Loss of another kind.

[MichelleKneels (imported)]

I'm a submissive girl, slowly transitioning and I hope to have an orchiectomy sometime in the near future. I've read all sorts of things about the after-effects of this surgery and I'm not all that worried about them. What I am concerned about is if the loss of my testicles will impair in any way, my submissiveness and my deep need to serve. I'm in a relationship with a Dominant Man and He has given me a His consideration collar, which sort of signifies an engagement ring in the BDSM world and each day my feelings for Him grow stronger. As my part in the relationship is based on my desires to serve Him both domestically and sexually, the loss of my libido isn't of any great concern to me, but the loss of my desire to serve Him is worrying me. I hope to spend the rest of my life serving this wonderful Man and the last thing I want is to lose that desire.

Incidentally, the plan to be castrated is and always has been mine and is something I would have done anyway, had I not met Him.

Does anyone have any advice for me?

[Cainanite (imported)]

What you may find is that your submissive instincts are tied to your sexual feelings. When your sexual feelings diminish, so too may the pleasure you derive from being in a submissive role.

I would guess that if you find non-sexual pleasure from being submissive, then a loss of your libido wouldn't effect that.

I would recommend some deep introspection on your part before you look to do something serious. A lot of other people will recommend that you immediately go to hormone blockers for a trial run on castration and see how it effects you. Though that will no doubt give you some answers, it would be better for you to determine where your submissiveness comes from first.

The hardest thing you can do is to know your own mind. If you have a therapist you can talk to, it might be helpful. I know I have not found therapists or psychologists helpful, so your mileage may vary on that. For me, writing out my issues and some serious meditation on my emotions helped me get to where I needed to go.

Don't submit to castration, chemical or otherwise, until you are a little more prepared, and know from what parts of your life your desires stem. Depression can be a serious side effect, even with a chemical castration run. Knowing a little more about yourself will help prepare you for it.

We tend to be a bit biased around here and members will suggest you go for it, or immediately go for the drugs. Just be aware there are risks, and things will work out a lot better for you, if you already know where your feelings come from.

[JesusA (imported)]

Cainanite may be young, but he is definitely wise. Read his advice carefully and spend enough time considering it before taking any action. Your first step needs to be to try to work through your own thoughts and motivations, BEFORE taking a mostly reversible step of hormone blockers. Nothing irreversible until you are absolutely certain.

[SplitDik (imported)]

I'd concur with the advice above.

I don't know about submissive urges, but I know my masochism is very tied to my sexual "horniness". One way to test this (at least works for me) is to see if your feelings change after orgasm. In terms of masochism, I find my interest in pain diminishes dramatically after orgasm. For example, I'll happily be crushing my testicles in a door and then after orgasm I'm like "wow, why would anyone ever want to do that?" Your thinking really can change dramatically based on hormones and related brain chemicals (dopamine, endorphins, prolactin, adrenaline, seratonin, melatonin).

I guess the question I'd have is whether you'll be taking female hormones. If you do, I wouldn't anticipate much problem. But being entirely without sex hormones can be problematic on many levels, including lack of energy, urges, and intimacy.

[transward (imported)]

I know a transperson who, when under the influence of testosterone, has an overwhelming desire for feminization and submission. She begins transition and talks of becoming a slave girl, does the therapist letter thing, gets Rxs for androgen blockers and estrogen, (chemical castration) After a couple of months of this she loses libido and all desire to transition and be submissive, stops hormones, detransitions, and purges all her fem goodies and declares she just wants to be a gay boy. Aside from a year or so in prison (which must have been tough) she has been going back and forth for almost ten years. She's been on and off hormones and has legally changed her name four times.

So yes, castration, physical or chemical, will affect your desires for submission.

Transward

[Milkman (imported)]

I agree with the above statement. In following the progress from desire to action of several men, I have noticed how many of them although very keen about having a eunuch or trans identity prior to castration, then loose interest in the subject after castration. There are several examples of people on here who were very active, but once castrated now don't even like to think about this change to their body and have lost all interest in submissiveness or the reasons they sought castration in the first place.

[_g (imported)]

I'm a submissive girl, slowly transitioning

From this you are taking Estrogen and anti-androgen's? If you are then it should not make any difference as the testicles are shut down not making any testosterone. If you still have some testosterone production then it could make a difference.

_g

[DavidB (imported)]

I agree with the above statement. In following the progress from desire to action of several men, I have noticed how many of them although very keen about having a eunuch or trans identity prior to castration, then loose interest in the subject after castration. There are several examples of people on here who were very active, but once castrated now don't even like to think about this change to their body and have lost all interest in submissiveness or the reasons they sought castration in the first place.

I dont think that everybody who has been castrated and doesnt come back to the site has lost interest in either of the above. This is a great site and very helpful for people to find the support to achieve the goals they are lookinf for. And after achiveing those goals and moving forward with thier lives may not need to be coming here. Yes some might and do have regrets and but I am thinking that most just move forward in a positive place.

[DavidB (imported)]

What you may find is that your submissive instincts are tied to your sexual feelings. When your sexual feelings diminish, so too may the pleasure you derive from being in a submissive role.

I would guess that if you find non-sexual pleasure from being submissive, then a loss of your libido wouldn't effect that.

I would recommend some deep introspection on your part before you look to do something serious. A lot of other people will recommend that you immediately go to hormone blockers for a trial run on castration and see how it effects you. Though that will no doubt give you some answers, it would be better for you to determine where your submissiveness comes from first.

The hardest thing you can do is to know your own mind. If you have a therapist you can talk to, it might be helpful. I know I have not found therapists or psychologists helpful, so your mileage may vary on that. For me, writing out my issues and some serious meditation on my emotions helped me get to where I needed to go.

Don't submit to castration, chemical or otherwise, until you are a little more prepared, and know from what parts of your life your desires stem. Depression can be a serious side effect, even with a chemical castration run. Knowing a little more about yourself will help prepare you for it.

We tend to be a bit biased around here and members will suggest you go for it, or immediately go for the drugs. Just be aware there are risks, and things will work out a lot better for you, if you already know where your feelings come from.

I strongly agree with the advice to try and find ones motives and look for answers before going forward with any type of castration, but I dont think we are in a rush to push people towards chemical castration right away. I think the prevailing idea is to say hey there are alternatives and test periods, give this a try before you do something that can not be undone.

[janekane (imported)]

To me, every person is actually unique to a significant extent, yet people can also be grouped into bunches that share many similarities. Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of being human is finding a personal sense of self that is also adequately acceptable from a social perspective.

For myself, I found talking with people in the psychology and psychiatry fields to be profoundly helpful; only, it took me a goodly while to find psychology and psychiatry people who were skilled enough in insight-oriented work as to be able to avoid projecting their self-image onto me in sadly harmful (to me) ways.

One of the unresolved issues in human psychology/;physiology is the nature of the experiences of pleasure and displeasure. For myself, as a theoretical biologist who happens to have a doctorate in bioengineering and whose dissertation is essentially a bioengineering-oriented model of mental health and mental illness, I find very strong neurological evidence that the Epicurean view to the effect that pleasure is the absence of pain (that is, the absence of pain centers in the brain being active) fits observable brain function far better than the view that there are both pleasure and pain centers in the brain.

My research has firmly informed me that there are two sorts of pain centers, one form being of awareness of pain and the other form being of blocking awareness of pain. In the first edition of the book about pain by DR. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey, "Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants," Brand described lives of some children who were born without the ability to be aware of pain. One child ate her fingers amused by the experience and not troubled by the loss.

In my view, to the extent that a person arrives at a state of pleasure through blocking pain awareness without actually reducing whatever is causing pain, there is some risk that the blocking process will not be sustainable, and pain will return more intense than before.

To the extent that pleasure results from blocking pain instead of resolving what is causing pain, a sense of pleasure may be the result of the psychological defense of displacement rather than problem resolution. Seeking sexual pleasure to block non-sexual pain may be the core mechanism of sexual addictions, at least to the extent, as proposed by Harvard addiction specialist, psychiatrist Dr. Lance Dodes, as in his book, "The Heart of Addiction."

For myself, my orchiectomy was an aspect of my seeking effective cancer-risk-minimizing medical care; I was born with a genetic condition for which the average age of death without such care is, as I read the medical literature, 42 years; I am now very nearly 73 and have not yet died from terminal cancer as did my dad and brother, who had the same genetic condition.

I had figured out that I did not fit society's notions of boy and/or man before I learned to talk. When I was 13, in December of 1952, and learned of Christine Jorgensen, it became clear to me that I was not totlly alone in this world in the sense of being non-social-convention-gender-conforming.

People who have obtained one or another form of surgical gender modification, whose drive for change was predominantly of psychological displacement have tended to regret their surgeries far more than people whose drive was not of displacement.

Michelle, I have no way to know whether or not displacement is relevant to your life situation. However, if you are unsure, then the slow approach may be very wise, as others here have suggested.

My situation, in 1986, was different than yours. Though he had not been diagnosed, my brother (three years older than me) had already developed terminal cancer before I got my orchiectomy. Had I waited much longer for my orchiectomy, I figure that my chances of being alive now might be zero. For people not at such risk as I was, the slow approach may be far wiser than the way I went; which was, I was unwilling to wait any longer because I sought to avoid dying while yet comparatively young.