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MadFem ♀️'s avatar

Honestly, even if the person in question didn't have any questionable motives, I would feel very betrayed. I'm not okay with men touching me in medical situations. It doesn't matter what you do to try to cover up that fact, it's still going to trigger my panic response.

This is incredibly selfish behavior that could only be the result of male privilege.

Pixie Bruner's avatar

I had pelvic floor dysfunction, and muscle issues after a radical hysterectomy and bilateral oopherectomy for cervical cancer treatment. I already felt mutilated and lessened as a woman because of effects of my surgery and cold-turkey estrogen withdrawal that was NOT treated for two years leading to osteopenia at 51. I was vulnerable, ashamed and humiliated by needing pelvic floor PT.

I was able to find a female provider (all my providers are and were female, even the now-replaced one who did not allow me estrogen at 48). But it still was embarrassing and I felt lesser and weak and was grieving being a woman and trying to regain bladder control fully and become able to be at peace with my new body. Severe GSM/Vaginal atrophy. I admit it. It was invasive, awkward and I endured.

My female PT let me grieve and advocated for me. I got estrogen replacement and that even helped a lot on it’s own- but this woman was invading my body, giving me Kegel homework, bladder exercises and using tools to measure my muscle control and strength inside my body regularly. I still felt safe. She understood my anatomy and how gender and sexuality, and self-perception changes after cancer treatment and with GSM or hormones lost. I felt neutered, I was not likely fertile by 48, but I felt dehumanized and neutered and I still considered myself a woman- an adult female woman with XX chromosomes and just a less supported bladder, a estrogen starved traumatized urethra, a narrowing vagina that ended in a scar (“the cuff”) and and a clitoris all deprived from estrogen and use and atrophying and causing more problems.

My pelvic floor PT was a woman and she went into her gyn/oncology speciality PT because she didn’t want to women to cry, have shame, pain, bladder spasms, and pain and anxiety related to urination and intimacy after cancer- she saw what happened if untreated and the agony and illness and incredible shame she prevented.

She helped me immensely and I’ve recovered as much as humanly possible but a transwoman doesn’t have lived experience, knows the female anatomy as something experienced and grown up with and how it help forms a woman’s sexual identity, brings us joy, and can bring us terror,

abuse, humiliation and pain as well.

A transwoman has never had nerves cut that connected where mine were cut, or a bladder without a uterus as support suddenly, estrogen-loss caused atrophy, blood vessels lost and changed and will not experience the same trauma as my surgical and sudden transition to post-menopause when I was still menstruating months before the surgery.

I am a woman and had to fight for replacement estrogen. (Cancer survivors of gyn cancer use dilators too. We hate them, even when we stop needing to dilate). I wanted to remain a woman with my altered natal parts I had left in my body, not dilate an inverted male member that was closing because it was a wound- my “wound “ was to save my life and starved of the estrogen it always had and caused problems with my urethra and bladder control even. The TP papercuts were annoying and demoralizing)

I’ve my dignity back now. My body back. My ability to have joy back. I’ve healed but I’d have not been able to allow a man to treat me as an SA survivor or been comfortable. Womens pelvic floor PT should be administered by women- even for the same sex-attracted like me, there’s nothing erotic or fun or sexy about it. Only an AGP could and would make it so- it’s a way for men to violate already vulnerable ashamed women who are feeling destroyed and broken and defective.

I just needed PT, to strengthen muscles, relearn my new body, an expert to evaluate damage, reverse it with clinically proven methods, and demand estrogen replacement and medical care and a safe understanding compassionate provider who didn’t make it even weirder than than it already was and definitely didn’t enjoy it either.

Pelvic floor PT is not pleasant. Amazingly awkward and unsexy. Eventually, we made jokes on the PT table, but it took a lot before that care provider/PT relationship was established and we joked about my progress. I named the dilators. We laughed occasionally and celebrated my regaining my body’s normal function back as much as was possible. I couldn’t imagine having to do so with a man. It’d have me still ashamed, dehumanized and feeling gross and mutilated or refuse care but alive and facing decades of shame, pain, humiliation and anxiety ahead of me.

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