{"id":29535,"date":"2015-01-06T02:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-01-06T07:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29535"},"modified":"2015-01-07T10:48:49","modified_gmt":"2015-01-07T15:48:49","slug":"the-amazing-and-scary-power-of-testosterone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/06\/the-amazing-and-scary-power-of-testosterone\/","title":{"rendered":"The amazing – and scary – power of testosterone"},"content":{"rendered":"

A throw-away comment on the experiences of female-to-male transgender people by Scott Alexander<\/a>:<\/p>\n

… I could hunt down all of the stories<\/a> of<\/a> trans<\/a> men<\/a> who start taking testosterone, switch to a more male sex drive, and are suddenly like \u201cOH MY GOD I SUDDENLY REALIZE WHAT MALE HORNINESS IS LIKE I THOUGHT I KNEW SEXUAL FRUSTRATION BEFORE BUT I REALLY REALLY DIDN\u2019T HOW DO YOU PEOPLE LIVE WITH THIS?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The author of the last link has this to say about the impact of testosterone on his life:<\/p>\n

One of the most interesting things about the effects of testosterone and trans men is that we have something else to compare it to. Non-trans men do not. And non-trans women do not, which is why I wrote the post \u201cIt\u2019s the Testosterone: What Straight Women Should Know.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

When I started testosterone a dozen years ago, I expected my sex drive to increase. The \u201chorror\u201d stories are a part of trans man lore, passed down from generation to generation as we all gear up for male adolescence, no matter how old we are, and take out a line of credit at the adult toy store.<\/p>\n

And it did increase, within about four days of my first shot, and I basically squirmed a lot for two years before I got used to it. But I was planning for that. Here are the things that took me by surprise:<\/p>\n

> It became very focused on one thing \u2013 the goal, the prize, the end. That doesn\u2019t mean that I was not able to \u201cmake love.\u201d What it does mean is that there was a madness to my method, because it was goal-oriented. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. There was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. There was an unguarded hoop just waiting for a slam dunk \u2013 score!<\/p>\n

> It became very visual. I saw it, I wanted it \u2013 whatever it was. This was a new experience for me, because, in the past, I had not been aroused so much by pictures and body parts (or pictures of body parts) as I had been by words \u2013 erotic descriptions, stories, and things said to me.<\/p>\n

> It became very visceral \u2013 instinctual \u2013 with a need to take care of it. It had very little to do with romance or even an attraction that made sense intellectually. You\u2019re hungry, you eat. There was a matter-of-factness about it, especially when I was by myself. Hmm \u2026 peanut butter sandwich sounds good. Okay, done. Let\u2019s move on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And from the linked post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Whenever I speak at a college class (which I did this week), I inevitably get the question about testosterone and sex drive (because college kids are still young enough to be thinking about sex most of the time).<\/p>\n

And I tell them the truth, which is that, at least for me and most guys I know, testosterone sends your sex drive straight through the roof and beyond the stratosphere. NASA should honestly use it for fuel to get those rockets (which are really just larger-than-life phallic symbols) to the moon. It is a very powerful aphrodisiac, and way better than oysters, which tend to be slimy.<\/p>\n

Testosterone not only increased my sex drive ten-fold, but changed the nature of it as well. It became less diffuse and more goal-oriented, which is probably how the word \u201cscore\u201d entered the sexual lexicon. It also, in certain situations, became less about any other person and more about me.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A throw-away comment on the experiences of female-to-male transgender people by Scott Alexander: … I could hunt down all of the stories of trans men who start taking testosterone, switch to a more male sex drive, and are suddenly like \u201cOH MY GOD I SUDDENLY REALIZE WHAT MALE HORNINESS IS LIKE I THOUGHT I KNEW […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,16],"tags":[872,254,196,255,43],"class_list":["post-29535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-science","tag-chemistry","tag-gender","tag-lgbt","tag-sexuality","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7Gn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29536,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29535\/revisions\/29536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}