On choosing the form of one's dopamine lever

I'll put a content warning right here at the top: this is going to contain mentions (some extensive) of genitals (vagina, penis, nullge), HRT, SRS, dysphoria, sex (vaginal, anal, oral, feet, masturbation), and vore (oral, anal, unbirth, cock).

... But let's get into it.

Let's get personal. And let's make it weird.

This is basically just me trying to work out how I feel about all this, so I'm gonna just ramble off the top of my head for a few pages, 'kay?

The catalyst for this post is a dream I had during the 20 minutes after my alarm went off, where I flopped forward out of the covers and then dozed right back off. I give very little stock to dreams in general, and I'm Barely Awake What Year Is It Back To Sleep I Guess dreams even less.

It was notable, though, because it was my first ever vanilla sex dream. It involved intercourse featuring vaginal penetration. ... and I was the one with the vagina. (Or one of the ones. It was not clear what equipment my partner was using - whether it was home-grown, customized, or detachable.) In the context of the dream, I could feel the pressure sensation of her equipment, whatever it might be, inside me, stretching me, and the main emotion was... comfort? Trust? Controlled, safe vulnerability? It was pleasant.

Note that artificial sensations in dreams, while not unheard of, are fairly rare for me. Typically, my dreams are visual and auditory affairs only, in keeping with my lack of attunement with my body. If I do have sensations in a dream, it's because I'm about to be returned to reality, and something is touching me in the real world.

Of course, as I haven't received sex reassignment surgery, this sensation - and this dream in total - is currently a physical impossibility.

More than that, I have never really dreamed about sex - not graphically so. (The most graphic dreams ever got was laying on top of someone else.) I also typically don't fantasize about sex. While it didn't gross me out, I considered myself ace because sex - in roleplay or in fantasy - was always terribly, terribly boring to me. And the one time I was in a position to have penis-in-vagina intercourse, my arousal died almost instantly upon trying to enter my partner.

Barring a few vague curiosities about penetration that resurged when I started hormones, the only recurring fantasies I have ever had that involve genitals:

• Oral (receiving or more rarely giving)
• Footjobs (receiving)
• Unbirth (about even focus, slight preference for pred)
• Cock vore (prey)

The first two appeared mostly during the time that I was dating someone with whom I literally nightly did erotic roleplay. They weren't into any of my main fetishes, and as mention sex is kind of boring to me, but they were special enough to me that I enjoyed it anyway, and we did a lot of power play - bondage/rape/enslavement/pet play etc. Often in my head I would substitute my own power play fantasies.

These fantasies would typically be from the perspective of my partner's character, often the submissive and the female character in the scene. Sometimes I would mentally reverse things and the fantasy in my head was from the submissive role, ignoring almost everything about my character (especially gender).

Oral fantasies have been most commonly seen in conjunction with vore (receiving or giving; during swallowing, or as a precursor to unbirth or as a vehicle for vore threats). It seems like the power play and service aspects are most interesting to me, with the actual genitals involved being boring or slightly gross to me either way. These tend to focus on receiving for that reason.

Footjob fantasies tend to focus more on my partner's feet and their actions than on my genitals, and they also tend to focus on the power dynamic - the vulnerability of helplessly enjoying something. A common way feet scenarios play out in my head is for the other person in the scenario to tease and threaten vore if I should indulge in my love of feet. (I try to resist, but indulge anyway, and they carry out their threat.) Footjobs were only ever a subgenre of this scenario, and recently they've been phased out completely in favor of just focusing on looking, touching, sniffing, and licking.

Genital vore is super fun to me, because I love the idea of the pred and/or prey getting turned on by vore, and in particular the idea of the prey becoming a burst of pleasure for the pred rather than (or in addition to) fat is exciting to me. (As with oral, I don't go for safe UB that much.)

It's interesting, though, that in unbirth scenarios I tend to focus a bit more on the pred, and in cock vore I almost exclusively focus on the prey. This runs counter to my expectations, since again, I got what I got. And with cock vore especially, while manipulating the dopamine lever, I tend to think "This is the kind of feeling the pred is having", rather than just. Focusing on the pred.

Since I'm talking about non-oral vore, I'll also take a moment here to address the topic of Butt Stuff.

It's... oddly uninteresting to me. I've enjoyed anal vore at times, but I don't know how much of that is me liking it and how much is just me enjoying the power play and vore aspects while enjoying my partner's enjoyment. In any case, I don't generally have any desire to indulge in it on my own.

I also don't have much interest in anal intercourse (aside, as always, from the power play aspects). Giving or receiving. I did at one point get some toys, but I had very little interest in learning to use them, and after one short-lived experiment I threw them in a drawer and haven't touched them since.

Anyway.

One long tangent about the nature of my fantasies later, now we get back to the heart of the matter. Or the. Genitals of the matter.

The semiconscious signals I've been receiving have been leading me toward thinking about SRS recently. My first thought was an aesthetic one: having a visible bulge makes me very uncomfortable, and there are some cute dresses and stuff that I simply won't wear. Though this partly has to do with me simply not having that many pairs left, I've stopped wearing jeans as much as I can avoid it, even now that it's winter. Even with my usual pencil skirts, although they do a decent job, I always have the fleeting thought to make sure to carry my purse in front of me. Only my widest skirts are dysphoria-free.

As some of you may know, I'm thinking about moving to Japan. And I love the public baths and hot springs, and I'd not want to miss out on that. But I also do not want to be naked in the women's bath with a penis. I've tried to analyze this - is this purely about worrying what other people will think of me bucking the Rules of Genitalia, some fear of social retribution or desire to fit in? Or is there something about how I want to present myself?

Ultimately, I think it's the latter. I don't like having a penis. I don't want other people to know I have one. I don't want them to be able to see it.

But I've also been having thoughts here and there about what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of vaginal penetration with whatever whatever. These came from a few months before I started consciously thinking about SRS. I remember I even spoke with one of my friends about having fleeting curiosities, and nothing much came of it because I had another emotional/life disaster that claimed 100% of my attention right after LMAOOOOOO

Up to this point I had held the stance that, as I'm not interested in or curious about sex, and I doubt anyone but me is going to see it, it's just a matter of choosing the form of my dopamine lever. And I don't care, both kinds of genitals are ugly, so I might as well choose the safe, no-surgery option.

I'm still a very anxious person. I'm still incredibly nervous about the idea of the risks involved (especially since I already am apparently at higher risk of blood clotting), about having to go off estrogen for the time around the surgery... about having to go off ORGASMS for the time around the surgery (what a horror!) Having to dilate. Risking prolapse and/or tearing. Having to relearn how my body works again (I'm already finding that my current equipment has started functioning completely differently from how I'm used to it working...) Bleeding. The very danger of being put under for surgery (something I've never had to do) and taking on a major surgery.

Those things are all very valid and I have to weigh them some more.

But I think every part of my former stance is wrong.
I do have curiosity about sex, just not the role that I thought I was going to have.
It is part of the body that I show to the world, and to myself in the mirror - people will see it.
For this reason and more, it means a lot more to me than just choosing the form of my dopamine lever.
And I do care what form it takes. I have a preference, and it's for a vagina. This is why I tend not to give my female characters penises, even though I have no objection to them being trans.

Here I should note quickly that I've also devoted some thinking to the idea of nullge. And I did have some relief at the realization that the concept existed. But. Given that I have been having increasing thoughts about receiving penetration, and my immediate reaction to the idea of nullge was "Ahhhh, but it would be fun sometimes to... y'know..." I think that if I do decide to go for surgery, it wouldn't be to go to nullge.

Anyway. TMI info dump over.

DM me how you feel about your genitals You know what, no. Not even I'm dumb enough to invite that shitstorm upon myself in the name of jokes.

... But I mean, if we're mutuals and you have something to say on this subject, I wouldn't mind hearing it!

EDITED TO ADD: I had a nice conversation with one of my mutuals on this. And, yeah, I think that as much as I was being very diligent about making sure that I was not investigating SRS to better 'fit in' or 'fit the stereotype', I think I was a lot less diligent about making sure that I was not trying to avoid SRS to 'fit in' or 'fit the stereotype'.

I know a lot of people who either can't or don't want to get bottom surgery. And I want them to feel unbelievably valid. Some of them are proud of the plumbing they have, and they should be!

Now that I'm facing this issue thoughtfully and consciously, I can say - sure, I don't think having a penis makes a woman less of a woman, or makes a woman less attractive, or less socially fitting, or any of those other things.

I just think having a penis is not something that's part of my desired self image.

And in the name of fitting in I think I kind of swallowed that. As I deepened my transition, I tried to emulate the kinds of people I surrounded myself with and be like "yay rah I love my dick! and I'm so valid for having it!"

(But I do not, in fact, love my dick. And I am valid for having it but I am also valid for wanting to get rid of it.)