Susan's Place Transgender Resources

MTFs. Did you find that long term HRT helped you to adjust to your new equipment after SRS? Did HRT help you to rewire your sexual responses? I'm curious. I realize this is subjective and may vary from girl to girl.

HRT has deffinitly changed my sexual responses, not that I had much experience in that department before HRT, I never actually had sex at all before coming out, and only did a couple of times before HRT. A lot of the changes seemed to come after being on hormones for a while. Also I noticed that I had a lot more sex drive once I switched to cyproterone than I did on spiro. Probablly one of the biggest changes is that arousal is much more of a whole body experience, also I crave being touched almost as much as I do sex, more so if I'm tired. I also finally feel more or less comfortable with my sexuality, though I know I it won't be one hundred percent until the male bits are gone, though ignoring them during sex works pretty well. I also finally feel like I'm experiencing sexuality the way my body was meant to experience it my sexual responses feel natural now, not bizarre and like they were driven by some external force. Now I suspect that part of this is due to also having finally discovered my true sexuality (I am a straight woman) though I do feel like HRT may have had a hand in that too. All in all I'd say the changes were from a mix of self discovery and HRT, but the hormones have played a big role, plus they have helped me feel way more comfortable with my body in a lot of ways.

While I cannot pinpoint the reason for this to HRT or time, things definitely have changed a lot over the years. Directly after SRS it still felt a bit like before, though not exactly like that, already there was a lot more whole body experience involved. With time that just changed even more. I have a hard time comparing it to pre-op or pre-HRT though as I had sex only once pre-op and during HRT and none before (well excluding one-person sex, which is different again. But I had a huge mental block on "doing it like a guy" - no way XD )

There haven't really been that many changes for me between pre-HRT, post-HRT, and post-SRS in terms of sexual response. I have less testosterone in my body now so my libido is a little lower. I have less erectile tissue in my body now so my refractory period is a bit shorter. But that's about it. I've been on HRT for 2.5 years. And I've been post-op for 1.5.

I can't say I entirely understand the idea of "adjusting to your new equipment." To be honest, my first experience of being post-SRS, other than the discomfort, was that my body felt normal. I was only on HRT 13 months before my surgery.

By adjusting to new equipment, I meant that the physical differences between genders also include differences in sexual responses. These differences are influenced by hormones. Hormones affect the brain as well as the body. Through HRT the brain can work in tandem with the changed body.

*Shrug* As I said, I didn't really experience a shift in sexual response, so there wasn't much to adjust to.