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Rachel's avatar

Sex while inhabiting the wrong gender is *weird*. At least it was for me.

I've always been uncomfortable with sex, but it took me a long time to unearth all the reasons why. Not uncomfortable enough to not have sex, mind you, but uncomfortable enough to often feel bad and always feel weird about it.

The first layer was pretty simple. I grew up in a moderately conservative family in a moderately conservative area, and I was a teenager in the 1980s, at the peak of the Ronald Reagan Family Values era. Sex of any kind outside marriage was sinful and shameful and bad. It didn't take long to understand that all of that was absolute nonsense, but understanding an idea and really internalizing it don't always proceed at the same pace.

The second layer came out of the same place - as bad as straight sex was, anything *gay* was so much worse. And my sexuality never fit the straight template, so *gay* was the only alternative I had the framework to understand. But that didn't fit either - It took all of five minutes to realize I was never really attracted to boys or men.

It turns out I am very, very gay - I am a (trans) woman exclusively attracted to women. But I was never gay in the sense I worried about as a male-presenting teenager.

The bottom layer (pun kind-of intended) was the hardest to dig through, and it's one I'm still working on. It turns out I just don't connect with male sexuality, at all, even when it's my own.

The physical and emotional differences in the experience of sex between masculine and feminine bodies are huge, and the feminine version just feels *right* in the same way the masculine version always felt *wrong*. Genitals are a big deal, obviously, but they're not the only thing that matters. Going on estrogen and eliminating testosterone also made a huge difference, and I never, ever want to go back.

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Steph Toone's avatar

Wow, there was no need to call me out this loudly...

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