(05-04-2014, 04:12 PM)ClaraKay Wrote: How has your herbal or pharma HRT program changed your attitudes about sex?
Thoughts?
Clara 
I find it quite difficult to answer this question, so please excuse this overlong screed, much of which repeats or rehashes things in earlier posts.
My attitude towards sex has been very much part of my dysphoria. However that dysphoria originally came about (and recent posts in Flame’s Cold Turkey thread are quite relevant), I think I ended up short changed in innate preprogramming both in respect of masculinity and femininity. My sex education during adolescence was sadly lacking (my mother deputed it to my school principal, and his effort was so obscure that I never realized what he was talking about until years later, leaving me in the meanwhile to learn from the Encyclopedia Britannica) . Surprisingly, I learned little from my peers, although when I was first sent to boarding school aged 7 I was placed in a dormitory mainly of boys recently returned from India. There was a lot of sometimes wildly inaccurate information exchanged about sex, including about hijra (the now official ‘third sex’in India), who I was then told cut off their penises by tying them off with a string. This seemed like a good idea to me at the time and I tried to put it into practice, but the school nurse noticed and made me stand on a chair in the middle of the dormitory in front of everybody while she cut the string off . Much later when I was 16 my mother acquired a copy ‘The Sexual Responsibility of Woman’ by Maxine Davis which was quite advanced for the time, and left it around, I suspect in the hope that I would read it, which I did. At the same time, puberty and testosterone were producing urges which could only be relieved by masturbation, which I never truly regarded as sex and which I always felt guilty about, not because I’d been taught that it was wrong, but because it was solitary, and I believed that sex involved two people who had a special, maybe magical relationship. At the same time my attitude towards girls, whom I’d always originally tended to see just as people, became difficult because I was almost totally lacking any male ability to make a sexual advance, and instead needed a girl to try to attract me, which conventionally doesn’t usually happen. When I forced myself to make an advance, it always went horribly wrong. The only people who seemed prepared to make sexual advances to me were male homosexuals who might treat me as fulfilling a female role, but had me running far away if they showed signs of wanting any form of continuing relationship. I also tried, over the next dozen or more years,various other not very effective ways of trying to make myself feel like a woman, amongst which a feeble attempt at cross dressing didn’t seem to do anything for me.
When I started work in a full time job, I found myself thrown together with the firm’s first and at that time only female professional (‘J’), in an environment in which she not only provided me with informal but invaluable training but we could relate naturally, and rapidly became good friends. Perhaps inevitably I fell in love with her but remained incapable of making any sexual advance, and I couldn’t then conceive that she might feel the same way about me. Eventually she got me out with her on the pretext of helping a friend of hers and her husband, who turned out to have with them a very personable co-worker ‘M’of the husband. M had lost his job, landed himself on them and was beginning to outstay his welcome. Since both I and J had come in our own transport, she was persuaded to give M a ride back to London, and then to put him up in the spare room of her apartment. I was congenitally incapable of coping with any kind of competition and in due course they became engaged and then married. Strangely perhaps the friendship survived even when they moved to a different part of the country. I visited frequently and even even loaned ‘M’ money to invest in a business (which he promptly lost to a con artist). For the better part of 14 years J tried very hard to make the marriage work, despite M’s feckless and sometimes abusive behaviour (when I tackled M on the latter they both turned on me). I eventually moved to Canada in an attempt to change the direction of my life. In due course I found myself active in a tenant’s association and found myself going out with another active participant, a striking but clearly somewhat troubled woman. How does someone like me make a sexual advance to someone who insists that every man is out to rape her? I kept telling myself without much effect that I was making a big mistake and settling for second best in trying to pursue the relationship. It really hurt but was something of a relief when she dumped me. And at that point Ihad a letter from J saying that her marriage was at an end and which of several courses did I advise. I resolved that this time I would not make any mistake, and the rest as they say is history. I made a proposition, the sexual advance wasn’t needed, and the result was a magical if at times scary adventure. J has always tended to say that she is a passive lover, which is untrue since she is highly reactive and my idea of sex is to do everything I can to promote and interact with that reaction, and my own satisfaction automatically came along with that. Dysphoria was more or less forgotten.
As time went by and stresses increased and heart failure became a factor, I found increasingly that my part was no longer automatic and was taking away from what I could give. Interest in porn increased and dysphoria returned. I started looking at various possibilities for physical feminisation short of transition. One was breast enlargement, and I actually acqiured most of the wherewithal necessary to attempt saline infusion but never actually tried it before coming across ‘Flat to Fab’ and getting into NBE that way. Six ineffective months later I ran into a surgical emergency which as a side issue drew attention to my BP being out of control, resulting in increasing doses of prescription drugs which while not very effective at controlling my BP were very effective anti-androgens, topped off with eighteen months of Spiro which, combined with a renewed attempt at NBE, produced significant breast development. In the meanwhile, yet another prescription drug at last controlled my BP. At that point I discovered this board , and having got off many of the prescription drugs, started on PM. My initial purchase of PM was from Biovea, and didn’t seem very effective, and after a couple of months I bought Ainterol capsules and increased the dosage, whereupon I suffered a severe gall bladder attack. Since sudden changes in estrogen levels are known to be a possible trigger of gallbladder attacks, I gave up NBE for some months while awaiting gallbladder surgery, and tried instead without any success to restore male function. Then I went back to PM and to my original approach to sex: I think that I am finally persuading J that I also get a surprising amount out of it. I’m sure that the subconcious mental effects of PM have done a lot to help me in this.
Nonetheless, I’m inclined to think that neither herbal nor pharma HRT have changed my basic view of sex as I see it, although I think that the pink elephant in the room does still represent a problem we have not fully resolved. Over the years we have fought verbally over many issues, but both of us have drawn back on such occasions from bringing into full play issues which we believe could threaten our relationship. I don’t think I have yet persuaded J that my gender issues do not constitute such a threat. If I could, I’m sure she would enjoy making clothes for Annie -as it is, the latest shirt she has made for me has buttons on the female side - I don’t know whether this was a Freudian slip or not.
