In solidarity with Trans women, this month you can make a difference by putting your olfactory system to use — while going number #2!
Yes! It’s not a joke. We are sincerely asking all women to please spend more time smelling their poo during bathroom breaks, and to critically examine what many of our gender have to endure as part of the cost of bottom surgery. It is time for us all to do the work to truly empathize with the sights, sounds, and smells endured by every member of our large and beautiful gender community — including those with distinct transitioning odors:
Based on Gram stain the majority of smears revealed a mixed microflora that had some similarity with bacterial vaginosis (BV) microflora and that contained various amounts of cocci, polymorphous Gram-negative and Gram-positive rods, often with fusiform and comma-shaped rods, and sometimes even with spirochetes.
The social taboo around frank discussion of smells is already quite strong, but doubly so when it comes to the ones that can come from MtF neovaginas. If you are a regular on advice and trans subreddits, you know you usually don’t have to wander too far down the feeds before coming across anonymous posts carefully prodding for advice on neovaginal smells, like this one:
[…] One night I was going to go down on her, so she washed her bits before she came in the bedroom and she laid on my bed. I was about a few inches from her face when I noticed a foul smell that I can best describe as stale urine, cheesy, and a bit like feces.
I’ve heard of post op mtf smells, but I’ve read most people saying that they go away quickly after transition. Anyway, I backed away because I was so put off by that smell. She kept asking what’s wrong and I finally broke down and told her what’s wrong.
She was confused and kept smelling herself saying she didn’t smell anything. She said she just washed it too. It’s been a fight between me and her and she’s self conscious about it. I asked if it could be an infection or her hygiene habits, lifestyle, or diet because I know those things can affect the smell of the vagina.
She told me that’s just the way her vagina and all vaginas smell. She told me it didn’t smell like what I described it as and it just smelled like vagina. I tried asking my mother about what it could be and she couldn’t give me any answers because she’s not informed on this topic. I tried asking my gay cousin but she didn’t have any answers either.
I was wondering if anyone in here could give me some advice on this? Do transgender women just have a different smell down there than cis women? Is that just her natural smell? If so, what can I do to get used to the smell? […]
But before we get to the cultural impact and science of unique genital scents, read on to learn about the sad story that sparked a poovolution in a Canadian public school.
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“As I was transitioning, I found it triggering that my cisgender female friends didn’t smell like poo,” the top of the fateful note read. It had arrived by way of the Trans Express.
That’s what they called it there. The relatively small but respected Canadian school had just set up an anonymous tip box for LGBTQ folks to alert the faculty to issues faced by their community. It was a lavender wooden box, decorated with cheery handwriting, plastic flowers, and other colorful accoutrements, discretely placed by the janitor’s closet near the main bathrooms.
Three times a week the woman describing herself as the school’s “trans mama bear” ceremoniously poured its heartrending contents out onto a table in the faculty lounge….
