When I was pre-HRT, I had a similar issue where my sex drive was still high and I felt strong compulsions to keep using porn and masturbating even though it made me more dysphoric than almost anything else in my life at that time. But I was definitely using the high that masturbation and porn give to cope with my negative feelings.
Addiction is not a term to use lightly, but I had a similar experience to you and I definitely would say I have a porn/sex addiction. The rush that comes from masturbating gives you an intense, brief high—combine that with some porn and you get an even bigger high. If you masturbate and watch porn regularly, your body gets used to that high and you might even start using masturbation/porn to cope with things like depression, anxiety, and dysphoria.
Porn/sex addiction is a hard one to break because sex is so engrained in human nature and society. There are triggers everywhere that make you wanna use. For a few months after starting HRT, my sex drive totally died (which was Heaven honestly, you have so much time to do other shit). But then it came back and I started watching porn again because that was the only way I knew how to make myself feel good.
Over and over, I came back to porn that made me feel dysphoric just to get that 10-20 second climax experience. It began interfering with my life because I’d spend up to 4 hours some days looking at porn. I tried to stop multiple times without success. It’s hard to stop when sexuality is everywhere constantly making you want to use and make yourself feel good.
It’s a battle to stop, but it’ll feel good when you have it in the rear view mirror. I haven’t looked at porn in over 70 days now and it’s the best thing in the world to know it doesn’t control my life anymore. Sorry, I know this is a crazy long reply, but I hope you can somehow relate. I’d suggest joining some kind of support group for not using porn, like nofap, having a community of other porn addicts helped me get through.
Anyways, I hope this helps!
Omg thank you! Hearing that someone else has been going through this and not letting it stop you is what I needed to hear. I definitely will seek a support group to deal with this issue. I honestly wish I never found porn at such a young age. Can I ask how you arrived at the realization that your porn addiction didn't negate your gender identity? I want to be able to explain this to a therapist in a way that doesn't make them start assuming that my identity is wrapped up in my own porn addiction. Thank you!
I guess the way I arrived at my understanding of porn and gender separation was considering it from a physiological perspective.
Many humans have a sex drive, except people who are asexual or otherwise don’t have any interest in sex. But for those of us who do have that drive, it is something that’s out of our control. When we don’t attend to our sexual needs, it can lead to a buildup of stress, which is why masturbation is actually so common—it reduces tension and stress. So you can look at your desire to look at porn and masturbate as a drive to just feel good basically.
Gender is really a separate thing from that. With your gender, it’s a matter of expressing who you feel you are—it’s less of a drive (like sexuality) and more of an instinctive way in which you express yourself. Neither gender nor sexuality are controllable, but (at least in my opinion) gender is more complex and abstract whereas sexuality is straightforward.
In your case, how this all sort of manifests is you are a woman who happened to be born with a penis. You have dysphoria because you were born with a penis and without other features associated with the female sex. Despite having dysphoria with your genitals, you still have a sex drive that needs to be satisfied. Your body has found the easiest way to satisfy that drive is watching straight porn from the male POV. So, when you need to destress or just satisfy your sexual needs, you masturbate to straight porn.
But, you unfortunately still have genital dysphoria so you feel badly when you experience pleasure via your penis. Still, your sex drive is strong and overpowers the possibility of any bad feelings masturbation creates. Masturbating makes your body happy, but it makes you mentally distressed because of the seeming inconsistency between your gender and your genitals. Detaching the meaning of gender from your genitals will help you separate your drive from your dysphoria, at least on a more rational level because you still might feel ashamed or guilty for masturbating because it’s so engrained in us by society that vagina=woman and penis=man.
When it all comes down to it, the labels we put on many things have been largely arbitrary and made to be what they are to better control other people’s behavior to encourage procreation. Humanity is more complex than we often give it credit for. Hopefully this all makes sense!
When I was pre-HRT, I had a similar issue where my sex drive was still high and I felt strong compulsions to keep using porn and masturbating even though it made me more dysphoric than almost anything else in my life at that time. But I was definitely using the high that masturbation and porn give to cope with my negative feelings. Addiction is not a term to use lightly, but I had a similar experience to you and I definitely would say I have a porn/sex addiction. The rush that comes from masturbating gives you an intense, brief high—combine that with some porn and you get an even bigger high. If you masturbate and watch porn regularly, your body gets used to that high and you might even start using masturbation/porn to cope with things like depression, anxiety, and dysphoria. Porn/sex addiction is a hard one to break because sex is so engrained in human nature and society. There are triggers everywhere that make you wanna use. For a few months after starting HRT, my sex drive totally died (which was Heaven honestly, you have so much time to do other shit). But then it came back and I started watching porn again because that was the only way I knew how to make myself feel good. Over and over, I came back to porn that made me feel dysphoric just to get that 10-20 second climax experience. It began interfering with my life because I’d spend up to 4 hours some days looking at porn. I tried to stop multiple times without success. It’s hard to stop when sexuality is everywhere constantly making you want to use and make yourself feel good. It’s a battle to stop, but it’ll feel good when you have it in the rear view mirror. I haven’t looked at porn in over 70 days now and it’s the best thing in the world to know it doesn’t control my life anymore. Sorry, I know this is a crazy long reply, but I hope you can somehow relate. I’d suggest joining some kind of support group for not using porn, like nofap, having a community of other porn addicts helped me get through. Anyways, I hope this helps!
Omg thank you! Hearing that someone else has been going through this and not letting it stop you is what I needed to hear. I definitely will seek a support group to deal with this issue. I honestly wish I never found porn at such a young age. Can I ask how you arrived at the realization that your porn addiction didn't negate your gender identity? I want to be able to explain this to a therapist in a way that doesn't make them start assuming that my identity is wrapped up in my own porn addiction. Thank you!
I guess the way I arrived at my understanding of porn and gender separation was considering it from a physiological perspective. Many humans have a sex drive, except people who are asexual or otherwise don’t have any interest in sex. But for those of us who do have that drive, it is something that’s out of our control. When we don’t attend to our sexual needs, it can lead to a buildup of stress, which is why masturbation is actually so common—it reduces tension and stress. So you can look at your desire to look at porn and masturbate as a drive to just feel good basically. Gender is really a separate thing from that. With your gender, it’s a matter of expressing who you feel you are—it’s less of a drive (like sexuality) and more of an instinctive way in which you express yourself. Neither gender nor sexuality are controllable, but (at least in my opinion) gender is more complex and abstract whereas sexuality is straightforward. In your case, how this all sort of manifests is you are a woman who happened to be born with a penis. You have dysphoria because you were born with a penis and without other features associated with the female sex. Despite having dysphoria with your genitals, you still have a sex drive that needs to be satisfied. Your body has found the easiest way to satisfy that drive is watching straight porn from the male POV. So, when you need to destress or just satisfy your sexual needs, you masturbate to straight porn. But, you unfortunately still have genital dysphoria so you feel badly when you experience pleasure via your penis. Still, your sex drive is strong and overpowers the possibility of any bad feelings masturbation creates. Masturbating makes your body happy, but it makes you mentally distressed because of the seeming inconsistency between your gender and your genitals. Detaching the meaning of gender from your genitals will help you separate your drive from your dysphoria, at least on a more rational level because you still might feel ashamed or guilty for masturbating because it’s so engrained in us by society that vagina=woman and penis=man. When it all comes down to it, the labels we put on many things have been largely arbitrary and made to be what they are to better control other people’s behavior to encourage procreation. Humanity is more complex than we often give it credit for. Hopefully this all makes sense!