Warning, this is a looong post and secondly, I talk about sex a lot in this thread and my discomfort with sex as a man and desire to have sex as a woman. Before I get pounced on and told "if you just want to be a woman just for the sex then you shouldn't transition" please understand that I am speaking of just one aspect of the manifestation of my gender dysphoria. Many others are present, but this is the one that I wanted to talk about in this thread and I do not want to transition just because of sex.
I am curious if anyone else has gone through this: I've read from a lot of girls on here that went through a sexuality change while on HRT that they think perhaps they were always attracted to men and that their gender identity and sexuality got conflated because their envy of women's bodies registered as sexual attraction. Now I am by no means stating this is the case for everyone who has experienced a sexual attraction change but this is definitely something that I've heard tossed around a bit. I'm curious if anyone else other than me has had sorta the reverse conflation of GID and sexual orientation. Now I'm not talking about realizing you're attracted to women while transitioning, I'm talking about sexual attraction to men clouding your GID rather than GID clouding your sexual attraction.
I have always been attracted to men. I love everything about them. There's nothing I like better than lying in a man's muscular arms and running my fingers through his chest hair ... And maybe down a little further :-P. AAAANNNYYWAAAYYY O:-), I came out as gay when I was only 12. I knew then I was attracted to men and had zero interest in women sexually. At that point I didn't know what trans was or that changing your sex was even possible. I just associated all of my gender issues with being gay and assumed every gay man felt that way. Even at that point whenever I would fantasize about guys I would always fantasize that I was a woman with them. This was a continuation of cross-gender feelings that had been present since I was a child, but again conflated all that with being gay. Of course when I discovered that gay men actually like being men, combined with discovering that trans was a thing, sent me on a mental journey that has eventually led me to transition (my appointment to get bloodwork to get started on HRT is now in only two and a half weeks :-D). In any case, the aforementioned discovery happened at the age of sixteen and from the moment that I knew I COULD become a woman I would flirt with transitioning and then go into denial mode.
When I got to college and started to date as a gay man my dysphoria REALLY started to rear its ugly head. I went through the same cycle every time I had a boyfriend. In the beginning my dysphoria would disappear and I would just be happy being with him. Then it would slowly creep back in until it would get unbearable. I would especially have a ton if hangups about sex because nothing felt right. I have never "topped" because I have no desire and never have had any desire to use my penis for penetration... Or to have a penis at all... That part of my body has always been a HUGE part of my dysphoria with memories going back to when I was a small child and I cannot WAIT to eventually get rid of it... However even being the "bottom" would be an extremely distressing experience for me because having sex with a man as a man felt completely wrong. I'd be having sex, and in my head would be freaking out, wanting him to touch my breasts, or penetrate me vaginally, or just generally treat me as a woman in bed, which was impossible given my current anatomy. Then the dysphoria would spread to romantic interaction in all parts of our relationship. I would start to tell myself, okay, if this relationship doesn't work out then as soon as we break up I'm gonna pursue transitioning. Then I would inevitably freak out and our relationship would implode. Then perhaps even more inevitably I would go into denial and refuse to acknowledge that my dysphoria was real and then I wouldn't pursue transition.
However, as I'm sure most of us experienced, while the discovery that transition is possible thrust a door wide open it also launched a whole slew of coping mechanisms and denials. One of them was a continuance of the conflation of sexual orientation with gender identity. Being attracted to men I would sometimes look at a guy and want his body... And because of this I would go, 'well I can't be trans because I want to have that body.' Though when I would think in real terms about being in possession of a body that big, muscular and masculine (I'm on the tall side for a woman at 5'10" but my body is a pretty average build, and I'm slopey shouldered and wide hipped for a guy) I would be utterly mortified at the thought of trading in my slightly androgynous body shape for a real manly body. It would be extremely triggering because when I would think about having that kind of body I would start to freak out. Then on the flip side when I would see a beautiful woman I would think about her body and be totally turned off, but when I would think about being a woman that looked like that I would get deeply jealous and wish that I had what she had physically. However the initial reaction based off of where my sexual attraction lay would be enough typically for me to go, well I can't be trans because of x, y, and z. Then I would once again pursue men romantically as a gay man.
This cycle happened about three times with different boyfriends. This eventually led me to become largely celibate and just 'focus on my career' for the past six years (19-25). Then that became my coping mechanism because if I just focused on work then I could distract myself from my dysphoria. Eventually that coping mechanism imploded too forcing me to finally confront, accept, and deal with my gender dysphoria over the last two years finally leading me to HRT. And in terms of that old mechanism of denial eventually I realized I didn't want to HAVE that male body that I was attracted to, I just wanted to have him in bed with me :-P. I'm curious if any of the other women on this board who have always been attracted to men went through this same kind of denial/coping mechanism conflating sexual attraction with gender identity?
