Body Love

In the first five days of #30DayOrgasmFun I have only managed two orgasms. This was not unexpected and does not make me the West Bromwich Albion of wanking.    As I wrote earlier, Citalopram is doing its thing on me, and , I know, a couple of other participants. Failing to come is, however, not failure. For each time, I have pleasured myself with the vibrator, wallowed in my fantasies, helped myself along with the odd visual aid, I have enjoyed my body and reconnected with it. And this is massively important.

There is a thing called body dysmorphia which many transgender people suffer from, or are diagnosed with (not quite the same thing)  and  the man/woman born in the wrong body is a common trope as much as that of little boys who knew at the age of 3 they were really girls and longed for pink dresses and dolls rather than the toy cars they were actually given. If this is the experience of some trans people it is not the experience of everyone. It is certainly not mine.

I really enjoyed being a boy, I loved the rough and tumble of the games I played. I loved climbing trees, I loved playing football at the recreation ground using jumpers as goal posts and I can bore for England about rush back goalkeepers. Oh and I had a pair of  ball of white Alan Ball football boots which were THE thing to have in 1971/ Neither do I believe I am trapped in the wrong body. I have a body. It is the one I was born with, it has performed reliably enough to get me to the age of 56 in good health, it responds well to my mad urge to run half marathons. It is the body with which I have had great sex with some lovely men and women, it is the body from which my lovers have derived great pleasure. It is not the wrong body. If I believed that I would either have to deny myself or embrace mind-body dualism and make more than a nod in the direction of gender essentialism. Emotionally and intellectually I cannot do any of these things.

It is true that I have a complex relationship with my body and there have been times when I have hated it more than I have loved it. But this is not an exclusively trans experience. I guess most people are unhappy with their bodies at various times in their lives and negative body image is particularly an issue for many women . We all need to learn to love our bodies. And masturbation, particularly slow extended session of self love are a great way to do this. I remember a few years ago BUPA ran a series on ads on television, focusing on a remarkable fact about the human body with the slogan “You are amazing”. Solo sex leads to the same conclusion and, unlike BUPA, it’s free.

I had planned to be a bit adventurous but all my sessions this week have actually been in bed. No matter. I began on Sunday with the scented bath and the lingerie and came to a filthy fantasy I will write about in a future post, suffice it to say it involved me being used as a sexual plaything.  On Monday even Marlene couldn’t’ help me and I fell asleep, vibrator in hand. Come Tuesday it was an old sex issue of DIVA that came to the rescue (why do they no longer do them?). Since then I have not come but have explored my body in new and enjoyable ways.

Of course I am looking to change my body. My tattoos are part of the feminisation .as is laser hair removal. Further changes lie ahead. But these are not a rejection of my body. For it is my body. The right body. The body I am learning to love.