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Friday, December 26, 2003
 
Give Yourself a Girlgasm!

Can you, as a tranny who still has a penis, have an orgasm without having an erection? I can. So can some of my friends. One obvious route is through anal intercourse. Another is learning how to stimulate yourself and come while “tucked”. It is this second option, which I call a Girlgasm, which I will discuss here.

Typically, I will dress and tuck my penis back using a gaff or panty girdle. I then go out dancing or read transgender erotica to build my internal arousal. Back home, I get out a vibrator and stimulate the head of the penis (glans) as well as the area around and behind. This is while I am still tucked back. Eventually I can build up enough excitement to come, and it can be mind-boggling. Since my glans is roughly where my clitoris will be post-op, and the tucked testicles help in transmitting the vibrations all-around, it feels very feminine. Since the cock is engorged but not hard, I don’t have to “tune-out the penis-ness”, or shape-shift as much in my fantasies.

Since I discovered this technique gradually, I can’t recommend a sure-fire recipe yet. Sex therapists often teach people with disabilities on how to shift their erogenous zones, so what I am suggesting should be possible for others. Here is how I would teach myself this from scratch:

First, get a coil-type vibrator. This is the kind that plugs into the wall and has interchangeable heads. Use the one that looks like a cup and teach yourself to get off while you are erect by placing the cup over the glans. If you are really used to stroking the shaft, do that too, but try and shift your focus to vibrations rather than friction.

Get a gentle gaff or panty-girdle that you can use to tuck your cock back and hold your testicles in. You want it to be gentle as it takes a while to learn how to build up sexual stimulation without getting an erection. I use the “AFI Femme” that I bought at Carla’s. Leave the locking chastity devices in the fantasy world! You will “flip over” a few times while you learn. If that happens, don’t fret – you can either let the stimulation pass or go ahead and enjoy a conventional orgasm.

If you have not worked on learning to enjoy prostate stimulation, or anal self-stimulation yet, you may want to try learning that too. Your body is a much bigger sex organ than your penis! Read up on foreplay techniques and learn to stimulate your breasts, ears, legs, etc., the way women like it to be done. (Note to TG admirers: Trannies love this slow tease too!)

When you do have a “girlgasm”, it will feel different. Perhaps less seminal fluid will come out. (A condom or bit of tissue will help catch it). If you let the arousal tension build in your body, the feeling will be more intense and last longer.

Sometimes I do a little “self bondage”, so that I can bear against restraint while I build and come. (Again, be careful and make sure you can “get loose” quickly in an emergency). If I can find a gaff that exposes the glans and the anus, I want someone to rim my “vagina and clit”.

A girlgasm might be a way of simulating what sex would be like post-op. You are using the same nerve endings and tissue that you will have with your neo-vagina, in roughly the same places. Since I have not had that surgery yet, I don’t really know.

I would be interested in knowing if others have learned how to do this or something similar. Please write and let me know if these instructions work for you, or tell me what does.

Note: This article ran in TGForum a few weeks ago. Several readers wrote back confirming that they too had independantly discovered how to pleasure themselves in this way.

 
The Dual Motive Theory


I have written another paper about the Dual Motive Theory of how transsexuality develops. While Lemonade Stand focused more on the flaws in the other two etiological theories, this one explains DMT in more detail. Here is the diagram that I drew to represent this:




From the Introduction:

There are two paradigms of transsexual etiology at war with each other. On one side is the view that the mind-body gender mismatch is biological and results in a deep emotional pain that can only be relieved by changing the body and social role to match the mind. The other side views gender transition as the culmination of a sexual desire to change one’s body and role to that of a woman. The biologists cite neuro-anatomical evidence. The psychologists cite sexual response measurements and the power of paraphilic desire. Each side cites the evidence from personal introspection and the reports of their supporters.

The passions of those who vehemently reject sexual explanations are white hot – they take such talk as demeaning, hateful, and likely to set back public acceptance by a generation. Still, from both the inside and the outside, the transgender community seems to have much to do about sex. The miniskirt to baby carriage ratio is high. This uncomfortable fact is usually dismissed by the “trapped in a man’s body” crowd as some form of transvestite contamination. However, even conservative transsexuals view the rite of passage to be acquiring a vagina rather than adopting a baby, and probably have miniskirts hanging in their closets.

A careful consideration of the evidence and the arguments for both theories leads me to the conclusion that, in many ways, both sides are right. A synthesis seems possible. This paper presents the argument for such a synthetic Dual Motive Theory (DMT).


Tuesday, December 23, 2003
 
The Lemonade Stand of Desire, Revisited

I have been improving my Lemonade Stand paper. It is really coming together nicely. I just might have sorted out the autogynephilia mess! I have been staying up odd-hours and having a stimulating intellectual adventure.

For those who have not idea what I am talking about, the autogynephilia mess is what I call the bitter controversy over theories of how and why transgenderism develops.

Several of my friends from both sides have been kind enough to point out issues and make suggestions. I have incorporated these. If you looked at this a few days ago, you might want to give it another read. I expect to keep improving it, particularly for clarity and accessibility.

I have an animated visual metaphor in mind that explains this in a satisfying way, but have not worked out how to render it yet. About 15 years ago, I invented just the thing to do this with, but Director has grown unbearably complicated and expensive, and Macromedia does not treat her mother well.

I also changed the name of the paper to be "The Lemonade Stand of Desire" so the initials spell out LSD. I have amusing names for the competing theories too: GROG (Get Rid Of GID), and AGPMT, (autogynephilic motivated transformation) which I pronounce AG-pimped.

The LSD title is also ironic, as I know several TGs who report first becoming aware of their internal femininity under the influence of this drug.

I call the hybrid theory DMT, for "Dual Motive Theory".

Sunday, December 21, 2003
 
A New Amsterdam in San Francisco?

Part of the fun of living being a transgender gal in San Francisco is that men sometimes think I am a hooker. I get horn honks, queries from cars, and offers to buy drinks. Its even happened when I had my hair up and was wearing a long dress. Considering how old I am, I view it as a compliment, although I have always declined to negotiate terms.

San Francisco has always been "the wickedest city in the Americas". Before World War One, there were thousands of bordellos, as well as every other imaginable form of vice. During the moral upsurge of the early 1900s that included Prohibition and the criminalization of drug use, San Francisco cleaned up. Prostitution and gambling were banned.

This had the practical effect of cutting the police in on the action and making it much harder for a sex worker to be self-employed. The legal trade moved to Nevada. This state of affairs persists today, with many streetwalkers, strip clubs, and outcall agencies operating in the City.

The sex workers of San Francisco began to organize as a political movement in the 1960s. For a while they had "The Hookers Ball" every year. Today they have several unions, a free clinic, and even a film festival.

One intelligent friend of mine has an interesting idea: Convert part of the Tenderloin into the official "Red Light District" of San Francisco, like they have in Amsterdam. Architecturally, this means rows of small rooms with a large window in the front where the prostitute stands or sits as the customers file by. When a customer selects, they go into the room and draw the curtain.

I have seen this spectacle in Amsterdam and other European cities. The smorgasborg tends to self-organize along racial and sexual variation dimensions. There is a transgender section.

Doing this in San Francisco, precisely the way she imagines it, makes enormous sense. Sex work would be much safer for everyone, and the complaints from the neighborhoods about streetwalkers would cease. Workers won't be assaulted or murdered. The middlemen are disintermediated so more of the money goes to those who earn it. Customers won't get robbed, cheated, or infected with STDs.

If you read this and say "It will never fly", you are probably right. While those in San Francisco might go along, the rest of California has plenty of unreconstructed moralists who would block this. This is sad, because this moral stance allows corruption, misery, disease, and death to flourish.


Saturday, December 20, 2003
 
The Lemonade Stand

NOTE: I have moved the body of this paper to a central location to make updating easier. The abstact is still valid, but to see the latest version of this, please refer to the official copy at: http://www.jamiefaye.com/lemonadestand.html

Abstract

Autogynephilia theories are both a matter of interest and intense controversy in the TG community. Autogynephilic arousal exists and it is more properly viewed as a coping mechanism rather than as a prime motivating force. This reconceptualization can explain primary/secondary TG clustering along the age and sexual orientation dimensions.



Sunday, December 14, 2003
 
Deliminalization of GRS

Recently I tossed out the term "deliminalization" in the context of GRS, resulting in some confusion on the TGSF Yahoo mailing list.

The basic idea is to deemphasize the significance of Genital Reassignment Surgery as designating the penultimate moment of gender transformation. I call this idea deliminalization.

This word is derived from the terms liminal and liminality, which are from anthropology. Liminality refers to the concept of "rite of passage", or a ritual which an individual undergoes and the community recognizes as designating a new status for that person. Examples include the Australian Aboriginal Walkabout, the Bar Mitzvah in Judaica, and The Order of the Arrow in the Boy Scouts.

The liminal state is the period of spiritual transition. In the Walkabout example, it is the time when the boy prepared, wanders the desert, testing his survival skills and undergoing a spiritual transformation.

Weddings, births, deaths, and religious conversions are examples of other liminal rituals, although the core meaning is the rite of passage. Liminal is also the root of the term "subliminal", which we use to describe messages sent below the threshold of perception by a group.

The "Standards of Care" metaphor of liminal transformation, is to us, familiar: The novitiate undergoes a period of trial living in the new gender, and after approval by an authority, undergoes surgical transformation. The actual liminal state occurs while the surgery is being performed. You "go to sleep a man, and awaken a woman" (or vice versa for FTMs). Mildred Brown, beloved by us all, sends each new post-op a Teddy Bear inscribed with a message "True Self at Last", designating the GRS date as a new birthday.

This attainment of new status via surgery became institutionalized in the 1970s when laws allowing gender change were passed in many jurisdictions. It also brought on the acerbic critique of the process by Janice Raymond in her book "The Transsexual Empire". I would argue that she was close enough to be wrong, for some of the right reasons. [Check out "Sex Changes" by Patrick Califa, for a satisfying & devastating critique of Raymond].

One of Raymond's points was that modern medical science had created a new liminal process in error. I like the way Lannie Rose put it: "SRS does not make you a woman any more than rhinoplasty makes you a rhinoceros". The argument backing this up usually includes the following points:

A neo-vagina is created, but not an entire reproductive system.
Womanhood is more than the capacity to be fucked from the front.
Genetic material not changed.
The unfortunate consequences of the "forced masculinization" of a MtF (vice versa FtMs) are not remediated.
GRS for FtMs is a much less developed and satisfying process which many forego, so there is a double standard.
GRS can have undesirable side effects, including loss of sensation.
GRS may be an unacceptable medical risk for some otherwise qualified.

and finally, and perhaps most importantly,

Making GRS a condition for the acceptance by others of one's transformation of gender greatly increases the pressures acting upon a TG person to undergo it.

I have known many TG people who, despite warnings to the contrary by care-givers, still expected some sort of magic result from GRS. I have also known TG people, some no longer alive, who thought that their transformation was "completed" by GRS, and neglected aspects of the crucial aftercare period.

For all these reasons, I advocate for the "deliminalization" of GRS. This means we shift the focus from this one momentous occasion to the broader process of transition. This means changing the laws and changing our own conceptions. How this is to be done is as open as the future. The process is already underway.

Make no mistake, GRS must still be available, and should be accepted as is any other life-saving medical procedure. Research funding should be increased, better follow-up studies done, and techniques improved.

However, "Pre-op or Post-op" should not matter to anyone but the individual involved. That is what "deliminalization" means.

Thursday, December 11, 2003
 
Hell is Three Blocks South

As noted earlier, I live on Post Street. Its just North of the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. During the day, many of our City's homeless come here because many of the shelters, food lines, and other care givers operate here.

It is also the major crack cocaine dealing area of San Francisco. As I often walk down Jones Street to get to the public transit on Market, I have observed this firsthand.

There is an elaborate network in operation here. Generally the drugs are sold by "runners", who for a cut, fetch the rocks from the gang soldiers. Frequently the crack is smoked, right out on the street, using glass pipes stained gray by the residue. Each corner has a spotter, who steps out of view or yells a signal if the police are seen.

The Tenderloin police station is right in the middle of this, so the action tends to occur a block or two away. The actual "deal zone" shifts around too. The police use dirt bikes and can pounce in an instant, seemingly out of nowhere. In the week before the recent runoff election, they were quite active, rousting many homeless people as well as gang members.

Crackheads themselves look pretty dreadful - probably both due to the drugs and living outdoors. I remember one woman with a ruined face and scraggly hair, gently warning me "I had beautiful hair like yours once".

The Church is working there, helping as they can. Being a Methodist by upbringing, I am thinking of becoming involved with Glide.

One thing is certain - grave danger lurks and I best be prepared, lest Hell swallow me.

An excellent series of articles about the homeless issue in San Francisco ran in the Chronicle recently. It includes many photos of this area, as well as the other hell-holes of San Francisco.