Ok this kind of an odd topic for me but not really concerned more interested, so bare with me "again". I hope this is on the right forum also hehe!
Recently since coming out or sorta coming out to myself since I feel like I am back and forth every other day, anyway since then things that would normally "turn me on" sexually do not, I feel rather like a emotionless amoeba now.
I've seen plenty of topics on HRT effect on being sexually aroused ect, but is it normal for people pre-everything to all of sudden not get aroused by things that use to?
And again this started after I came to terms with being trans.
Getting in touch with your true gender changes your perspective in countless ways. My sexual interests definitely changed pre-HRT.
My experience was that when I finally accepted myself as transgender I felt very significantly different and better almost immediately. I came out and went full time as Tessa well before HRT and any passability.
To specifically answer your question I find myself aroused by different stimulus and in different ways. I cannot discount the huge sense of relief I felt for giving up on acting like a man. To start seeing myself as more feminine as transition progresses gives me the ability to see the world more clearly from a more feminine perspective. Now with less of a competitive nature my sense of calm and fitting in my skin and clothes is dramatic and difficult to quantify. The usual soft core porn in our media outlets seems even more blah, and exploitive than before.
I fully love men and women and that did not change but I felt more free to express myself in a way that would more likely attract attention from a straight male vs a man who is Bi or gay. Arousal after HRT is, as you have heard, different too and for me that means a slower warm up and the absence, thank goodness, of urgent horniness.
I always wanted to know what internal forces animated my senses of arousal and love. I feel I now have a much better and growing understanding of myself, my needs and the value of romance and intimacy in a relationship. Sex is such a charged topic and we are so saturated with stimulus in this culture that it may be a challenge to find our own comfort zone. There are many expectations we have created for ourselves but, we can hopefully avoid the nonsense about performance and let ourselves be free to discover some deeper truths?
So yes, I think it is "normal" to have different feelings about arousal after coming out to yourself. You are dealing with some complicated and comprehensive internal dynamics, yes?
Quote from: suzifrommd on September 13, 2013, 01:40:01 PM
Getting in touch with your true gender changes your perspective in countless ways. My sexual interests definitely changed pre-HRT.
I dont know about completely changed but I did realize that I fall for people for who they are not what they look like... which had opened up a whole new world of possiblities.. some scary at first to accept.
Tessa: Yeah complicated would be an understatement, I've always been a bit of an over thinker when it comes to these kinds of issues. I've been a giant bowl of mash potatoes over the last month. Currently I am trying to quiet my mind a bit so I can stop flip flopping and maybe then I can actually come out to someone.
Suzi: I never really thought of it that way, that self reflecting could be altering the way I view things.
Birth control did that to me, but, I felt like "amoeba" was more my natural state than the crazy maddening roller coaster ride of hormones every month. I think that has to do with both my lack of gender and my status as an asexual both.
I don't feel like anything in my mental transition had any impact on my sexual interests or drive, but everything else about my self-discoveries going on in the past few years have impacted it. I'm not MtF or FtM, though. Maybe a transition like that would have more of a difference.
I admitted to myself I was trans and bi so what I thought about I no longer rejected by myself.