This thread resonates wth me a lot. I never had much dysphoria about my male parts and initially i was not thinking much about SRS, instead thinking that an orchiectomy for my general health might be the best thing. Lately though i have been kind of feeling like SRS will happen for me and i am sort of accepting it as an inevitable choice. i live in a place where insurance should cover most of it and i think that is another factor.

I like and liked using those parts in intimacy but as my HRT dosages increased they became pretty non-functional. Taking meds to make them temporarily functional, is not real appealing to me. I'm still officially undecided though, i feel pretty complete as is but the appeal of having a vulva and a functioning vagina is growing.

Strangely, there is this little voice inside of me that says if i go that route i will lose some of the "specialness" of being a trans woman, i'm sure that sounds odd to many, but it is there. Another subject for my therapist

I completely understand what you mean, but i see that many people are doing the surgery now and they have good result , I think I will do it only because I am sick and tired of going back and forth  about whether if i should have surgery or not ..i have been debating for 10 years and..part of the reason is i havent come to accept that i wont be able to have my own children..but I am slowly just accepting the inevitable. I have no choice. I dont think my life will be perfect or even better, but at least I dont have to think about having surgery or not anymore if i had the surgery.

   Being still close to the beginning of this transition thing I am still procrastinating.  When I started HRT I thought "Well I can try this and stop before it becomes irreversible I've got time to decide if it's right for me.  4 months have gone by and I've grown small breasts that are not going away without surgery. I'd call that irreversible. I have started with therapy and told a few people about me. I guess that's kind of irreversible.  Yet I haven't really made any other decisions, no commitments.
  I'm just sort of coasting, still working on accepting this myself I suppose. I keep thinking I "should" get started looking into electrolysis but even that is a step in making things real. Ids and birth certificates and such are just too real right now. Surgeries seem things in a distance future and need not be thought of seriously yet.

    I don't think I am ready for "Real" yet.

  Hugs,
    Jeanette

@kelly_aus I've been trying to look at being trans like that...I don't know if I consider it as a shame... when I meet new people at the university, I don't tell them. I mean they also don't tell me that they're men or women It's clear from the beginning. But I also feel kinda...I feel like my cover is blown away when someone notices something. But I would never deny it. I stand by what I am. But sometimes my mind freaks out when somebody is just looking at me. Funny story: there was this young men in my class, from my point of view the most attractive men in my whole semester and he stared at me every time he was there. He had this "I kill you"-look on his face, even when I smiled at him. I got a little panic attack because of that, since I thought he noticed something. I couldn't stand it any longer, went to him, asked him how he was and then asked why he was starring at me the whole time. In the end he was nice and wanted to meet me for a cup of coffee. So much for that. But it really makes me angry that my lack of self-esteem led to this panic-situation...

@Wild Flower There you go, that was the case with my ex-boyfriend. It got better, but in the beginning I was a secret to everybody he knew. In the end, everybody knew that I was his girlfriend. Damn, I was so far... and it was for nothing.

@RobynD But it seems like losing the function of your parts through HRT wasn't a problem for you, while I was always checking with my doctor that my blockers are so low, that it would still work. So losing it would be... Again I really don't want to offend anyone. But I think I would feel mutiliated...kinda.
But I know exaclty what you mean by saying you will lose some of your "specialness" One gets used to being different, which also makes us a little special.

@imissmymama that is another interesting opinion on that topic...but what if you will be thinking the opposite: "Should I have kept it?" then?

@JeanetteLW that is totally okay. It's like you said, you're still involved in accepting it for yourself. Those steps, like starting with HRT, will lead the path you want to go

@omnom

I dont see any reason for keeping it, the only regret I might have is if I have complications from the surgery..