Twice in the last week I’ve read the assertion that trans women’s vaginas are ‘a wound’ which, without ‘lifelong attention’, the body will seek to ‘heal’. Speaking as an old trans woman who does nothing more than wash her bits to avoid being smelly, I’m here to say BUNKUM. /1

But this assertion is repeated so often as gospel — and usually with precisely the same words — that it’s worth noting why this urban myth, uttered with sincere pseudo-expertise by people with no clinical background, seems to have such popular longevity. /2

First, where did it come from? The first time I saw it written was in Germaine Greer’s book ‘The Whole Woman’, where she claimed it had been said to her by a clinician (thus setting it up as impeachable).

It’s true, of course, that trans women are instructed to dilate their new vagina regularly for a period after leaving hospital — several times a day at first, then daily, then weekly and then ... well, a regular sex life will be quite enough. /3

The early dilation regime is not to prevent ‘healing over’ but because the suture lines in any plastic surgery operation, where flaps of skin are sown together, have a tendency to shrink as they heal. Once they’ve healed, no more shrinkage, other than normal atrophy. /4

ATROPHY? Well, yes, if you don’t use something it will tend to shrink. Ask any woman of my age who hasn’t had a regular sex life. They dry out too. Boots is full of products for lifelong maintenance of dry foo-foos. /5

Apart from the personal hygiene I’m really quite neglectful of my vagina. There! I said it. I did the dilating as instructed — I’ve still got the most sexless dildos ever invented — then I had a fairly regular sex life for many years, until I got old and bored of sex. /6

Occasionally I get the dilators out — about once a year — just to check things out. After all, I’ve been reading this urban myth for over 25 years and I’ve always been curious to know whether it had any substance. Reader, it doesn’t! /7

So why does this myth have such currency? Well, it’s all a not-too-subtle way of inferring that my genitals, and hence my sex, is unnatural — so unnatural that even our own bodies would reject it. It ‘sounds’ credible because ear piercings close up if you don’t always fill them.

But that’s the extent of the ‘validity’. Gender reassignment by reference to Sharon, who put your studs in. /9

The truth is that the body is quite cool about having a vagina there. Men and women are not separate species. We carry the genetic program for being either sex, tilted away from the default (female) by an infinitesimally small process at 6 weeks gestation. /10

That channel which the surgeon dissects in order to accommodate a neovagina (made with your own flesh) is in a plane where a vagina was developing until a hormone told it to stop. Putting a division back there is no bodily affront. /11

So please challenge the mindless repetition of the ‘wound’ myth if you come across it. It’s designed to insinuate that trans women aren’t natural, even if you don’t realise that when repeating it. /Ends