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Sephina
12-21-2013, 04:54 PM
So I've been reading a lot of the posts here and a lot of the girls here have made confessions that thier sexual preference changes on HRT, but I've seen others say that their doesn't seem to be any evidence to that effect but that your true orientation comes out instead so I wonder what are your thoughts on this? I'm curious does sexual orientaion actually change or is it just a dormant realizatoon?

Rianna Humble
12-21-2013, 05:00 PM
I don't know if there is a definitive answer to this, but one of the two Gender Specialists who confirmed my diagnosis suggested that an absolute change is rare.

So far, my preference hasn't changed but theoretically that means to an outside observer my orientation has. In the male role a preference for women was considered heterosexual but not in the female role.

I can give no guarantees as to future performance.

MarciManseau
12-21-2013, 05:07 PM
For me, I've always been bi, and that didn't change after I began hormones, and after 9 years, it's the same. It may be that some are willing to more readily admit to liking men once they're "on the way" to womanhood :)

mary something
12-21-2013, 05:16 PM
I'm early on yet, almost three months now. What my account lacks in long term knowledge it hopefully makes up for in the fact that I'm still close enough to the beginning of the process that it is easy to compare my before hrt and after hrt self. I haven't noticed any difference in my attractions. I've noticed that I smell different and that I smell men now much more so than I did before but as far as what I like or find attractive that hasn't changed at this early date. As far as intimacy and those types of things in my relationship it has gotten better since hrt.

JamieLeigh
12-21-2013, 07:34 PM
Personally I believe Gender and Sex are two totally different things I'm Post-Op and have been on HRT since early 2008 and my sexual preference never changed. I love men. I always have.

Kimberly Kael
12-21-2013, 11:29 PM
I've never talked to anyone who experienced a change along these lines whose sexuality wasn't already somewhat complicated. Bisexuals who find social pressure uncomfortable may wind up dating their apparent opposite before and after. I've even heard from some with strong ties to the lesbian and gay community who were in "same sex" relationships both before and after. On the other hand, those with a clear and unambiguous interest before don't seem to see significant change. All anecdotal, of course. YMMV and please let us know if it does.

Sephina
12-22-2013, 02:36 AM
Thanks for all the insight its good to know, it doesn't affect anything I was just looking for clarification thanks

MaryAnn40c
12-22-2013, 03:44 AM
I am bi have been for years...so thinking if you have been the same you should be same afterwords

JamieLeigh
12-22-2013, 02:26 PM
Is it true that most trans woman are bi-sexual or Lesbian, or is that just my misconception?

steph1964
12-22-2013, 02:45 PM
I didn’t think mine would change but it did but I don't think that it is due to HRT. I did some reading on this and found a lot of different explanations on why this could happen and I found one that seems to fit me. Maybe that is just to make myself feel better but here it is.

I was attracted to females, not sexually like other males, but because of how they were put together. If they were dressed nicely, hair and makeup done well, and looked like they put time into their appearance, then I noticed them. According to what I read it is because I wanted to be them. A big breasted girl in a tight t-shirt did nothing for me. My brother and brother in law dragged me to a strip club one night and I really didn’t like it. Once a coworker who later became a friend told me that he thought I was gay when we first met because when we worked at the mall (we were cops) I never looked at the women.

I never had an attraction to men but I tried to suppress a lot of crap and this could have been buried down there with everything else. Now I am accepting of myself, I can be accepting of everything.

My counselor told me not to overthink it. She said that it doesn’t matter why, it only matters how I feel and if I’m attracted to men then go have fun!

JamieLeigh
12-22-2013, 02:52 PM
I always noticed attractive women but I know it was because I envied them. It only added to my misery at being stuck in a body I hated.

Badtranny
12-22-2013, 02:56 PM
Let's put it this way; If a few months of HRT can change a straight man to gay then the military would have a weapon capable of destabilizing the worlds governments. Imagine the disruption if we could change the sexual orientation of a huge percentage of men around the world. Hell, the world might even be a better place.

Regardless of the anecdotal reports from an anonymous internet forum, there is no known drug that can change the sexual orientation of humans. Please, let's at least try and retain some intellectual self respect around here.

JamieLeigh
12-22-2013, 03:09 PM
I totally agree Gender orientation and Sexual Orientation are two totally separate issue. One has no effect on the other.

Leah Lynn
12-22-2013, 03:14 PM
Three months on hrt and no change. I still love the ladies!

Leah

JamieLeigh
12-22-2013, 03:34 PM
When I was very young my first therapist told me I was not Transsexual I was simply gay and to just go out and accept that fact and live as a gay male. I tried that and it did not change my inner desire to be the woman I knew I was inside. I was always attracted sexually to men. I still am after almost 4 years on HRT and SRS.

TeresaL
12-22-2013, 10:41 PM
My orientation hasn't changed, but I want to hug men more than before. I don't think I could do them though.

Sephina
12-22-2013, 11:06 PM
Alright thanks ladies I think we have enough personal testimonial to put this theory to bed, seems as if like your orientation changes then its most likely not HRT but pretty much just always been there just not reckognized.

rachael.davis
12-23-2013, 09:49 AM
One of the topics I've been working on with my new therapist is the strong possibility that I've mistaken the strong friendship women develop for romantic love, when I was younger and in massive denial I couldn't understand why several great women didn't quite understand why I "wanted to be friends"
Part II of that is I'm looking closely at the difference between sexual attraction, romantic love, and "male bonding"
I suspect I've been getting it wrong (so to speak) for quite a while.

JAS
12-27-2013, 11:23 PM
This is interesting I think, because of all the misunderstanding and misconceptions about just what we are talking about when we use the term 'sexual orientation'. When I use that term it refers to the sex of the person I want to jump in bed with and do it with.

Now when I was quite young and suffering from an over abundance of testosterone with all its awful and totally disgusting side effects, I found that I had two options for mitigating or "dealing with" those "issues". One was 'sharing' with a willing young woman, or dealing with matters my self.

Once I had healed from the surgery and faced with what amounted to a life sentence of dilation, I found that men most pleasurably solved that little problem. I happen to love men and when I was not married, I was always in a LTR with one.

Did my 'sexual orientation' change? I would argue that it did.:D

Sephina
12-27-2013, 11:38 PM
Well ok then i suppose it a matter of personal experience and perception, the only reason i brought up this topic is i am a trans woman who is still attracted to women so for a while in fact a long time i didnt think that i actually had a problem cause i thought well maybe im gay, but i like women so thats not it either wth i was confused so i figured id like to see what others views on this were, as far as GRS amd Dialation and other things assosciated with transition i was talking to a friend and she said that she felt comfortable in a female role and that she would just like to have the plumbing removed but didnt really care for the idea of hormones for the rest of her life and dialation. To which i replied i wasnt too terribly keen on either but id rather that then the current situation ive got going on. anyways like i said it was merely a thread to see what others views and or opinions were on this, the concensus seems to be that hrt doesnt change what you find sexually attractive, wether you want to call it orientation or prefernece or what have you.

PaulaQ
12-28-2013, 02:42 AM
Regardless of the anecdotal reports from an anonymous internet forum, there is no known drug that can change the sexual orientation of humans. Please, let's at least try and retain some intellectual self respect around here.

And yet - this seems to be exactly what happened to me. Oh well. I really was very uninterested in men before HRT. Then rather rapidly, I was. I don't really care if it was there dormant all along - but I've thought long and hard about it, and I just don't find much evidence of that. If it was there, it was really buried deeply - not like consciously suppressed, but so deep I was unaware of its existence.

I mean lookit - I had about, I dunno, 700GB of photos of naked women before I started transition. I've been married to two different women. I've never pursued, or been interested in, or attracted to men. Believe me - I spent my whole life hiding my gender - I know what it's like to hide stuff. I wasn't hiding this. I'm trying to be as honest about this as I can be. Did I ever have a fantasy about a guy, or curiosity? Yeah, but it was an extremely rare occurrence. I didn't find images of men to be arousing, at all. (In fact, that was generally a turn off for me.) On the other hand, a pretty woman, talking to me, would more or less make my brain fall out of my head.

Now? It's the opposite.

If HRT didn't do this, then I don't know what did. If it was latent inside me - and I don't really find a whole bunch of evidence for that - but if it was, why'd it suddenly come to the surface?

I honestly don't really care one way or the other what my sexual preference is. That's the great thing about being trans - I really don't care, what are people going to think I'm some type of pervert because of who I want to sleep with? No - they think I'm some type of pervert because I'm trans, lol.

Maybe my improvement in emotional state wasn't caused by HRT, while we're in the business of debunking things. :)

tori-e
12-28-2013, 10:06 AM
So here's a thought: If you see yourself as heterosexual and you are male and like women, then you you transition to female and you're still heterosexual wouldn't you then like men?

I know it's pretzel logic isn't it?

For me there has definitely been a shift. I could have never seen myself with a man before transition, but it's different now. I find both men and women attractive. And frankly I like the male attention too. It's really nice.

The shift for me didn't happen over night and I'm pretty sure it wasn't until a while after GRS.

A friend that transitioned years before I did explained that T put a mask over her sexuality. After she transitioned she no longer found the idea of being with a man a bad thing.

My personal opinion is that a shift in sexual orientation occurs when a shift in who you see yourself as, changes.

Victoria

CharleneT
12-29-2013, 03:36 AM
Good, quick advice: do not pigeon hole your sexual orientation until after SRS .... just say'n you will discover new worlds and there is NO way to know which part of the universe you will find yourself most comfortable in.

Sabrina133
12-29-2013, 09:54 AM
For me, I've always been bi, and that didn't change after I began hormones, and after 9 years, it's the same. It may be that some are willing to more readily admit to liking men once they're "on the way" to womanhood :)

I would say the same for me. I was bi when i was a male. Now that i've been on HRT, am still attracted to males and females. My SO is a female and i am madly attracted to her.

I Am Paula
12-29-2013, 10:30 AM
This question seems to be perpetually in a thread. As this one fades, another will replace it, and must therefore be a really important question.
I asked my therapist this some time ago. I still like her answer, be it scientifically valid or not. "Those sitting on the fence sexually seem more likely to fall on the gay (androphyllic) side. Those who have never been bi sexual tend to not change at all." I buy that.
Whether I was in a phase of practicing or not, I considered myself bi. I love the way women look and act, and when I'm in a LTR, it is almost always with a woman. I find men sexy as hell, but only in a real physical sense. Go to dinner, go to bed, GO HOME.
Now, on HRT, I find myself looking at males from a less sexual perspective. Would they make a good partner? Are they caring and capable of a LTR?
There is no definitive answer to the original question 'Does sexual orientation change?'. Our perspectives change, but chemicals cannot make us something we are not.

PaulaQ
12-30-2013, 04:49 PM
There is no definitive answer to the original question 'Does sexual orientation change?'. Our perspectives change, but chemicals cannot make us something we are not.

So hormones can make you grow breasts, change your skin tissue, hair growth, vastly alter your moods and emotional state - but there's no possibility they could affect your orientation? That seems like a ridiculous assertion, particularly since it seems to happen for many of us.

I've spent a good chunk of the weekend thinking about this, and trying to find some evidence that I'd been attracted to men in the past. And sure enough - there is some, but not in the way you'd think.

When I first started thinking about this, I thought about it in terms of being a closeted gay man. Secretly attracted to, and desperately wanting to be with another guy. I've just never been attracted to men that way. I just haven't. I've never thought "OMG, I'm so turned on looking at that guy, god, I wish..."

But what I have realized is that I've always been highly attracted to, but sexually frustrated by, relationships with women. On paper, I always had a great sex life with women. My partners were genuinely shocked and astonished that I made them feel as good as I did. The problem is, as hard as I'd try to please them, and to have fun myself, ultimately I ended up pretty unsatisfied. My wife generally conked out and fell asleep a couple of minutes after we made love. I'd get up, and read a book or something for a few hours, feeling like "was that it?"

I know that in terms of equipment, being penetrated by a guy would've satisfied me a LOT more than what I ever got out of being with women. (I unfortunately never found a woman who found the concept of "pegging" anything but repugnant.) Problem is, there was no way, no how, I was attracted to guys.

So I was attracted to women, but they frustrated me - a lot. My sex life, active as it was, was nothing but disappointment as I think back on it. I simply couldn't be attracted to men, but I am quite certain had I been able to be, sex with them would've been extremely satisfying.

It's as if my sex drive was sort of fractured, or twisted into a knot that just didn't make any sense, or work for me. Now that I've gotten some hormonal congruence, I'm actually attracted to the people who can satisfy me sexually. I'm also not very attracted to women anymore. And I mean in the past, I had all sorts of involuntary reactions talking to a really pretty woman - I'd get kind of shy, my heart would speed up, if she were really sexy, I'd likely have an erection. Now? Nah. I'll talk to women, doesn't really matter what they look like. I just want more friends. Attention from a nice looking guy, however, will make my breath catch and my heart race. Look - this stuff is involuntary. And it changed for me.

The really weird part is that while intellectually, I know that "wow, this is really weird", it doesn't actually FEEL weird. It feels like I've always been this way - having sex with men seems normal, sex with women seems, kinda weird, despite the fact that I've never been with a guy, and have been with plenty of women. I have memories of being with women - they don't feel right anymore. I'm not ashamed, or anything like that - they just don't feel like anything I'd ever have wanted to do, even though I remember quite clearly being really enthusiastic about it at the time.

I sort of regret, intellectually, not staying attracted to women. I think it'd be easier to find a partner in another trans woman, or with a GG lesbian. I'd be a really good lesbian too, or at least a fun one to date. But yeah, the thought of that doesn't do a whole lot for me.

I Am Paula
12-30-2013, 05:35 PM
PaulaQ. All your points are valid. I don't think it's impossible for orientation to change, I just have not witnessed it.
I think many TS girls who are in sexual relationships with women feel there's a hardware conflict. I know, thru my many marriages (?? yup!) that I always felt like it should be my legs in the air. To me sex always sucked (no pun), but I did what I did, and women seemed to accept that. Sex with men is great...but I don't much like them for relationships. Gradually, on HRT tho' they are looking better ;-)

Angela Campbell
12-30-2013, 05:39 PM
LOL "I am Paula".....(to keep separate from PaulaQ) I can understand as I like penises just not the ugly things they are attached to.

JAS
12-30-2013, 05:46 PM
I don't know if there is a definitive answer to this, but one of the two Gender Specialists who confirmed my diagnosis suggested that an absolute change is rare. So far, my preference hasn't changed but theoretically that means to an outside observer my orientation has. In the male role a preference for women was considered heterosexual but not in the female role. I can give no guarantees as to future performance.


So I was attracted to women, but they frustrated me - a lot. My sex life, active as it was, was nothing but disappointment as I think back on it. I simply couldn't be attracted to men, but I am quite certain had I been able to be, sex with them would've been extremely satisfying.

As I mentioned in an earlier comment my orientation changed 180 degrees after my full recovery from SRS. In those final days before I was finally forced to admit that I had run out of viable options for surviving my condition and would have to submit to a full bodied sexual transformation, I actually made one last desperate attempt to avoid that reality and entered into a homosexual encounter with a man to see if perhaps I was just in some sort of homophobic denial. While the experience was not unpleasant, it felt completely un-natural and most obviously was nt who I was or what I needed.

As I described in that earlier comment, I was essentially asexual in that year or so that I was on pre-surgical hormones, and it was not until after SRS and a full recovery that my libido again began to become apparent. Interestingly, my interest was primarily towards men, and being quite young and attractive, they found me exquisitely interesting as well.

Another thing that might be of interest is that while my initial sexual encounters were all about sex and learning all about how things worked, that soon became old hat and the deeper needs for love, trust and total acceptance became paramount.

At the risk of being redundant, I again want to point that I was very young when I transitioned, early 20's, and from what I have read, those women who transitioned earlier tended to follow the same numerical distribution as natally born women in terms of sexual orientation. In other words the ast majority of us are heterosexual ad attracted to het. men.

The very few women that I know of who transitioned young, (before 35), are all heterosexual and either married men or are planning to.

DebbieL
12-30-2013, 05:48 PM
Being transsexual is so much more than sex. It's a fundamental part of who we are, a part of us that most of have had to hide for years, even decades. We have hid to hide her from family, friends, lovers, even wives and children. For many of us, it's like being an undercover cop or a spy or even a Jew in Nazi Europe. We MUST pretend to be what people want to see or there will be TERRIBLE consequences, including a slow and painful death, or just lots of pain and suffering even if we manage to live. Many of us have survived beatings, torture, terror, and worse.

So many things change during HRT. As your breasts develop, your posture improves, you start wearing feminine clothes, and looking good in them, you are treated differently. Men are nicer to you. They hold doors for you, they help you, they are more polite and less confrontational. As men we were forced to compete in thousands of subtle ways. Whether it was winning an argument or "can you top this", getting beat up on the elementary school playground or getting pummeled during a soccer game or football game. Even as young as two years old, little boys will generally push each other to gain dominance or status. Boys are told not to hit girls, because it's not in a girl's nature to fight back. For a transsexual MtF there may not be the organic drive to push back and that makes one a target. The boys can push, shove, and even hit him, because he's a boy. They can take his toys because he won't fight to get them back.

After years or even decades of being on the painful side of such confrontations, even someone who might have bisexual sexual desires would struggle with the idea of experiencing a man as loving and gentle. This can be made worse when our effeminate nature is incorrectly perceived as homosexual desires. In fact, often the worst persecutors of effeminates as homosexuals are masculine boys who find them attractive. They are struggling with their own attraction to a person who is not quite female, and seems accessible, but in total fear that his own desires will be discovered.

Especially in High School and college, I found it safer and easier to let people think I was gay than to let them know I was transsexual. There weren't a lot of transsexuals around back in those days, and there were lots of jokes about them. Films and books about Christine Jorgensen came out, along with Myra Breckenridge, but the restricted ratings on such movies and lack of parental approval made getting accurate information nearly impossible. Even when they had it figured out, they gave me porn of transvestites - still hairy and just wearing clothes over their masculine bodies. I thought they were making fun of me.

But women were also a problem. Nearly all of the women in my life were close personal friends, and NOT with benefits. I did have a few girl-friends with whom I did some heavy petting and kissing, and I enjoyed it, but because I wasn't as aggressive as the other boys, they considered me to be more like a girl, and even "Shared" me and passed me around. They would even conspire to take advantage of my willingness to please while asking nothing in return, especially when intoxicated. They knew exactly what to look for and would tell the girl who wanted the experience exactly what to do to get me into the coat room with my head between her legs, but I was in a black-out (when Debbie the "****" took over). A few guys figured it out too, but they didn't want to get caught so it was more rare.

Even though I liked women more than men, I actually liked women who were very aggressive. If a woman wanted to get something started with me she had to tell me what she wanted, or push me into it. I was a willing and submissive participant, but I always wanted her to set the terms. In essence, I wanted a man with breasts.

I had tried boys a few times, but since I wasn't dressed, about the only pleasure I got out of was pretending that I was a girl giving him the pleasure.

Many of us are encouraged to read fiction books, romances, love stories, and stories of feminization, forced feminization, and other transgender themes in which a man is pushed by a woman to become a she-male or even a female. For many of us, this opens new vistas we hadn't considered before. As we read romance novels where the young lady is yearning to be touched, to be kissed, to be filled, we begin to put ourselves in her role.

In my case, I found a woman who really enjoys sex with Debbie, including play with toys. I'll keep it clean by simply saying she popped my cherry and I really enjoyed it much more than I had expected. Often, as males, we have more focus on the male experience of sex, arousal, erection, ejaculation, and resolution. I don't know about you, but I found "normal" sex as a man incredibly frustrating, just as it started feeling really good, it was over.

With HRT many things change. Erections if they happen at all are much smaller and less firm, penetration may not even be possible. We can still experience pleasure when stimulated, but it takes much longer to built to anywhere near the intensity. On the way, there are more plateaus and once we have learned to separate orgasm from ejaculation we can experience multiple orgasms. Often our partners will have learned, either through experimentation or through "Sissy Literature" about prostate stimulation, and will have found a number of ways to create new and unexpected pleasures.

Needless to say, in transition, EVERYTHING gets reassessed. We may still find men less satisfying because they last long enough, they are too focused on their own pleasure, or they don't want to cuddle and snuggle after making love. Many of these situations are familiar to women as well. For some of us, childhood fantasies of the handsome prince coming to kiss Sleeping Beauty, or to take Cinderella away from her horrible step-family are so deeply repressed that we may not awaken them until after HRT and watching some Disney movie.

Often, our choices of lovers and wives have been driven by such fantasies. We might be married to the woman who wears sensible shoes, bosses us around a bit, and aggressively initiates sex when she wants it. Often, we are not only attracted to them, but they are attracted to us. Cross-dressers often continue to be very masculine, even macho, men, and only want to dress. Transsexuals often don't have the chemistry or neurology to be confrontational and actually find it comforting when a woman takes charge of it. When my wife (#2) showed her daughter a picture of me as Debbie, her daughter's advice was "Well mom, you won't have to worry about threatening his fragile male ego when you take charge of it". When Lee (#2) told me that, I laughed out loud and told her "Well, she's got that right!". When she lost her key to the hotel and I didn't lose my temper, when she started helping and I smiled and said "thank you for helping me drive honey", and when she burped and I said "excuse me", she knew I was the one for her! To sweeten the deal, she has a tenor voice and sings in the choir. When she goes out with Debbie, she often holds the door for me, gives her name for the reservation or waiting list, and often makes plans and tells me what we are going to do, to confirm. If I have a conflict she will adjust, but usually I am thrilled that she has arranged a fun date for us.

Lee is all woman, but she also provides much of the care, certainty, support, and confidence I might have otherwise sought in a man. When we met, she was heavy, nearly 280 lbs to my 270. Yet because she was sexually aggressive, or would respond when I playfully flirted with her, often scolding me for being so naughty in a cute and silly way, I found her more attractive than many women half her weight who didn't want to take control.

HRT does change things, including what is arousing sexually, what we fantasize about doing, and how we want to be seduced. At the same time, if someone is really exclusively attracted to women, and feels no attraction to men, it's unlikely that this will change just because of HRT.

Sabrina133
12-30-2013, 06:10 PM
Wow, Debbie, how amazingly insgight full for us starting on the journey. thank you and hugs.

mary something
12-30-2013, 08:18 PM
PaulaQ, can I play devil's advocate for a moment and ask you how you know moving to Texas didn't change your orientation? ;)

PaulaQ
12-30-2013, 08:29 PM
Well - that's certainly a valid question, and despite our governor's horror and loathing over that very subject, it's certainly happened to better people than me. ;)

I was born and raised in Texas, so I feel that probably wasn't the cause. I guess an argument could be made for my moving to 'the gayborhood' having had an impact. But I know some other closeted straight people who live down here, and they seem to stick to the team they started playing for. So I dunno - I'm still thinking hormones though! :p

Perhaps the same thing happened to me as happened to the singer of this song:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkRVodqIcvs

mary something
12-31-2013, 11:15 AM
I love it Paula! I think sometimes a new perspective makes a big difference sometimes, just seeing one side of the mountain sometimes. You've certainly had a lot of life changes this past year and you sure have accomplished a lot. Hoping 2014 is the best yet for you!