Caveat: I cannot express a generic "woman's"
viewpoint. I can only give my opinions and
experiences as a TS woman. Those may or may not be
similar to what people who were born female feel and
think.
--- Spike Jones <spike66@attglobal.net> wrote:
>
> What I *would* like to do is be able to *see* the
> world thru a woman's eyes
I'm not sure you can do that any better than you
currently do without living the role. Estrogen may
help, it may not. The mental and emotional effects
are subtle and not everybody reports them.
> And reversibly?
The two things which may not be reversible are
infertility and gynecomastia (male breast growth).
You should have 3-6 months before there are any
irreversible effects.
Any other changes... especial emotional and sex drive
will go away in a month or two.
> Would I lose my sex drive temporarily?
It will most likely diminish... it may not. I doubt
you'd loose it completely. I've been on hormones for
4 years and I haven't lost mine.
Actually... spontaneous erections rarely happen and
your mind spends much less time thinking about sex (I
believe that is the single biggest difference between
men and women) but you would still have the ability to
achieve erection and orgasm when you wanted to.
It takes between 2 weeks and a month before any
changes are noticeable...
Birth control pills wouldn't work either. They don't
contain enough estrogen to have any effect.
There is some small danger of Deep Vein Thrombosis if
you are over 40 and/or a smoker and take oral
estrogen... this is due to increased clotting factors
produced by the liver as the estrogen passes through.
You can avoid that danger completely by using a non
oral estrogen. My recommendation would be the
Estraderm patch.
> My notion is that I would be a better companion for
> my chosen female wife, if I could only understand
> what she is seeing.
This experiment might help with that, it might not.
Part of a woman's world view comes from being a target
of male sex drive. Without living in role for a
while, you won't experience that. Before transition,
I gave very little thought to personal safety unless I
was in a known "bad area". I've had a few experiences
since transition that scared men. Men following me...
approaching me in a parking garage... making sexually
explicit remarks/requests/demands. And all in areas
that I knew were "safe" before transition.
> Observation: for some reason which I have never
> understood, women seem to grok men's feelings
> better than men grok women's feelings. Loree,
> someone who has been both may have a unique insight
> on this.
The flip answer? Men's feelings are based on sex.
Seriously, there is some basis for that flip comment,
though it isn't by any means the whole story.
Women tend to be smaller than men and are often
targets for mens sexual aggression... so figuring out
what men are thinking is a survival skill.
Loree
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:07 MDT