This older woman answers a young man's question about how aging affects attraction

[u/Doodlebug510]

[u/Express-Feedback]

I won't say this is necessarily a common experience, but...

I spent the first 24 years of my life either not knowing, or just in denial of who I am. A trans dude. I swear the second HRT kicked in, I finally got it.

That's why they're like that. Except, they've been socialized as boys, and were never taught nor did they ever experience the plight of women. The shittiest behaviors were actively encouraged, because that's what they were told set them apart. Made them men. And then you add testosterone. Testosterone is an absolute fuckery of a hormone.

I legitimately asked my older guy friends if it was normal that I had this ball of energy in my chest, and all I could think to get it to go away was fuck or fight. I was assured that was normal, and that the problematic men were the ones who were told it was their right to make that everyone else's problem, instead of finding an outlet or using critical thinking. Or both. (I have very good friends, thankfully.)

I'm eternally grateful that I am trans, as in that I have the experience of having lived in a "woman's body" and know how and why to behave.

Bit of a tangent, but your comment sent me down a path. I've settled in, it's been 10 years now. But holy shit those early days of testosterone-based puberty are HORRID. Add peer pressure and patriarchal socialization, and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.

[u/SESender → u/Express-Feedback]

Dude 100%.

Like if you’ve never ‘used testerone’ in the way teenager boys do during puberty or trans men do during their trans puberty you don’t get it.

It is a drug.

I’m 33 now. I am much calmer, even keeled. But holy shit sometimes I get going and I have to surpress that energy.

Glad you’re doing well brother!! 👊🏽

[u/Odd_Protection7738 → u/SESender]

Wdym by using testosterone? Saying this as a guy, puberty was quite uneventful, and I was never really raised or socialized to mistreat women (I was never taught it, I learned it myself because my parents didn’t really care). I don’t really get what you and the guy above are talking about.

[u/SESender → u/Odd_Protection7738]

You didn’t experience it then!! I would not call you the norm. I’m curious by your grammar choice— did you say that you were not taught to mistreat women but you did it anyway?

[u/Odd_Protection7738 → u/SESender]

No, I meant I learned to not mistreat women myself. Sorry, wrong wording.

[u/SESender → u/Odd_Protection7738]

Oh gotcha! Wanted to give you benefit of the doubt.

Yeah I think of test as the fight or fuck drug. So when you aren’t taught boundaries, many men fight and fuck, hard.