Trigger warning: this post contains discussions of male and female sexual anatomy, sexual function, sex and gender, sexuality, arousal and its consequences.
The despair of sexlessness is real. The absence of desire is profound, its silence only heard when it is upon you.
At first, I regarded it with relief, even wonder, the death of sensation or arousal between my legs burying my dysphoria with real gusto. The ‘deadness’ was a curious relief, profoundly liberating. You mean I don’t have to use it anymore? You mean I can explore connection with someone about something other than penis-vagina sex?
The profound relief of that thinking appears to be the measured opposite of how most men I speak to about this process and gets to the core of male fear about castration—this is castration anxiety, not some weird notion that the vagina represents an instrument of fear. Castration anxiety has its root in a fear about an inability to perform, to be a man, not that they would be literally castrated. And yet, this literal interpretation has had the very bizarre outcome of freeing me from any real or potential or past fears of just this kind.
If you don’t have a cock, you can’t be expected to use it. The chemical death of the cock has already opened so many doors for me in my personal relationships, that the blessings are already too numerous to count. Mainly, that it is out of the picture has made it possible for me to have a depth of relationship with women that I have never felt before, and that is worth it all.
Life without Sexual Desire, However, is Tough
For someone who is wired for sex, not as a performer, but as someone who is libidinous to the extreme, has lived in an erotic landscape of the head, and is now moving into a libido of the body, this period has been filled with fear. I haven’t written new erotica in nearly 18 months, in part because I was busy, but mainly because the muse only strikes with arousal, kinky ideas, and those thoughts on hormones have been vanishingly infrequent.
More and more I have turned to credible sources on what happens with the body and libido on GAHT (gender affirming hormone therapy). I need my sisters who have travelled this path before to tell me what they have done.
It alarms me that most of the doctors actually performing sex change operations are men. It alarms me that the very “best” ones seem to be the “best” because of how beautiful they make the vulva. Granted, I would like my future Penelope to be positively Grecian in her beauty, but this is hardly the point. And for those who tell me that functionality is hard to understand when I don’t even like men and never intend to have a man’s cock inside of me I say that without a vagina, what’s the point? How can I be vulnerable without one? Anything else is just pretend.
Well, there is a certain someone with a love of strap-ons who I can think of…Actually, there might be more than one.
My surgeon list is dominated (how appropriate) by women. I have a strong preference for a woman doing this operation and am taking the steps with two, with a lone man as a backup. I am pleased to hear that the main goal is the preservation of ‘functionality’—in particular that of sexual function, but also worried that pleasure is likely to only come after a year post-op.
But the scientific conception of what a clitoris is, for starters, at least in the world of the sex change, is to fashion a nub out of the head of the penis, a glans that has already only half of the nerve endings of the real thing, forgetting of course that the clitoris itself is a vast structure with ‘legs’ reaching down on either side of the vaginal canal, filled with erectile tissue. Much of this tissue in a male-to-female operation is just thrown away. Surely with the ability to grow tissue in the world of stem cell therapy, and our growing knowledge of this organ, we can do better than this.
Please don’t read this as sour grapes. I will be happier with whatever can be made than with what I have today.
My surgeon told me that the nerves are rewiring already now, under the symphonic direction of oestrogen, which means they are multiplying and going to new places. Over the past month or so, I have begun to have feeling again down there.
The other day, provoked by a mixture of emotional and intimate touch, I found myself not just spiritually and emotionally aroused, but also physical stirring. It was so weird because it has been so long. I did not get “erect” in the sense that we would know, but there was enough of a change down there for me to notice it. Actually, it was just enough for my now tiny little thing to go back to the size it used to be when it was not erect. That is approximately doubling in size, perhaps plus a bit.
But this was accompanied by something else. I will call it “thickness”. I felt my whole groin area, between my legs, also just above where my penis comes out of my body, my lower belly, all of that area, and my perineum, just felt flushed and thick and very sensitive. And over the past days this has been happening more and more.
It is arousal. And the tell-tale signs are there with it…what we might refer to as ‘pre-cum’ and what Ex-Mistress called variously ‘the sign that I’m doing a good job’ or the ‘ultimate compliment’. Refreshing thoughts. I’m kind of blown away by it.
But its definitely not the same. I don’t get that same highly focussed and targeted groin feeling and the taut pleasure-pain of a rock-hard erection. Instead, it is this general horniness and arousal that is between my legs but extends around through my legs and up my butt, and also up my belly to my chest and to my breasts and into my throat. It is a feeling of smouldering fire.
So, arousal is back. And today, when I got up, it was flushed through my whole body. Provoked in part by Star Child, who has inserted herself rather deeply into my consciousness. I am overwhelmed by her witchiness, and just how much of it she has, and it is exciting me something fierce.
I have been told that progesterone is ‘anecdotally’ seen to help trans women with libido. Ahem. It is also ‘anecdotally’ seen to help with breast tissue growth. Well, I can confirm that in a month of taking it, it really has made a difference to my boobies. And now, I am pretty sure that it is making a difference to desire. Especially since all other hormones doses are the same.
Okay, progesterone is not all a bed of roses. Possible side effects include “weight gain”. What they should say instead is that you will lose all self-control in the face of a voracious increase in your appetite. That has meant 20 extra pounds in a month. Gotta take the good with the bad, right? Nope. Weight gain will be my bitch. Thank goodness it is spring, as the exercise bug is the only way out of this hole, and I am on it.
More importantly, the politics of this. Progesterone is not considered an essential part of GAHT. Can you believe it?! Helps with libido, helps with breast tissue growth. Are those not two of the most important aspects of transition? Oh, and it also helps reduce the risk of blood clots and breast cancer that high levels of oestrogen can cause. The tyranny of the patriarchy says that a trans-woman does not desire, or to have beautifully shaped and perfect breasts in case they trigger temptation. Heavens. They feel so good on my shirt they trigger my own temptation. Who would have ever thought that I would choose to wear a bra so that I wouldn’t get aroused by just walking around with my breasts? The thought boggles the mind, but as I write, my nipples are so sensitive, my chest, my breasts, so aching for touch…all from contact with my robe.
Jeez. God bless progesterone!
Beyond Non-Binary 