Quote from: lemon_ice on May 23, 2014, 06:21:16 PM
However as for me I do have a great respect for masculinity and I guess testosterone too by default. It was the brave and driven, typically males who have driven forward the exploration of our earth and now in its early stages, the cosmos; who have also been mostly responsible for massive advances in science and technology in the last two centuries, and indeed the many wars which, despite their terrible human cost, were the hot houses of so much of the technology we rely on today. I don't think many would doubt that it was an orgasm (lol) of testosterone that in the 50's and 60's drove us into space. However I actually feel quite sorry for many males today, so many traits that were essential to them (and all of us) during most our evolution are now, in our modern civilisation, redundant; and are often now being expressed in very negative ways..
I tend to attribute this more to social roles/barriers that deterred or prevented more females being involved in the past (especially in more tech/cutting edge stuff), rather than to anything useful about testosterone/masculinity.
Quote from: lemon_ice on May 23, 2014, 06:21:16 PM
I think our world we be much the poorer if we lost them, in fact for all their warts and body odour lol, I think we will really need their drive and direction to surmount the many terrible problems that are rushing toward to us in our very near future..
I don't see why gender/sex/hormone balance/whatever really needs to come into this. We are capable of being driven and motivated without testosterone or masculinity. We just need intelligent, capable people able to dream/worry about the future and care enough to do something.
I'm guessing it's not quite what you meant when you wrote it, but to me, it sounds a bit like 'we need the men to save us!!!' because in the past they haven't been keen on letting us contribute nearly as much. If I sound angry/combative it's because of that and I'm sorry for coming across that way.
As for the main topic, I find HRT actually reduced my sexual interest in men. I've never had any romantic interest in men, just women. I think my attraction to men was more so I could be the 'woman' in sex helping to temporarily reduce my GD. Sexual interest in women was always mixed with jealousy and envy and intense sadness at my body, making the GD worse. As a result I never bothered with relationships. Just kept to myself.
Now that my body has changed a bit (mostly breasts that are just starting to be noticeable even under a thick jumper, not many facial changes/body shape changes that I have noticed, but my T is still a bit high and the E dose is still a little bit low I think, so the breast growth is somewhat surprising), I see myself as female in the mirror much more often, facial hair going and that I've been internally 'seeing' myself as female for about 2.5 years (oddly I found out about being TG, went with that but didn't really know about transitioning till like 14 months after identifying as female...) I don't really experience much attraction to men unless I'm really down. I'm just too female most of the time to need to use gender roles as a way of validating/boosting myself anymore. Consequently, I'm much more comfortable with being lesbian. When I was a teenager I would occasionally 'slip' and think of myself as lesbian, then reject the idea. Because of my body, it just felt dirty and weird.
