Journal article
Gender dysphoria and sexual euphoria: a Bayesian perspective on the influence of gender-affirming hormone therapy on sexual arousal
- Abstract:
- Self-reported sexual orientation of transgender individuals occasionally changes over transition. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we tested the hypothesis that neural and behavioral patterns of sexual arousal in transgender individuals would shift from the assigned to the experienced gender (e.g., trans women’s responses becoming more dissimilar to those of cis men and more similar to those of cis women). To this aim, trans women (N = 12) and trans men (N = 20) as well as cisgender women (N = 24) and cisgender men (N = 14) rated visual stimuli showing male–female, female–female or male–male intercourse for sexual arousal before and after four months of gender-affirming hormone therapy. A Bayesian framework allowed us to incorporate previous behavioral findings. The hypothesized changes could indeed be observed in the behavioral responses with the strongest results for trans men and female–female scenes. Activation of the ventral striatum supported our hypothesis only for female–female scenes in trans women. The respective application or depletion of androgens in trans men and trans women might partly explain this observation. The prominent role of female–female stimuli might be based on the differential responses they elicit in cis women and men or, in theory, the controversial concept of autogynephilia. We show that correlates of sexual arousal in transgender individuals might change in the direction of the experienced gender. Future investigations should elucidate the mechanistic role of sex hormones and the cause of the differential neural and behavioral findings.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.2MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s10508-023-02778-1
Authors
+ FWF Austrian Science Fund
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/013tf3c58
- Grant:
- KLI 516
- KLI 50
+ Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/03a63f080
- Grant:
- 23741
+ Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economics
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- Funder identifier:
- https://ror.org/02d229b24
- Publisher:
- Springer
- Journal:
- Archives of Sexual Behavior More from this journal
- Volume:
- 53
- Issue:
- 5
- Pages:
- 1859-1871
- Place of publication:
- United States
- Publication date:
- 2024-01-12
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-12-06
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-2800
- ISSN:
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0004-0002
- Pmid:
-
38216784
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2118968
- Local pid:
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pubs:2118968
- Deposit date:
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2025-04-18
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Klöbl et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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