Trigger warning: this post discusses male castration.
It really would be absurd of me to say, “hey boys, you should try this, you’ll really love it.” Amiright?
One by-product of hormone therapy is chemical castration. I hadn’t really thought about it until I felt it. Castration. Then I realised that is exactly where I am. And yet, my desire is intact. It’s just suddenly very different.
What’s different? Well, first of all, I not only don’t get hard, but I can’t. My male bits might feel good if I were to play with them, but that’s never something I have felt comfortable doing, so I’m hardly likely to start now. In other words, my genitals are not likely to be a source of pleasure anymore. [I do know that many trans MTF sisters are negatively and intensely triggered by their own erections, so this is not unusual in the community. But I also have some trans friends who say, “use it or lose it,” and I not only see that a physical impossibility, but find it hard to reconcile with being trans in the first place].
That sounds pretty awful. Terrifying even. And yet, it is not. Instead, I feel really great. And I mean physically, erotically. My skin, our largest organ by far, has come alive. I can feel it in ways that I never felt before. Touch is so deeply and utterly erotic. But so is a current of air, or the swish of fabric on my skin. It is as if my whole being is emanating erotic touch…maybe even erotic self-touch. It feels as if all of my skin is being caressed, kissed by life, by energy, by the air.
It is electrifying. And liberating. Genital-centric sex has always traumatised me. I just didn’t want to do it. And most of the women I have dated of course wanted it. Objectively, and as far as the things go, I have a rather fetching cxxk. Or had, I should say. Because it can’t be a cxxk now that it has officially retired. And I think you can understand how using this instrument which sits at the seat of male power (or at least self-attributed male power) might be triggering for a trans woman (or even non-binary person).
Male Chastity
Not long ago I enjoyed a delicious meal overlooking the Thames with a spunky, empowered, creative and rather inspiring woman. And the topic turned to chastity. Of course. Right?
I love the idea of chastity, at least for men, of keeping the cxxks locked up. And I also know that many women, not just dominatrixes, actually love the symbolism of it. But I’ve never loved the reality of it for me. And it was interesting, because I was struggling to explain why or what it is about male chastity that doesn’t work for me.
First, chastity is about control. It is a physical block against penetrative sexual contact, or genital self-stimulation. Inherent in that idea is that a man has uncontrollable urges. I have a political problem with that idea. Surprised? Nope. I mean, if we accept the narrative that a man has uncontrollable urges, we get into a line of apology that eventually leads to patriarchy. A man has needs. Blue balls are bollocks. And so on.
What I do like, however, is what female devotees of male chastity describe as a male who whimpers with desire, desire for her, desire for the whip hand, the controlling hand. And since I find nothing more erotic than a strong and empowered woman, this plays right into that beautiful seam. And I also love that it does modify male behaviour for the better.
In my own life, this kind of self-discipline has come easy to me. A Domme I play with is an exceptional teacher in this regard. “You don’t need a cage,” she demurred, “if you cheat who are you letting down?” And she is right.
Second, chastity is very genital. For someone like me who wishes that I could deny that I even have male bits, to put a cage on is to feel the weight of it, to see and feel it as something larger, even if it is a tiny cage, or a cute little pink plastic one. I tried. I played with an online domme for a while and she just loved this, but in the end came to understand that I would obey and play and be compliant in the same ways without it. Physically, tucking was a far more appealing way of experiencing chastity. And a tucked me can wear a female chastity device which somehow just feels better.
My lunch date wondered if I was simply asexual. And of course, how can I say such a thing, as there are no yardsticks, but I am possibly the most sexual person I know. Can there be a word for it? A-genital? Do my genitals have to be in commission for there to be sex? I don’t think so.
Perhaps the most beautiful thing about chastity is what it does to the mind over time. Edging. Is hot. Edging extended over days, weeks, months, a lifetime, is really, really hot. And I find myself just wishing to lie with a woman, to feel her breath on me, to graze her with my skin, to nibble and bite, and touch, and intertwine and to dance on the edge, lost in arousal for hours on end.
And suddenly I am there. Castration as experienced through hormone therapy has put me there. I am in chastity in a permanent way. And the beauty of it? It is to myself.
Not once in my play over the past years did a session ever lead to a “happy ending”. It was never on the cards. I have learned from the community that this is unusual. For myself, I know that I wouldn’t have wanted it, as it might have broken the spell. And who on earth would want that? Surely it is preferable to exercise self-control and stay inside the happy fugue? Effortless. A state of being. And to want to get off? Hmmm. It seems like a betrayal. A betrayal of the self.
I submit not because it arouses me, but because it is how I express love. It is how creative expression takes shape and flies. And submission for me cannot be about me or it risks becoming selfish or its opposite. But the rarity of a woman who is truly comfortable, is lustily satisfied, and has her energetic cup filled up by having her needs met, being taken care of, looked after, tended to, and not to feel guilt…hmm.
The physical, sexual reality of being non-binary
Now that I have no choice, because it is my physical reality, it is as if an enormous weight has been lifted. At the same time, I realise that I am like a virgin. It is as if I have never had sex before. [Madonna’s song Like a Virgin seems rather apt]. But I feel so utterly energized and erotically charged. My libido is fully here, it is just somehow congruent.
My trans friends, regardless of path of travel, have all noted this to me—and they are all mentors, because our first steps are always baby steps.
What Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT) does for a trans person is to bring their sexuality in line with their gender identity.
I might have understood that intellectually before, but now I begin to understand it physically. It makes sense. My sexuality has always been about innocence. About gentle touch. About being two souls at play…never about conquest.
An Aside
One of the dommes I played with was a great teacher. In reality, she probably taught me too much, too fast, and I couldn’t keep up. I’m still processing many of the things she showed me. God Bless Sex Workers. The healing powers are extraordinary. I cannot tell you how utterly and deeply liberating it has been to share moments with a very small group of Sex Workers. It has been a privilege beyond compare. And there is someone out there who can help with every stage.
One such person recently flattered the skirt off of me. She told me I was a dream client because I came to learn and was just open and receptive. I’ve only ever blown it once. And that was because I fell in love. Developed the feels. The emotions became too strong. Disorienting. But the blessing in that has been greatest through its failing. I needed to learn about boundaries, my own, but the way I learned about it was to push someone away by pushing on their boundaries. That was the most important lesson of all, and one which is and will change the course of my life. Both in the way that I protect myself, but also in the way that I actively respect those around me.
Why the aside? Because I want to learn about physical touch, about love making, about my skin, and about how to please a woman. And now that I don’t have functioning genitals anymore, I feel that I can throw myself into this without fear, without shame, without my mind getting in the way.
Castration is a scary, big word
Talk about taboo. A hallmark of patriarchy is the reverence we apparently have for the male organ. Somehow it is the seat of male power.
This interesting article in Forbes of all places, looks into eunuchs in history:
Or have a listen to BBC Radio show In Our Time for an interesting discussion of the eunuch in history.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b053bsf9
And here is an interesting Youtube Video on the eunuchs of Imperial China.
An Alternative Male Power
What if true male power was different? What if male strength was moral? What if being a man simply meant being constant? Being a rock. Being reliable. Being a shoulder to cry on. Being a gentleman. Being solid. Being present. Being there. Being uncomplicated. Naked. Open. Devoted. Innocent.
That’s the kind of man I could actually wrap my head around being. Is there a woman out there who wants that from her man? Would she still want it if he didn’t have a cxxk? Could she be satisfied? No, even more, could she be satisfied even more? I love women, but I can’t be a man with one, at least not physically…but I can be all of these other things, and I can touch you, and care for you, and look after your needs, and not be so obsessed with my own needs in ways that may have their birth-right embodied in male genitals.
Cuckolding and commitment
Would it make me a cuckold if I was a partner of a woman and she slept with a man to satisfy her own physical needs in ways that I could not? Maybe I should try.
For me, it is all about the emotional connection. And maybe that is the female in me speaking. To have sex without emotion isn’t possible. And yes, you can have emotion with strangers. I can be deeply emotionally connected to someone that I have met only once. How? Why? Because emotional connection is founded upon a base of respect, trust, and curiosity. We explore and get to know through a touch that is allowed because all of these other factors exist.
Of course, marriage is said to allow for an ever-growing, ever-deepening connection. It isn’t the institution that does it. It is commitment. And trust. Submission is an enormous facilitator towards both.
Why do so many men get turned on by cuckolding? As a dating teenager I was prone to jealousy. So afraid of humiliation. What I can’t tell is whether that came to pass because of how I was or whether what came to pass was created by me because I was how I was…you decide. While I have let go of jealousy, I still don’t seek humiliation, but for different reasons. It is one of my only red lines in play within the BDSM world. Why? Because it turns me on, and usually that turn on is stemming from something inside me related to shame…and that makes me feel unhealthy.
I learned about compersion from a dominatrix, because I found that her exploits and fun with others was a source of joy for me too. And that was new to me. Something I hadn’t felt before. The absence of jealousy. And so I wonder, if you are not jealous, are you still being cuckolded? If I don’t have a working whotsit, can I even feel jealous if she plays with someone else’s? Somehow I think I might still struggle with that if it were a partner, and that stems from knowing the emotional content of the act is likely to be there too, and that would be the hurdle.
And what of cheating?
In my own married life, I never cheated, though I have at times wondered if my wife has. I said to myself, ‘surely she must.’ She’s an attractive woman. I have not been home much before and during COVID. She has needs. She also “cheated” on the man she nearly married before marrying me. Precedent. And there is also a very thin line between breaking up because you have shagged someone else and breaking up and then shagging someone else. Also precedent. But over the past few years, I have discovered that I wouldn’t have cared if my wife had “cheated”. Does that mean I had fallen out of love for her?
Nope. In fact, just a year ago I knelt at my wife’s feet and hand on heart, told her how much I loved her. That might have been a tearful plea for her to love me as me, to see me as I am, and to accept me. Well, it appears it was a bit of a Hail Mary. And it didn’t work. But there is a silver lining. I can walk away without guilt. To give everything that you have, everything, including yourself, and to have it rejected after it has been used should feel awful, and yet it doesn’t. I don’t really understand why. Instead, I feel totally liberated.
Castration as Fantasy
This is considered one of the more extreme sexual fantasies that crops up on the fringes of erotica writing. It never occurred to me that my attraction to the genre had something to do with my gender identity. Duh!
I have been an avid consumer of this kind of erotica and have penned a number of such stories over the years. Thus far, I have also gotten away with selling such prurient smut on Amazon and other platforms. Lucky me. The stories sell reasonably well.
I have also noted that there is a rather significant kink sub-culture that is into this, though I have found it to be predominantly gay male. This is not an aesthetic or a tone that appeals to me. But surrendering these most precious jewels to a woman is a kind of deeply fulfilling spiritual act that I would wish I could do over and over again…can you imagine a very alternative version of the children’s book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins? Only, there are few things that I could imagine that would be more of a personal hell than the persistence of the family jewels!
In the trans community, there is a completely casual relationship to the act of castration. An orchiectomy is to have the testicles removed surgically. To sit in group and have someone say, “why don’t you just get an orchi,” is to know that such a suggestion is not at all outlandish and quite normal and helpful. We take androgen blockers during transition, and those have some potent and undesirable side effects, and of course an orchi means you don’t have to take them anymore.
A couple of dominatrixes I admire have opined on castration, and to hear them speak about it is sheer joy.
If you care to, listen to this wonderful interview between Mistress Blunt and porn star Charlotte Sartre on the topic of castration.
When Charlotte describes how she would love to cut off her husband’s balls and have them preserved in clear plastic so that she could wear them as earrings you understand how delicious such an act of absolute surrender and submission would feel.
Dominatrix Lucy Sweatkill also waxes poetic about her ultimate fantasy being the same, but expresses a fear about the ramifications down the road for the man’s mindset, and how it might change when the hormone cocktail changes. Miss Lucy, have you considered a trans slave? I happen to know one. Just kidding.
Since the jewels are rather irreplaceable, but still totally expendable, I am thinking, wouldn’t it be nice to have such a deep and trusting relationship with someone where such an act would not only be welcome, but also desired. Talk about no turning back. Only for a trans person, we are already castrated. It feels a bit like recycling or composting. Why not reuse something like that? After all, it would be a shame to let them go to waste. They are jewels after all.
Castration without Estrogen
One of the things that I learned through my delvings into the world of human castration was of the potential side effects. There are many ways to do it, much of the methods borrowed from animal “husbandry”. Hah. Of course, an orchiectomy is performed in a very different way and under very different conditions.
But outside of the context of gender transition, a castrato would typically experience weight gain, energy loss, and depression. To avoid these things, a male castrato nowadays would take testosterone. Kind of defeats the purpose, but very necessary.
Some small level of testosterone needs to continue to exist in the body, a role in part fulfilled by progesterone, which is from the same class of compounds as testosterone. If you just take oestrogen at a high enough dose, and for long enough, permanent chemical castration will result. There are also physical tools that can be used which “crush” the blood vessels that feed the testicles, and in a few days they die. [Talk about CBT! Wow. Not my kink; I’m not a masochist—but for someone out there…]. This is a “non-surgical” intervention, and has the added benefit that the body “clears up” dead tissue, so over a period of time, the testicles will simply be dissolved and disappear.
Oestrogen itself, is a rather joyful alternative to testosterone. Apart from being a necessary part of the journey of a MTF transgender person, it appears to be bringing on changes in my everything that are totally welcome.
I was scared of breasts. Now I feel them budding and growing and feel joy about them. My skin is alive in ways that I could have never imagined—to a sensualist, this is like being given the ultimate gift. And my mood is joyful and positive. It is like bathing in the sunshine all the time. Can a hormone trigger optimism? How am I putting up with so much awful shit in my life and finding every day I am happier than the day before?
The Eunuch
Eunuchs have existed throughout history. The guard of the harem was traditionally a eunuch, a nod to the idea that an outwardly presenting male was the best guard, but to prevent him from despoiling his charges, he was neutered. As if to say that the presence of a penis which can become erect is a potential act of violence.
Makes sense even when a potential mistress in the harem might invite a man to lie with her, even a eunuch. To be in harem was to be an object, owned, and therefore her agency had been taken and given to the Master, the King, whoever’s harem it was…and said Man would also be the castrator.
Bringing it all Together
I know that castration is a topic not for the faint of heart. But in truth, that it lies at the heart of transition for every transgender person. The thought is rather obvious, but had totally eluded me. The thought that my fantasy of this type of kink was a harbinger or a voice for something deeper also eluded me, but it affirms the observation that what we find erotic is really just an internal language about deeper needs.
And why is all of this so beautiful to me. I crave the sisterhood. Every part of me for as long as I can remember has wanted to be accepted and welcomed into the fold of women. As a baby, as a child, even a boy can experience that. Woman’s love. Mommy love. But once puberty hits, that is no longer possible. The innocence is gone. The bird is pushed from the nest.
For a girl becoming a woman, the sisterhood awaits. For an AMAB transgender non-binary person, bringing my body into line with my psyche means that women start to treat me as I feel. Can I love one of them? Yes. Can one of them love me? Friends yes, but lovers? I hope so. But the first step is transformational: though I may have regarded myself as a man, what of the castrato?
And for the others, the dommes, the sisters, the friends, the play partners, the SWs, can there be genuine affection for someone who just loves to be with you? It only takes one.
Great insight, thank you for sharing it
Thank you Jo for commenting and reading
Reblogged this on attis.
An interesting, sometimes disturbing read…
I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on this topic…particularly those parts you found disturbing…please share.
It makes me sick to think about it. I’m trying to pull myself together and comply with your request, because it was a personal address. Just a patient, please.
I waited a long time for the answer. I easily forgot about it. Also about my intention and interest.
Even before my castration, I had a transsexual friend. Before operations. Before hormone treatments. I asked him why the hell he wants to expose himself to hormone replacement, and the scalpel?
He replied that then he will be identical to himself… I replied, but you are still identical to yourself now: even in your born male body, you identify yourself as a female soul with a female soul. Yes, he replied, but the world is not. I told him, then the world castrates itself… It doesn’t matter if they non accept me. What matters is whether you accept yourself in a dual identity. Your physical sexuality is male, your spiritual identity is female. The scalpel and hormones become a third identity. You will never be a…
At that time, I didn’t have to give myself an answer to the question of identity. I didn’t even have to answer to myself… what is that the ONE…
I know I didn’t answer, but that’s it.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I have found it enjoyable to read, and I must say you write in a light-hearted and genuine manner that is very pleasing for the mind.
As a transmasculine person, I have found a lot of the feelings you expressed here to be familiar, even when I think they should not, for we had the opposite experience, as arrowhead to fletching. But I do not feel as a man with a pussy, but rather as an eunuch, and in an attempt to find echoed feelings on the internet did a google lead me into your blog.
I need to thank you again. Not only for the relaxing and bright essay, but for also helping me on my own way.
Ciao Minaccino…I love this. Thank you so much for reading, for finding this blog, and for giving me such a warm feedback. It is beautiful when we touch people.
I know you say that trans masc is unlikely to have the same in common as trans fem would to another trans fem, but this has not been my personal experience. As I participate in various support groups in different cities, I have often found more in common with the lived experience of trans men, than of my trans fem sisters. There is something in the nature of how different people are trans which I have found is more in sync for me with trans men…
I am so glad you are here.