#if anyone says any shit in the notes about testosterone being toxic or whatever I'm going to come to your house and shit on your bed

[queerasflux]

realized I'm coming up on my 7th year of transitioning so I thought I'd do some things I like about my body as I'm settling comfortably into myself. I use he/they/it pronouns. Image description in alt text.

[valehirvas]

Have your experiences on T given you any opinion on what degree typical male behavior is "innate" (caused by testosterone early in life when it's high, tapers off with age) vs "socialized" (caused by centuries of culture with male rule)? I'm not asking for you to be sure or definitive, I just saw you talk about "masculinized" depression on T and now I'm curious if you think being on T has given insight on other bio vs social things. If you don't feel comfortable speaking to it I understand also.

I actually paid a lot of attention to this when I transitioned, and found nothing particularly surprising, honestly. What I did discover in my personal experience pretty much follows what science has already told us, so:

- T causes higher libido for sure. Didn’t notice any difference in how I experience attraction, however, just in how often I got horny. So no changes in terms of how I looked at or felt attracted to other people, but changes in how my body functioned.

- The crying thing is definitely hormonal. “Men don’t cry” is less toxic masculinity and more just the way your hormones work. I’ve never been a guy for big waterworks but on testosterone crying was often just downright physically impossible. Not speaking emotionally, again, I could be incredibly sad and still just not produce any tears or trigger any kind of sobbing, even if I desperately needed the release. So there’s that. Contributes to the feeling of being “bottled up” and frustrated as well, because whatever hormones crying releases to ease distress, I couldn’t.

- When speaking about my masculinized depression, it has to be pointed out that I wasn’t more aggressive, I was just angry instead of sad. This was directed inwards, which made my self-harm tendencies worse. Everything that previously upset me and made me cry now made me angry instead WITHOUT the ability to cry to release it, but angry internally, not in a way where I’d be seeking out fights with others. In fact, I was way more docile when it comes to my relationships with other people, because I was emotionally more in-check thanks to my decreased dysphoria: being less dysphoric gave me more energy and time to deal with my mental problems, which led to me becoming less volatile in general. But in terms of depression, while it overall got better, I didn’t have any coping methods to deal with anger which I’d never had to cope with before, so I just kind of wanted to cut all the time, or punch myself, to release the build-up of frustration. I can see how this would turn into social/outward aggression in people who haven’t been taught to internalize their emotions to appear more palatable and well-mannered to others, see: men in general. But in terms of how the hormone alone functions, it doesn’t automatically make you a violent beast. It just makes you process upset in a different way from women, which I personally didn’t have the equipment to deal with at the time.

- I started testosterone quite young at 20, which meant that I was still dealing with a lot of teenage-y moodswings. Testosterone stabilized my mood a shitload. Retrospectively I feel a lot of that was just my dysphoria chilling, because like I said that freed up a lot of my mental resources so I could work on my other issues, but my best friend noted at the time that the change was immediate and clear as day. I went from a very sensitive and easily upset person to your local enlightened guru who wouldn’t have given a shit if the world around me literally fell apart in flames. I don’t know at which point that stopped being more testosterone calming down my hormonal moodswings and when it started being just a part of my personality, but I’ve never gone back on that. So the jury’s out on how big of a deal testosterone as a hormone itself was and how much treating my dysphoria affected my general mental wellbeing, but I definitely did not feel as emotionally volatile on T as I did before T at the time that I started.

Honestly I’d say that most of male bullshit is male bullshit because of socialization, not due to hormones. T didn’t change my values or my personality, even if it sometimes changed the ways I reacted physically. Even then, though, the things it did change like arousal and anger would be incredibly difficult for a young kid to deal with when entering puberty, so where I already have compassion for young females going through that shit and where I understand them in terms of it, I do also offer my condolences to young males who are thrust into the midst of that shit at 12 instead of 20. It’s not easy. Figuring out how to navigate experiences that strong was tough both ways.

I can very confidently say that testosterone did not in fact make me horny enough to die from not getting laid (at you, incels), nor did it make me view women as objects (at you, porn gremlins), nor did it make me want to rape or murder anyone (at you, literal psychopaths), and so on and so on.

Basically anyone who excuses their behaviour by blaming testosterone for it is an irresponsible fuckwad. Male hormonal levels didn’t make me a beast incapable of human restraint and manners, and unless somebody proves the existence of sexed brains, I highly doubt that changes when the person in question is a natal male. What does change, though, is socialization.