Really? I am not questioning… Well, what am I questioning?
I am aggressive, but more like an aggressive provider. Kinda like the Patton Oswalt sketch that goes, “I want a steak. [Second voice] Oh you’ll get a fuckin’ steak”.
I simply have never felt that way, even at my pimpli-est/horniest. I am bitter about the decade and a half I have been largely shut down by my SO, but I have never found it hard to squash that side of my brain.
Maybe I’m weird. (Maybe? That’s an understatement :D)
Alcohol has a more complex interaction with the brain. This article summarizes the four ways nicely:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2012/10/16/what-alcohol-really-does-to-your-brain/
To me the Louis CK bit is most illustrative – most of all, the testosterone driven sex urges just get fucking tedious. To paraphrase his example, you are this middle aged married dude talking to the librarian about some book for your kid, and your brain is constantly bombarding you with this unwanted sexual imagery and suggestions about the librarian.
You can look it up on the YouTubes, I have posted links to it a few times before. It is the best narrative description I’ve seen. And geeks and digerati all love Louis CK right? At least that has been my understanding. So take his word for it.
Sometimes I wish we had a Children of Men type outcome where sex (or sexuality, I guess) didn’t exist. It is cool and all, future of the human species all but certain, thanks for all that, but like religion it is the source of a lot of problems.
Why do you struggle so, @codinghorror? Sexuality is a beautiful thing. RIDE THE BULL, man. It’s fun and rewarding.
I must have seen it, time to break out the googs 
Math, science, writing, art. Those are beautiful things. Sex is a crude set of biological levers nature manipulates to ensure the survival of the species. Pretty sure we have that whole survival of the species thing wrapped up now, thanks. We’re good.
This is beauty as well, and you can tell because the very forces that allow you to recognize beauty elsewhere are what operate your sexual desires.
Those crude levers are how you work, and they have a beauty of their own. A cruder beauty, yes.
The most beautiful thing is hurdy gurdy. There, I said it.
Now I’m sad. I’m imagining what it’d be like getting one’s dick caught in a moving flywheel…
Well, the flapping noise is unforgettable.
Obviously, you’ve never seen Lilian, the Perverted Virgin.
I think this is one of the big pitfalls in this discussion. “Brain chemicals are responsible for X behaviour” is really not true; I am responsible for my own behaviour, whether or not my brain chemicals are affecting me. I see it as a way to oppose a kind of Dunning-Kruger effect: pretending that I am free from my body and its chemicals is denial, and the more rational I think I am, the more susceptible I am to being influenced by them. I hope the comparison of women on periods wasn’t seen as othering or belittling women. The way I see it, I have to see the things that are affecting me so that I know how much I can trust my own judgement on different issues, and I should also recognise where other people are coming from - without dismissing what they’re saying, I can recognise that they might say it differently in a different context. When I’m hungry or tired or worked up in some other way, I need to be particularly careful about how I express myself. I actually just started trying different kinds and dosages of medication for ADHD about 2 months ago - it’s exhausting, as they have different and unexpected effects on my mood that I haven’t gotten used to yet, and it’s another memory of being a teenager and feeling some loss of control over myself, despite having a general idea of the underlying reasons.
On the one hand, I can relate to the experiences of Griffin Hansbury and other F>M transsexuals of feeling overpowered by sexual images of others:
The thing is, while solutions such as testosterone inhibitors could be a part of how you approach things, I would really try to avoid medicating this issue where possible, especially given the track record with things like depression and ADHD. The truth is that while I don’t sense a significant loss in libido, I don’t look at women in that way now. There’s the shock of feeling this way as a teenager when you’re not used to it, in my case coupled with ideas from religion and ideas about women in general, that just made me feel disgusting and incapable of being loved - I guess in a similar way to the way many teenage girls feel about their physical appearance. I can relate to @codinghorror’s statement that:
There is no way that I felt better than women. I envied them for their rationality and lack of susceptibility to this, although obviously there were many things they were dealing with that I didn’t understand. I would probably have taken the testosterone inhibitors at the time, because looking at how I was changing and seeing some of the overwhelmingly male traits in society, I was not feeling good about becoming a man. However, I hadn’t counted on the fact that things can get better with some discipline and focus on positive values such as respect for women, and that women are often not as sickened by honesty about this issue as I’d imagined.
I think a big risk in this issue is to attach value judgements to natural processes or to deny cultural influences, individual variation or personal agency. As in other parts in life, testosterone is not a script that you have to follow or something shameful, but it can be very rewarding when accepted in a responsible way. It also helps to make things a bit more objective if I recognise that given a significant increase or decrease in testosterone, I might have a very different perspective on sex - I am not that rational in that regard and I shouldn’t imagine that a partner’s interest or lack of interest in sex says anything about things like their commitment to a relationship.
ETA: It should be pointed out that Griffin Hansbury was both new to the effects of testosterone and was taking them at a level way higher than what most men are at naturally. It was an important issue in my case, but not like pornifying every experience by any means.
I absolutely agree. I was never advocating that testosterone is something that controls a person completely. It’s a psychoactive drug. Like THC, or methylphenidate or heroin.
It comes on strong, and completely shifts how your mind works for a while, but like all drugs, eventually with time and experience and discipline, it becomes the new normal. You reach a new homeostasis and you don’t feel quite so perturbed about what it does and how it makes you feel. You can still change your own mind, if that’s what you want to do. It’s just that when it first starts, or if there’s significant modulation, then it can throw you way off into unexpected territory you’re not used to.
And even so, I remember the time before the prozac, and I had gotten into my groove. Just because you have intrusive thoughts that are hard to dismiss doesn’t mean you always have to act on them. ADHD is a very good parallel, I think, for what testosterone does. They have some common features, like making it hard to focus on anything that isn’t right in front of you and grippingly salient. They both increase impulsive urges, and they both can predispose one to risk taking urges and behavior. But they aren’t everything you are. A whole person isn’t just one system in the brain, and while both will color your perception and actions, you can still figure out how to become comfortable with them.
In all honesty, I’ve been in gray-land a very long time now, and it wasn’t by choice. When the doctors prescribed me prozac, they never mentioned that my dick might stop working right, and that I had a chance of never being able to participate in society as a sexual being again. They never mentioned that I might never really feel classically attracted to another human. It’s like, I got to see in color for a while, but now I’m stuck in grayscale. I remember the color, and want to go back to that again, but all the mods to get back to color are crude, and really difficult. I could, perhaps, go on wellbutrin, but the last time that happened, I went completely manic, got into a lot of trouble, had boundary issues, and don’t want to do that again. And I haven’t taken prozac for several years now, so it looks like I’m not going to “go back to normal” on my own. So…
Yeah. It’s like I’ve forgotten the documentation on how to be a normal sexual being. But I still have the system sitting there on my workbench.
Not to keep “othering” but there’s also a distinction between sexual arousal and sexual desire. For most men, especially younger men, or men on steroids or low T therapy, there’s no difference between sexual arousal and sexual desire. If a male gets sexually aroused it’s basically indistinguishable from sexual desire. A lot of male adolescence is figuring out how to try and separate the two ideas, at least behaviorally. At 15, I would pop an unwanted boner in class staring at the back of a pretty girl’s head, and not really want to have an erection, but I absolutely wanted to have sex with her.
In women, I’ve come to understand that sexual arousal and sexual desire are often completely separate and can be quite independent of each other. They can become sexually aroused by someone, but not necessarily feel a sexual urge, and vice-versa. This disconnect is unintuitive to many if not most males. We may become aroused by someone but not want to immediately have sex with them, but it certainly will be something that constantly bombards us.
I’m sure I’m missing nuance here, but I think it might be important to mention. I’ve had girlfriends who have tried to explain it to me, and it’s perhaps more understandable in my current state where I can register “that person is very sexy” and not really feel any sexual desire. But my brain isn’t really normal anymore anyway, and it’s not something I’m happy with.
It’s one tiny anecdote, but: I start to get horny after literally one or two sips of alcohol. Way before it has any measurable affect on the rest of my system. I always assumed it was just a stimulation of blood flow thing, because there is a definite physical sensation in my nethers.
Venlaflaxine did the same fucking thing to me. And in no way helped my marriage from crumbling, and in a lot of ways greatly accelerated it. Maybe I’ll be married next year, maybe I won’t, but I sure as shit wish I had gone through boring talk therapy and not antidepressants.
Great, they’ve got me on antidepressants for my ADHD. Lots to look forward to then, I guess…
They affect everyone a different way(why did I type same??). Just be mindful, and as honest with yourself about what you are feeling as possible. Antidepressants can be a godsend.
Buy don’t neglect talking your issues out.
Just saw this, seems like a good place to put it.
I am gonna get flamed for this. And perhaps actually banned.
Only when we recognize that “manhood” and “womanhood” are made-up categories, invented to control human beings and violently imposed, can we truly understand the nature of sexism, of misogyny, of the way we are all worked over by gender in the end.
They aren’t made up. Not everyone fits these coarse, broad generalizations, but I am a man. I don’t believe I am being oppressed or ridiculed, but I also feel uncomfortable when it is stated that my gender identity is made up and violent. Neither is true, at least for me.
Reductionist language when it comes to sexuality and race is a shorthand I don’t think we need.
