So okay, after the last several weeks of unfolding, following months of buildup, following years of roiling pressure and repression, I think I’m at a place where I can talk about this more confidently, put the thoughts into an order here.

Anyway, masturbation, right. Whee.

This whole discussion is gonna tie into that business about my attitude toward my body and my sexual role, and the way my attraction works. Like, my views toward my genitals and my bodily processes and my engagement with them and with other people, and how those reflect on my ideas about myself, who and what I am, how I feel about myself as a human being and as a person in relation to everything else.

I’ve gone into this divide I have here in regard to my body. Physically, cosmetically, anatomically, I love what I have going on downstairs and would not change it. There’s zero dysphoria toward my genitals, in part because I don’t gender genitals; in part because they’re great. What does make me feel absolutely awful, though, is sexually engaging with them. It’s worse when, as in past relationships, I’m expected to be the assertive, penetrative party, right. But even for my own alone-time purposes, there’s never not been an essential problem here.

I have not been shy lately about my extreme fondness for cock, right. (At least hypothetically. As pertains to the land of dreams where all pronounced sexuality rests, for this girl.) I’m not going to dwell on that, but suffice my issue is not the concept or behavior of a penis in itself. Like, yeah, I am all about everything to do with that… when it’s attached to a hypothetical other. Super-duper, yeah. Good. But in regard to my own body and processes, it freaks me out. It feels dirty and wrong and uncomfortable and there’s this inescapable shame associated.

This isn’t a thing I really want to “get over,” as it’s not—like, I don’t think of it as an external problem that I’ve taken on and I’m carrying around for no reason. It’s maybe not the most constructive response, but I’m coming to realize its origin is in me, actually. It’s my own signal. It’s not even a hang-up as such. This is hard to disentangle, but it’s wrapped up in my gender and my core ideas about how to relate to myself and others and the world. The wiring, it’s like it sends me this wordless jolt to say, “No, dummy, you’re doing it wrong. Figure it out.”

Historically it has been this uncomfortable thing, having these masculine physiological responses to things that don’t align with my emotional responses, or really anything I want or that matters to me, and feeling this almost coercive compulsion to address it. There was an indignity to my body’s demands upon me and its behavior through the whole process. I never went eagerly into masturbation; it was a matter of relenting—like okay, if I maintain this stupid thing, it’ll go away and I can think about something else, god. And there’s this kind of, every single time it almost felt like I was being tricked by this promise that it’ll be fast and simple and no problem—only to be left with this mortifying mess, that could be hard to contain, was hard to clean entirely. It left me feeling disgusting.

Like, all of this just reinforced all of these negative feelings I already had toward myself. It’s not the penis that was the problem; it was the masculinity, right. It was the behavior everything down to my own physiology seemed to demand from me, that left me distraught. It would be easy to dismiss all of this as, like. Me being prudish or any of the other things my exes have labeled me. But, no? That’s not the problem at all—the fact of sex, the fact of masturbation. Or, I mean, that’s not at the root of it. (One does have a bit of delicacy. I am a girl of some taste and refinement and dignity after all. Goodness gracious. Ahem.)

Coming to understand myself as so unambiguously a bottom, as I have done recently, clarifies so many dynamics at the center of my being, as a person. The way I react, the kinds of dissonance I feel, the things I prefer, the things that scream out as wrong for me personally. And the way my body works now, it feels like one of the missing pieces—my physical reality finally aligning and clarifying everything else about me as a person. It makes so much more sense, and it feels right, and there’s no innate sense of shame attached (beyond social decorum).

So, just gonna leap into the whee zone here. Butt play, right? You’re this deep in the topic, you’re not gonna get too many vapors from this discussion. It’s not like it’s new territory historically, but until lately the focus and significance were unclear to me. There’d always been this interest, circling the drain, but my predecessor never quite knew what to do about those thoughts and feelings and images and impulses. And again, all the roles seemed to demand attention where it was least wanted, so the issue was always sidelined.

Now I get it. As a girl, as a bottom, as this aroace creature with no active drive but this volcano of feelings on the inside, and in my pansexuality—with an aggressive current fixation on men and a lifelong, hitherto confusing, interest in cock. It all, uh. Fits. To to speak. I’m not the one who asserts unto others. I’m the one who entertains and accepts and embraces and nurtures and appreciates, who doesn’t insist on her singular way in the world but takes the world in to make herself more whole. Ideally, hypothetically. Constitutionally.

As far as hormones and impulses and self-maintenance go, the thing about butt play is that though it takes a bit more prep work, it is for me at least substantially less soul-destroying. And weirdly, managing it feels more honest and straightforward than just masculine wanking.

The main concern here obviously is going to be cleanliness, because. Well. There are certain things about a butt, right. But in a way, that concern is so incredibly obvious and immediate and top-of-mind that it feels less insidious than the mess of a promised quick, simple wank. One has to think ahead a bit, plan one’s actions, book some specific time with the understanding of how it’s going to be used. Make an appointment with one’s self, right, with the knowledge that one is going to be exploring and appreciating one’s body. There’s a humanity already. One needs to lay out some tools, make some space. Prepare one’s body. It’s not a quick, easy impulse. There is a deliberation here. An earnestness and transparency of intent. A need for existential consent with one’s self. So just the emotional groundwork is so much healthier.

Also in regard to cleanliness, it’s mostly up-front here, as opposed to being held off as a final insult after this hollow yet physiologically overwhelming and unpleasant experience—Now you feel like garbage, and here’s this awful situation to clean up. Go to hell. See you next time, on my clock. Won’t call ahead. With butt play, cleanup—on the one hand it’s again kind of baked in as an understanding, what issues may exist here and how one may need to deal with them. But overall it’s way less of a problem. Everything’s water-soluble in a way that a masculine ejaculate is aggressively not.

With all the changes to my body, semen’s no longer a thing, right. And good riddance (again specifically in regard to me; it’s fine, from other origins). My body’s working on girl logic, which extends from the fluids I produce to the way I feel arousal, to the mechanics of orgasm, to the wiring of my senses.

None of it is a fully automatic process. Like, I have to engage with my emotions and notice and study the way that arousal comes to me now—not with this petulant screaming flush of blood to one area, but an overall heightened sense of interest and receptiveness. This tingle and warm pressure from my upper limbs, up my torso, to my lips and cheeks. This depth to my breath. This mental clarity. This wryness, fondness, playfulness. And when I’m lying there, every time it’s like the next chapter in an ongoing conversation as my mind gets wired a little closer, those synapses get strengthened, and everything is a little more intense than the last time. My lips feel numb, with the prickle of a foot that’s waking up from a long sleep. The rub of my face on the pillow has this jolt as strong as the rub of my genitals as a teenager.

And—we all have the same anatomy; it just gets specialized late in development, some even after birth. For masculine anatomy, we call it the prostate. Feminine bodies, if we address it at all, it’s usually in terms of its sexual function, and we say “g-spot.” (Skene’s gland, if you want to get nerdy.) It’s the same organ. As one goes on and rewires one’s senses away from one unwanted nexus to one more in line with one’s understanding of the world, everything just becomes so much more wholesome and joyous and holistic and meaningful.

As the connection strengthens and the body responds all the more intensely, one feels so complete and at one with one’s self. It’s about the entirety of me, appreciating my humanity, appreciating my body, my femininity. Strengthening the link between my mind and my body as inextricable parts of a whole person. About feeling human in a way that has always been unavailable, and that runs completely counter to the mode of engagement that my body used to demand of me.

And much like the thoughts that go through my head and the way I engage with my current emotional fixations, none of it feels lurid in the way that I tend to associate with sex and masturbation and the modes of attraction that had I felt been assigned to me. It just feels honest and right and warm and good. It’s very clearly constructive, at least to my relationship with myself and my humanity. But also just, at the essence of my being I think it helps to reinforce this essential love for the world, this compassion for the other. It makes me stronger as a person, gets me in touch with what it means to be alive. As opposed to making me want to die.

This isn’t subtle. It is so deeply etched to my grain, to the way I engage with the world, to my political ideology, my ideas about art and communication. Before anyone else, before any outside projections or assumptions, every piece that I lock into place reinforces who I am. I am in fact a human being. I am a real person. I am a girl. I am full of so much love. These are the ways I see myself and I feel about others. This is what it means for me to be alive. And it’s all important.

Like my aversion to exercise, it’s easy to strip out these things that never made sense to me, or that made me feel awful, because of the frame they came with. Because of the way that other people engage with them as if the things, the actions are important in and of themselves. As if they’re all somehow correct and expected from me to achieve some kind of end, an end often rooted in some kind of supremacy or status, in demonstrating one’s value over others according to some system that makes no sense to me and that I want nothing to do with. But, I am my own universe, and I get to make my own terms of engagement. The fact is, I am human. When I deny whole hunks of that from the weight of someone else’s garbage, I’m chopping off essential pieces of myself and crippling my understanding and acceptance of what’s left.

So yeah, this is a piece of me I’m reclaiming. And gee whiz, does it make more sense now. Things can in fact be good. I have nothing to be ashamed of, when I am true to myself. I just need to follow the signals and ask what they’re actually trying to tell me.