Does Sexual preference affect your decision to Transition?

[VickyS]

Yes and no.  It has added to it.

I have always had a VERY strong attraction to male genitalia and up until a few years ago some attraction to female genitalia which has now gone and I now find it repulsive.  I have NEVER found the act of love making as a man comfortable, it just felt wrong.  I am very submissive and take on a 'girly' role whenever I had sex, whether it be with a man or a woman which was just confusing.  It was only after I came out to myself that it finally clicked and I realised that I had the sexuality of a mostly straight woman.  If I mentally put myself in the role of a woman it all fit perfectly.

Now that my mind seems to have accepted this, my desire to transition has become stronger as things make sense now but also I have trouble as I can't even masturbate properly anymore (not that I do much of that these days), and definitely not with it sticking out the front like a man!  This is another reason that I want SRS/GRS as then things will be in the proper place and I can look forward to a proper sex life that feels right at last!  Well, that's the hope anyways... 

[Northern Star Girl]

If anything, my sexual preference has expanded to include men as romantic interests. 
I am presently interested in men and women now and have spent time with both.

Danielle

[Jennifer M]

I've been considering the same thing. I like women or someone who dresses feminine. Now, I just look at a woman and think I can't wait to be one, look how they dress and wish I could present myself like her. I've also started having fantasies about being with a man when I have transitioned. I have a very high labido, just the tool I currently have doesn't work very well, doesn't help I don't like it lol

I'm totally with you on most of this. In my fantasies I am exclusively a woman. The partner could be a woman or someone with male genitalia. The thing is, everything else about men repulses me. The abstract is "eh maybe" but once I think about male face/body desire plunges. It doesn't help that, for me, tattoos are the second-biggest turn-off behind smoking and now they're EVERYWHERE.

I wouldn't say I have the sexuality of a straight woman because I would more rather be with a woman. "Lesbian trapped in a man's body" mostly, "with maybe some bi tendencies" if pressed to think about it.

[Nina]

For me, I hadn't realized I was attracted to the opposite sex until I was in therapy before I came out. It was another six sessions before I began to transition full time.

[Leann]

I actually wrote a super long TL:DR post in response to this question but decided nobody would read it or care so let me more succinctly try to add this.

I was never accepted into the world of boys and never looked or acted the part because that is simply not what I was in spite of the obvious contradictory anatomy. I entered kindergarten in 1960 and was immediately singled out creating major issues in my life until I graduated high school.

People had always been uncertain if I was a boy or a girl as long as I can remember and I grew up femme leaning androgynous looking but had the temperament, personality, manner and interests like any other girl which really seemed to bother and confuse a lot of these people. By 1967 or junior high/middle school (7th and 8th grade), the entire world including my parents and all the doctors I had been taken to from the time I was 10 pegged me as gay because of course at the time, that's  how gender atypicality was categorized because no one knew any better.

At 15, while out of school a month recovering from a violent homophobic attack that darn near ended me, I came to an understanding with my parents there was no way in holy hell I was ever going to grow up to be a man and somehow they just got it. Even as ridiculous and unheard of such a thing was, they said they had always known my true nature and who I was. We knew nothing about trans anything and had no directions or guidelines to follow but I ever increasingly moved out of androgyny as sort of just a natural progression and by the time I was 16, outside of my freakish life as a non-human it in school, it was rare that people didn't think I was a girl. I only got more "girl" after that. After years of talking to clueless doctors, I was officially diagnosed with "primary transsexualism" and started HRT the summer before my senior year at 17 in 1972,  which it seems was very rare for someone so young that long ago? Trans youth weren't even a recognized phenomenon nor had the concept of gender dysphoria come into usage yet and there were a lot of concerns about my age but nothing else made any sense. One of my psych evals even used some old Benjamin terminology when it was noted I was "completely psychosexually inverted". Whew! I'm glad at least the language is better these days even if things have gone a bit far in the PC direction.

Immediately upon graduation, even though I had been passing as a girl for several years, getting new IDs and stuff can be looked at as the end of my social transition but in reality, I had never been anything different to transition from so it was all a big non-issue. In other words, it was all kind of a moot. I had just grown up to be a girl with some sort of before transition and after transition point indiscernible because it all just organically manifested along the way somehow all by itself as the way things were just supposed to be. That sounds stupid, doesn't it but "being" a girl socially wasn't a big deal to me because that's what I'd always known myself to be and how I just came across to people. On the other hand, not being female and able use my body sexually as such nearly sucked the last bit of life out of my soul.

I lived the five years I had been on hormones and the four years since I had officially gone full time after getting out of high school in this sexual state of limbo. I had perfectly integrated, blended seamlessly into he world as a young woman and was completely accepted as female and was well beyond any sort of transition so when I did have SRS in 1977 at 22, you can bet that changing sex was all about being able to have sex at that point but it otherwise didn't have any effect on my daily life beyond the six weeks I took off work. Who I was going to have sex with was really irrelevant and it wasn't really until after surgery that I truly began to even discover what my preferences were. At now 63½, I still don't know what they are but it's been fun, interesting and sometimes hella exciting figuring them out. I've had my share of boyfriends and was reasonably promiscuous in my 20's and I was married to a wonderful man for 12 years but over the course of my lifetime, I've also had a couple of LTRs with other women as well. Go figure?

So no, sexual preference did not affect my "decision" to transition which was never a decision in the first place. It's just how I turned out. My sexual preferences did not did not lead me to surgery either but rather the ability to have sex as a female regardless of who I was with surely did.

Finally backing up what Complete said, people seem to think it was impossibly difficult to be trans, transition and be treated in the 1970's and the popular lore seems to be filled with nothing but horror stories from this era but if I got started on HRT as a 17 year old in 1972 while still in high school and had referrals and recommendations for surgery as soon as I turned 18, at least for me anyway, it wasn't as bad as people seem to think but I was pretty obviously "afflicted" and they didn't know what else to do with me but to proceed with what was considered at the time to be a grand experiment because of my age. Lack of funds was the only thing that made me wait until I was 22 for surgery, not gatekeeping. Yes, the way I was treated and some of the things that happened to me during my school years in a backward, redneck Arizona city are probably about as bad as you can imagine but after I graduated, with passing privilege I just easily got on with life with what we would now refer to as stealth as a regular girl and other than the sex and surgery thing, being trans was not and has not been a part of my life other than in minor ways.

Consider yourself lucky. I grew up in the same time frame as nd it was a nightmare to say the least.

[KathyLauren]

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[sarahc]

For me, as a trans woman, the ability to have sex as a woman with a man IS a significant reason for me to transition. It's not the only reason or the main reason.

I think the bigger reason is to simply to live as a woman, and even if I couldn't have sex with a man, I definitely would still want to transition.

But I am really looking forward to a relationship with a man at the right time.

[Michelle_P]

Consider yourself lucky. I grew up in the same time frame as nd it was a nightmare to say the least.

Welcome!  I think you will find a few other folks here who had an unpleasant experience in trying to come out in the 1960s-70s.  Standards of care and local laws were in wild disarray back then, and coming out was anything but smooth for many of us.

(I was 'caught' and sent through a form of what is now called 'reparative therapy'.  Didn't stick...)

KathyLauren invited you to post an introduction.  This is a great way to get started here, and connect with others.  Welcome again, and I hope this can be a helpful place for you.

[Lisa_K]

Welcome!  I think you will find a few other folks here who had an unpleasant experience in trying to come out in the 1960s-70s.  Standards of care and local laws were in wild disarray back then, and coming out was anything but smooth for many of us.

(I was 'caught' and sent through a form of what is now called 'reparative therapy'.  Didn't stick...)

Caught doing what? Would cross-dressing or something similar be a safe guess or something else? Of course, it's really none of my business.

When I was little and up until about the time I was in the 4th grade when it was kindly suggested I not do that any more, I was notorious for wearing my girl cousin's clothes. She visited weekly or I visited her and regularly as clockwork we either swapped clothes or I just found something of hers I liked and wore it. It was kind of a family joke and I did get teased about it but it was more or less expected and not a big deal.

My mom was pretty strict about what I could wear to school but I did everything I could to be as gender neutral as possible but I still felt really dorky, awkward and uncomfortable then when the whole unisex thing came into fashion, I was on it in a heartbeat. By the time I got to junior high, I had hair past my shoulders and was presenting as gender ambiguously as possible which just didn't fly in 1967 so you can imagine the kinds of things I dealt with in school. When other girls were allowed to start wearing makeup, I was allowed to at least play with it around the house and I loved the artistic and expressive qualities about it and since I'm kind of a makeup/beauty junkie, I guess I still do?   After I was 15, all my clothes came from the girl's department as long as they could marginally pass for boy's clothes but I did have some things that were too overtly feminine I was not allowed to wear to school but I could wear girl's underwear as long as they were cotton. It's funny how silly that seems now but it was a big deal to me back then.

I had some amazing liberties but what I thought were some weird and arbitrary restrictions as well. Some of the biggest screaming and door slamming fights I ever had with my mother were about how I could look but how many teenage girls probably haven't gone through the exact same thing? At least my long hair, which was halfway down my back when I was 15 had ceased to be a problem with the schools which hadn't previously been the case.

My senior year of high school after I had started HRT and was obviously going to be a full time girl as soon as I graduated, I had clothes for school and clothes for the rest of my life, my own drawer full of cosmetics and junk and my own jewelry box. People actually trusted me with their kids and I made money babysitting to buy some of my own stuff. It took getting sent home twice but I'd figured out a little bit of discrete mascara was as much makeup as I could get away with at school. I pushed things as far as I could but there still were limits. I was the "gayest" thing anybody had ever seen but they were just stupid and I didn't care, I'd grown some pretty tough skin and built up some mighty big walls over the years. As kind of a big F YOU parting gift, for graduation I went the whole nine yards with makeup and my mom curled my long blonde hair that was to my waist at that point and the people that hadn't figured out what was going on for me before sure did then. I walked away and never looked back or saw any of those people ever again.

There was and never really had been anything I could be caught doing that would have caused alarm or surprise because I just didn't hide anything. I didn't feel I had to. How my parents ever dealt with this or put up with me, I just don't know? Probably something to do with that unconditional love thing I'm guessing because in spite of all my problems and all the trouble they caused or the times we had to move so I could go to a different school, I was loved for who and how I was and as just me. My individuality was respected.

Probably best for another discussion but the whole nature vs. nurture issue has been brought up about me because I unquestionably did have a lot of nurture and was brought up with very few differences from any other girl as far as I can tell. I've always believed my "nature" was so strong, obvious and irrepressible, of course it and who I was nurtured, how could it not have have been? I was miserable and unhappy enough and maybe my folks felt sorry for me and didn't know what else to do but just let me be me. I sure sound like one of those cases because a lot of things do fit the classic pattern but no, my mother did not make me trans! I think most of us here are smarter than that? Personally, I'm grateful for learning all the stereotypical things and life skills growing up that most other girls do.

To stay on topic, I was not interested in boys and pretty much couldn't stand them in fact for all the bullying and ridicule. After a group of them nearly killed me when I was 15, the fear, mistrust, anger and outright hate I felt for them took well into my 20's to subside when I found out not all of them were monsters. I was only interested in girls as friends during my school years. The one and only ever friend I ever had in high school was a girl. I was just too freaked out about myself to even think about other people because it would have just been too weird for them and for me. After I graduated and was "official" I still didn't really know if I liked boys or girls because I had zero experience with either but through my (ahem) own explorations, I figured out the packaging didn't really matter that much. Because labels all seem to be a thing these days and I like to keep it simple as possible, if asked I comically describe my sexuality as mostly straight or if I'm trying to be clever, as heteroflexible. If I wanted to attach others, I'd be here all day and I'm the wannabe girlfriend of a man I'm hanging out again with later tonight and need a nap!

Sorry for writing so much and rambling again. I must stop doing that.

[Michelle_P]

Caught doing what? Would cross-dressing or something similar be a safe guess or something else? Of course, it's really none of my business.

I went to a parochial elementary and high school, not great for someone like me.  A few yardsticks broken across my wrist convinced me to not talk about wanting to be a girl, and some of what I heard on the playground back in 1959 told me my dream of waking one day as myself wouldn't be happening.

I had a great deal of trouble with socialization in school, fearing male students and their reactions to me.  Many saw through my imperfect disguise, and I was called out and beaten for being a sissy, 'girly' and otherwise not male in my appearance and behavior.  I still had the discomfort and a sense that something was wrong, and it got worse when I was about 13.

At 14 I discovered that if I gave the bus driver an extra dime, I could ride all the way into San Francisco.  In 1967, that was quite the experience.  I wore my boots and flare pants, and in the SF bus terminal I'd change my top to something a bit more Bohemian and brush out my hair, another 14 year old hippie chick running around the city.  Then I'd head off to visit new friends over at Taylor and Turk St, or out near the Panhandle at Haight & Ashbury.

I had an extremely effeminate body, with no hair, undescended testicles, and some breast growth.  At 15 I was sexually assaulted in the high school locker room by several of the 'jocks'.  I received detention for trying to fight off my rapists.

At age 16 I was caught dressing in a 'sweep' to get youth off the streets of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, hit with a morals charge (my top buttoned the wrong way for a person assigned male at birth) and turned over to my parents.  I was taken around to a number of doctors who talked with me, and offered my parents treatment plans.  Mom, a professional nurse, turned down the electroconvulsive and aversion therapy plan (ECT was extremely crude and damaging back then), in favor of testosterone injections and extended counseling from a local religious figure.

The treatment was extremely unpleasant and frightening.  I was to blame for my rape, and was working with Satan to support my perversion.  I had to repent, pray, and follow instructions from my counselor without question.  The result had me terrified that even the slightest slip, when detected, would have me involuntarily committed, lobotomized, and run through a course of ECT and aversion therapy.

This 'cure' worked in the sense that I couldn't dress or express my authentic nature in any way for about 10 years. I was in my 30s, married with small children before I could even begin to address my true nature, and at that point decided the best path forward would be to suppress as much of this as possible for the sake of my wife and children.

There is a part of the trans community that looks down on those of us who are late to come out, using a variety of terms to refer to us that I consider invalid and obscene.  That's unfortunate, as many of us are among the best advocates and organizers for the defense of our community.  We generally do not and cannot live stealth, but are out there and open, pushing back against the hate so future generations will never have to go through what we went through.

[IAmM]

I love your story Lisa. Please don't feel that I am insensitive to what you have gone through, I have gone through it. I have run the gamut since you began posting, I had no idea how to ever respond and I thought that I never would. I don't understand your life. I don't understand parents that want you. I don't understand family that don't think that if they beat you enough it will fix you. Knowing how you should be at an early age and not being able to let it go I understand, but it was not enough to respond, not for me. I understand some other things that I never feel like talking about so, I just let it all wash over me. Understanding, compassion, envy, regret, all of it and just avoided reading your posts.
 
The arguments with your mother I understand so thoroughly. Not my mom obviously, I barely knew my mom then but my grandmother. What made it worse was that they didn't move, she drove me to the new schools, every day. It got to be over an hour trip one way to and from school and I practically screamed at her the whole way. I blamed her for being raped and nearly killed as much as I blamed and hated myself, she was the one who put me it he hospital to fix me, she was the reason everyone eventually knew everything about me. Since my grandfather had threatened to put me in an orphanage when I was seven or eight he didn't have much to do with me, it was all her. We fought about everything, what I was wearing, were you touching that guy? Why would you want to be a girl, you would be so ugly? I know it wasn't her, I knew it then but I was in so much pain I didn't care.

Anyway, I left home when I was fifteen and she died of cancer less than two years later. We had been getting along much better but not soon enough.

I think for my whole life I dreamed of if, If I had parents, if I was born a girl or even live as a girl, if I was normal. I guess that if fighting with your mother is normal I at least touched normal somewhere. I do wish that I had known my mom, or not been so estranged from the mom that raised me when she died. I am so glad that I am not alone though in the life that I had and I am so glad that your mother loved you so much.

Take care.

[Linde]

I want to be a woman just to be female.  Sex has nothing to do with it.  I have not have any sex for at least 10 years now, and really don't miss it.  My libido is that low that one would need to dig a hole to find it.

What I miss, is skin contact and cuddling, but that has not much to do with sex.  I want to cuddle with a soft and hairless body, and that means it has to be either a woman or an intersex person like I.  I would not care if the woman would be trans or a cis, as long as she is soft and cuddly!

[christinej78]

I want to be a woman just to be female.
.
.

Hi Dietlind,                     27 October 2018

I know the feeling well.

"When you are dead, you don't know that you are dead; the same applies when you are stupid!"

I like your signature, it is a true statement. I'd like to add that neither condition is fixable and that the stupid are the last to know they are stupid.

Unfortunately, unlike the dead, they procreate, both can and do vote, especially for those that offer the freebies most of us end up paying for and are excluded from receiving.

Best Always, Love
Chris

[christinej78]

I went to a parochial elementary and high school, not great for someone like me.  A few yardsticks broken across my wrist convinced me to not talk about wanting to be a girl, and some of what I heard on the playground back in 1959 told me my dream of waking one day as myself wouldn't be happening.

I had a great deal of trouble with socialization in school, fearing male students and their reactions to me.  Many saw through my imperfect disguise, and I was called out and beaten for being a sissy, 'girly' and otherwise not male in my appearance and behavior.  I still had the discomfort and a sense that something was wrong, and it got worse when I was about 13.
.
.Deleted for the sake of brevity.
.
There is a part of the trans community that looks down on those of us who are late to come out, using a variety of terms to refer to us that I consider invalid and obscene.  That's unfortunate, as many of us are among the best advocates and organizers for the defense of our community.  We generally do not and cannot live stealth, but are out there and open, pushing back against the hate so future generations will never have to go through what we went through.

Hi Michelle,                     27 October 2018

I had no idea; you and I seem to have experienced much of the same hell. We should talk off-line some day. Thanks for your openness. Some of the crap that happened is tough to think about and even tougher to express openly. I admire you for your courage. Thank You Big Time.

Best Always, Love
Christine

[Linde]

Hi Dietlind,                     27 October 2018


Unfortunately, unlike the dead, they procreate, both can and do vote, especially for those that offer the freebies most of us end up paying for and are excluded from receiving.

Best Always, Love
Chris

Now, now, we don't want to drift off into politics again, do we?

[Linde]

There is a part of the trans community that looks down on those of us who are late to come out, using a variety of terms to refer to us that I consider invalid and obscene.  That's unfortunate, as many of us are among the best advocates and organizers for the defense of our community.  We generally do not and cannot live stealth, but are out there and open, pushing back against the hate so future generations will never have to go through what we went through.

I did not experiences the problem you had as a child, young person.  My super strong cousins would have beaten anybody into little pieces if they would have done any bad to me!  I had a pretty good childhood, nd di not even hink about any gender stuff.  I pretty much could live the way i wanted to live.

My gender dysphoria started with puberty. But I have written enough about this already!

I wanted to address this hatred attitude in the trans community!  I was attacked and even stalked on reditt and accused not to be real trans just hopping onto the trans wagon because it is in etc. 
A real trans would have found out in early childhood that one was trans.  I don't even know what I felt in early childhood, because it was after the war and I had to wer the clothes of my older sister when she grew out of them.  everything was unisex, we were glad to have clothes on our bodies and some food to eat.  I did not even know that two different genders existed until I had to go to school.   
Anyway, I was further accused that I had sex with women and fathered a child, a real trans would never do that, and on and on this person went.
Here I was trying to find out more about me and my condition, and was accused to be not enough of it or pure enough for it or to old to be it anyway.  And that I am only interested in trans stuff because I want to get off on women with a dick!  I could not believe the hostility I faced!
But anyway, ladies, now you know I am just a stalker, and don't talk about your boobs and your dicks because that forces m to go into a dark corner to masturbate, now you know my dirty secret! 

[IAmM]

I never actually responded to the op. Sorry.

As a teen sexual attraction was very confusing for me. Maybe it was all of the other problems but my "itch" never found anyone to land on. I knew that I wasn't attracted to girls but I hadn't yet had any guy that I was attracted to either and felt it was a waste of my grandma's time to keep going on about me staying away from guys. I was afraid of them, angry with them, hated some but there was never any attraction. Not sure why her, schools, the police, everyone really assumed that I was gay, I never tried to go against my grandparents and present female. I did eventually get a crush on a guy in my early twenties, it was hard for me to deal with so I spent the next twenty years as alone as I spent the first twenty.

To answer the question, I don't know. No definitely, I had already planned a life alone and it had nothing to do with it. At the same time, I still wanted love, to be touched. I don't know why I even get horny, I have almost no testicles, but I do. So, I don't know. However small of a part it had to play it did have a part to play. Not sexual preference but the need for some kind of a physical relationship, I just happen to have only ever been physically or romantically attracted to men. While being a man with a man is not nearly as icky as being a man with a woman, it is still pretty icky.

Okay, put it this way. My problems with sex, or a potential partner was not because they were the wrong or right gender, they were because I was the wrong gender. It was never going to happen with me as a male.

[Michelle_P]

Hi Michelle,                     27 October 2018

I had no idea; you and I seem to have experienced much of the same hell. We should talk off-line some day. Thanks for your openness. Some of the crap that happened is tough to think about and even tougher to express openly. I admire you for your courage. Thank You Big Time.

Best Always, Love
Christine

@Christine , I am quite open about this within our community. I want folks to realize that there have been times and environments in which simply being ourselves was unsafe, bordering on deadly, even within the standards of care of professional psychology.

I work at my activism specifically to avoid a return to those days, and to make sure today's youth never have to go thorough what we went through.

I realize that by being so out, I may annoy people in the cis and trans communities. Some folks don't realize how quickly a culture can turn on a marginalized group when they need to create an outsider, the alien to focus their fear.

On the original question, who I am attracted to had no impact on my decision to transition. I was always attracted to other women. (No, dear, not that crank  Blanchard's disproved hypotheses!)   After transition I recognized my attraction was broader, towards femme presentation, and not terribly focused on the shape of genitalia. I'm also demisexual, needing romance or emotional connections before I can express sexuality so that slowed me down a little.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[christinej78]

Now, now, we don't want to drift off into politics again, do we?

Hi Dietlind,         29 October 2018

Nothing political intended, just a statement. My ex-wife is an expert at gaming the system. One of her sons OD'd on drugs, is now a quadriplegic, whose first 2 months In the hospital cost the taxpayer over $1 million; what did the taxpayer get for their money; nada, nothing.

Best Always, Love
Chris

[ChrissyRyan]

No.

Chrissy