Deflowering & Reflowering.

The effects of spironolactone on my sexuality

When I think about my sexuality, often a vase will come to mind. Before I went on the anti-androgen medication spironolactone, I never would have thought of my sexuality like this at all. My slim audience on substack might be familiar with the fact that a trans woman's sexuality will often transform under the effects of HRT. But I have never really heard someone explain what that meant. I found the experience delightfully confusing and wanted to share the experience here.

Online, I've read many trans women recount becoming gay, bi, straight, etc; after spiro has its effect. What I experienced was totally different. It was the emptying of a sexuality. Even now I am trying to fill it. Sometimes, I wonder if I've become some kind of ace-lesbian.

First, a map of the terrain;

In my head, my sexuality felt like a kind of intelligent goo; climbing, expanding and solidifying at will in some hot cave that exists everywhere all at once on my person. Attraction made me feel as if I was throwing up hot semen. Like salty sweat translated into its own species of tactile sensation. This isn't to say that I didn't enjoy being aroused, but it always felt like unsuspectingly tasting pepsi from a milk carton. When my doctor offered to raise my spiro dosage into the no-hoe zone I was gleeful. I thought I could finally rid myself of a whole domain of problems. But this only made things worse.

I noticed it first in my eyes. Out of some hardwired habit I found my eyes lingering on attractive women and lesbians as usual. Yet I was incapable of ‘engaging myself’ in anyone my eyes passed over. This absence forced me to wonder… what even occupied that space in the first place? What had I been engaged in when I was engaged in my sexuality?

I felt suddenly compelled to ask myself why looking at hot women should mean something to me. But that just opened up the question of why I should enjoy anyone else's body at all. Of course, it seems like libido, attraction, sexuality, whatever; remedies this issue. But then... none of these things could rationalize your eyes into taking in someone's body per se. Those who have the answer have no need to know it. It might make sense once you do it, but only after the fact and only because, well, you just did it.

And yet I was still interested in other women's bodies. It was just that the habit of my attraction became a kind of memory excreted onto a perpetual present. An awkward present, composed of rote instinct. I looked not to enjoy, or even to remember enjoyment but because sexuality was something I practiced and thereby marched its memory forward. My eyes were grieving.

And they confronted that grief as if someone had grafted an alien limb onto my body that still reenacted what I could only assume was a purpose.¹

Something did however happen... with butts. (I have no clue how I'm going to post this with my whole-ass first name on the internet. God please no agp allegations. Fuck don't kill me I swear that's normal).

I had always been a butt girl... and that meant something to me. Excuse me while I crudely reconstruct these desires:

What it meant to me was that I could enjoy having sex behind people. Butts were then something like the handles I rooted myself to during sex. Still, sex rarely came to mind when I found someone attractive in the wild. What came to mind instead was her and being able to sense her presence without her acquaintance: the intrinsic vulnerability of being more than an individual; being a body. We’re all extra-personal. None of us exist without bodies. And truly, none of us can dream beyond embodiment. So (among other things) the hotter her butt was, the stronger I wanted her body's personality--not just as a Stranger to me but as someone vulnerable. As a person like all of us are people: extra-individuals oversaturated in the promise that is flesh.²

This could bring me to a long long looong discussion on gender envy. Because, it seems the women whose bodies I desired were really just ways of desiring their personalities through their flesh, but their bodies only figured indirectly… Anyhow, I don't want to get into that. That’s an entire essay in itself.

Both before and after I came out, I had already had a number of bad experiences penetrating other women. I really, really didn't want to do that again. I had still been aroused in those moments, but it turns out the substance of that arousal disfigured my sense of self.

So when I consulted the sex I had pre-transition, the entire narrative of my sexuality simply broke down.

It was true that even prior to this emptying, my sexuality was already breaking down. But I was the one who was breaking it. And this had always been a kind of self-discovery for me. But now, there was nothing to even break.

The lessons I learned during these moments allowed me some stray desires to build from. I knew that I wanted to feel feminine during sex. I knew that I didn't (and mostly shouldn't) trust others to love me with my Blackness, trans womanhood and lesbianhood during sex, and so ample affirmation was another need. I needed to be taken care of. I wanted someone who could embrace me as a body, not just a mind. So I wanted someone who boldly lusted for me. I didn't want attraction to dissolve into what I so desperately want disproven; that my body is deficient. There's too much risk for someone like me to initiate interest, I needed them to at least see why they ought to take initiative in the first courting gestures. Holding the door for me, initiating the first intimate encounters, etc. I wanted someone who treated me like a woman. The whole nine yards of chivalry.

From this, the build-a-butch that occupies the center-stage of my current sexuality was born. Lo and behold, I uncovered memories of the people I had gravitated towards the entire time. I would love to say “I was a femme lesbian all along!”, but I won't. It’s affirming to believe everything new has simply been uncovered, especially when novelty might destabilize your sense of self. Really, I think what I discovered was something I unknowingly created. Really, what I had discovered was that my sexuality was free all along. If my sexuality is a vase, its emptiness remains a part of that vase. The vase would still remain just as whole, just as empty regardless of the flowers I encased within.

I guess my sexuality is a practice.

If I were to use my freedom as I had wished, I would fill it with masculine lesbians. Sapphics with masculine haircuts, often bewildering personalities, alternative; these were the people I tended to fall for. Now however, I see them as variants of a type. All this could change, and it’s hard to be open to that change, but I’ll try my best.

1. I'm editing this on the bus around 2 weeks after writing its roughest version. Passing my eyes over the text you've just read... it strikes me that all this sounds very compulsory (homo)sexuality. I got so sad thinking about it. "If it turns out I'm not attracted to women I think I'd prefer dying". It's an exaggerated thought but still, I had it. So I look at a tall rugged looking 40-something year old man. If anything, what strikes me most about him is the collar bone pulling his shirt collar into revealing chest hair. I don't find that attractive at all. He looks like his name is "Trent".

I imagine a man fucking me from behind, my arms bent behind me like raw chicken wing. I don't imagine his face, or his body. A brief heat spills from inside me.

I think of a woman doing the same. But I imagine her imposing stature, abs, sports bra, sweat, jet black hair... you get it. The heat rushes into me and I feel like I’m about to moan. This reminds me of love. (footnote of footnote??: Is anyone else’s arousal that intense?? Is that what it’s like for everyone?? I am being completely serious here: I know someday I will end up moaning in public because the fantasy of something actually melted my insides. This only started after taking estrogen btw.)

2. I’m mixing Husserl’s use of the word “promise” as the material excess inherent in a shared world and Merleau-Ponty’s “flesh”. So… these aren't my ideas. See Husserl’s “Cartesian Meditations” chapter 5 and Merleau-Ponty’s “The Visible and Invisible” for more.