revolutions

I had a lovely date and a night of multichannel communications, bolstered by wisdom and humility. So many new impressions and shifts and thoughts. Her scent follows me subtly. I am late for the Scientific Council and that will be fine. It felt like coming face to face with reality. It felt like gentle fun. I maintain faith of connecting more and in more areas still. If we hurt each other it will be fine. I don’t need to preplan what might happen.

I kept fading out into… somewhere and she sensed it each time and told me to stay in the moment. It’s seriously hard work, I hadn’t realized how I keep escaping mentally during sex. Always to some extent.

I wanted my parts touched but even with the greatest care, and with the sensations feeling good, I feel like I’m keeping watch against something when it happens. So hard to stay even when I want to.

I cherish communication that is mutually desired. I hope for time shared simply being present together. I anticipate the future. This day is beautiful.

auld tan sine

NSFW: Sex party stuff.

I’m a sappy, romantic girl. Also I need to learn kinder time management for self. Also life is hard and life is great and I may need and want more consistent/coherent/intensive emotional connections; perhaps I’ve kept expectations low as part of a strategy for not being sad in a life often complex and disappointing. Also the stereotype is real in that if at all possible, trans girls crush on trans girls at the drop of a hat, more than 50% of the time.

Went to sex party for NYE again, it was once more transformatory, edifying and more fun than the last two times, I’ve gotten closer to a social self that can handle it. In past years I was shyer and less anchored so I spent more time being unsatisfied with not enough happening. Some this time but less.

As previously, started out with name and pronoun rounds, as well as stating intentions for next year and next few hours. Mine were embodiment, and for the evening, getting caressed, worshipped and spanked into submission, as no-one really has tried my pain threshold and I want that. I suppose what I want is something very specific, and I did not get that yesternight – having my butt spanked with flat, blunt implements like floggers by someone I am sure knows enough not to leave permanent marks, but going at it far and hard and long enough that I really cannot keep dignity. Basically relaxing into a state where I keep no control except resisting, and then lets go and surrenders when it’s reached the level that I cannot stand more. Crying and screaming and actually feeling something more than pretending, giving in because I literally have no choice. This really appeals to me. But also needing for whoever does it to not tease me with pain, not let me get all cool or bored or resentful or dissociated or distracted or zoned-out, it has to stay full-on intensity so I can’t escape anywhere. This has been a tall order for a girl who tends to date subs and very kindly, conscientious people…

Anyway. Then there was facilitated play which was much better than I thought. Group takes turn, one third at a time wears a blindfold for ten minutes. The other two thirds move between the blindfolded people, greet and goodbye them by touch, staying for some time and touching them. Anything is on table unless the blindfolded signals not – pain play, breast fondling, caresses over and under clothing, kissing, biting. Ensure at least one person touching each blindfolded person at all time, preferably more. Hardest part was with people who did not respond much to what I did, easiest where I could guess from their wishes what they liked.

I told people they could remove my corset beforehand. So that felt amazing, being held and moved around, having my chest made unclothed, nipples pinched and kissed and sucked, being grabbed and touched hard by several pairs of hands at once. I didn’t go ecstatic or lose control, but I did have a lot of fun.

This leads to one of several insights. I fear not being as reactive as other people in terms of getting lost in passion, I fear being relatively asensual, that I’ll always have to remain in control, remain aloof and separated. What I’m beginning to suspect is that perhaps I’m just difficult, that I need a lot of time during which I both feel safe and secure, including socially and emotionally, and during which I get sufficiently intensely stimulated, am not allowed to fade out or zone out or dissociate, do not feel the duty to give anything back and so to focus on giving rather than receiving (happens all the time, I always fear being selfish), and am not touched in any of the wrong ways. Maybe if that happens then somewhere there is a state change and I too would lose myself in passion. Or maybe there has to be an emotional connection also. I really hope I can experience that. It seems so, so selfish. And then I think of people I’ve been with who feel guilty for functioning exactly like that. Maybe I function exactly as my girlfriends have, and am as hard to please (and as deserving of that effort) as they? Wouldn’t be the first time it was like that…

Anyway. Then faded out a bit but got to experience violet wanding; tried to push my boundaries by nipple play or so, but while it was fun to experience the electric jolts, in the end it wasn’t strong enough. Perhaps having it directly on genitals while tied up would be something I couldn’t just take, but this was nice but mild.

Then an odd episode. Someone spilled vanilla sauce on himself. I commented that at least something at the party should be vanilla and offered to get a napkin. He offered me to lick it up. So I did, at his feet, and he kept spilling vanilla sauce on his leg while I lapped it up, until I said I’d had enough vanilla sauce. Then we kissed and made out and he gave me pain and pleasure on my upper body through mouth and amazingly strong and capable hands. I felt safe and present mostly, as he was clearly more into giving at this point, and it was mostly surrounding social circumstances – and sort of not knowing him enough to read whether I kept him happy or interested enough, causing again social-style worry – that limited how far I could get to some extent.

This suggests to me that I should make sure not to let social anxieties get in the way. Specifically, it’s great the more I know someone so I can read them, know how they communicate, know what sorts of things they feel, know what they want and what the understanding of the situation is. I will continue to do party play like this, but I’ll hope even more for stable friendships and partnerships as a vehicle for really intense sexual experiences. I need to accept that I stay a social creature also in formal play.

It may also be that I have to acknowledge that I DO have preferences for people, some attract me more than others, and I actually need to be somewhat physically attracted to someone for sex to be able to be as intensive as I want it at least sometime to be…

Then there were some formal sessions/rituals which didn’t do much for me, and I fell out of scope and mood and mindset from having come down, until I was again asked to join play with some people very dear to me in different ways. However, given their relatively more intense dynamic internally, I felt through no fault of theirs that I was somehow in a fifth wheel situation, and having already begun thinking on the above, that moved me even further out, and I spiralled on that thought. In a sense, I realized I really want situations where I don’t worry at all socially, where I feel fully engaged, and where I feel certain we want the same thing, and that this is what we want most and undividedly, right there, right then. Not in all cases, perhaps, but that type of emotional framing for sex, with friends and partners alike, seems like something I may need to focus more on, I need more talk on the framing and perhaps I should be more restrictive on whether a certain time is the right time or not?

Found the way back though as we ended up with me essentially cuddling the others while casually using a vibrator on my bottom parts through clothing. It turned a somewhat challenging situation into a great opportunity. I can’t recall when last I masturbated except as isolated experiment to see whether I still could come, certainly years ago, so having a situation where the best thing to do was to lie in a cuddle pile masturbating was a great learning opportunity. I can indeed stay in pantyhose tuck and use even a small vibrator, I won’t get too hard, and can trace tissues like where outer and inner labia would be, where the clitoris would be, where the vaginal opening would be, can try to trace what touching sensations and pressure on these parts would be like, and that felt safe and good. I could get close to coming, enjoy that, and edge myself for what must have been close to two hours. It takes me time to be able to reach close to climax, I can keep myself close to there and enjoy vibrations, and when I finally went over, I enjoyed that too.

Then the fluid aspect made everything horrible. I don’t ejaculate so much, and it is clear fluid at least, but I loathe it so much because in this setting I end up with the tucking panties getting wet and cold, so the only way out is to again acknowledge the shape of my anatomy. Up until that point I don’t have to. It’s possible that being all wet would be fine if I could be naked (and/or casually wipe off), but getting naked reminds of my shape. I can’t use any other words for it, I can’t type out what others might call my genitals. And loathe getting hard, and can only hide it from myself by tucking.

So… I want to be able to stay relaxed throughout pleasure, but right now, coming means a huge let down, dysphoria spike, logistics. All so cumbersome. I just want to be able to stay present in my embodied self and not have to edit my impressions or keep doing workarounds. Well, maybe I look for confirmation that I should have surgery, but yes. There should be a way around this. And I worry about finding the right technique, and recovery times and challenges, and costs, and things that can go wrong one way or another, and how afraid I will be of complications without easy access to the same surgeon, and how afraid I will be that healing won’t go well, or that nerves won’t work.

I’m still really afraid, and I become more afraid when I think of really doing it end of this year. That’s so close! Barely any time to prepare! However will my life be ready! But at the same time, I want it done now, I want it over with. I want more life post-operatively. I’m definitely on a track here. I briefly implied to my parents I will do it, and to the rest of the world. I think perhaps people won’t be surprised. I hope it will be soon. I hope I won’t regret anything going wrong. I feel guilty that I’d pay so much privately rather than save/invest, if waiting longer would mean insurance coverage. But I realize I won’t wait three years for a body I can be naked in.

In the meantime, I’ll try my best to enjoy sex, and nudity as best I can, and so on. It will be a year of workarounds. But what else is new?

It will be OK.

moon mask merge

So what happens? My partner (once more in some form) said my face has femininized. I had more moments of not being able to let go of an emotional surge once it started, just deciding what to do with it. Touch feels good.

Got gel estrogen and progesterone prescribed, so will start a cycle now. I wonder if I will experience something.

Also second hand shopping, got some skirts and a jacket for experimenting with business chick looks, curious if I will feel OK with that or not.

EDIT: Oh, and asked my endocrinologist on the possibility of collaborating on clinical studies. He was open in principle and seemed surprised. Continuing to represent!

movement matter molting

Day is multistressed, and I sense I am in a state where I jump at anything remotely scary, even social things. Interesting. Don’t think it is any microhormone fluctuation per se (though it extends worries last night which faded a little when I replaced spent patches) but rather compound effects of how stressful things are right now.

Still have a cold, irritating. Worried about things. But feeling good also, feeling seen, and I can navigate all of this.

Oh, and discovered I can receive stimulation with a Hitachi through tucking and that this feels great when another person does it to me, so at least some things still work now in terms of sexual reception. Watched surgery videos and felt scared, but then again, the point is that I should be sedated while they do it to me, and then for things to be bandaged while initial healing happens. Meh.

And I am beginning to recognize I may have several emotional wounds from previous situations that actually behave similarly to very very weak subclinical PTSD, in most cases I don’t even acknowledge I have been hurt because I don’t feel I deserve compassion about those things, I blame myself. Nothing severe. But all sorts of complex things left marks, and I may be getting to a point where I can acknowledge that and maybe work on it. Is this finally me getting a little closer to graduated emotions?

stone butch purples

NSFW: sex sex sex sex sex sex

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while and not finding the time. The last month I’ve gotten more sexual again, I think stressors went down enough to let me. I feel desire for desire on some level, and am casually enjoying playfully aiming for it. I think I was even a little disappointed when a date did not end with me getting laid, where I had thought I would. I’m crushing (surprisingly strongly) and I want to be explored and touched and observed, I want to be held and handled and I want to be smiling and cheeky and full of feeling as I tease and torture. I updated my fetlife profile even.

At the same time it is really really unappealing to think of anyone seeing directly the malformed parts between my legs. I can’t even name them comfortably, not on myself. There are exceptions for some people but I remain in high vigilance mode as it happens, when I was recently licked for example, I enjoyed and wanted it, but I couldn’t stop being watchful. Through clothes is OK, I enjoyed pressing myself against someone, or having a vibrator against me.

I want to come, I want that release. But there’s still fluid when I do. Transparent, yellow-reddish, sticky. Not so much, but still there. I can hope it would get less. I’d be happy being wet like a cis girl, even squirt like some, but I cannot reparse my fluids to that, and I deeply loathe the point at which receiving turns into cleanup. I learned I can come when tucked, with a magic wand against me; it was harder than I thought (though this was mostly experimentation to check I still could, so not in super sexy mode – I scrambled for fantasies and ended up thinking of how it would be like to have my vagina penetrated, that worked finally).

I fetishize cum in itself, I would want it on me and on those I make sex happen to, but I don’t want it to be mine. I hope (and believe) if my genitals had the right shape and lack of tumescence, I wouldn’t mind this fluid. It could drip from the hands of someone who had just fingered me and it would be fine, I’d be fine with wet panties and a wet spot if I felt the right shape of my parts against it, I’d be fine being seen with the right parts. I’d love to be licked like that.

I want this so much, I realize. And despite the longing, trying for it where I am now remains a matter of careful workarounds and ersatzes. I’d feel unsafe otherwise. This state, then, makes me feel some sort of affinity to stone butches (some of whom presumably are trans men), who have sex but do not want to be genitally touched. I no longer feel I appropriate by saying so, though I do acknowledge their direction as opposite to mine.

I should get SRS, shouldn’t I? I still have troubles wrapping my head around the want. I feel like I am deciding, like I know that I have decided somehow, that the timer is already counting down. It was two years from when I first decided (?), less now. I want a healed and functional vagina before I am 40. It feels scary and weird to type it. I’m preparing for it, a lot of things I do seem to be work towards it. I need to get the money – saving up something like 18K if I want to go for Chettawut and have extensive margins; not yet sure how I will do that. I’ll schedule and undergo electrolysis with that explicitly for that purpose. These things I know. I’ll continue to sculpt away bodily masculinity traces, reshape myself more, and I’ll get my legal sex change and voice work done within this time span also. I sense I will do these things.

I can also sense me going through with it, stepping into the flow of events for surgery and recovery. That sense has a shocked numbness from fear too, of pain, of complications, of not knowing how to get all the aftercare right. It’s the fear of wounds, of having surfaces where it is possible for me to do wrong, or for things to go wrong. But I feel also some sort of headiness when imaging it. I am beginning to imagine the feel of rush of will, of agency. I can somehow feel how I would feel in the moments of acting on the decision. I think I can feel how I would react, contain and mindful away the fear, be still and scared and still acting as normal despite the fear. I am familiar with how that feels for me. I’ve practiced a long time now.

So what else can I feel? The tucking project worked, I now know what it is like not to protrude. It feels right, it feels safe, it feels contained. I want that. I feel now the shape of my crotch as it would be, mounded but otherwise flat. It’s numb though, I have no lips yet, no insides, no knowledge of that. It’s like I have only the sketch, the draft, and it still goes stiff where it should not. Could I change that? That’s the point, I guess. Can I already now work up to feeling insides? Maybe. I’d need to try inguinal canal sex, maybe other sorts of touch in between what my outer labia would be. Still incomplete, but I hope maybe some of my loved ones will end up doing me like that. I think perhaps I’ll ask them to.

So… yeah. The trajectory is here. I’m working towards it. Steps on that route will also involve documentation, preparing my family, ensuring competence is in place for when I will be on leave, ensuring my house has an elevator by then. Getting in the best shape I can. In every one of these regards I act in a motivated manner to make it happen. Looks like I plan for having non-penile inversion vaginoplasty by latest 2020.

termidin

The following is something I wrote to comment on a reddit post defending the use of the term “sex” to mean “reproductive sex”, under which saying “trans women are biologically male” would mean “trans women can only reproduce with cis women”. I think my points are valid. But I wrote them to clarify my own thought process. If I post them in response to the poster pedant, there would be a long angsty discussion that would drain me at a time when I have to be 100% at capacity. I need to let it go. So my response instead goes here.

The main weakness is that in practice, when it comes to animals, we often do use a “master construct” of “biological sex” which means all the different subcomponents being aligned and pointing in either direction. In humans, retaining that use is highly problematic. The thought of myself as “biologically male” is abhorrent even if it was entirely uncoupled from role and position and. It is furthermore important to me that I am like other women in regard to all those other biological sex characteristics. Reproduction is the least meaningful of the biological sex continua, really. So I work to be “female” in all biological regards I can.

As long as you use the terms “male” and “female” to denote reproductive compatibility in some two-sex reproduction systems, what you say is true in the sense that we could describe the same reality and your statements would not be inconsistent under your language framework. However it is not the only way we could choose to define those words.

To me as a (somewhat established, now moving in to work on sex hormones and how they impact systemic disease) biologist, there are no formal terms that just state unqualified “male” or “female”. There are terms of karyotypic, specific genetic, endocrine, transcriptional, anatomic etc. “male” and “female” and they each describe concepts that almost always are continua, often have bimodal distributions, often have overlaps in those distributions, and often are correlated with each other, correlations which break down under intersex and under transition. I do not refer to someone as just “male” or “female” without qualifying which regard I mean. As a trans woman, I am presently e.g. karyotypically male, endocrinologically closer to female, anatomically closer to male (which likely will change), etc. E.g. my anatomic and endocrine sexes are not the same, and I don’t recognize as useful any master contruct of biological sex above the individual properties, if I want to talk about the correlation structure I can just do that directly.

When I do use unqualified “male” or “female” about humans in everyday speech it is not as a scientific term, it is intended to be understood as shorthand for the constructs of “man” and “woman” and carry the same opt-out, opt-in clauses as those do for me. More and more people are using language in this way, inside and outside of science and medicine, and I think it is good that we do. For lab animals in order to be quickly understood I will still use “female mice” e.g. as a short-hand for XX mice, e.g. in the sense of “ovarectomized female mice were supplemented with E2, then assessed for tumor growth”. But sex so used is a short-hand I neither need nor want for humans, and the animal use case is also an area where scientific terminology well may come to shift over the next decades.

If I wanted to address specifically what you talk of, I would talk of “reproductive sex” (leaving aside complexities that vary within and across species). I don’t think any practical utility is lost, whereas some is gained, by having that specified.

How do I start being consistent? Well, where space allows, and where I have enough clout (I don’t always), I might start specifying “genetically male mice” (implying endocrinology and anatomy following, even where we might alter both of these). Probably just using “genetically male/female” per default. It feels like a cop-out because then I am still using the ghost of the master construct, assuming typical development as it were, but if the alternative is full descriptive: “genetically, anatomically and endocrinologically male mice” which is too long, or unqualified, I’ll try to push this alternate term. Let’s see if it ends up in a paper sooner of later.

Looking back into thread, OP is providing amazing responses to this that are better than mine and I want to meet her and buy her drinks. That aside, the insight with regards to the animals is important and I should get to work on that.

Another comment in the thread makes the claim that someone’s womanhood is about whether others treat them so. As with sex and gender both, I want them at least implicitly qualified to who it is that assigns. And my sex, and my gender, if the two are not symbolic links to each other, is about how I label myself. Others inform that label. But stating I am not a woman in Texas because the Texans would not see me so does not match my use of the term. I am one equally there, in the sense that my own labeling of my own sexed body remains there.

Need to regain focus and grasp hold on that science so it can get to where I need it.

corpora

NB: NSFW

Libido stays low, and this mostly does not bother me. Theoretical and conceptual interest in sex as symbol and practice remains high. Sex as bonding with partners work, and I’ve enjoyed that – exploring and touching them. One big difference is that it’s become much like cuddling with some parts deepening into more intense touch and stimulation, I don’t really care as much as I used to about anyone getting off, which used to be a really big thing for me.

As regards the one I am with, I want of course for them to reach whatever goal they are after, but the need to provide that (and gain validation from having been able to provide that) has lessened significantly. I worried some this would make me lazy but I don’t think it has to, as long as I ensure I stay embodied and comfortable and liking the cuddling/intimacy aspect while I do things with them, then I’m still happy giving another what they seek, so long as I am happy having sex with them in the first place.

As regards myself, it’s now been long since I climaxed, almost so I fear sometimes I may risk losing the capacity. However, this is not for trying and failing, but for not trying at all; I have zero interest to self-pleasure, and when with a partner, while on some level I want for them to make me come, the idea of messy discharges and coming down to the reality of my current parts configuration is off-putting enough that I haven’t asked for it, though probably next time I shall because I’m curious how it will feel now, how and if it has changed.

Generally, uncomfortable baring bottom parts even during sex now. This all sounds awfully like increasing (clarity of) genital dysphoria. I wonder what it would be like post-op? And also, I’m curious on whether the anecdotal experiences of others saying another form of libido returned to them once they started progesterone would apply to me. I will meet my new endocrinologist next week, will ask then if they will support me trying it.

Also while I am still switch and still capable of top dynamics, it seems
a lot of the drive for that was validation-related. Interesting.

TLDR; All in all good, calm, but also gradually more and more curious on what being stimulated is like now, and less and less comfortable with my parts during sex. Curious on who I am now sexually. Demisexual switch?