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?
