In reply to FreshSlate:
yea, I too once tried to be free from the evil clutches of the multi-blade corporations; who shall obviously remain nameless. (t.b.h more often than not it’s just too time consuming to go cut-throat)
It makes a massive difference if you give your hirsute areas a good long soak in warm water beforehand, softens things up nice (same with disposables really).
Shaving after getting out of the shower works well for me.
Granted it's a slightly different technique, can't do long sweeping strokes with the blade, more lots of short stokes across the same area.
But it really shouldn’t be traumatic; just don't let the thing move across skin anything other than at 90deg across the blade.
Start with the grain, finish against.