(gentle ambient music)
- When I was pre-op, oh, the orgasms were good,
but honey, when I got that vagina. (laughs)
(text typing on screen)
How do you have sex?
Are you able to have penetrative sex?
I am a post-op trans woman.
So that means that I have undergone vaginoplasty,
which is a form of reconstructive surgery.
And that allows me to be able to have vaginal intercourse.
- It's actually really weird, having sex with a vagina,
obviously, 'cause I went 22 years of my life without one.
Every single time, I'm like, "Oh my God, what if it hurts?"
Or like, "What if it breaks?"
Or, "What if I have to get another surgery or something?"
- Personally, I am pre-op so I haven't had a vaginoplasty
and I don't plan on getting one probably until I decide
to have children.
Just because I don't really have gender dysphoria
as much down there, it doesn't really bother me as much.
I do the penetrating, I guess. (chuckles)
- What is your sexual orientation?
If you have a partner now, how do they identify?
I'm straight. I am married to a heterosexual, cis male.
- I would say straight because I am attracted to men.
And the men that are attracted to me also,
they would consider them straight
because they see a female in me.
- A lot of men are scared to date a trans woman
because they're scared of being gay
in the eyes of other men.
I don't have muscles. I don't have hairy legs.
I have nothing that would attract a gay man to me.
You know? So I don't consider my partner gay.
- As it stands now, I would identify as pan or bi.
So I'm still married to my cisgender wife.
We were married before my transition.
The vagina is still something that I am exploring
and open to.
It isn't my number one preference, but I recognize
that my wife's number one preference
wasn't, at the time, having a wife.
- At what point do you disclose to your potential partners
that you're trans?
It's such a touchy subject
because a lot of girls disagree with me.
But I believe that your first conversation. Point blank.
- I wouldn't want to talk to somebody,
have feelings for them, and then they find out
that I'm trans and they're not into it,
which is totally fine because it's not everyone's cup of tea
and you can't be mad at somebody
because they're not into you.
But I definitely think that before you do anything sexual
with somebody, you need to disclose that you're trans.
That is like a number one thing.
- So before my surgery,
I think it was a little more important.
I would literally be with a guy
and just get caught up in the moment
and think he's like so perfect, so amazing.
And then I was like, "Wait, I have to tell you something."
And now, having a vagina, I've fully had sex with people
and just not even told them.
They just don't know.
When guys get upset when they find out you're trans,
it's honestly based off their own insecurities
of, "Oh I find so and so attractive.
Oh, she used to be a boy. Oh, my God."
If you're attracted to me,
if you literally just had sex with me,
it doesn't matter who I was born.
I'm not that person anymore.
- Have you ever feared for your safety
while pursuing a hookup?
- I was hooking up with a lot of people
without telling them I was trans.
I had an instance one time where I was hooking up with a guy
and one of my friends at the time,
who I thought was my best friend,
told him after I hooked up with him.
And he lived in the same apartment building as me,
and it was not good.
Him and his friends starting to beat my ass.
I literally had to move out of my apartment
because I was scared, literally, for my life.
- Well, I do sleep with a bat and a knife, for sure.
I've thought to myself,
"Oh, shit. Do I have to grab my knife?"
I have been in bars where I've had guns put up to my head
here in California.
- Honestly, a couple months ago I was with this guy
and it was just going really good.
Didn't expect to hook up with him or anything.
But then one thing led to another.
Obviously I didn't tell him I was trans
'cause I didn't expect to hook up with him.
He was like, "Oh, was Lila your birth name?"
And started asking very weird questions.
And he was like, "Oh, your vagina looks new."
I didn't know where it was gonna go.
I was like, "What if he drugs me or smothers me
or literally kills me?" 'cause it happens all the time.
You have to be so careful.
And so I was like, "Oh this is a really unsafe situation.
I have to go."
- Are orgasm's better after your transition?
When you're more comfortable with your body,
yes, orgasms are better.
- When I was pre-op, ugh, the orgasms were good.
But honey, when I got that vagina...
It feel so nice to just be able to just let her just flow.
Just let it flow. (laughs)
- I think now that I'm on hormone pills,
my libido went from here to here.
- When you're on hormones for so long,
it does a lot to your reproductive organ.
So you don't produce sperm
and your sex drive goes down a lot.
I almost went like a year without having sex,
just because I really was not feeling well about myself
'cause I was still in kind of like that beginning phase
where I felt like I really wasn't a full woman yet.
- My sex life with my partner has improved
since my transition.
It can be magical and epically more romantic,
and epically more because I'm so much more engaged.
I was never able to be fully engaged
with almost anything across the spectrum of life,
not just sex, before I came out.
It's much better, much more beautiful.
- How often do you encounter people who fetishize you?
Very often.
They go instantly into like, "Oh, do you like the top?
Can I give you oral?"
- There's always random people who will Instagram DM you,
Twitter DM you.
- Been so many people who are like,
"Oh, my God, do you have a dick?"
Or like, "Blah, blah, blah, blah."
And think it was so hot and stuff like that.
And it's like, "Baby, I'm not a fetish."
And that's what so many people think where they're like,
"Oh I'm not into that."
And it's like, "Into what? You're not into girls?"
That's not something to be into.
It's just like, "Are you attracted to me or not?"
- When you have sex do you ever struggle
with feelings of dysphoria?
Yes, I do.
My voice and my face for making out,
and sometimes my stubble, I haven't had laser hair removal.
There are certain surgeries, facial feminization
and things like that, that I still haven't had.
I don't feel dysphoric about my genitalia.
A lot of trans people do.
I don't, I like that part of my body.
- I know a lot of trans women are very against their parts,
and, you know, 'cause mentally they're women, right?
Well, this is me, a trans woman.
I'm not mentally a woman. I don't want ovaries.
I don't want a vagina, you know?
So I like using my penis to have sex, for sure.
- It's so important oftentimes as a trans woman
to feel that we need to be the prettiest,
we need to be the thinnest, we need to be the curviest,
just so we can even feel less dysphoric.
- Early on, I remember she even asked if it was possible
for me to sometimes role play, like the role of a guy,
even just for almost like dress up.
I think she was just coming to terms with the loss of that.
I was just very honest and said,
"No, 'cause I'll be in tears by the end of that."
- [Interviewer] Was sex talked about
in your home growing up?
- No. (laughs)
There was no sex talked about in my home.
- I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama.
So, very deep Bible Belt South,
so sex was not talked about at home.
And I actually had sex at 13.
- Asian people, they have this strict rule,
and also the way that they want their sons to grow up as.
So, if they're growing up trans, it's kind of a big no-no.
I told myself, and I made a promise to myself,
that I won't transition medically
until my mom fully accepts me.
Yeah, she disowned me for like five years.
I just wanted that path for me.
I know that a lot of trans girls would be like,
"Sila, you need to take hormones right away
or else you're gonna turn into an old man."
But for me I wanted to do it my way.
I mean, now we're like best friends,
and she buys me underwear and bras and stuff, so...
- Is it transphobic if I want to wait for sex
until my partner gets further into her transition?
- Oh. Ooh, that's a tricky one.
- There's no issue with wanting to wait.
And you need to definitely communicate that
because it really sucks for someone to have to wait
and expect something and it never comes.
And then for also them to have to feel
that you really don't desire them at all.
- No, I don't think that's transphobic.
I think, honestly, certain things, especially sexually
with pre-op trans women, is I guess just your own opinion
and your own preference, I guess.
Certain things make you uncomfortable. That's one thing.
But if you genuinely like don't wanna have sex with them
then it's like, "Why are you together? Why are you talking?"
- It's like it's a conditional kind of love.
It's like you don't view them as female or male
until they're completely transitioned, which is not fair.
If you can't love me at this point,
you can't love me at this point.
You know?
- Has sex ever made you regret your transition?
I would say no.
I don't think sex really has anything to do
with my transition because I guess, for me,
I could go the rest of my life without having sex.
- Not regret. I would never ever regret anything.
But right after I got my surgery and got my first boyfriend,
I was like, "Oh my God. Why is this so much work?"
'Cause you have to dilate and clean (indistinct) clean,
and all this stuff.
Once you go that far,
there's nothing really you can't handle.
So it's just all about patience at that point,
and letting everything heal, and your day will come.
- I'm at a point in my transition
where sex doesn't give me any validation anymore.
I think when I was younger, that was definitely an issue.
And I thought I needed to be having so much sex
to have people really think
that I was the most perfect and beautiful woman.
- What's one thing you wish you could debunk
about being a trans woman?
This whole pervert thing,
and us trans women using the restroom.
It's like, "Honey, all we do there is wash our hands
or pee or poop, and then we're gone.
I am not there to look and stare at your anything."
- One of the things that I wish that we can debunk
is that we often don't get tested.
We often don't wanna know our HIV status.
People think that we're just walking around,
just like a walking STD.
We're not.
- We just wanna be normal.
We wanna live a life. We want happiness.
We want boyfriends. We want husbands.
We want to not be killed. We don't wanna be threatened.
We don't want to be somebody's secret.
We don't wanna be your side chick.
Every night I get texts,
from midnight to five in the morning,
and it's so annoying, because those are whole hours.
And I'm not nobody's ho.
I'm special. I'm unique.
- [Interviewer] What is something you wish you had learned
in Sex Ed?
- I wish that I learned being trans isn't a sexuality,
it's an identity.
I thought, because of my own experience, I thought,
"Okay, all trans women who transition from male to female,
they like men," but that's clearly not the case.
You can be trans, a trans woman and love women.
You can love both. Or you can love men.
I wish that I would've learned that sex doesn't equal love.
I think I would've realized that just because I was 13
and I thought that I loved him, and we had sex,
so that meant that he loved me too.
- The emotional connectivity
that comes from having sex with someone.
After I've had sex with someone, it has never been the same
when I'm in the room with them,
when their name is brought up.
There's a connection there that, for better or worse.
Those are pieces of me that I wish I had guarded
a little more in a lot of circumstances.
- Everyone should explore their own bodies
and find out what is best for them.
It shouldn't be about making other people happy
or fulfilling a societal standard.
Sex is fun, and it should be about that.
(soft ambient music)