Josie’s partner was another trans woman. “She worked very slowly and made 100 percent sure that I was okay with the process of being penetrated for the first time.” Though Josie had had sex before transitioning, this experience was different: in the changes in her body and identity; how sex acts felt; the emotions of being with another person in bed.

The “magic” came after she transitioned. “I lost my virginity for the second time when I was visiting a friend from a Facebook group,” she said. “I drove four hours to her house to hang out. I was only a few months into hormone replacement therapy and was more excited then you can imagine.” Josie was also nervous: “When she touched me, my knees became weak,” Josie told me. “We ended up in her bed.”

Josie is a 29-year-old trans woman from South Carolina. She told Broadly that when she lived as a straight man in her youth, she expected more from losing her virginity: “I thought it was this magical thing, but it ended up to just be sex.”

Having sex for the first time can be exciting, terrifying, poignant, regrettable—but once it’s over, it’s over, right? What if you undergo a change that radically alters your body and how others perceive you? Transgender people often overhaul the body and identity they were born into—is sex after something like that comparable to sex before it? Being trans myself, I know that sexual experiences pre-transition were significantly different from the kind I experience today. It made me wonder: If you’re trans, is it possible to have sex for the first time...twice?

“When she penetrated me, it was a little painful, but I became putty,” Josie told me. “My defenses fell, and I truly felt like I’d entered a new stage of my life. In my heart, I felt that this destroyed the mask I wore for so long.”

Penetrative Sex After Transitioning Isn't for Everyone

Kate is a 39-year-old teacher in New York City. She has been attracted to women all her life. She first had sex “a long time ago,” with a woman to whom she would, decades later, come out to as transgender. When I asked her if she felt like she “became a virgin again” after she transitioned, Kate said, “Kind of: It felt like starting over. I said things to my friends like, ‘I've never kissed anyone before.’ A part of me knew that this was a big beginning.” The concept of being revirginized remains “silly” to her: “I feel the same way about virgin as damsel or maiden: These words are used to demean and infantilize women.”

She's never dated a trans person.

Kate hasn’t had penetrative sex post-transition. “I've decided not to use my penis, which is still on my body, unless someone asks me to. My current partner says she doesn't ‘feel like she needs’ my penis.” She met her partner on Tinder. “She's never dated a trans person, and is treating me like I am not trans,” Kate said, adding that that’s how she prefers things. “She texted me today: ‘I...100 percent agree about exploring our femininity together. Pretty girls forever.’ There is a ton of physical chemistry, political agreement, and joint healing, bonding, and growing. I couldn't have met a better person to be my first physical partner after my transition.”

She Felt Like a Virgin Again

Robin is a bisexual trans woman in her late 30s. “I first had sex in 2001, at age 21,” she said. “It was awkward, but I don't think more awkward than most people's first time. I spent another 13 years having sex following that before I realized I was trans.” She wasn’t interested in penetrative sex, but performed that role in bed for the pleasure of the women she slept with. “I preferred receiving oral sex, but it took a long time to connect that preference with my dysphoria. I thought of myself as a lousy dude, never as a woman. I had a lot of shame, but I managed to function despite it,” she said.

When she underwent bottom surgery, sex felt new. “I definitely referred to having a new kind of virginity once I had a vagina,” she said. “I went about losing that virginity as soon as I was healed enough.”

She had sex with her wife following the procedure, but that was deeply personal to their relationship; it didn’t feel like she’d had sex for the first time “twice,” per se. “However, I put a lot of thought into the first time I received vaginal penetrative sex with someone after surgery,” Robin says. “I picked a sweet, generally straight, cisgender boy,” she said. “He was very understanding and patient, although he'd had no previous experience with trans women,” Robin says. The neo-vagina can be extremely tight following the procedure to create it, requiring months of dilation to expand. “Unfortunately, I was still very tight, and it didn't go well. Given the circumstances, I was grateful for his attentions, even if it didn't work out exactly as I'd hoped.”