#thirdsex

A companion piece to my article "So Your Date's Sexless: What to Expect when there's Nothing Down There," which covered the broad spectrum of Eunuch and Nullo sexuality, this one will be focused on the vaginaless who belong to the female-spectrum, looks-like-they-might-have-a-vagina, Zero-V community.

Chapter One: Who are the Zero-V?

Unlike the Eunuch/Nullo community, the vast majority of whom are gay men, most vaginaless people are straight women-but here at the Department of Queerology we don't discuss such controversial, alternate lifestyles. Still, it has to be said, because straight women dominate any information on zero-v-ness, there is no information on what sex is like when your anatomy suggests you should have a vagina but do not, and that is because the straight women all get vaginas so their husbands can orgasm.

So, once more I rise to fill the void in queer sex ed.

Chapter Two: It's a Spectrum

Zero-V people can have any, multiple, or no gender, be cisgender or transgender, and can be attracted to anyone or no one. In the context of this article "female-spectrum" will be used to refer to the labioscrotal folds we all start with that end up looking more like labia, or, in fact are, which increases societal expectations that a vagina should be present. Phallic-wise, they can have anything from the tiniest clitoris to a noticeable micro-phallus, to a well-sized penis, and that is because labioscrotal folds and the clitorophallus arise from independent structures: one does not necessarily follow the other. When we say that someone is zero-v, we don't mean, necessarily, that there is absolutely nothing there: in cases of vaginal agenesis and hypoplasia there is usually a vestigial structure present. Being zero-v broadly means you don't have a penis-sized tube, whether that is because there was nothing there to begin with or because you have a micro-hole.

Chapter Three: Sometimes It's a Dud

Zero-v folk have higher rates of not feeling pleasure in the back, for various reasons: with vaginal agenesis and hypoplasia, since the vagina and uterus are underdeveloped (if there was any development), it's more likely the uterovaginal plexus (the nerves that control the organs) aren't fully formed as well, resulting in either feeling pain (dyspareunia) or not much of anything. With vaginectomies, when you remove an organ, the nerves it was connected to get severed, combined with scar tissue, leads to loss of erogenous sensation and pain under stimulation. So it's not a matter of "oh, you just need to have more sex to get used to it," it's a matter of the nerves not being there. And there ain't nothin' wrong with that. Unless you're engaging in sadomasochism, pain during sex means something's off. So a lot of v-less people switch to anal or focus on their clit or peen-of which there are innumerable guides.

Chapter Four: Isn't It Obvious?

Having spent an hour looking at crotch shots-solely for scientifical purposes, mind you-the only circumstance in which I could see a vaginal opening was after or during intercourse, when the vagina is fully stretched open. Before that, you'll have to dig to find it, and that is because the vagina is buried in the labia and closes vertically when not in use. Being able to lubricate also can't be used as an indicator because it's very common for the bartholin's glands to be present in vaginal agenesis and hypoplasia. Unless you find out by accident after trying to stick something in there, the only way you can tell is by asking, and to illustrate that point, here are three people, none of whom are female, but they are on the female-spectrum. One has a short vagina, one just has perineal skin, and the other has a vestigial membrane. Can you guess which is which?

Chapter Five: The Membranes

For those with vaginal agenesis or hypoplasia, usually there's a membrane, or an indentation, even a tiny vagina present, but, lacking muscle tissue, it can't dilate, can't contract, can't hold its shape indefinitely after being stretched into a tube-if enough tissue is available to do so. Also, it has very poor nerve endings: only 5% of female persons can orgasm from vaginal stimulus; with v-less people, it's zero point something. It doesn't happen. And creating a penis-sized hole is not easy-months of dilation therapy if you can't afford surgery. So, don't come to your partner's bed with the idea that your dick is the right size to get in there: it ain't. Also don't pressure your partner to get a vagina, because for the most part they won't be able to feel a thing, or it'll be more pain than it's worth, or not angled correctly to connect to the g-spot, so a waste of effort. Having a vagina is for the vagina-haver's pleasure, not yours, so respect your partner's decision to remain zero-v.

Chapter Six: The Skins

These are the completely zero-v, whose labial-spectrum organ just dead ends in the perineum because they were born that way or had a vaginectomy. In cases where the person is also more female-spectrum in that the urethra doesn't connect to the phallus, the urethral opening can be much larger and further in back, in the perineal zone: in female persons the urethra is a wrinkled pinhole on top of the vagina; for zero-v it's like a little cavernous tunnel about as wide as a sipping straw, very visible from a distance when the legs are spread or if the labial-spectrum organ is pulled open. In both types of skins bartholin's glands are rarely present, and even though the perineum looks normal, the patch where a vagina typically would be can be strechier than normal.

Also, having such a urethra comes with special hygiene needs; because the hole is so large, the urine stream might not be able to flush the sebaceous secretions that keep the tunnel moist, leading them to build up as a white paste that can cause irritation and pain if unchecked. Stretching the cavern open while crouching over a mirror, or having your caretaker assist you if of limited mobility, take a q-tip and gently scoop out any pale spots to ensure squeaky cleanness for your date.

Chapter Seven: Sex in Zero-V: The Interlabial Dimension

Interlabial is a term I found to describe the mechanics of doing sex without a vagina, because intercourse isn't possible-but if you want to call what you're doing intercourse that's fine, I'm just putting it out there that there's a specific term for this.

So, for some v-less people, that spot in the back where a vagina typically would be can still experience arousal and intense pleasure, and I have a couple theories as to why that is: the pudendal nerve, which controls sexual arousal in humans, connects right there, so it could be that these people have a strong pudendal nerve. Or, the nerve plexus that controls the pelvic organs is extremely complex, and it could be that even though a vagina never developed or is no longer present, the plexus is still vagina-shaped, thus making sexual arousal vaginal in shape. A phantom vagina, if you will. Which means that your partner might want to be stimulated in a way that is simialr to vaginal stimulation.

Lubrication: A lot of zero-v people have troubles lubricating: the bartholin's glands may not be present, or underdeveloped, or were damaged by radiation therapy treating vaginal cancer. So if you're doing a lot of rubbing you'll need to reapply lubricant multiple times, and there are some fun ways to do that: you can put a drop of lube on a sex toy and spread it around their genitals; or, if your partner has well-developed labial folds and is comfortable with it, you can place a glob of lube between the folds, and it stays in there like a well, and whenever their clitoris/phallus/penis dries out, you can slide your fingers into this well, like dipping them into a wet vagina, and reapply that way.

Fingering: you might think that because nothing's there or they have a finger-sized hole, that you don't need to worry about waiting for them to get fully aroused before poking around. That actually isn't the case because the same mechanisms are in play: genitals are designed to inflate with blood to make them stretchier for intercourse, and combined with the fact that perineal skin, membranes and divots don't wanna stretch, it can be easily painful to just start jabbing at things. Keep your fingernails well trimmed to prevent cuts, and gently massage your way deeper so their body can adjust to your presence. In some cases you might be able to stretch far enough inward that you're in between the arms of the levator ani, one of the muscles that contracts during orgasm, which will feel like your finger is being squeezed by two rubber bands. You don't need to worry about damaging them, and your partner will be able to feel their body clutching you, which can add to the enjoyment.

Sex Toys: yes, it's possible to find itty-bitty toys for their itty-bitty holes. Anal trainer kits come with butt plugs in various sizes, including very small, that can be used like dildos. Small anal beads can also work. Narrow urethral sounds can be repurposed to playfully prod the area.

The D: yes, v-less people want to have a big hard cock between their legs just as much as anyone else. Because the average-sized penis/dildo is so wide, pressing inward will be painful, and if the urethra is in the back, this'll put pressure on the bladder. So just thump the area, only exerting force if you're engaging in sadomasochism and your partner wants to be in pain. If you have a penis/long phallus and really want to thrust into something, you can do intercrural sex, where your partner presses their legs together and you slide into the crack. Use lots of lube.

The G-Spot: most people have this, a cluster of nerves just below the bladder, that most people stimulate through penetration to intensify orgasm. Not wanting or being unable to do anal sex doesn't mean your partner is cut off from their full sexual potential: what male-spectrum people do is massage the perineum or sit on a little ball and hump it to trigger the nerve, which can be adapted for your partner. Other zero-vs who have a developed vaginal plexus, might have discovered the phantom vagina method, which entails visualizing yourself as having a vagina, even a full-sized one, and receiving penetration, which tells the nerves to start doing stuff. Be open to the idea that your partner may be fantasizing about vaginal penetration a lot. Often, an external source of stimulation is needed to maintain pleasure levels, and offer to help out. If your partner is very comfortable, you can discuss the possibility of roleplaying vaginal intercourse. It does take longer for v-less people to orgasm, since the g-spot isn't being tapped directly, but the extended period soaking in pleasure is very rewarding.

Chapter Eight: In the Event of Orgasm, Don't Panic

As I said earlier, orgasming solely from zero-v spot stimulus doesn't happen. Until it does. I've had two pudendal/vestigial-vaginal-nerve/whatever-the-damn-thing-is orgasms in my life without my microphallus being touched, both were cosmic experiences, but I don't know why they happened at all. Maybe it'll happen for your partner, but not because you were trying for it or expecting it. So, as the guy wanting to get it on with a zero-v person, don't go into the bedroom thinking you're Mx. Right who can make a fossilized chunk of wood cum (you're not that good). Don't even acknowledge that zero-v orgasms exist, treat the spot as just another erogenous zone and have a fun time.

Suffragist/suffragette was considered a "third sex", and suffrage flag is very similar to the genderqueer flag by @gqid.

A third-sex (tersex) is commonly used to denote an “other” sex category beyond “m” or “f” (of male or female) in documents for example. In some passports they don’t categorize “third-gender” but instead “sex”. 

It would seem like biological essentialism, but some people interpret this as a psychosocial sex (often referred as brain sex in English). Denoting someone who is not dyadic, while not essentially intersex, hence may be classified as altersex.

For those just tuning in, I'm a third sex person-what exactly that is is different for each person (we all have unique anatomy), but for me it means I was born with a microphallus, labia, and a urethra in the spot where a vagina would be-and no vagina, but because my urethral opening is so large it's often mistaken for one. (I blame crappy sex ed for this.)

I am also sexless: all my reproductive tissues have been removed...and yet, despite neither having a vagina nor a prostate gland, I can still experience a g-spot orgasm.

HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE?!?!?!?!

I've spent the weekend trying to figure that out. I'm 99.98% certain I understand what's going on.

Prior to my shit ton of surgery, the main way I was able to orgasm was through receptive anal penetration-and I was truly an animal: I could shove a fire hydrant up my butt and not feel a thing.

However, in the process of the surgery my rectum had to be rearranged, and this ended my era of anal hedonism: everything gets stuck now, and fantasizing about penetration no longer causes arousal. I think one the nerves that controls the sphincter got lost in the process.

But then something mysterious started happening: I began experiencing arousals somewhere else: at the junction where the labia connect in the back. For me this is a stretchy patch of skin that can be pressed inward a little bit, and I experimented with penetrating this area as deeply as possible, leading to the discovery that I could orgasm this way; I've since termed it Interlabial Sex.

Prior to my surgery, one of the problems I had was when I would sit my genitals would go completely numb, and it would take a minute of kneading and literally punching myself in the dick before sensation was restored.

After the surgery, this problem never happened again, and I think (99.98% probability) that the thing that was pinching the arteries and nerves wasn't there any more, leading to unrestricted blood flow going to my pudendal nerve, which is the nerve that controls sexual arousal in humans, and happens to be in the place where the labia connect in the back.

While exploring this new kind of penetration, naturally, I would fantasize about having sex with someone with a penis, who would thrust deeper and deeper into me, until I started fantasizing about having a vagina...and realized I could feel pleasure inside me, similar to what I felt when I could have anal sex, with similarly intense orgasms.

BUT WHY?!?!?!?!

Studying diagrams about how to stimulate the g-spot through the vaginal wall and how to get to a man's prostate gland, these spots turn out to be in the same place: behind and a little below the bladder.

Veeeerrrry interesting.

As everyone with two brain cells recalls, the human sexes originate from the same embryonic goop, and thus have the same nerve systems: the inferior hypogastric plexus and the sacral plexus-which the interwebs are telling me is what the pudendal nerve branches off of but I honestly don't know how they can tell all these squiggly lines apart.

Anyway, the point is, in both male and female persons, there is this nerve cluster behind and a little below the bladder, which in me got reconnected to the pudendal nerve-or maybe it already was, and it was only because of the circulatory problems that I could only feel it through my rectum.

Some of you who have kept up with my old man ramblings might be wondering: since you fantasize a lot about receptive vaginal intercourse nowadays, are you thinking about getting a vagina?

No, for a couple of reasons.

First, the idea of having a vagina for realz causes a lot of distress.

Secondly, where would a vagina go? Right where I have these nerves I'm havin' so much fun with. They would be sliced to smithereens.

Which makes we wonder about the fate of other people sort of on the female side of things who also don't have vaginas.

So many are pressured to get vaginoplasties so they can have "real" sex. Some of them are even children when this happens.

Bad sex ed will be the death of civilization, so the elders of my tribe prophesy. How many people were denied the chance to explore the pudendal nerve through perineal massage, having their own mind-blowing orgasms, before deciding on surgery?

We need to add another chapter in the sex ed books about pudendal nerves and perineums and the avenues this provides for zero-v sexuality.

The yellow might be a little too literal, but I couldn't think of anything else. As with the other flags I've designed, the gray half represents one's natural genital set, while the yellow represents the urinary track, with the circle on the bottom for the perineal orifice.

Perineal, if one hadn't guessed, refers to the perineum, and in typical human physiology, the bladder doesn't empty back there, but there are several reasons why someone might be different.

In a lot of cases one might be born that way, such as y-type urethral duplication, in which a person has a urethra in the normal position, and a second one in the back; in female or close-to-female persons, this may result in the second urethra being fused to the vaginal wall, so pee comes out the vagina. Other cases may result from severe hypospadias or for reasons that have yet to be determined.

Just as many incidences are caused by treatment for medical conditions. In the event of gender incongruent men born female or close-to-female, who suffer from gender dysphoria and wish to have male genitalia but not urethroplasty, the position of their urethra behind the new scrotum can be preserved with a procedure similar to a urethrostomy.

In the case of fe/male/close-to-either -to-nullo with gender dysphoria (who may be men, agender, or anything in between), the result of having their genitals removed results in either needing a urethrostomy or the female/close-to-female urethral opening morphing into a noticeable hole about where the vagina used to be-the perineal zone.

For gender incongruent women born male/close-to-male with gender dysphoria who want female-looking genitals but don't want to go through a vaginoplasty, a urethrostomy is a very simple solution.

The most common medical condition that requires creation of a perineal urethra is strictures in the male/close-to-male urinary tract: as one gets older, the more likely this will be the result of prostatic hyperplasia, in which the prostate gland constricts around the urethra at the base of the bladder, creating a potentially fatal blockage.

In rare cases of hypospadias without any history of complications, they'll suddenly start having catastrophic strictures later in adulthood with creating a perineal urethra the only way to preserve life.

How many people have perineal urethras no one knows because medical associations and disease analysts haven't been keeping track-but I imagine it's quite a lot.

In many cultures, standing to urinate is essential to masculinity, and the loss of that ability can cause men to have a lot of emotional distress, even gender dysphoria. For trans men and transmascs who get too many fistulas in their urethral lengthenings and have to reverse the surgery, I imagine that's also really tough to come to terms with...

...or, sitting to urinate not being a component of their gender dysphoria may lead their therapists or their peers to doubt their transness, their manliness, with the concomitant social pressure to conform.

For duplicated urethras, the second one can be seen as an unsightly deformity, or there may be a slight incontinence problem, which is also socially unacceptable, so it's dissected away at the earliest opportunity.

With hypospadias, Real Men Stand To Pee (tm) is the whole point of those urethroplasties, which usually cause more problems than they solve, such as spraying, but the child may feel under so much pressure to conform that they won't even dare think to sit.

As I frequently bemoaned in my article, "So your date's sexless: what to expect when there's nothing down there," because perineal urethras are positioned where a vagina typically is, and because they are a noticeable orifice, they are often confused for vaginas-and better sex ed is needed, simply put, so that people understand that these things exist and how to tell the difference.

Having a perineal urethra myself, I do stand to urinate (it's actually easier), so I can dispel some misconceptions: it's mostly a matter of technology.

The "pack 'n' pee" things made for trans men cannot work with my anatomy: because the female urethra is right on top of the vagina, the funnel part of the thing has to go into the vagina, otherwise the urine backs out and sprays everywhere-and I don't have a vagina.

At home, I can just stand over the bowl, but in public or outdoors that isn't feasible, and the thing that I found that actually works are urinary prosthetics made for female persons who do a lot of camping, specifically the pStyle device, extremely simply designed, and doesn't get in the way of my microphallus-which was another problem that kept coming up when looking for a device: despite about half my groin being on the female-ish end of things, stuff made for the female end, men and women alike, doesn't fit me (hashtag third sex problems).

Technically, a person with a scrotum can use a pStyle, but you would need to pull your sac upward to get the thing in place.

So this pride flag is for us saints and scalawags who pee out the back, that we should not be stigmatized for being born this way, or coming to be this way via a medical condition, nor should we be made fun of for using prostheses.

In a recent issue of Time magazine Angelina Jolie proudly displayed tama mastectomy scars. I remember when the news of tama surgery leaked years ago the manosphere going nuts, whining about how another hot chick had gotten tranzed and mutilated. Probably why tama later salpingo-oophorectomy was kept quieter.

This queer woman did this because of cancer, but the cisheteronormative hegemony doesn't make these distinctions, it doesn't care if you were born with agonadism or had cancer. Cisheteronormativity only cares about one thing: perfection. Anything less than that and you're a disposable freak.

Though extremely unlikely that Mg. Jolie identifies as a female eunuch, ta definitely understands being queer-bodied and freak pride...an' ya gotta let all that out.

You can't live a life in shame. Governed by it. Having scars is the new natural. It's your body it's natural.

My labiaplasty-on-male-genitals (yeah, that's a real thing) are very prominent, but in all my years of making erotic content and shoving my crotch in the camera not one person has ever said a thing. No one cares.

Ya gotta seize the day, own it, and never apologize.

Angelina never apologized; never begged a pardon. Nope: I'm gonna rip my shirt open 'n' show my scars an' yer jus' haveta git used to that, boy.

To end this pride week I decided a return to the positive, and add a bit of color: let's get some flags, people!

The standard flag is one invented by Beyond Mogai Pride:

it's bright and flashy, and everyone likes it, unlike the teresex flag which is drab and ugly, and won't be shown here.

For trans men who want to be male eunuchs, Transx Mogai Cafe knows you're there:

In the studies I found, non-binary eunuchs were almost evenly split between genderqueers and all other non-binary genders, so I designed a flag based on the genderqueer flag:

For women eunuchs I designed a flag based on the cis woman one by Idrisney29:

A couple miscellaneous flags: there's the Sexless flag by The Mogai Dragon:

if you don't wanna use the e-word.

And lastly, the Thirdsex flag by Varsex Pride, for those who feel they're a third sex, or come from a culture with more than two sexes:

If you're looking for community, men have reclaimed the word "eunuch;" that's pretty much the only way to find guys to talk to. For women, your best bet is seeking out groups for Altersex, Nullo/nulloplasty/ectomy. There are very large non-binary support groups within the transgender community, there's no shortage of people to ask for advice.