What a strange thing man is; and what a stranger thing woman. – Lord Byron
Tomorrow I’ll be doing a question and answer column, but there was one query which I realized needed a column all to itself because the answer really isn’t as interesting as the question. It was, “How can you tell a transsexual from a biological woman?” Most of my female readers probably consider the answer to be obvious, but since many of my male readers may be equally convinced that it isn’t I think it’s best to examine the reasons for the question before moving on to the answer.
You would probably have to have lived at the bottom of the sea for your entire adult life to be unaware that some people born male are, to one degree or another, uncomfortable in their gender role; obviously some born-female are as well, but while many women who feel that way attempt to deny all gender by becoming neofeminists, men adopt a variety of behaviors ranging from cross-dressing to sex-change surgery. Women who cross-dress for sexual reasons are pretty rare and female-to-male transsexuals are unimportant to this discussion, so when I use the term “transgender” in this column it will heretofore mean only a male-to-female transsexual. The term “transgender” started out as an umbrella term for many kinds of gender nonconformity, but has settled in to basically mean what used to be described by the term “transsexual”.
Most cross-dressers are perfectly happy being male; they are not attracted to other men and their attachment to women’s lingerie probably arises from the same murky swamp of male sexuality as so many other “perversions” do. Indeed, most escorts have probably encountered clients who ask if they can wear women’s lingerie during sex or even answer the door in such garb without asking first. I never had a man surprise me that way, which is a good thing because my feelings on it would be the same as mixing BDSM with full service; I just can’t let a man inside me if I can’t take him seriously. Dominatrices cater to clients who wish to be “forced” to cross-dress as a BDSM “punishment”, and some of these men even derive a sexual thrill from going out in public and attempting to pass as women.
But that’s not the same thing as a transwoman, who actually feels uncomfortable as a male and really wants to be a woman. There are three types of transsexuals, Type 1, Type 2 and Extreme; as Dr. Helena put it, Type 1 transsexuals feel as though they are women in men’s bodies, Type 2 transsexuals only think they feel as though they are women in men’s bodies, and extreme transsexuals actually are women in men’s bodies. Type 1 transsexualism appears to derive from some childhood environment which stunted the development of a male self-image and caused the transsexual to pattern his psyche on strong female role models, while Type 2 appears to derive from trauma which causes the transsexual to reject his male identity. And extreme transsexualism (AKA gender dysmorphia) appears to derive from neurological causes which actually program a biological, XY chromosome male to think and feel like a woman, though he still has a physically and hormonally normal male body. At one time strict standards were in place to allow all extreme transsexuals and those Type 1 cases who could learn to live and behave like women to be recommended for gender reassignment while prohibiting Type 2 cases from doing so, but in recent years “queer activists” and easy international travel have combined to wreck or circumvent many of the safeguards which were designed to keep disturbed individuals from implementing irreversible changes to their bodies and later regretting it. Gender reassignment does not consist merely of sex-change surgery; it requires years of hormone therapy and electrolysis to remove his beard and other female-inappropriate body hair, and the candidate who wishes to do it by the numbers rather than simply flying to Thailand has to undergo years of psychological therapy as well. The costs of all this are astronomical, many tens of thousands of dollars, so a certain percentage of transsexuals turn to prostitution (generally at the street level) to earn it.
So in any large city, there is a small population of prostitutes, mostly streetwalkers, who dress as women but are not biologically female. Some of these are transsexuals earning their fees, while others are simply ordinary homosexual prostitutes who dress in drag; since all of these individuals lack female equipment they generally work at the low end where they can make a living only providing oral sex (unlike escorts, whose clientele presumes that full service is on the menu if desired). Traditionally these drag prostitutes did not openly advertise their masculinity (though it was generally obvious to those with eyes to see), but in modern times the internet has provided them with a venue to seek out those men who actually want to have sex with pre-operative transsexuals (also called “she-males” or “chicks with dicks” by their aficionados). But while some men actively seek transsexuals and some don’t care if only oral sex is involved, a much larger percentage are repelled by the thought of sexual contact with a male, however disguised, and in a few this goes beyond mere aversion to active concern. For whatever reason, these men are haunted by the thought that a prostitute they hire might be a post-operative transsexual.
Let’s face it; men really don’t look much like women. Even with padding in the right places they’re taller and larger, their faces, shoulders and waists are wider, they have thicker skin and deeper voices and hair everywhere, and their mannerisms aren’t much like those of women even when they try. In Hollywood comedies, men often dress as women and succeed in fooling everyone, but in the real world someone encountering the title character from Tootsie would be more likely to say, “Why is Dustin Hoffman in drag?” than “Wow, what a babe.” Normal men do not have access to Hollywood makeup artists and are seen from every angle rather than photographed in carefully-planned shots, and real people can’t help noticing the heavy theatrical makeup men need to cover their beard stubble. Even drag queens who perform in clubs benefit from dim lighting conditions and the distance of the audience from the stage. As I said above, transsexuals are physically and hormonally male; even years of hormone therapy and full-body electrolysis cannot erase greater height and larger bone structure, and once the larynx expands during puberty not even voice lessons can disguise the male vocal timbre.
Yet the myth persists; some men are absolutely convinced that a large percentage of escorts are actually post-operative transsexuals, and that it’s difficult to tell even when naked in the same bed with them! I suspect this idea is really just an exaggeration of the fact that some streetwalkers are either pre-operative transsexuals or drag queens, and the fact that a blow job from a fully-dressed streetwalker in a dimly-lit car is a far cry from a full-service call with a naked escort in a well-lit hotel room gets lost in the paranoia. Tourists to New Orleans, with its large homosexual population, seem especially worried about this; every week at least two or three guys, always tourists, asked if the girl I was about to send was a “real” girl, and every so often the number of such inquiries would explode for a few days (presumably after some “cautionary” TV show aired or magazine article was published). In truth, I knew of exactly four transsexual prostitutes in New Orleans; three were streetwalkers who worked out of the seedy Tulane Motel and one was an escort whom I never met, but was described to me by Doug as looking “like a stevedore in drag.” Despite the popular myth of their prevalence in the Big Easy, no service with which I was connected could even supply a transsexual hooker if a client wanted one!
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that a post-operative transsexual whore was short (by male standards), slender, possessed of very fine features and a high-pitched voice, and had received sufficient hormone therapy to give her a feminine shape and soft skin, and enough electrolysis to absolutely remove all facial hair and unfeminine body hair; are there any unalterable characteristics which would still allow one to tell that she was not biologically female? Obviously fleshy tissues can be surgically altered, but bone structure cannot, and there are a few such ways in which the average woman differs from the average man. The most obvious is in the proportional size of the hands and feet; even a short man tends to have larger hands and feet than a woman of the same physical size. The necks of women are proportionately longer and more slender than those of men, and this cannot be altered even if the Adam’s apple is shaved down. Also, women are leggier than men; though my husband is 8” taller than I am my waist is only barely below his, and I’m sure many of my readers have made comparable observations with their spouses. Finally, the index fingers of women are generally the same length as our ring fingers or slightly longer, while those of men are usually shorter than the ring finger. Of course none of these are foolproof tests; Uma Thurman has huge hands and feet, as did Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and I’m sure there are some men whose hands and feet are as small as a woman’s. I’ve met men with long, slender necks and women with bull necks, and I had a friend whose legs were so short that even though we were the same height standing, she was noticeably taller when sitting. And some studies suggest lesbians have longer ring fingers than other women, so that their hands are of similar proportions to those of men.
The short answer to my correspondent’s question, then, is that though there is no foolproof test, there are a few which would usually serve to allow a post-operative transsexual to be told apart from a woman of similar size and build. But I have a rhetorical question for you: Far be it from a bisexual woman to presume to understand a heterosexual man’s thinking, but why does it really matter? If your escort looks, sounds, acts and performs so much like a woman that you need some sort of Blade Runner replicant test to tell the difference, then what is the difference? If you were looking for a wife and planning to have kids I could see how it would be important, but for an hour’s diversion why is that particular aspect of an escort’s medical history more important than any other? You’re not going to turn gay from unknowingly copulating with her, so I don’t think I’m out of line in saying that when it comes to whores, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.
UPDATE: Since I first wrote this column, my thinking on the subject has evolved considerably; I now realize that despite the positive ending, I inadvertently perpetuated some harmful stereotypes and slurs in the text. See “Due Consideration” for further discussion, and please accept my sincere apologies for the unintentional negativity.
I’m constantly worried that the next woman I meet will be a replicant. I’d say more, but I’ve got to get ready for my date with Lola. L-O-L-A, Lola.
LOL! 😀
“If your escort looks, sounds, acts and performs so much like a woman that you need some sort of Blade Runner replicant test to tell the difference, then what is the difference?”
The difference is homophobia. Now don’t get your panties in a knot! I’m using the word in a completely different inaccurate way than the inaccurate way in which that word is commonly used. I’m using it in this case to mean “the fear that I’m a homo.”
A lot of straight men have a fear that, deep down, they are a bit, well… G-A-Y. Many a heterosexual man is afraid that maybe, though he would slug anybody who suggested it, somewhere inside he’s here, he’s queer, and he does NOT want to get used to it.
The intensity of this fear seems to be related to his opinion of gay people. This makes sense: I will naturally be more afraid if I think that maybe I’m something bad than if I think that maybe I’m something good or neutral. In my own life, I know that as the negative attitude towards gay people that I picked up from living in B.F.E. declined, the fear that I might say or do something which could, by the wildest stretch of the imagination be interpreted as “faggotish” declined as well.
As late as my mid-twenties I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t’ve made the Lola joke. I might joke about somebody else dating a transsexual, but not about me dating one.
I still don’t get it. If he can’t tell in any way, then he isn’t attracted to any subtle masculine quality. So how would that make him gay? I mean, if he was attracted to a “she-male” or somebody who looked like a drag queen that would definitely be queer, but why would it matter if she’s wholly feminine? Is this just some irrational guy thing a woman can’t possibly understand, like channel surfing or refusing to ask for directions? 🙁
That’s actually a fair question, Maggie, and I’ve often asked it myself (and I’m a man!): where does the fear that one is gay come from?
My (subjective, impressionistic, maybe-wrong-but-anyway-there-it-goes) opinion is that it has something to do with what ‘being a man’ means. Since our society had a number of important features tied in with the concept of being a ‘real man’ — courage, ferocitas, self-reliance, independence, autonomy/leadership, dominance, physical strength, resourcefulness, etc. — there was always a pressure for men to be ‘real men’, or come as close to the model as possible. Now, if “enthusiastically desiring to fuck women” is made part of this complex of features of ‘real men’, then it is easy to understand — though of course illogical — that they get confused, intertwined, so that denying one sounds like denying the others.
In other words: if you don’t “enthusiastically desire to fuck women” — which gays don’t — they you aren’t a “real man”, and therefore you aren’t corageous, self-reliant, independent, autonomous, resourceful, phyiscally strong, dominant, self-reliant… You’re not one of us, the real men, so we get to mock you for that and deny you access to the ‘men’s network.’ You become an example of ‘what men shouldn’t be.’ You become the enemy.
It’s illogical, of course; there are plenty of gays who are physically strong, self-reliant, courageous, autonomous, independent, resourceful, etc. (just ask any elite army unit). But it seems to be what is believed. Just like a sex scandal in America can terminate a politician’s career (invalidating any other good qualities that politician might have to hold office), a suspicion of gayness can terminate a man’s career (invalidating any other good qualities that man may have as a man). Weird.
By the way, that also (I think) explains refusing to ask for directions. Channel-surfing has more to do with the ‘hunter’ stance (where’s the game? where is hiding? etc.), I think.
People are seldom rational enough to think along those lines, especially men. We’re too hormonal; yes, women have hormones too, many more you might say, but they’re the “subtle action” variety. Predominantly male hormones like testosterone have stronger effects on the psyche as opposed to predominantly female ones. True, broadly the emotion behind such thinking is the fear of being hoodwinked into having sex, the most intimate thing conceivable, with someone who is not what s/he seems, homophobia and the natural sexually repulsive reaction straight men have to other men. But even though individuals engage in the same behaviour, their reasons for doing so may not necessarily be the same. The human psyche & sexuality are too complex for such exact concordance to happen more than once in a thousand instances or maybe even a million. Now, the reasons may be similar, because nature tends towards averages rather than extremes, but even here, there will be subtly different shades (thus I mentioned homophobia and repulsive reactions seperately above). For example, majority of people do whatever work is assigned to them, but some people ‘complete’ their work and some people ‘finish’ their work. It may be premeditated behaviour or purely impulsive. There will always be exceptions to the rule. What you can do, is find the mean.
I personally find it unnatural. Being gay, the male anatomy is sexually pleasing for me but the female is more aesthetic. That doesn’t mean that I want to maximise pleasure by sleeping with someone having both, breasts and a penis (a guy with a vagina or a feminine man is a different matter). Similarly, a straight guy who loves his own penis & a woman’s breasts doesn’t want to sleep with someone having both but is perfectly happy sleeping with a flat chested woman, some even want a woman with a flatter chest or a tomboy. The breasts + penis combination itself tends to be repulsive for most men. Maybe lesbians love it, but most men don’t.
Now about channel surfing and asking for directions. I personally prefer not to ask for directions because I want to do it on my own, be independent. And there’s the thrill of exploring unknown territory. But I have no qualms about asking for help if I feel that I can’t do it, albeit there is that little voice in my head crying like a 4 year old child because he was defeated.
Channel surfing is more along the lines of “some is good, more is better” for me. I’m being entertained by the program, not the commercials. So it makes perfect sense to me to go to another channel and watch another show during a break. The same reasoning brings men to the prostitute even though they have a wife. And if I miss a few minutes of the other program because the timings don’t match, it doesn’t matter, the sum total here is greater than the sum total of being loyal to the program. And if the program is boring, I’ll obviously change the channel and curiosity will still bring me back to see whether it got any better or if there’s something else airing at the moment.
And it doesn’t matter that there is no longer a penis down there. The knowledge that there once sprouted a penis between the legs of this being which now sports breasts is enough to turn a guy off.
It might be (though I do ask for directions… for all the good it does). But I’ll see if I can maybe, hm…
OK, if I hire this woman, and we have sex, and it turns out that she is a he or used to be, then that part of me that is afraid that I might be gayer than I let on wonders if, somehow, I did know. That I picked up on ring fingers or whatever, and went ahead. Because my deep dark side is actually queerer than a three dollar bill.
Also, there is this weird confusion (and it isn’t just men) between attraction and action. Whether I was drawn to a masculine quality or not, if I’ve just done it with a dude, well, then I did something gay. And then you get into the whole question of “are you really gay if you don’t actually do it?”
Think of all the gay men who claimed to be “cured” because, even though they still had the disire to have sex with men, they weren’t acting on it and had instead married some poor woman who now has a gay husband (despite his claims of cure). He isn’t DOING IT, therefore he ISN’T IT. Until, of course, he DOES IT because, despite all the prayers and cuddling and hitting a pillow with a tennis racket while screaming at Mother, he’s gay and always has been.
I know that the whole “does that mean I’m gay?” paranoia isn’t entirely rational, but then neither fear nor prejudice are most of the time.
So basically, the desire for the “replicant test” is to protect himself from irrational fears later; he can use it on every whore he hires and as long as she passes he isn’t gay, secretly or otherwise. Is that it?
Yeah, pretty much. Should the replicant test ever fail, he may still wonder if he somehow let it fail because he’s a bit gay, but he can probably talk himself out of that.
LOL! 😀
I almost laughed when I saw Sailor Barsoom gave exactly the answer I was going to give: a big “homophobia”. 🙂 🙂
Know, Maggie, that homosexuality is a disease, that you can get it from ‘gays’ and ‘honorary gays’ (transsexuals). Even if you can’t tell; even if their body is modified in such a way, by an artist surgeon who did everything conceivable and technically possible; no matter what was done to it, the homo-virus still lurks there. The insidious homo-virus, which hides in the little spaces between the atomic orbitals and can never be killed, weakened, die, and is always ready to bite. Come close to a transexual, no matter how visually and functionally feminine, and you will be contaminated. Maybe some stupid quack of a shrink told you this is an ‘irrational fear’; but no, this is part of a big conspiracy: “They” want the gay vote, so it’s good for “Them” if there are more gays. That’s how they get the votes they need to advance the big gay agenda! Transsexuals are their last invention, their T-1000 Terminators, these “things” that only cause nausea in any self-respecting Real Man(tm)! It’s impossible to even look at them without your eyes wandering to their perigenital region and our brains feeling waves of cold shock and horror at the abomination under the fabric. A mockery of real genders, made for the only purpose of serving as a more successful vector for the homo-virus!
And we know what the next step is. My God! My hands are shaking as write these words. “They” are working on a new strain… one that will survive in real women’s bodies. I don’t know how close they are to it, but it seems they’re quite close. If they ever do it; if the homo-virus can be transmitted by real women; then even sex with women will become gay. And we’ll no longer have any hope of surviving! The whole world will be submerged in one big ocean of gayness, where only infected people will exist, people who slowly but surely will start looking at those male body-builders with their huge pectorals, their well-trained bodies, their lustful sweaty scent, and succumb…
LOL! Too funny! 😀
That was too cool!
This one’s easy: transsexual women don’t have periods. Therefore, any self respecting homophobe should only have sex with prostitutes/escorts/”seamstresses”/etc. during their highest flow days. That WU, the taint of man sex will be washed away by the offerings of Venus to Pluto.
😀
While homophobia plays a role, I think pride plays a bigger one. Having been made a fool of in the most intimate way possible would be a huge blow to a man’s ego, said ego being very heavily invested in his ability to bed women.
(Either I screwed up the html code for an image embed in my above post — i’m much more used to forum code — or perhaps Maggie is blocking images in comment posts to reduce spam. Fine. >.> Everybody assume I successfully teased Sailor Barsoom for his “date with Lola” line with an image of Looney Toons’ Lola Bunny. :P)
The answer Maggie, may be one thing, many things, or any combination thereof depending on the personality of the guy in question. Though I think MikeS hits a VERY strong point: The desire not to feel like the biggest fool your imagination can conceive is a pretty strong disincentive…
And of course as guys we know, know down to the bottom of our little guy-souls, that our very BEST guy friends all the way from kindergarten would LAUGH until they SHIT themselves if they ever got wind of our “petit trompé”! LAUGH until oxygen deprivation caused them to black out!
We know that because it’s what we would do. ^_^
No, images aren’t blocked; I use them myself. I clicked “edit” on your comment and all I saw was an empty box, so I deleted it; perhaps you could try again?
Well I met her met at the b-ball court near Acme Acres,
Where we, um… bought bread from some random bakers?
Never mind. I’ll send you my Ranma version of L-OL-A if you like. Also, you’re a guy? See, I can be fooled. It’s the Earth Eye in your hovercard.
Well, since you ask the question Maggie, and since gay/trans prostitution is fairly widespread in Spain, I will throw out the reasons I have come across:
i) lack of consent: similar to MikeS’ point about being fooled, but it goes further: men outside of prison are not used to having sexual contact without giving consent, and consent based on deception is no consent at all.
ii) some people believe trans to have a high rate of blood borne pathogens. So, even if no infection results, there is still the “yuck” factor. This is similar to the popular disinclination for sexual contact with intravenous drug users.
iii) fear of ridicule has already been listed.
iv) the “fear of becoming gay” is mentioned in other comments; the idea I have heard is more specific, namely that addiction to transsexuals could result. Hence, receiving fellatio once while being deceived could lead to repeating without being deceived, and going further each time. This combines with the idea that transsexuals are more genuinely sexual than a woman could be, and eventually, the man could end up rejecting women as a result.
v) paying for sex with a woman that is not one constitutes a waste of money and time. It is similar to paying for diamonds and receiving pebbles instead.
vi) there is a peculiar viewpoint (not very common but it does exist) as prostitution being a spiritual union between masculine and feminine essence; under this viewpoint transsexuals are classed as not having female essence.
HELLO,MISS MAGGIE… MY NAME IS, ANNA CORVETTE. YOU ARE TRULY, THE HIGH PRIESTESS OF THE ‘ ILLUMINATUS PERFECTI’ !!! THE CONCERN THAT,MEN,PARTICULARLY HETERO- HAVE ABOUT, THE MORAL ETHIC AS WELL AS PERSONAL SELF ACCEPTANCE INVOLVING SEX WITH ‘A MAN-IN-GIRLS CLOTHES’ HAS TO BE CLARIFIED AS PRIORITY FOR THE SOCIETY TOTEM TRADITION TO FLOURISH,OR AS WE FEARED, SEXUAL ANARCHY AND ALL OUT GENDER WARFARE! THAT AFTER THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF FEMALE BUTCHERY, TORTURE, DESECRATION, AND, BRUTALITY , I MUST POINT OUT, THAT DURING THESE ATROCITIES, ALL HOLY AND SUPERSTITIOUS, RAMPAGED OUT OF CONTROL,WHY? THE MEN, WHO SWORE AS GENDER GIVEN TO PROTECT THE WOMEN.CHILDREN AND THE INNOCENT, IF I MAY, HAVE A LITTLE OF YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION, I WILL BRING SATISFACTORY RESULT TO YOUR SERIOUS INQUIRY ,AND IT IN TRUTH, CONCERNS EVERY DIMENSION OF SEXUAL PARTAKERS WHO, WILL AGREE, THAT, THE ORGASM IS THE TREASURE WHEN TASTED IN CONSIDERATION, IS AS THE VERY SACRAMENT OF THE SWEETEST WINE OF ALL PLEASURES WE REVERENTLY SEEK TO FULFILL…
Hi Anna! Thanks for the compliment, but in the future would you please turn the caps lock off? 😉
Hi Maggie — I think you’re doing great work exploding the commonly-held misconceptions about prostitution, but in this post you’re unfortunately propagating a lot of very similar misinformation about transsexuality.
First, Transsexuals are no more a product of childhood trauma than whores are. I don’t even know where that “Type 1/Type 2/Extreme” classification came from (first I’ve ever heard of it) and I don’t know how you could call anything as subjective as a “feel/think/am” scale science.
Secondly: “…in recent years “queer activists” and easy international travel have combined to wreck or circumvent many of the safeguards which were designed to keep disturbed individuals from implementing irreversible changes to their bodies and later regretting it.”
And by that you mean governments and moralists who presume to know more about our minds and ourselves than we do? Telling us what we are and are not allowed to do with our bodies, “for our own good”? People who have no experience (or even understanding) of transsexuality unilaterally deciding that the desire to be the opposite sex HAS to be the byproduct of disturbed thinking, simply because it’s not something they can conceive of wanting to do? I’m not equating transsexuality with prostitution (as you said, one is irreversible) but I hope the rhetoric sounds familiar.
And while I’m sure you can find stories of repentant transsexuals, they’re a tiny minority, and usually the result of 1) inability to “pass” even after transitioning, and wishing they’d stayed a socially recognizable sex, even if it was the wrong one, or 2) getting religion. In neither case do those feelings of gender dysphoria ever actually go away.
Those safeguards you speak of are not, and never have been, for the benefit of transsexuals. They’re a buffer for medical professionals against malpractice suits, and the next best thing for the moralistic assholes in power if they can’t criminalize transsexuality outright.
Please believe me when I say that it does much more harm than good to set up an endless row of hurdles that transsexuals must clear, usually with a hostile or uncomprehending system, before we’re “allowed” to be what the rest of the population takes for granted. Prohibitively difficult “safeguards” don’t make the process any safer, they just make it longer, more humiliating, and far more expensive.
Thanks, Gabriel! I’ve never known any transsexuals except as passing acquaintances, and my information came from the late Dr. Helena, who was a friend of mine who was a Masters & Johnson trained sex therapist. I’m not sure if there’s more than one classification system in existence; this is how she explained it to me, so perhaps she was simplifying it for a lay person?
Late to the table, as usual: in the natural course of the evening with an escort, is there something about the appearance or feel of post-op, surgically-constructed labia and vagina that would be different enough to tip off the client? I have no idea how good those surgical results are, but it’s difficult for me to imagine a constructed vagina that would have anything like the muscular response of the real thing (even discounting all of those ancient Asian secrets of muscle control to drive men wild that they teach you in Whore School 🙂 ). The condom, which I assume the transsexual hooker would still insist on for verisimilitude unless she were selling the Tranny Experience, might reduce sensation enough to cover. . .
Of course, by the time the client realized the vagina in question wasn’t reacting like a genetic one, it would be too late. He’d have already caught the Homo-Virus. 😉
I would think the only person who could answer that question would be a man who had knowingly been with both kinds of woman, or perhaps a plastic surgeon. As for the condom, a doctor can correct me if I’m wrong but I believe a constructed vagina would still be susceptible to venereal diseases, so the condom wouldn’t just be window-dressing.
Oh, duh, of course. I was thinking in terms of actual contraception. My bad.
The muscles involved (the pubococcygeus and bulbospongiosus especially) are present in both sexes. In the woman they surround the vagina, in the man they surround the in-body portions of the penis. When a sexual reassignment is carried out, the new vagina is accordingly surrounded by the same muscles that surround a natural vagina. The variation in muscular response won’t be distinguishable from the usual variation among women.
The biggest difference isn’t under the skin, but the skin itself. The artificial vagina is usually going to be lined with the skin of the former penis. That isn’t going to feel quite the same as a natural vaginal lining, and won’t stretch quite as elastically. An uncovered, lightly-lubed finger might well be able to feel the difference . . . but a penis wrapped in a condom with lube applied won’t.
Thank you! That readjusted my whole mental image of male to female postoperative anatomy.
Actually, I think the best way to tell is the jawline. I met a transwoman who went to the same university as me, and she looked and sounded like a woman, but her jawline was slightly more square. From an outsider’s perspective, women and men tend to have different jawlines, and a transwoman usually has a more male jawline (and voice, obviously).
y’know…
I’m not sure if this individual is a female…
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FAmanda_Marcotte&tbnid=8lmbpvZNxKdaFM:&docid=yCEfoEeDAJyRnM&h=4350&w=3479