Jul (they/she)

First let’s clarify the components here.

Sexual desire/need isn’t really testosterone specific. Most people still retain their sexual desire on HRT, though often reduced. It takes a while, though. But typically, you won’t lose sexual desire with HRT alone, it’s just a little different.

Erections are different, but similar. Women also have erectile tissue, and it’s similar how it’s activated, but they don’t generally maintain the “erection” throughout the entire sexual encounter. Most mtf people experience a lot of difficulty in achieving and/or maintaining an erection after a year or two on HRT, timing is different for everyone, but it takes a while.

Many mtf people get an orchiectomy to reduce these things and reduce the need for the androgen blockers.

Anecdotally, I had vaginoplasty after about a year and a half on HRT. I didn’t take androgen blockers during my initial HRT, just Estradiol, so I can’t really say how they affect things. But towards the end, I was losing the ability to maintain erections for more than a few minutes at a time, and ejaculate was often very minimal. Also, the orgasms themselves became less of a spike and lasted longer. After vaginoplasty, I still have the need to masturbate, but it’s definitely not as intense, and I dont have as much anger and frustration build up if I don’t masturbate for a few days. Masturbating takes way longer, though, but orgasms are still something I enjoy and helps me relax.

I know some mtf people who do not choose or dont have the means to get vaginoplasty will have an orchiectomy to help make these changes happen as well as eliminate the need for androgen blockers and their side effects.

If you truly want no ability or desire to have sex, it’s mostly irreversible, but you can get “nullification” surgery. Basically all external genitals are removed and only a hole for the urethra is left behind. This surgery can leave some penile nerves intact or totally remove them so there’s no ability to orgasm. But the psychological need for orgasms still takes time to fade from what I’ve heard. But it will be less than with just HRT. Not something most doctors will recommend, but it is sometimes done for asexual people.

It’s not really possible to extract the drug from the extended release components without knowing exactly what chemicals they used and doing some chemistry to dissolve the components you don’t want in a chemical that only disolved that chemical and not the drug.

As for reducing dosage, I do that with lots of drugs for rationing purposes either due to shortages, insurance delays, or financial issues. If it’s a capsule, you usually can pull the two sides apart and take a portion of the drug inside. Some have multiple different components inside, but usually they are randomized enough during shipping that you’ll get a fairly even distribution of the components.

If they are solid tablets, it depends. Some you can cut with a pill cutter, but some will cause issues because they are designed to be digested more slowly and taking it cut can cause unpredictable release timing.

Disclaimer: not a doctor or pharmacist, just have had to ration meds a lot due to the crappy healthcare system in the US.

Yeah get that. I do it because my pangolin is segregated so that if that internet facing layer is penetrated, there’s not much else they’ll have access to. Similarly, if my WiFi is penetrated, there’s just a few devices. And many of my services run on Kubernetes distributed and load balanced across a bunch of cheap devices, so it needs reverse proxying at the ingress anyway. And there are a few other reasons for keeping traffic off of the pangolin server or even the router when it’s internal to internal, but still be able to use the single domain name for the service, especially with IPv6 not having static IP addresses quite the same way as IPv4, so not wanting to hard code IP addresses or even port assignments in services that back other services like the database server which originally was just running on the NAS, but switching it over to another system only required changing the internal reverse proxy, not every service that used it. I like abstraction like that.

Yeah, I have my own DNS server that caches from multiple backing servers as needed. I’m not worried about DNS blocking, it’s never been effective. The issue is ISP level blocking usually isnt just DNS blocking, it’s also involves IP level blocking, many of which dont work on IPv6 which is one reason (besides just resistance to replacing old hardware) it hasn’t been adopted widely by consumer ISPs. If you have only a single, unchangeable (by anyone other than them) IP address, they have much more control and your traffic is much easier to track and manipulate.

And there is even lower level blocking at lower layers of the network stack. ISPs can intercept and mangle packet’s destinations at any layer because your traffic must go through them and so your networking equipment must trust their equipment to properly route traffic. They don’t do it now mostly because it means adding a lot more processing power to analyze every packet. I do it all the time at home to block ads and other malicious traffic. But if they’re required to upgrade to allow for that level of traffic analysis, by law, then that opens the floodgates for all kinds of manipulation either politically or capitalistically nefarious in nature.

Yeah, I have caddy and traefik in front of most of my home-based services, except for a few web UIs like the router’s. Pangolin just receives incoming connections and routes them to the correct reverse proxy in the correct VLAN for that service.

I have VLANs to separate services that are more public facing from very private ones that only certain devices should be able to connect to directly. Basically, I have one VLAN for IoT devices that need to connect to the internet often but only certain things should access directly, one for very private things like my NAS, database server, 3D printer, etc, that rarely if ever need access to the internet, one for my personal devices (laptop, desktop, phone, tv) which are behind a pihole for ad blocking, and one guest VLAN for guests, but mostly for my work computer which really likes to snoop.

Good news for fascists since it means there will be an easy way to force ISPs to block all “unlawful” content like Wikipedia or any other site that gives educational information to refute their current agendas or reflects opposing opinions that they consider “alternative facts”.

Yeah, totally. I’ve gotten much better at thst over the years for sure. But I know if something like a new Fallout game were to come out or something, I’d easily get sucked back in. So, whether or not it’s clinically an addiction, I treat it like one. Fortunately, I have ADHD, so addictions are easier harder to create and easier to break. But there’s still some compulsive behaviors that can pop up.

Switching to Linux did break my addiction to gaming, though usually I play single player stuff. And then Steam started working, but fortunately crypto came along and made graphics cards shoot up in price and now LLMs have made memory and storage shoot up, so I haven’t upgraded my PC in a long time. So that’s kept me from going back. Now I just play little games on the Switch periodically. But I can’t use those controllers for anything that requires lots of detail control or for long periods., so I don’t play too often.

Talk to your doctor. There are a few options. I used Cialis/Tadalafil for a bit. Also, I was not taking androgen blockers as the estradiol alone lowered my testosterone levels enough which is somewhat common and many doctors are waiting now to prescribe the androgen blockers due to the possible side effects. But I know it’s difficult to remove those if you’ve already started with them. That said I still suffered some ED, but the meds helped though I didn’t like the side effects of getting hot and face flushing. But you can take Cialis regularly in lower doses rather than just in the moment which helped reduce the impact of those side effects.

On the plus side, the orgasms become way, way better without testosterone, and eventually you can have multiple orgasms in a single session, things just take longer to build up. Remember, cis-women require more stimulation to get turned on, too, and to orgasm and you’ll need to get used to that. Even after SRS, my orgasms take a long time, though I did have some complications around the clitoral tissue and am awaiting revision surgery, but they are way more intense and last longer.

So, my advice is be patient. Realize that you will need your partner to give you more attention than a cis-male. Your erection no longer directly expresses how turned on you are. So communication is required instead, again, similar to a cis-woman, though our cultures rarely allow for it even with cis-women. And it’s a reason I like sleeping with women rather than men since they better know what to expect.

Now if only my ISP (Quantum Fiber/Century Link/AT&T) would offer native IPv6.

How about going to a laundromat?

Damn, where’s mine. I could use a pizza right about now. LOL

I bail or use VPN fir anything asking for that kind of verification, porn or otherwise.

Never give your ID or any other info to age or identity verification sites whether it’s porn, sex education, social media, dating sites, or any of the sites that are starting to require it. 99.999999999999999999% chance it will get mishandled and leaked. The promise to delete the data immediately after verifying, but all the leaks have proven they or their contractors don’t actually do it.

Too bad the US is owned by fossil fuel companies and weapons manufacturers who make money on wars fought over said fossil fuels. If we could at least eliminate the subsidies from taxes, then people might actually see how much more it costs. But as long as taxes pay for fossil fuel production, it will always appear cheaper to those not paying attention.