After a long time I finally realized I had been approaching the issue from the wrong angle. Rather than ask why cross gender arousal exists, I needed to ask the following: how is it possible to decouple wanting to be another gender entirely from sexuality? The answer is you cannot.
It helped me to speak to genetic women but also to androphilic transgender women like my friend Sherry to fill in the portrait. Their experiences of feeling feminine sometimes brought sexual feelings as well.So it is not the presence of the occasional arousal that is the crux of the issue but rather whether it is an end goal or alternatively a manifestation of a much larger portrait which encompasses identity.
That last part is up to us to figure out.
One of the biggest hurdles for some (certainly me) was trying to understand "gender euphoria" from arousal (especially if you have gender expression deprivation anxiety and needing to get a fix). They both enact the same triggers in the mind and that causes a lot of confusion. It is hard to decouple them. It takes a lot of time and introspection over that time.
ReplyDelete-Christina
It took me many years to deconstruct everything. Be patient with yourself and focus primarily on being happy and balanced. It will all click into place while understanding that being transgender is never going to be a picnic
DeleteOne of things you will realize over time is that if you are dealing with identity the euphoria will wane and be replaced with a deep comfort. That is an important sign.
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