01
What to know
- Do not stop a prescribed medicine or hormone on your own because sexual function changed.
- Gender-affirming hormones can change spontaneous erections, firmness, ejaculation, and fertility in ways that may or may not match a person’s goals.
- A sexual-function change can be worth discussing even when a treatment is otherwise working well.
What people often get wrong
A similar-looking photo or one matching symptom cannot confirm a cause. Timing, change, examination, and sometimes testing matter.
02
Useful next steps
- Bring a complete list of prescriptions, over-the-counter medicines, supplements, substances, and hormone therapy.
- Tell the clinician what function you want to preserve, reduce, or better understand.
When to get care
Do not rely on guesswork when the pattern changes.
- Arrange care for a persistent new change, especially with urinary symptoms, pain, numbness, or cardiovascular symptoms.
- Use emergency care for an erection lasting four hours, severe injury, or inability to urinate.
03
What a clinician may ask
- When did you first notice it, and is it changing?
- Is there pain, discharge, bleeding, fever, urinary change, or loss of function?
- Were there recent medicines, illness, injury, sexual contact, products, or procedures?