boots with heels - nice if I want to feel pretty, going into the closet when I am just doing something else.

QuoteWhat I really like about not wearing makeup (aside from the time and money I save, and my concerns about animal testing and environmental impact) is waking up in the morning, rolling out of bed with my groggy lover, padding over to the bathroom, and seeing my true face in the mirror right from the very start.  Whether I'm sick, or hung over, or sore and aching from the previous night's activities, what have you.  There's no haunting.  The Alien has been kicked out of the airlock.  I feel so free.

Yes - I can imagine that if you felt compelled to use this before FFS, it must be liberating. It was similar for me when I had laser and hormones for a while and could skip the makeup to cover up facial hair and all that. Freedom at last :). Not sure what a FFS now would do - probably the opposite - it would probably make me feel pretty and then I may be tempted to be even prettier at some times ;)

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 28, 2016, 10:34:39 AM
Back when Andrea James was getting the word out on facial surgery -- the radical bone work necessary for so many European women, at least -- she got a lot of flack.  Some objected to the whole notion of trying to look female, as opposed to visibly transgendered, either out of a sense of "you're not really a woman" or from their own insecurities -- because it's expensive and hence out of reach for so many.  Or because different choices were made, and those choices needed to be justified.  And of course, some never needed it in the first place -- at least, not to be gendered correctly. 

Oh, this is still the same , at least here in Europe. I tried to talk about FFS and voice surgery on some occasions and was basically almost called names or I was just ignored. It gets nasty usually when I explain that I think FFS and VFS should be part of the trans health plans - here GRS and hormones and therapy are NHS covered and FFS is not (VFS only sometimes). Trans people really get angry at me for saying this.

QuoteThe thing about this kind of facial surgery is that it isn't additive -- it is taking material away.  Which is literally a "letting go," certainly a scary approach for some people who are so used to "holding on."  And hey, if you want to hold on, I won't stop you.  If you want to add on, if that's what you need, so be it.  For me at least, the path has always been about letting go, along with a lot of refinement and rebuilding.

Totally! This is all about letting go. Again and again I meet this feeling that I move on by letting go. And that often if I manage to let go, something new rushes in that feels great. Like transitioning - letting go of the male persona that was not me just liberated me myself and I did not have to learn how to be womanly and gestures and behaviours and wording and how to walk and body language and all that - It rushed in from who knows were I have been hiding. I was always puzzled at people tring to learn all of this consciously... I think truely letting go just makes it happen. But I think many cannot let go - especially if they got married with kids...

Fair enough Sophia and Anjaq. Good responses! Peace and love to you both xx

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 28, 2016, 01:55:52 AM
They do a lot with lifts: brows, full facial. But they also do work like soft implants into the upper forehead. Warlockmaker explained it to me: in effect it produces the same or similar feminine female contouring as the heaving grinding beloved by some western surgeons without any of that invasive work. They do similar implant work on cheeks.

That could also be because of the low income in Thailand. Bone work is more expensive and its hard enough for many western women to afford it, how much worse it must be for Thai's.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 28, 2016, 01:55:52 AM
By the way, re the Thai kathoeys and hormones I've had many conversations with them and have been surprised at how many say they no longer take hormones, or only occasionally.

Seems like that would be dangerous, with the risk of osteoporosis. Why do they do that?

Quote from: AnonyMs on October 28, 2016, 02:35:55 PM
That could also be because of the low income in Thailand. Bone work is more expensive and its hard enough for many western women to afford it, how much worse it must be for Thai's.

There's probably a lot of truth in that

Quote from: AnonyMs on October 28, 2016, 02:35:55 PM

Seems like that would be dangerous, with the risk of osteoporosis. Why do they do that?

I fear the rather uncomfortable truth is that they think hormones affect libido and in the case of pre-op kathoeys, erectile function.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on October 28, 2016, 10:18:14 AM

What I really like about not wearing makeup [...] is waking up in the morning, rolling out of bed with my groggy lover, padding over to the bathroom, and seeing my true face in the mirror

I know. It's just that if we're being women you won't find many cis women in the world that feel similarly. I don't mean to have more than a gentle discussion on this, and certainly don't want to argue with you over a very valid POV and stance esp re animal testing, but all of my over-40 cis female friends wear makeup and are very grateful for it. I'm like them ;) x

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 30, 2016, 01:53:05 AM
I fear the rather uncomfortable truth is that they think hormones affect libido and in the case of pre-op kathoeys, erectile function.

See, this is whre it comes back to the thing about the definition of the groups. If we want to compare transsexual women with some group in Thailand , we cannot take the Kathoey group because they include a lot of other trans subgroups. I doubt many transsexual women would be worried about erectile dysfunction, but I know among the broader trans umbrella there are groups who are like this, transgender people who want to be accepted and maybe also look like women but have a sexuality that involves them having erections. That is a bit of a weird spot to be in because it makes it hard to balance out the feminization from hormones and the sexual functions.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 30, 2016, 01:57:22 AM
I know. It's just that if we're being women you won't find many cis women in the world that feel similarly. I don't mean to have more than a gentle discussion on this, and certainly don't want to argue with you over a very valid POV and stance esp re animal testing, but all of my over-40 cis female friends wear makeup and are very grateful for it. I'm like them ;) x

I think you are projecting your experiences in your country or even state or city globally. First of all most of the women in this world will have limited access to makeup and if they do, they may use it more to be prettier if they want to be - maybe for some occasion, maybe also for daily life, but I doubt the majority of women worldwide uses makeup daily. Especially not the full makeup with powders and liquid creams and all that. I can now just speak of my country as I do not know what chinese working women or indian peasants actually do, but here in Germany, using full makeup is not that common. Some women do this, many do not. Many women do not use makeup at all or just light makeup like mascara and lipstick. Of course Germany is also not the norm. Women here also tend to wear unisex clothing and "Normcore" stuff. In the 70ies and 80ies there were quite a few women who did not shave at all, now this is different but still a lot of women do not shave body hair regularly or in all areas that americans do.
This is all a beauty standard and a cultural thing. I work at university and I would say that I see only a small percentage of women (students and staff) there who wear more than a very basic makeup.

On the other hand, most of the women over 50 I see have short haircuts - no longer than to the chin, often shorter than that, most of them also wear pants daily and functional clothes - personally I do not want to go there and be like those other women when I am 50 ;)

I've lived most of my life in so-called third world countries, amongst the poorest of the poor including six years continuous in Africa, three and half of which was in a village where we had no electricity, running water and no internet or indeed any external connections except twiddling a shortwave radio knob. At one point I didn't even leave the village for a whole year. I've travelled all over the globe as an anthropologist.

Every woman, everywhere on the planet, with the sole exception of a certain type of western feminist tries to make themselves more beautiful through cosmetics. Indeed, in our African village the only woman who didn't use make up was the American Peace Corps volunteer ;)

Cosmetic enhancement by females (and in many instances men), from face paints to jewellery, are anthropologically as old as the hills themselves. With genuine respect, you're the one projecting here.

Well I did not say that women do not want to make themselves beautiful - Just that I do not think this is perceived as sort of the "must do" thing that it appears to be in some countries where women would say they do not leave the house even to shop for groceries or meet the mailman without putting on their makeup. I think some women have lost that feeling that it is about making themselves more beautiful and they rather take it as a prerequisite to not be ugly.

Also yes, I would say that certainly a majority of women do use something to make them more beautiful - makeup, clothes, accessoires. Even "Hippie Chicks" will probably use jewelry and earrings or nice clothing. Just not always and not daily. And I think "every woman in the world" is not really true, if you see that in countries with feminist tendencies this is not always the case.

More to the point regarding FFS - I think what trans women want to feel is that we do not want to HAVE to wear makeup just to perceive ourself as having a feminine appearance or to be seen by others that way. My goal was always to be able to do what was mentioned above - roll out of bed, not using makeup and still see myself in the mirror and maybe go to the bakery to get breakfast without much fuzz if I do not want to - but of course if I have the time and feel like it, I want to do some things to make myself more beautiful. Just as one day I want to wear jeans and sneakers and on some days I may feel like wearing a dress - I would not want to have to wear dresses and skirts every day just to be recognzed as female. So I guess FFS can be an option if these things are an issue. What makes it difficult for myself though is, that I do not have these problems but still have trouble with really always seeing myself - so its not about the others or that I would need makeup to "pass", if that would be the case, my decision for it would be very much clear.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 30, 2016, 01:57:22 AM

Quotefrom: Sophia Sage on 28 October 2016, 16:18:14

What I really like about not wearing makeup [...] is waking up in the morning, rolling out of bed with my groggy lover, padding over to the bathroom, and seeing my true face in the mirror

I know. It's just that if we're being women you won't find many cis women in the world that feel similarly. I don't mean to have more than a gentle discussion on this, and certainly don't want to argue with you over a very valid POV and stance esp re animal testing, but all of my over-40 cis female friends wear makeup and are very grateful for it. I'm like them ;) x

Actually THIS was the statement I disagreed when I said that this is not what I think all women int he world feel like. It was not that I said they do not all want to be more beautiful. I think this is something almost all women would like and most will use tools like makeup for it.

But I think there are not that many women in the world who have not been told by advertisement that they are ugly who would not at least desire to feel that way as Sophie said - waking up in the morning and see their own face in the mirror, even before there is any makup involved. I feel sorry for those women who do only feel they are themselves once they applied all those cosmetic products. Seeing ones own face should not require makeup and I believe that for most eomen this is not the case and they use makup more to make their OWN faces more beautiful instead of making their own face appear at all.

I don't think there is such a place that suits all of us. The "best" does not exist. Every surgery is personal.

Also, take everything with a grain of salt. Surgeons who do this as their main occupation do aggressive marketing. They only show their best results on their website. What you see there is the best they did.

I will be doing FFS next month. I opted for a local, down to earth, maxillofacial surgeon. No popstar surgeon -with his head in the clouds- for me.... remember Michal Jackson? he had more money than all of us combined, and "the best" surgeons, yet they botched his face.

Aaack, I can't believe I got a week behind on my favorite thread!

Catching up now:

Quote from: anjaq on October 28, 2016, 11:58:46 AMOk, yes I get that now. Indeed - Melanie Phillips described it as "deleting the parts of the personality that came to be in transition or before and are no longer needed and reboot those systems from the built in ROM memory" - more of a computer analogy, but similar in the content.

Different metaphor, same idea, absolutely.

But what if some of the built-in ROM memory got damaged along the way?  Or maybe I'm just so clumsy I always need to create feedback loops to make sure I'm doing what I think I'm doing in the way I want to be doing it.

QuoteI guess I am in the middle - on many days I do not use makeup at all - I also like to be camping or diving or hiking and thats not a place for makeup. But when I am at work or maybe going out in the evening, I do use some - but nothing like the full makeup some women do. I am lazy - I use mascara and eyeliner and kayal and maybe sometimes a lipstick. Thats it then. And I do it to be more pretty not to be seen more female or to "pass" better... same with clothes like skirts or boots with heels - nice if I want to feel pretty, going into the closet when I am just doing something else.

When I was in my thirties, I was the same way.  But in my thirties, I lived a very different life than I have in my forties.  (*cough* midlifecrisis *cough*)  I wasn't always a bohemian hippie chick, but it was nonetheless my destiny.

Different social contexts call for different social conventions.  I'll still wear makeup for a fancy night out, but the last several years those have been few and far between, and only with my parents.  I'll wear makeup for my mom.

QuoteI tried to talk about FFS and voice surgery on some occasions and was basically almost called names or I was just ignored. It gets nasty usually when I explain that I think FFS and VFS should be part of the trans health plans - here GRS and hormones and therapy are NHS covered and FFS is not (VFS only sometimes). Trans people really get angry at me for saying this.

The same thing happens when bringing up the practice of non-disclosure.  I'm baffled by this.

Okay, maybe not entirely baffled. 

Fear leads to anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering.

The question then becomes, what are they really afraid of?

QuoteThis is all about letting go. Again and again I meet this feeling that I move on by letting go. And that often if I manage to let go, something new rushes in that feels great. Like transitioning - letting go of the male persona that was not me just liberated me myself and I did not have to learn how to be womanly and gestures and behaviours and wording and how to walk and body language and all that - It rushed in from who knows were I have been hiding. I was always puzzled at people tring to learn all of this consciously... I think truely letting go just makes it happen. But I think many cannot let go - especially if they got married with kids...

Letting go is scary.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on October 30, 2016, 03:53:13 AMEvery woman, everywhere on the planet, with the sole exception of a certain type of western feminist tries to make themselves more beautiful through cosmetics.

Yeah, I'll cop to being a certain type of western feminist.

But I'm not so sure we're the only ones who don't wear makeup regularly. 

Sometimes, for example, you may get to a point in your life where you don't want to look more outwardly beautiful.  Certain lines of work -- working class work, in particular.  Or to reduce the unwanted attention of men, because of trauma. 

Some women don't need it -- they have great skin skin, dark thick lashes, and a certain flush to their lips.  Some are allergic. 

No one should feel shamed for wanting to wear or not wear makeup. 

Me, where I am in my life right now I'm more concerned with what it takes to be inwardly beautiful, because frankly this has not been one of my strong points.  Oh, I'll still wear jewelry and nice clothes, don't get me wrong; I obviously still care about my appearance.  It's just not my focus right now.

Quote from: anjaq on October 30, 2016, 07:38:27 AMI think some women have lost that feeling that it is about making themselves more beautiful and they rather take it as a prerequisite to not be ugly.

I'm not sure it's even that -- I think a lot of the time it's just done because it's expected. It's become rote.

Quote...we do not want to HAVE to wear makeup just to perceive ourself as having a feminine appearance or to be seen by others that way. My goal was always to be able to do what was mentioned above - roll out of bed, not using makeup and still see myself in the mirror and maybe go to the bakery to get breakfast without much fuzz if I do not want to - but of course if I have the time and feel like it, I want to do some things to make myself more beautiful. Just as one day I want to wear jeans and sneakers and on some days I may feel like wearing a dress - I would not want to have to wear dresses and skirts every day just to be recognzed as female. So I guess FFS can be an option if these things are an issue.

I don't think anyone can be "on" 24/7.  And we shouldn't have to be "on" 24/7 just to get gendered properly. 

So, yeah, it's one thing to advocate makeup to make yourself prettier and more compelling... it's another to say that it's an acceptable way to deal with gender dysphoria if there are obvious problems with the underlying bone structure of one's face. 

Which, naturally, is not a problem that everyone will have to face. 

QuoteBut I think there are not that many women in the world who have not been told by advertisement that they are ugly who would not at least desire to feel that way as Sophie said - waking up in the morning and see their own face in the mirror, even before there is any makup involved. I feel sorry for those women who do only feel they are themselves once they applied all those cosmetic products.

It's a Saturday morning.  Fall out of bed.  Brush teeth, etc.  But my lover is waking up.  Hmm, what am I going to do now?  Maybe fall back into bed for a bit; I am not putting on makeup first.  He already knows I'm beautiful, I can see it written all over his... face.  And I, for one, am going to believe him.

Mmm, hungry now.  Make breakfast together, catch a bit of the news... and then get ready for the day.

Context is everything.  Permanent solutions open the doors to so many wonderful contexts.

And yes, beyond this particular issue we all share, there's a confidence to not relying on makeup as a regular practice.  A self esteem.  I can wear makeup, or not wear makeup... I'm still going to be happy with myself.  And that, I think, doesn't really have anything to do with our situation at all, for it's something that all kinds of people in the world would love to achieve.  Being at peace with one's self.  Not that this peace isn't available to regular makeup users -- then it's just a matter of doing better and there's nothing wrong with that. 

But it's this "inner peace" that I think is fairly lacking in the western world today.

Quote from: 2cherry on November 05, 2016, 07:52:55 PM
I don't think there is such a place that suits all of us. The "best" does not exist. Every surgery is personal.

Also, take everything with a grain of salt. Surgeons who do this as their main occupation do aggressive marketing. They only show their best results on their website. What you see there is the best they did.

I will be doing FFS next month. I opted for a local, down to earth, maxillofacial surgeon. No popstar surgeon -with his head in the clouds- for me.... remember Michal Jackson? he had more money than all of us combined, and "the best" surgeons, yet they botched his face.

Top post! I'm with you 100% there. Some of the most invasive and expensive surgeries I've seen have had the worst outcomes, imho. It's something I particularly love about the approach of most Thai surgeons to FFS: they work with your natural features not against them, or that's my best way of explaining it.

On the makeup thing, I just think there's a balance to be had. No-one should be made to feel they aren't beautiful unless they enhance what is naturally there. There is inner beauty and beauty with or without clothes, jewellery, makeup or MtF surgery. On the other hand, heck, doll up girls when you want. For me, it's one of the most fab things about being female. That includes facial feminisation surgery which is presumably why most people are on this thread.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on November 05, 2016, 10:16:17 PM
But what if some of the built-in ROM memory got damaged along the way?  Or maybe I'm just so clumsy I always need to create feedback loops to make sure I'm doing what I think I'm doing in the way I want to be doing it.
.....
The same thing happens when bringing up the practice of non-disclosure.  I'm baffled by this.
The question then becomes, what are they really afraid of?

I do not think the ROM can really be damaged - its just, if you do not let the content of it put itself into play, it will not happen and it has to be commanded to overwrite other parts - their protection bits have to be removed ;) - Thinking about what is right keeps the protection on.

I think a lot of trans people are afraid of loosing THEIR face - they see themselves in the mirror they just think it does not fit the gender they want to be recognized as, so they do the surgery for the purpose of matching this up and in the process they loose their face and have to get used to a new one. Ideally it should rather be that one looks at the face after such a surgery and recogized this as ones own face immediately, unline the time before. But maybr its not that easy to know which it will be.

Some people are also scared to GRS that way - its something they feel they have to do to be women or to pass or whatever - but they do not feel an inner need to get this changed, they would be ok if it could just stay as it is and then they fight laws that demand GRS to change birth certificates (which is ok) and health insurance coverage of GRS (which is not ok!)


Regarding Makeup and being beautiful - I think in a lot of cultures beautification is wanted by women, but it is not always done with "makeup" in our sense. And it varies of course between days - working on the field needs no beauty, but celebrating on the day after that may be an opportunity for a lot of beautification.

However I think clearly beauty and being female and looking female are not the same. I also need to look female even if I roll out of bed on a Saturday noon after a long night out - I may not look beautiful, but i cannot stand if I look masculine or even male at that time - no way. Thats something different from using some makeup and styling on the evening before that to look good at the club. ;)

Quote from: 2cherry on November 05, 2016, 07:52:55 PM

Also, take everything with a grain of salt. Surgeons who do this as their main occupation do aggressive marketing.

They only show their best results on their website. What you see there is the best they did.

Which surgeons do aggressive FFS marketing ?

Quote from: oneoftwo on November 06, 2016, 08:17:05 PM
Which surgeons do aggressive FFS marketing ?

Facial Team. But there's plenty of independant posts about them as well.

Quote from: anjaq on November 06, 2016, 05:24:59 PMI do not think the ROM can really be damaged - its just, if you do not let the content of it put itself into play, it will not happen and it has to be commanded to overwrite other parts - their protection bits have to be removed ;) - Thinking about what is right keeps the protection on.

The desire for self-monitoring, holding onto control...

Mmm, a fear response. 

QuoteI think a lot of trans people are afraid of loosing THEIR face - they see themselves in the mirror they just think it does not fit the gender they want to be recognized as, so they do the surgery for the purpose of matching this up and in the process they loose their face and have to get used to a new one. Ideally it should rather be that one looks at the face after such a surgery and recogized this as ones own face immediately, unline the time before. But maybr its not that easy to know which it will be.

I'm not so sure about this.  First, there's nothing immediate about how we look in the mirror afterwards -- it takes months for it to settle in.  And for me, I was never afraid of losing the old face, because it was never my face in the first place. 

I wonder how much of the negative feedback you got in your circles is a fear of being truly gendered female, simply because of how much loss of power that actually entails.  And then there's no falling back on one's looks as an excuse for not actually letting go and simply going all the way.

There's an ego death that comes with the whose shebang (brow, nose, chin, jaw) of facial surgery.  Self image is going to change.  And perhaps it can be terrifying to discover that what one thought was unadulterated female gendering before was actually something else. 

Not to mention those who think one should look "trans" as a philosophical principle...

That was a great post Anjaq, with which I also happen to agree ;) Nicely balanced. I think this is a cracking comment:

'Ideally it should rather be that one looks at the face after such a surgery and recogized this as one's own face immediately, unlike the time before.'

I'm wary about hating our bodies prior to transitioning. Dysphoria can, of course, do precisely that especially with appendages down below. But it's a precarious line because that level of body-hate is also a driver behind teenage disorders like bulimia and anorexia. Somehow, if we can, we have to own the past whilst transitioning into our new expression of the true self within. Or so it seems to me. That's why I want surgery which doesn't make me unrecognisable from what was before: it just feminises it, albeit admittedly conforming to what western society means by feminisation.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on November 06, 2016, 09:21:03 PM
I'm not so sure about this.  First, there's nothing immediate about how we look in the mirror afterwards -- it takes months for it to settle in.  And for me, I was never afraid of losing the old face, because it was never my face in the first place. 

Well I have not experienced this yet - just did the simulation photos and even looking at them I recognize my face in the simulations as mine and flipping back between the two photos, the originial looks photoshopped to me after a few moments ;)

But yes, I can imagine that it may take time to settle in that it has changed. Just as it took a while for me to really get it, that my voice has changed and I do not need to do this and that anymore with it.

QuoteI wonder how much of the negative feedback you got in your circles is a fear of being truly gendered female, simply because of how much loss of power that actually entails.  And then there's no falling back on one's looks as an excuse for not actually letting go and simply going all the way.

There's an ego death that comes with the whose shebang (brow, nose, chin, jaw) of facial surgery.  Self image is going to change.  And perhaps it can be terrifying to discover that what one thought was unadulterated female gendering before was actually something else. 

Not to mention those who think one should look "trans" as a philosophical principle...

Yes, I think its all of that in part - some are somehow proud to be trans and want to show it - something I do not fully understand, coming from the "old school" in the 1990ies. Some may actually fear the complete transition. I think at least for many in Germany it seems to be a general suspicion about plastic surgery as a means to be happpier. They immediately think of women doing facelifts to look younger, girls doing breast implants to be sexier, lip injections, nose corrections - and the lot that women do to try and get closer to some beauty standards. This is severely frowned upon here - usinf surgery to be "more beautiful" is considered almost blasphemy. So it is actually a negative if a man finds out the woman he finds attractive has "fake breasts". I try to make the argument that FFS is nor really like that, it is close to if somone has some big blemish in the face and wants it removed. Something that is not so much about beauty as it is about looking "normal". I also get "my breasts done", but I do not want XXXL breasts like many do, I just want a C cup - some average breast size for a person with my size. I found I do not get what I need in online forums about breast enlargement because the goals are different - I have moe in common there with women looking for breast reconstruction - because of breast deformities or such.
But I also heard transgender people call the surgeries and even hormones to be "dangerous" and "mutilation" of a healthy body. That is because they have no real body dysphoria at all and project that onto others. They say "you can live as female without those changes". Heck, this is something I do not understand about being transgender (using the term now literally and to distinguish from transsexual). They like their body as it is and are actually preferring it to stay as it is but want to live as females anyways - they hate it if surgeries are forced upon them by social pressures. The ones I would call transsexuals are the opposite - the body needs to change and if it would come to it, even me, I would rather have a female body but have to pretend being a man in social context than vice versa. I do not want to make a clear division here, the lines are blurry and many experience some of both, but I think this can be a factor why some trans people are opposing surgeries, especially one that is so connected to one sense of self as FFS is.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on November 07, 2016, 12:36:53 AM
I'm wary about hating our bodies prior to transitioning. Dysphoria can, of course, do precisely that especially with appendages down below. But it's a precarious line because that level of body-hate is also a driver behind teenage disorders like bulimia and anorexia. Somehow, if we can, we have to own the past whilst transitioning into our new expression of the true self within. Or so it seems to me.

Well - I think I do not compeltely agree. As I said, I thinkthere is a difference between bulemia and body dysphoria in transsexual people. bulimia is caused by social pressures - in a society that cherishes women with curves, this thing would not exist. But not matter what way a society would change, transsexual body dysphoria would still exist. At least for some, the dysphoria could not be eliminated by having a society that is accepting of trans bodies. For some it may be true and those are the ones that basically blame society for their need to have surgery. They wish they could just keep their bodies as it is and still be accepted. And thats fine - its just not the experience of all trans people.

QuoteThat's why I want surgery which doesn't make me unrecognisable from what was before: it just feminises it, albeit admittedly conforming to what western society means by feminisation.

Here I also disagree, I am sorry. But feminization is not something that is so much culturally dependant. There are things we call feminine and who are culturally dependent - Makeup, Hairstyles, Clothes, some behaviours. But there are other things about the body that are not cultural - Men and women are physically different - its biology and if this can be feminized, it is universal - in all cultures women have breasts, a vagina, certain facial structures and body proportions which is different from men. If we see a very different culture and do not know their beauty standards or their social gender markers - lets say a fictional culture that had men wearing dresses and long hair and makeup while women are wearing black trousers and shirts - we would fall back to physical characteristics of the body and face as well as body language to identify female and male people. So this has nothing to do with "western society".

No, I don't agree Anjaq on either response. Body-hatred is a common thread and it's not simply driven by society under-valuing curves. It's also often, I believe, about striving to achieve an impossible level of beauty and feminisation: that's a massive danger which I see with some MtF's especially surrounding FFS. The Michael Jackson tendency is there for all to see in some celebrity transgenders and it doesn't ultimately help the cause. Here I do agree about your sub-point, that that requires acceptance of different types of body shape and being.

As for your comment: But feminization is not something that is so much culturally dependant [...] in all cultures women have breasts, a vagina, certain facial structures and body proportions which is different from men. So this has nothing to do with "western society".

I profoundly disagree. We cannot, must not, ever, reduce femininity to this or that body part. Your comment, for instance, that all women have breasts shows a disregard for women who have mastectomies. Or indeed those who have A cups etc. Do you see my point? Defining gender based on this or that body part is reductionism and that way madness lies. What are we to make of women who have had hysterectomies. Do they suddenly cease to be valid women? What of MtF's, of whom there will be many on this forum, who describe themselves as female but don't necessarily wish to have the full GRS?

It's  marginally less controversial to go down the line of something more internal and less external i.e. hormone levels but even that is terribly terribly fraught. I know of cis women with naturally low estrogen levels and high testosterone levels.

And, I'm sorry, but feminisation is incredibly culturally conditioned. Again, I could show you women with whom I have lived in Africa, and beyond, who look nothing whatsoever like a stereotypical western view of what, allegedly, constitutes 'female.' To many from the west they would look like men.

We must avoid reductionism imho. Part of the path to that is to do away with gender binary absolutism and embrace fluidity. That's also a recipe for a more wholesome approach to one's body, no matter what gender one wishes to call oneself, if any. If a person wishes to identify with this or that gender, or none at all, let them. It's society which we should be changing, not ourselves conforming to the stereotypes.

x

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on November 07, 2016, 07:02:06 AMNo, I don't agree Anjaq on either response. Body-hatred is a common thread and it's not simply driven by society under-valuing curves.

Not all attempts at body modification are about self-hatred.  For me, the surgeries I had were about self-love -- correcting the ravages of testosterone poisoning so I could be seen unequivocably in the same way I see myself, in every sphere of my life. 

What about getting a tattoo?  Piercings?  Stretching the earlobes so they're shoulder length?  All of which is really the tip of the iceberg.  Does someone who loses a hundred pounds so they can finish a marathon hate their body?  Correction to a cleft lip?  Scar revision for burn patients? 

There is nothing inherently wrong with body modification.  There's nothing inherently good about it, either.  It can be well-motivated, or poorly motivated, and none of us would ever really know because no one has access to someone else's interiority. 

Quote

QuoteBut feminization is not something that is so much culturally dependant [...] in all cultures women have breasts, a vagina, certain facial structures and body proportions which is different from men. So this has nothing to do with "western society".[/i]

I profoundly disagree. We cannot, must not, ever, reduce femininity to this or that body part. Your comment, for instance, that all women have breasts shows a disregard for women who have mastectomies. Or indeed those who have A cups etc. Do you see my point? Defining gender based on this or that body part is reductionism and that way madness lies. What are we to make of women who have had hysterectomies. Do they suddenly cease to be valid women? What of MtF's, of whom there will be many on this forum, who describe themselves as female but don't necessarily wish to have the full GRS?

Basic-level categories are not constructed according to the rules of "set logic" which is what you're doing here.  They constructed according to "prototypes" -- consisting of the most common image.  In all cultures, we have at least the genders of male and female, constructed by sexually dimorphic characteristics.  The vast majority of the people gendered male or female are going to have those characteristics. 

Of course there are outliers, but even then they will resemble one prototype more than the other.  A woman has a hysterectomy?  She's still a woman, obviously, and will continue to be gendered as such, because she has a skeletal frame and a voice and a history of being gendered female that resembles other women and not other men.  A guy with no brow bossing will still be gendered a guy, from his receding hairline and his beard and his broad shoulders and narrow hips.

(Now, if that person also starts taking testosterone and grows a beard and the voice gets low and the breasts disappear... and then moves to a new city, unknown to all, you might as well call him a man because that's how everyone is going to perceive him (and he better pray that's exactly what he wants).  Very rare is the person so androgynous that all it takes to change the gendering they receive is a change of clothes and a different haircut. 

And as Anja says, in every culture everyone can easily gender everyone else from that culture pretty much by face alone.  Of course there are differences from region to region, but the point still stands -- someone from Japan might pass easily in the United States without any body modification, but back in Tokyo get clocked every hour.  The same general physiological processes are still in play -- vaginas and penises, the growth of bony structures in the presence of testosterone and the subsequent lowering of voice, the development of breasts in the presence of estrogen. 

QuoteAnd, I'm sorry, but feminisation is incredibly culturally conditioned. Again, I could show you women with whom I have lived in Africa, and beyond, who look nothing whatsoever like a stereotypical western view of what, allegedly, constitutes 'female.' To many from the west they would look like men.

Yeah, but for westerners living in the west, this doesn't help.  I bet those women don't get misgendered in their local areas, even upon meeting another local for the first time.

QuoteWe must avoid reductionism imho. Part of the path to that is to do away with gender binary absolutism and embrace fluidity. That's also a recipe for a more wholesome approach to one's body, no matter what gender one wishes to call oneself, if any. If a person wishes to identify with this or that gender, or none at all, let them. It's society which we should be changing, not ourselves conforming to the stereotypes.

That's not a very convenient position to offer someone suffering from gender dysphoria.  By all means, we should embrace whatever choices we encounter out in the world, knowing what we know.  But I sure as hell am not going to ask someone to not pursue whatever it takes to get the gendering and peace they need out of some philosophical or political point-scoring.  Isn't a lifetime of misgendering enough trauma already? 

How about rallying some cis people to practice and embrace fluidity, rather than those who've suffered for decades?

Now, if someone is brave enough to live on the margins, or in that oasis between the citadels, more power to them.  But that's their choice, and it's just as valid a choice to head right to the central cluster of one binary or the other, in every respect.  And if that's where you need to go, we know pretty well what it's going to take to get there.  And the thing is, even for those rare few of us who actually get there, we have plenty enough unique differences to broaden the basic-level categories of the gender binary as it is. 

Quote from: Sophia Sage on November 07, 2016, 03:21:23 PM
A woman is still a woman, obviously, and will continue to be gendered as such, because she has a skeletal frame and a voice

Ah so now the female identifier is all about skeletal frame and voice  :D

I've worked with cis women with huuuuuge skeletal frames and veeeeery deep voices.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on November 07, 2016, 03:21:23 PM
  A guy [...] will still be gendered a guy ... from his beard .

I was married to a woman who was in every respect very pretty. But she had a beard. I'm really not kidding: she did. It's a phenomenon I've also seen in some African ethnic groups. I've also worked with cis men who cannot produce facial hair and, indeed, have seen some men in parts of the world who don't produce beards.

If you stop and think about what you're writing I hope you might agree it's not a strong argument. You're chasing an illusory holy grail of gender identifier in this or that part of the body. Gender is soooooo much more than body parts. They are an aspect of it, and for we who transition they may be an important part, but they do not solely constitute what makes male and female. As I mentioned before a far stronger case can be made for blood levels and, indeed, chromosomes. But even they have limitations. If we're really going to define human beings by whether they fit categories of 'male' or 'female' then I'd rather leave it to every individual to say what they are: not conform to the oppression of others.

I do agree though about altering society's attitudes. I'm lucky enough to have a bit of a public profile and have been attempting just that, and will certainly re-double efforts, whilst supporting all of us who transition. It's a good point. And don't get me wrong, as mentioned before I adore all the femininity of western fashion. I just don't think it defines gender any more than this or that body bit.

Quote from: Sophia Sage on November 07, 2016, 03:21:23 PM
Not all attempts at body modification are about self-hatred. 

I didn't say it was. I said: 'I'm wary about hating our bodies prior to transitioning'

Anyway I've said my piece and made my view clear, especially about binary reductionism. I shall return to the topic of FFS which, incidentally, I'm about to have done at PAI in Thailand ... just to show that I do actually subscribe to the idea.  ::)

Peace xx

Ok, this went a bit wrong....

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on November 07, 2016, 07:02:06 AM
No, I don't agree Anjaq on either response. Body-hatred is a common thread and it's not simply driven by society under-valuing curves. It's also often, I believe, about striving to achieve an impossible level of beauty and feminisation: that's a massive danger which I see with some MtF's especially surrounding FFS. The Michael Jackson tendency is there for all to see in some celebrity transgenders and it doesn't ultimately help the cause.

Well but that tendency is a society thing. It is only because this society believes that women should have large breasts, curvy little noses, full lips and all of this, that people are striving for it so much - plus of course the cultural narrative that we can and should change ourselves and make ourselves better.

QuoteAs for your comment: But feminization is not something that is so much culturally dependant [...] in all cultures women have breasts, a vagina, certain facial structures and body proportions which is different from men. So this has nothing to do with "western society".

I profoundly disagree. We cannot, must not, ever, reduce femininity to this or that body part. Your comment, for instance, that all women have breasts shows a disregard for women who have mastectomies. Or indeed those who have A cups etc. Do you see my point? Defining gender based on this or that body part is reductionism and that way madness lies. What are we to make of women who have had hysterectomies. Do they suddenly cease to be valid women? What of MtF's, of whom there will be many on this forum, who describe themselves as female but don't necessarily wish to have the full GRS?

No, this is maybe a misunderstanding or maybe I just was not precise. Of course, being a woman and having or not having female body features is not necessarily connected or a prerequisite. Thats TERF-talk. But what I meant was that I am pretty sure that whichever people from whatever culture you ask, a vagina is defined as female, breasts are defined as female etc. That does not mean that ther cannot be a mismatch, but just the term "MtF" you used shows, that we regard some body features as male and others as female. And while this may be problematic, especially for nonbinary trans people, it is something that I am pretty sure is pervasive in almost all cultures. Some cultures may not see it as strict and of course you can still be a woman even if you have a body that is partly masculine (or "male")
- yet the body is still usually described in these binary terms. Or simplified - I doubt you would find a culture that regards breasts as something male or masculine.

QuoteAnd, I'm sorry, but feminisation is incredibly culturally conditioned. Again, I could show you women with whom I have lived in Africa, and beyond, who look nothing whatsoever like a stereotypical western view of what, allegedly, constitutes 'female.' To many from the west they would look like men.

In what way will they do that? Did they take testosterone or have they cut off their breasts? Most of the cultural influence is more superficial - it is about cutting hair short or long, wearing certain clothes or attire, paint, accessoires,... maybe even body language to a degree - but there are some things that are just independent from that.

QuoteIf a person wishes to identify with this or that gender, or none at all, let them. It's society which we should be changing, not ourselves conforming to the stereotypes.

Oh heck if they want to identify as whatever they want to, I will let them. The only time I get a bit upset is when people claim that I should be fighting for the end of gender binary just because I was born trans. I am binary and this is something that should be accepted as well.

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on November 07, 2016, 10:03:36 PM
I've worked with cis women with huuuuuge skeletal frames and veeeeery deep voices.

I was married to a woman who was in every respect very pretty. But she had a beard.
I'm really not kidding: she did. It's a phenomenon I've also seen in some African ethnic groups. I've also worked with cis men who cannot produce facial hair and, indeed, have seen some men in parts of the world who don't produce beards.
....

Gender is soooooo much more than body parts.

And don't get me wrong, as mentioned before I adore all the femininity of western fashion.

I would say that there is a difference between sex and gender. Of course you cannot say much about gender - that diffuse, undefined feeling - but physical sex - thats biology. And even if a woman has a huge frame or a face with strong brow bossing or has a beard, we will call these features "male", "masculine" or "manly" - if we are polite we may say "strong" or "unusual", but in the thoughts we still think of it in a gendered way and it is one thing to still accept that person as female without question, but it is another how we see these features - and this is something I do not think is a cultural thing because it more or less depends on the biological distribution. Its just that 95% of the women have breasts and 99.9% have no beard, while it is the reverse for men. That way all cultures will define these features accoring to those 99% to whom it applies to - and then it becomes cultural of course, but it is based on something else. We may also say someone has asian or caucasian features - referring maybe to the shape of the eyes - but that does not mean that these people cannot have lived in another country for generations - still we assign adjectives to features based on distribution curves.
Ethnicity is a different thing though and yes, there are some men who do not grow beards - and there are women who are part of some ethnic groups who have stronger hair on the body or stronger ridges over the eyes - but within that ethnicity they will still be identified as female based on the distribution patterns of "typical" masculine and feminine features.

To dissolve the very concept of masculine and feminine will be a hard task and frankly it will be a bit dissociative from reality, if one defines some feature as genderless when clearly 99% of the people who have it identify as one gender and 99% of those who do not have it identify as another gender and only 1% define themselves as a different gender.

Trying to push such a view onto people will just result in a major backlash, as we see it already happening with allthos who are now quite angry at gender politics. I am not sure this makes sense to pursue - but if one strongly wants to see breases as masuline or a penis as feminine features, maybe they do have to try to make everyone else to accept this view...

Quote from: Rachel Richenda on November 07, 2016, 10:03:36 PM
Ah so now the female identifier is all about skeletal frame and voice  :D

I've worked with cis women with huuuuuge skeletal frames and veeeeery deep voices.

I was married to a woman who was in every respect very pretty. But she had a beard. I'm really not kidding: she did. It's a phenomenon I've also seen in some African ethnic groups. I've also worked with cis men who cannot produce facial hair and, indeed, have seen some men in parts of the world who don't produce beards.

If you stop and think about what you're writing I hope you might agree it's not a strong argument. You're chasing an illusory holy grail of gender identifier in this or that part of the body. Gender is soooooo much more than body parts. They are an aspect of it, and for we who transition they may be an important part, but they do not solely constitute what makes male and female. As I mentioned before a far stronger case can be made for blood levels and, indeed, chromosomes. But even they have limitations.

I'm not trying to define the gender binary in physiological terms.  Like you, I'll accede to anyone else's interiority.  After all, I had to accede to my own interiority, didn't I?

What I'm trying to do is describe how most people in the world automatically assign "male" and "female" to other people automatically, subconsciously, instantly -- without the benefit of narrative.  And this is most definitely a matter of what "prototype" anyone's embodiment most closely adheres to (a "prototype" is the image in one's brain associated with a category). The prototypes of "male" and "female" are based those clusters of features that differ between the primary sexes within a social milieu -- which will differ as bodies differ from culture to culture.

Obviously, there is great variation.  Some women have deep voices, some men don't grow facial hair, some women are tall and some men are short, and so on.  But in prototype theory, how the human brain creates categories from sense impressions in the first place, it isn't a matter of whether a person checks every box or not.  Rather, do they check most of the boxes of one prototype or the other.  Is there a "family resemblance."  If it's 50/50, then you have ambiguity.  But the vast majority of the people in this world check 95%+ of the boxes (a completely unscientific estimate) if not all of them.

QuoteIf we're really going to define human beings by whether they fit categories of 'male' or 'female' then I'd rather leave it to every individual to say what they are: not conform to the oppression of others.

99.9% of the people in the world don't need to say what they are, because it's already obvious to everyone around them, and it's never questioned.  This is how the vast majority of the world experiences being gendered, and will continue to experience as such for the indefinite future.

So if one wants to be gendered correctly by other people, before any benefit of narrative (which includes social history -- if our community has always known Annie since she was born and assigned female because of her vagina, it's not going to matter much whether she's big and hirsute when she's fully grown as far as how we're going to gender her, because there's a social history involved, though it still goes back to initial embodiment), it's going to take embodiment and voice, because that's what the brain will pick up on immediately.  It behooves one, then, assuming one's gender dysphoria crosses both vectors of personal embodiment and social perception, to check as many boxes as possible, knowing that several boxes aren't ever going to be checked because of the unfortunate congenital and hormonal developments. 

What's going to matter the most, as Andrea James described nearly twenty years ago, is voice and face (including facial hair and bone structure), to which I'd also add overall body shape, which is why breasts are so important to counteract a large build -- and why they're so important not to have if your build is small and you want to be gendered male.  What's going to matter in bed is one's genitalia... if you're not relying on an accepted narrative.  What's going to matter in long-term relationships -- be it work relationships, friendships, romance, whatever -- is the socialization expected of you, which of course differs wildly from culture to culture, even between generations.  And coming back to one's self, I'd even go so far as to say that memories (which can also be altered) and the stories that come from them can also matter to one's own dysphoria management. 

And, I'm sorry to say, it matters whether one's narrative is open or closed. If one lives with an open narrative, it opens up all kinds of opportunities to be misgendered, especially in Western culture.  Because some people (not all, certainly) will take that narrative as "proof" that you aren't what you say you are. 

Some transitioners don't have a choice in this matter -- the body has a way of speaking, regardless of any stories told.  And likewise, sometimes a presentation is so overwhelming that even an open narrative won't keep one from getting properly gendered.  Back in the day, they were called "unicorns" -- those who could pass even with a knowing hostile audience. 

QuoteI do agree though about altering society's attitudes. I'm lucky enough to have a bit of a public profile and have been attempting just that, and will certainly re-double efforts, whilst supporting all of us who transition.

This, then, is the rub. It takes open narratives to make society more understanding of the narrative implications of gender, such that kindness and understanding can be exercised whether one has a choice to live openly or not. But there's a cost -- of not being gendered in the way that other people can take for granted.  Which, I dunno, can be a contraindication for someone with gender dysphoria.  It kind of depends on the extent of one's dysphoria -- obviously if one doesn't get very dysphoric being socially misgendered on occasion, the open narrative is much less daunting.

Again, I'm not saying that anyone "is" or "is not" who they say they are based on embodiment.  Only that embodiment is the actual foundation of how people construct gender in the first place, without even thinking of it.

Categories do not have an independent existence, and that includes the categories of male and female.  But that doesn't mean that "anything goes" when it comes to how human brains construct and maintain the categories they've created to make sense of the world. 

Well this certainly veered off topic...

Can we kindly steer this back on-topic lest I be forced to do admin type stuff?

Quote from: 2cherry on June 27, 2016, 09:49:14 AM
I think there is only one way to know: meet them, interview them and get a feeling about them. I think trust is the most important aspect. Ask about their work, see if they are passionate about it, and how they feel about operating on a face. Try to understand how passionate they are. My SRS surgeon (virtually unknown) was incredibly passionate. When I asked him: why are you doing these kind of surgeries. He told me: he loved doing those, he enjoyed the complexity. Immediately he started to pull up pictures of him working on a SRS, closeup and the way he talked to me was fascinating, I saw his eye lit up. Then, and there, I knew he was the "one"  ;D I've picked him based on that. Not on reviews. He knew all techniques, and does something similar as suporn. Just a local SRS surgeon.

Another interview idea: ask them about something that isn't related to the surgery, like something specific about hormones he doesn't have to know. He should say: I don't know anything about that. This means that he is a specialist, and isn't some poser. Any scientist is hesitant to speak about something they don't know.

May I ask the name of your SRS surgeon?