Trans Women and Orgasms

So far, the articles and chapters on women's orgasms that we've reviewed and summarized here have not made a point to take into account trans women's experiences, or acknowledge trans women at all.
Many people assume that trans women have the same experience with orgasm as cis men, but that's just simply not true. Trans women are socialized differently than cis men, have different hormone levels, are treated differently by sexual partners, and sometimes have different parts. In Julia Serano, PhD, 's best selling 2007 book, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Women on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, she spends a chapter, entitled "Boygasms and Girlgasms: A Frank Discussion About Hormones and Gender Differences", discussing her experience with orgasm, and what other trans women have experienced with their orgasms. She doesn't claim to represent all trans women, and I do know trans women who have had different experiences than what Serano discusses here, all experiences she discusses are experiences she says she's heard from many trans women, and appear to be common (67).  She discusses these experiences within the book's larger argument, that both a biologically deterministic view of gender, and a socially constructionist view of gender, are overly simplistic and flawed. One of her  overall arguments, which I highly recommend reading (the book as a whole is super interesting, and discusses things mostly within a cultural and social context, and is less focused on her body, which can be rare given society's obsession with trans bodies), is that there are biological differences between men and women, mostly related to hormones, that socialization exaggerates (74).

      She starts off her chapter by stating that while yes, biological determinism is wrong, the backlash against biological determinism often overemphasizes socialization, and ignores the importance of hormones, though she stresses that hormones are not "on off switch", and that everyone has some of both, in varying levels, on a continuum (66). One of things she talks about, rather tongue-in-cheek,  is what hasn't changed since she started taking estrogen and androgen blockers. She cries as much as she used to (although she says her emotions are harder to ignore than they used to be), is still as rational, still has the same tastes in women, food, and culture, and has retained all her skills related to mathematics, science, and reading maps (68, 72).  Even before transition, she was never as competitive or aggressive as men were, and remained the same personality-wise after transition (73).
     When it comes to sex, however, the hormones changed not everything- her sexual orientation, for example, remained the same- but a lot of things. She reports a sharp decrease in sex drive, with her going from wanting sexual release at least once a day, to only desiring it a few times a week (70). The way she masturbated also changed. While she always preferred erotic stories and fantasies over pictures of naked bodies, the way many women do,  she used to prefer  "back and forth stroking action", but after she started hormones, and without having had surgery, she began to prefer vibrators (70).  With her wife and by herself, she noted that it took her longer to orgasm, but that when an orgasm finally happened, it was much more intense, and diffused throughout her entire body, in a way that pre-hormones orgasms didn't (71). The orgasms are also multiple, when they weren't before, starkly different from each other, when they used to be more or less the same, and are less dependent on anything visual (71).  After treatment with hormones, her orgasms and sexual experiences were the same, more or less, as a cis women's. Though Serano does not discuss this, I know trans women whose sexual experiences were like this pre-transition as well, which might complicate this slightly.
    What does this tell us about orgasm and gender more generally? Certainly that hormones have a lot to do with the physical mechanics of orgasm, much more so than, perhaps, the actual clitoris itself, or certainly anything vaginal. It also tells us about some of the major differences between orgasms that men have  (and non-transitioned women) and orgasms that women have (and non-transitioned men).