Asklemmy

No worries, these are personal questions but that's what I've signed up for.

The answer is that it varies significantly. It's not uncommon for trans women to experience a reduction of libido on estrogen, but I experienced increased arousal and libido (much to my dismay, I wanted libido to reduce). However, I think viewing libido as just "more" vs "less" does not portray the changes accurately. Testosterone libido felt different, more desperate and animal-like. It was like a simple biological urge, like hunger or the need to pass a bowel movement. It felt imposed on me, and like a hijacking of "me".

Estrogen libido was deeper and more meaningful, more emotionally connected and harder to just stamp out. Testosterone libido was like performing a duty, estrogen libido was like yearning, pining, burning lust. Estrogen libido feels right, testosterone libido felt awful (to the point where I wondered if I was on the asexual spectrum).

The further into transition I got, the more my dissociation melted and the more dysphoria I experienced as a result - and in this case, the more I experienced bottom dysphoria. I started to wear underwear to bed to hide my genitals, and I started to recognize when I was dissociating during sex, and trying to avoid it by opting to not be touched. I couldn't stand being the center of attention in sex, focusing on me and my orgasm was very upsetting and usually I disappeared when this happened.

All this varies significantly among trans women - many of them feel no bottom dysphoria at all, and enjoy topping. Many of us feel varying levels of dysphoria, and either cannot use their genitals at all, or very little.

I was a middle case - I could have sex, but it required accommodations and working around my issues, usually by hiding the genitals and treating them more like female genitals (treating the glans like a clit, and so on). I found using a vibrator much more pleasurable on estrogen than before transition, and I really did not like having erections so I did everything I could to promote penile atrophy (but ultimately I didn't have much penile atrophy - I would have trouble being hard enough for penetrating, but still technically could sometimes). This was all pre-op, obviously post-op sex changed significantly - I am finding I am surprisingly more comfortable now being the center of sexual attention, though I still have dysphoria and there are struggles I have to work around (like feeling my new genitals are like the old ones).

I'm not sure my prostate changed much at all, to be honest. I didn't notice any difference, but post-op, vaginal penetration is prostate stimulating and featured more heavily. (Anal took more prep and time to do and could be painful, so it was admittedly done less frequently. Also, it could introduce gender feelings in a way, which could increase my dysphoria - sometimes gender-affirming activities can emphasize how much I'm not a woman, and can ironically backfire and make things worse.)

Honestly I am not sure there is a particularly perfect way to raise genital preference, but it is good to be transparent and honest about your preferences, it might be good to raise early and in a context where you are opening the floor to understanding their needs and preferences too, esp. around any dyphoria they might experience and what their needs are.

The majority of trans folks are pre- or non-op, so it's best not to assume anything about their genitals, and if you have preferences it's even more important to communicate about.

For transmasc folks you might need to examine your preferences and the extent to which female gentials make you see men as women (just like when men really enjoy penises on trans women), and just be honest with yourself and your partner, and be careful not to invalidate someone's gender.

Tbh, this isn't that far from talking about hair and sexual preferences with cis people, it's just good to be sensitive because being misgendered can be really dehumanizing.

So, much of gender is a social construct, but being a social construct doesn't stop it being real. Society has a bias towards a gender binary, and that creates the social context in which we come to understand and experience our own gender. These social frameworks creates the lens through which we learn to understand ourselves.

Lets say I grew up on an island full of men. I had never seen or met a woman, and didn't have a concept of women. In that environment, my experience of gender would have been different. I'd still have experienced the discomfort, and disconnection, I'd still have experienced dysphoria, but it would have manifested very differently. I wouldn't have identified as a binary woman in a world without women, and I wouldn't have had the language to describe my experiences, but I'd still have had a discomfort I couldn't address, and I'd still have known that I was different to the men around me in ways I didn't have the language or the concepts to explore.

But I didn't. I grew up in country town Australia in the 80s, when societies bias towards a gender binary was strong. And my own gender is binary too.

I do sometimes wonder what my experience of my own gender would be like if I'd have grown up in a different context, if society allowed space for genders that don't have to fit a binary. Would I still be binary? The truth is, I don't know. But what I do know, is that my experience of my own gender does fit on the binary, and knowing that, and thinking about it doesn't change it, because however I got there, my gender isn't a choice. It's just who I am.