A Few Questions...

I'm generally not very comfortable talking about sexual things but I've just had a lot of questions lately and no one to really answer them.

Well up until I was 18 I was really naive about sex and sexuality. I didn't know what masturbation was. I didn't really know much about sex except you could possibly get STD's or pregnant from it. My mom loves to believe she taught me anything, but she didn't. But when I think about it I started developing some of the things I find arousing though at the time (I was probably around 14 or 15 when I started fantasizing about things).

Anyways, when I was 18 was when my curiosity of things really peaked. I started looking at porn and I found I liked it. I sort of claim that as "my mistake"...it was an art site I joined and naturally the mature filter is switched on, but out of curiosity (not expecting to see pornography) I switched it off. I started finding out things that aroused me and that really got me thinking of my sexuality and why some things arouse me.

I don't think that I'm gay or bi, but I started fantasizing about male to female transgenders. I don't really find the feminine body as a whole very attractive, but I do find the curves and breasts appealing. I've never imagined having sex with a biological female. That doesn't appeal to me. But to have sex with a transgendered woman that still has male parts really does. And that makes me question my sexuality a bit.

The one thing that really bothers me (and it's really hard for me to admit it...I've only said it one other time online) is that since I started having sexual fantasies, they were mostly involving abuse. It scares me because I know that it's so bad and I wouldn't want it to happen to me, but at the same time I'm getting aroused by it them. I've tried to think of why that is. Maybe because I tend to think of myself as less than everyone else...but I don't know.

Just to put it on the record, I've never had sex but I do masturbate. And as for the porn, now I'm rather bored with it. Maybe every once in a while I'll look because even though I'm a girl, I'm a very visual person and get more stimulation from images. I don't really know how I completely feel about porn anymore because I've started becoming really torn about it...Because I still look at it every once in a while, I'm not disgusted by it (some fetishes disgust me though...) and usually it's drawings or animations instead of photographs or movies...I don't really know...

While I have never been into looking at porn, I don’t think you are doing anything wrong by doing so. As for your fantasies, I also have sexual thoughts that I’m not too comfortable with, some also involving abuse. Also I have a tendency to act impulsively and in doing so have put myself in dangerous situations in the past. I totally understand your feelings of being somehow less than everyone else, but for me it’s a bit more like I’m don’t belong here, like the world is a party and I’m and uninvited guest, with everyone looking at me and thinking “what is she doing here?”
I don’t think anyone can control what tends to arouse us, but we can (well most people most of the time) what we do. I don’t think you have anything to feel bad about, you haven’t done anything wrong.

I have those feelings of not belonging too. Nothing in the world really makes sense to me and I think that's why. I don't know...I just know my self-esteem and self worth tends to be very low...

I know that I can't always control what arouses me. Just...why that?

And back to sexuality, sometimes I do get aroused looking at pictures of women. I haven't fantasized about having sex with another woman, but seeing an image of a woman nude or scantily clad and posing provocatively arouses me. Porn of women does little to nothing for me. But that and being attracted to male to female transgenders really makes me question things...

Sounds all normal to me.... try not to be so hard on your self for being human and having human feelings.

Yes, don't feel bad because of your fantasies. Some people are into abuse, humiliation or even S&M, even though in their real, day-to-day life, they'd never accept such treatment. I don't know why some of us have what I'll call non-vanilla or kinky fantasies, but it doesn't mean you'd want it in real life. You might enjoy acting out the fantasy, but it's not the same as someone harming you. In fantasy, especially when it's in your head, you are in control, you control what happens, how hard, how fast, how often.

If it bothers you too much, though, I would suggest seeing a sexual therapist who might be able to explain it better, and help you deal with it. But don't think you're a bad person because of it.

If the thoughts constantly bother you, then I'd say to see a sex therapist, however, as humans, we are each unique. Some people like masochism, sadism, animals, dead things, the list goes on and some just like a man/woman's body as is.

The way I see it, there's a large gap between thoughts or fantasies and actual physical action. It's normal for people to fantasize about something that's sexually appealing to them. As for why you're attracted to transgenders, well, that's one question in an enormous question; why are people sexually attracted to certain things? I can give you a neurological or physiological reason, however, it's probably not going to satisfy your quench for the knowledge.

Hey there, sounds like you have a LOT of questions and insecurities running through your mind.

That's normal.
and the only one who can TRULY answer them is you, we can only give guidance.

I too was late to discover my sexuality. Later than you actually But now I'm with a great guy and having a great time sexually so, don't feel bad or out of place because you're new at this. Give it the time it needs to feel comfortable with everything, and to try things out at your own pace.

Porn isn't "a mistake" - if it is, TONS TONS TONS of people have made the same mistake as you, so PLEASE don't feel bad for it.

As far as the transgender thing, I think it's ok to be attracted to certain parts of the female body - we are BEAUTIFUL. Women are beautiful and you can appreciate that no matter what sexuality you are. I would just leave the question open and feel it out as time goes by.

As far as the abuse thing... It's ok to have these desires. Lots of people play rough with eachother sexually, lots of others don't. Some people LIKE being dominated, chased, whatever else. The only advice I would give you is be careful. If there's ever a partner in the picture make sure you both have a word that you can say , a safety word that can instantly bring the situation back into control. Make sure you really know your partner and trust. It is not wrong to feel that way. It WOULD be horrible to actually be abused. To play it out with someone you love and trust on the other hand, may actually do things for you.

wishing you the best

I always tend to have a lot on my mind...^^;

But I really appreciate everything that's been said. Thanks! Just had to take it in and think about it before I responded.

I might consider speaking with a sex therapist since those thoughts do bother me quite a bit.

@GrayNess: I'm rather interested in possible neurological reasons for it.

It does not have to be a sex therapist that you talk with - your regular therapist will be able to help you sort out these feelings, as they are coming from past wounds and not from perverted sexual issues or sickness.

An author and Freudian friend of mine recently told me that all mammals have an inherit bisexual nature. He said that if it wasn't so we would never meet up. That makes sense to me. It is important not to beat yourself up for being human and having such fantasies. All of our fantasies don't need to be acted out. Freud owned his homoerotic fantasies but as far as anyone knows he didn't act them out. As my old teacher on the alcoholic ward once said, " A person can be born an alcoholic, live his whole life an alcoholic, and die an alcoholic with out ever taking a drink of alcohol his whole life." Each person has to figure out for themselves where they want to go.
I hope that this has help some ~ Shoe

That's interesting. I've heard other people contemplate about sexuality in that manner but it's not something I've really thought about.

Yeah, this does help. Thanks!

Hi Sombra...

I am a man and have been for nearly a half century... But for a squiggling chromosome I would be a woman...

I have spent much of the last twenty years learning to express that 49% percent of me,,that part of me squashed under generational stereotypes based upon some long established roles...

You are 49% male with all the base issues that maleness would and does bring...including some aspects of sexuality.

I have found it "nice" to become more comfortable with my feminine side and lessen my learned attachments to expectations that my maleness brings...both from without and wthin.

Our existence is upon a continum in so many ways and trying to pick a point upon it suitable to some definition, I believe, strangles our potential...

With Care,

Lenny

You bet. Here is a short quote from my friend's website. Shoe

This brave woman speaks of being "flawed", as if homosexuality were some sort of flaw. It is no more of a "flaw" than being heterosexual is a "flaw". Both sexual orientations are elemental parts of the ebb and flow of human desires and emotions - in essence, a direct inheritance from our mammalian ancestry.

Sorry for not responding sooner. For the neurological reasons, it could fill several books and could have a higher-level university course (i.e. third or fourth year) devoted entirely to neurological reasons for various sexual orientations. So, I'm not going to write an incredibly complex post, mostly because I may not understand what I'm writing and that's useless to you, others and myself, I'm only going to write what I do understand. Since I understand a decent amount and have done some research papers, including one of functional neuroanatomy (although not for sexual orientations), I'm going to write this post with the assumption that you have little knowledge of human anatomy and physiology. This isn't meant to be taken personally, it's simply meant so I have a base to start my explanations at and to ensure that the base isn't above your head; if it's at a level you already understand, then perfect.

When sensory information (i.e. sight, sound, smell, etc...) is taken into your nervous system, it goes along the appropriate pathways depending on the type of sensory information but eventually it makes its way to a structure in the brain called the thalamus. The exception is smell and although smell can be part of the explanation, I'm basing my explanation on the premise that the sexually-appealing material is based from online resources, that is, you're not engaging with someone who appeals to your desires. It may seem slightly obscure as to why smell is involved, however, the basic explanation for smell is that as living organisms, we produce various biochemicals that can be detected by other organisms of the same or different species.

When you view sexual material that's arousing to you, as I mentioned above, it reaches the thalamus. The thalamus can be divided up into various zones but I'm going to ignore that for the purpose of this post and orient this post to less in-depth explanations (unless further in-depth ones are required).

After it has reached the thalamus, the information travels to various parts of the brain. One part that it reaches is called the nucleus accumbens or NAcc. This part of the brain is part of the pathway called the mesolimbic dopamine pathway. This name sounds like a mouthful so I'll break it down. The limbic portion refers to what's called the limbic system. Unlike most neuroanatomy, there isn't one defining structure called limbic or limbic system; it's composed of various parts, such as the NAcc, thalamus and other parts.

The NAcc is involved with reward, pleasure and is involved with conditioning, more specifically, with Pavlovian or classical conditioning (named after its founder, Ivan Pavlov). It's also involved with explaining addictions because of the immense pleasure and conditioning it's involved with.

The rest of the pathway mentioned above has to do with dopamine or DA, a very common and dispersed neurochemical. Here is where things can get very complicated and messy because in the brain, there are numerous pathways and unfortunately for scientists and us, these pathways are interconnected and interrelated in very complex ways. If we were to try to devote one colour per pathway in hopes of trying to sketch out the actual pathways in 2-D or 3-D, we'd end up with a multi-coloured circle or sphere. Part of the reason for this is that DA is produced through a series of enzymes and other chemicals, and each of those chemicals have their own unique pathway, and each enzyme has its own unique pathway.

Focusing on DA though, it's involved in pleasure, happiness, reward and many other things, however, I'm only going to focus on these types of reactions. As I mentioned above with the limbic system, another part of it is the amygdala. If you've taken Latin or Greek, you may know this as the word for almond because it looks like a cute little almond (yes I said part of the brain looks cute, LOL). This part of the brain is involved with regulating emotions and this includes happiness, pleasure, etc... .

Recall that the brain has numerous pathways and because DA is a common one, it is involved with another major one, the serotonin or 5-HT pathway (5-HT is an abbreviation for its full name, which is 5-hydroxytryptamine). 5-HT, like DA, is involved in pleasure, happiness, reward, conditioning, etc... .

By now you may have realized that there's a common theme to the functional neuroanatomy: pleasure, reward, happiness and to an extent, classical conditioning. The reason is, that if you fancied homosexuality, heterosexuality, sadism, etc..., these same parts, along with many others would be activated and when they're activated, they produce the sensations of pleasure, happiness, etc... . However, do remember that the NAcc is involved with addictions and conditioning, and it is one the big players in the neurological explanations. If you have, say, the amygdala activated, then you may feel happy or sad or whatnot, but if you have the NAcc activated, you've kicked it into "high gear" and now you're really feeling pleasure, reward and you're wanting to view whatever the stimulus was again because you want those feelings over and over again.

Another part of the neurological explanation is an incredibly fascinating phenomenon of neuroplasticity, that is, parts of the brain physically changing regardless of your age. When you have the NAcc activated over and over again, remember that it's not simply that one part being activated; there are pathways being activated (i.e. mesolimbic dopamine system), neurochemicals being synthesized and released, etc... . As this continues over and over for certain areas, those areas can develop more connections and so when those same stimuli come again, the reactions you feel are intensified.

One other pathway that I'll mention, although it involves a lot more anatomy and physiology is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis or HPA axis. This part involves a part of the body that you may not suspect at first: the kidneys and believe it or not, the HPA axis is involved with pleasure, emotions (including depression), sexual responses, stress, etc... . So put lightly, your kidneys are involved with depression and other moods.

The HPA axis involves the pituitary gland, which is the "master gland" because it releases so many chemicals. In fact, it's been divided up into posterior and anterior parts and each part releases numerous chemicals, specifically, it releases many hormones, more so than most other parts of the brain. Another part of the name of HPA axis is the hypothalamus, which has so many functions, it's easier to just say that it's involved in regulating bodily functions. If I were to list the functions it does, I'd be listing a large paragraph, it's that amazing! For this reason, when the hypothalamus is activated as a result of the sexual stimuli, numerous other parts of the brain and body are activated. For example, when you view the sexual stimuli, do you perhaps get sweaty hands, do you feel your body temperature get warmer, does your heart beat faster, etc...? All of those and more are attributable to the hypothalamus.

The heart beating faster in particular can be due to one other part of the body: the vagus nerve. There are 12 cranial nerves (large, major nerves stemming from various parts of the hindbrain to all over the body). The vagus nerve innervates not only the heart but also the lungs, and so when it is stimulated, the heart rate increases, you breath more, etc... .

The name of the HPA axis includes one other part, the adrenal gland. Before I mention what it does, there's a chemical you probably know of already that sounds familiar. That chemical is adrenaline and when it is released, well, I'm sure you know what it feels like.

So, how does all of this relate to the sexual stimuli? Well, when the information comes in, it reaches the thalamus, which sends information to all over the brain. The hypothalamus sits very close to the thalamus (note the prefix "hypo-") and that gets activated, however, because it tends to involve other organ systems, it takes a bit longer. The time difference is one you probably cannot feel because it's a matter of milliseconds so overall, it may seem like it occurs at the same time. The thalamus is connected to the limbic system and the amygdala and NAcc get activated, leading to the experiences of pleasure. The hypothalamus along with the rest of the HPA axis releases hormones and activate various parts of the body, such as lungs and heart via the vagus nerve or cranial nerve ten, or N X.

But, there's one major part I've left out so far: the hippocampus. This part is mostly concerned with memory and the reason for involving the hippocampus is simple. When the stimuli of any sort come into the brain, you have the think, how to react, and this is where the hippocampus comes into play. The reason I left it out until now is that it's probably not something that requires immense explanation because when we deal with memory, we move from biological/physiological psychology (i.e. neurology) and move to cognitive psychology, which although it does involve neurology, it also deals with more abstract concepts. Cognitive psychology has countless books and there are so many types of memory that I think it'd make this post seem even longer and more complex than it already is.

Hence "side" effects of psych medications, eh?

The whole thing sounds like a machine is in control, not "us" -- until you come to the neocortex, I guess... ?

Side-effects of psych. medications can occur regardless of DA. Side-effects in general for any type of medication are due to the medication acting on other parts of the body other than the target site(s).

It does give that impression, however, the way I view it and the way numerous animal and human behaviorists and psychologists view it, is that behavior is not simply due to biological reasons only nor to only environmental reasons only. It's due to both, however, the amounts may or may not be 50/50.

The neocortex is still part of the brain so I'm not following what you're saying.

Well, yes, but it seems to be the part that mainly allows a certain flexibility in our actions, rather than being quite so reactive as it might be without that.

True, it does allow for some flexibility, however, I feel you cant really consider how only one area of the brain allows us to be machine-like whilst ignoring the rest. If you look at only the neocortex, from a superficial view, then yes, it would be quite flexible in function and if you looked at some other areas, from a superficial view also, then yes, those would be rather rigid in function. However, the one needs the other because the neocortex alone is somewhat lost and the rest alone is somewhat lost. Overall, I don't think we're machine-like, I think we're more of a cyborg, able to be machine-like for certain things but for other things, we're able to have the proper flexibility and combine the flexibility and rigidity together to make a functional being.

Thanks for the lesson in neurology Grayness. A book that you might find interesting is Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. He states that men are more stimulated by visual clues where women are more into smell. It is a really interesting book full of studies and neurology terminology. He also talks about the high road and the low road of the brain. The high road is a lot slower and mainly in the neocortex and is more involved with responding where as the low road is a lot faster and mainly about reacting. It is a simple way of describing it though and there is not a black/white division as you know.
Psych medications do affect our sex lives. Most anti-psychotics block dopamine receptors. The biggest release of dopamine is when we have sex. There is also an inverse relationship between serotonin and dopamine. The more serotonin the less dopamine and vise-a-versa . That is why anti-depressants like Prozac that keep more serotonin floating around tend to lessen one's sex drive. I got all of that information from Dean Hamer's The God Gene. Also a very good book. ~Shoe

You're welcome for the brief lesson. I'll check that book out when my schedule allows.

This is fairly true, however, it's an idealistic view. Medications usually have side-effects and so the reasons for why one's sex drive may be decreased may lie outside the reasons of 5-HT and DA. I'm not saying that decreasing 5-HT won't reduce one's sex drive but rather that there are plenty of other reasons and because the neural pathways are so interconnected, changing one pathway can affect another pathway and other areas of the brain and so forth. Each of these changes can lead to a decrease in sex drive.

Neurological reasons for the attraction. Well, I've heard it say that whatever we are doing when we first become sexually arounsed can become significant to subsequent sexual arousal. If you were first looking at porn when you became aroused, you may have been looking at females, but because you can't accept the idea of sex with a biological female, you are substituting a transexual, physically male, man. Just a thought. billieJ

That would make me...attracted to piano benches! Accidentally rubbed my clit up against a piano bench and boom! It happened! I was 3, ejeculated. Mom wondered what i was doing and where that "water" came from. Shhh...

lol rofl

LOL! With me, it would have been a pillow. Nothin' sexier than a pillow!

Very interesting subject matter......

I agree with the above that a woman's body is beautiful Some of us spend a lot of time trying to achieve the "perfect" body that we see televised or that is in our minds. That being said, I am a approaching 40 woman which after delivering 3 kids still in some ways have the younger gal's bod. I am not certain how. I have fantasies of all sorts I have ALL of my life. I also have thought something was per se wrong with me. I have come to somewhat of a resolve in that nothing is abnormal.

They change all the time. Sometimes there are threesome of diff genders; sometimes S & M, sometimes weird stuff ...lol...but they are all me. I don't really act any of them out. I also do not share them with my sig other. That is my private world, I guess. I can say when I was real young I did experience a threesome and it was way overrated. All I took away from that situation was a bruised ego and heart. I won't go there again, even if it is stimulating to me.

Sorry to ramble. Good topic re the mind. Don't beat yourself up for being human. Go back to the above in that we are still mammals. We may be civilized but as they say you can take the gal out of the country, can't take the country out of the gal.

Anyway, again sorry to go on and on. Take something good from it and grow into a self-confident woman sexually. You have nothing to be ashamed of

Huggs

Jen