#I just wanna change how my body fat is distributed and have less body hair

[kaleidoscope-ize]

Yeah I’m non binary but I don’t neeeeeed to start HRT. I just want softer skin and less body hair and a rounder face and fatter hips and titties and—

[kagrenacs]

This pride month I wanted to discuss my transition a bit, I’ve had a couple people thinking about going on hrt wondering about what testosterone therapy is like. Up front I wanna say I wasn’t on it for very long at all, voice dysphoria was my problem, so I only needed to go on for 8 months until I was happy. I also messed up my dosing for four of those months, instead of 0.5ml I took 0.05 ml of T -_-

I’m lucky to have had a fairly easy time going on T. There’s a few doctors who have sacrificed so much for our community. The woman I saw was fired twice for providing a legal medical service to trans people. When going through the system, it can take up to five years to get referred T, pre-Covid. (I was going to DIY it if they denied me, at the time I had found a supplier of T gel, unfortunately it seems down though)

We discussed risks, namely being the production of too many red blood cells which can lead to stroke and tissue damage, however the risk is small, (one study says 11%) less than that of smokers. Your primary care provider usually monitors your hemoglobin levels because of this. Our main concern was the fact that I have premenstral dysphoric disorder, and have really struggled with really severe depressive episodes before my periods. Unfortunately there isn’t too resources or much discussion on pmdd and it’s interaction with HRT, beyond women undergoing feminizing hormone therapy potentially having pmdd symptoms. Ultimately though I don’t think I noticed any significant impact on my mood, and I don’t have periods.

I found this chart really helpful as a general guideline to what changes happened when. Everything is dependant on your genetics, looking at cis male relatives can be a good pointer to how your puberty will be.

I noticed skin oiliness first, even with my T micro-micro dose. (However there’s prescriptions to help with acne). I’d get acne around where chin hairs were coming in, near the 3 month of proper dosing, 6 months total mark. The thicker, coarser hair sticks around, I’m not sure if mine is growing as fast, or if i’m just not noticing more hair come in. But it still grows and I still like to shave it back a bit. I never got too much body hair besides leg hair, I have a little bit of belly hair and some slightly longer arm and breast hairs. I believe this is a genetic thing though, my brother isn’t particularly hairy yet either.

I saw a bit of changed patterns of fat distribution around month 4/7, I also increased T by .10 mL at this time. The veins in my arms and hands became much more prominent, I had less round cheeks, though nothing really noticeable. I’ve been off T for 3 months now and everything has returned to pre-t patterns.

A little after the fat redistribution I saw increased strength in small ways, especially in my hands. I was skeptical of that being real, but I managed to cut through some pork so well I cut right through an old plastic plate D: Bottom growth also happened around that time.

It took about 16 weeks total, about 4 weeks proper dosing to first hear the start of the voice changes. I tapered by dose off around 25 weeks, doing it every 2 weeks to slowly inch to where I wanted, and I was happy by 30 weeks. I was starting to grow moustache hairs around then, won’t lie that’s partly why I stopped T, I don’t like moustaches. My voice did change afterwards, I have the ability to pitch it a bit higher now, but it didn’t go to my pre-T voice. I think this snippet I found on google beautifully sums it up.

[epochryphal]

as an exobinary person who doesn’t id as transmasc, had top surgery over 10 years ago, took estrogen blockers for a year and had vaginectomy + unilateral oophectomy + hysto over 5 years ago, and this year started T, a few thoughts of agreement and elaboration and divergence:

1) it’s maddening how unseriously i’ve been taken (mainly by people in positions of authority, whether cis or not) for a decade and how rapidly that’s shifted to “oh shit a real trans” with T. walking around shirtless and nippleless did not change how i was gendered, T has. arghh. i especially hate how much it likely has to do fat distribution. it wasn’t facial hair on its own, and it doesn’t seem like it was facial hair plus voice either.

(also, replying “i don’t have that :)” about sex characteristics was met with awkward subject change and forgetting, and continuing to talk in cisnormative and transnormative binaries and archetypes. really hard to get people to think about someone not having a vagina or a penis. the semantic space just.. glitches out)

2. i’ve wanted trans voice, like this whole time. didn’t want anything else for its own sake. especially actively wanted to not need anything else to disrupt constant self-assured samey misgendering. so, it felt a) socially dysphoric to only take T because of other people’s infuriating misperceptions, and b) physically unwise to take T only for voice when other permanent effects would almost assuredly happen, and to plan to take it temporarily* when i might get attached to temporary side effects like fat redistribution. bonus: felt like fetishizing of or appropriating from my transmasc-id’d friends, yay

*(i don’t wanna be testosterone-dominant or estrogen-dominant. i don’t want to take sexed hormones the rest of my life, and doctors currently insist some amount is necessary for bone health and there’s no supplementing around that allowed, so fine i’ll keep a low endogenous estrogen production—but it also ain’t ~dominant~ and this is a language expansion i struggle with)

3. i’ve always been keenly aware that if i didn’t like having facial hair, i could do electrolysis. if i started balding, i could try remedies (perhaps less certainly - i was much more aware of trans-aimed and eunuch/neut-aimed care strats than men-aimed ones) or wear wigs or shave my head like my dad.

(still don’t understand why “electrolysis is an option” gets so lost when contemplating T. sure, it’s an extra step and expensive and painful and takes ages, but that’s transitioning in general in a lot of ways!)

4. general post-surgical depression is super a thing because metabolisms and isolation from people during physical recovery. and also because cw: Medical Trauma from the medical industrial complex. ucsf was abysmal at consent, misgendering, fluorescent lights, mismanaged/withheld psych meds i’d been on for years, letting a blocked caller through because ~family~, and more.

i regret them and their so-called “”center of excellence in transgender care.”” i regret the choice of surgeon, maurice garcia, now at ucla, who told me when i woke that he just Didn’t Do Part of what we’d extensively agreed, because “healthy tissue” (implied i’d want it for metoidioplasty or phalloplasty later). i regret going by ambulance to the ER later that week for blood loss-induced psychosis because they insisted on coding my body parts by what was literally removed and not there, for records and for insurance.

so yeah i was fucking depressed after. and haven’t been able yet to get a surgical revision because Trust.

and there’s a bunch of little things, like mm top surgeon wouldn’t believe i wasn’t eventually gonna go on T and work out so made me really flat, which has not filled out as i’ve gotten fatter and gives me a shape that’s difficult to find off-the-rack clothes or body rep for.

but one, it all comes back to bodily autonomy and being believed by the people able to do the surgery. being actually collaborated with as an individual person, not an exercise of technique where they know better. and being given the full breadth of options, including things like electrolysis for ameliorating possible effects you don’t want.

and two, it’s all been worth it. wish it wasn’t fucking traumatizing - the authorities and institutions and medical systems required to get any of it done! but the actual physical effects, including pain and recovery, all fine and well worth it.

so yeah, big ups to separating social from medical, and also separating medical system interaction regret from physical transition regret.

the reason a lot of transmascs experience some level of regret/depression after medical transitioning is, imo, the exact reverse of the reason TERFs think we transition in the first place.

TERF beliefs are generally that transmascs dysphoria is actually a natural uncomfortableness with how misogynistic society defines women, and that our transition is an attempt to conform to the idea that being nonfeminine means you aren't a "real" woman, instead of realizing that we only hate ourselves because society tells us women like us shouldn't exist, and actually radical feminism is the real liberation.

but for example: when i first starting on T, every change was 100% pure joy. i was so ecstatic, everything was amazing and wonderful. i truly loved everything.

but then the longer I was on it, the more transandrophobia I encountered because I was on T. I started feeling more and more ashamed of having hair on my arms, my thin facial hair, my "tranny voice". Things that made me really excited before starting making me a little bit uncomfortable because of how society treated it. It was literally like Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria but exactly the opposite.

Now this wasn't and isn't as strong as the gender euphoria T has brought me, and it hasn't caused me a lot of real "oh no do I regret this" distress because I have been able to immediately recognize that I am only uncomfortable because of how people started treating me differently. But especially for transmascs without support systems, without understanding our own internalized transphobia, can very easily feel a lot of trauma associated with transitioning because of the way that society treats trans men. when every change of your body is met with mockery and scorn and disgust, its natural to get affected.

and this is why its so fucked up when other trans people share stuff about how "soo many trans men are gonna regret T because they're all stupid little girls who think T is gonna make them sexy yaoi boys, since they all have no idea what it's like to really be men and just fetishize gayness!" because you are literally the reason. People mock and shame trans men, they make spaces hostile for anyone with a testosterone-dominant body, they act hostile to trans men and our experiences constantly. and then when trans men internalize that disgust and blame ourselves for how other people treat us because of our transition, those same people turn around and use that as a way to further mock us.