#which are estrogen patches

[nyaagolor]

[deadfo8]

a good time to reiterate that doctors who give transfem patients birth control as HRT get a thrashing for having not opened a book in the last decade and consequently putting their patients at undue risk

[genderqueerdykes]

I've heard smoking can harm the effects of estrogen, does this apply to nicotine in general or just smoking?

thank you so much for asking this question, this is an extremely important matter to discuss! smoking while taking estrogen HRT is highly discouraged for 2 reasons.

the first is that smoking (nicotine) has been shown to completely neutralize and eliminate the effects of estradiol altogether:

nicotine reduces the amount of circulating estrogen one has in their system, which can lead to menopause in many individuals.

the second reason is that smoking nicotine can increase risk of life threatening clotting disorders like stroke, heart attack and pulmonary embolism:

many folks are not informed of the fact that estrogen hrt can cause increased risk for pulmonary embolism and heart complications- this is why it's vital to make sure you get testing done by a professional to make sure what levels will be safe for your body, or what complications you may face if you have blood clotting or heart issues.

i can't find too many studies that disseminate different types of tobacco usage (chew, vape, patches, etc.) but it does in fact seem like the nicotine itself, no matter how it's administered, greatly affects one's estrogen levels.

overall, i would say it would be best to completely quit using nicotine if you are planning going on estrogen HRT. not only will you see more of the effects you're looking for, but you'll feel better in general, and have a way reduced risk of stroke and heart attacks. there's little to no point in taking a medication that will become completely useless once administered. i had a problem with smoking cigarettes for a while and i wish you the best if you do, yourself.

i hope this information has been helpful, thanks for stopping by! good luck out there

[agender-witchery]

I feel like every post that focuses on and celebrates the sexuality of transfems hyperfixates on gock and like. I get it, the majority of transfems are either pre-op or non-op, and yeah those people are so frequently excluded from even being allowed to celebrate sexuality and need representation because, hey, especially for the pre-op folks, that reassurance that you're desirable is needed. I should know, I used to be pre-op and I fucking hated it. I didn't get that reassurance when I needed it most, and I'm damned happy that people who do need it can get it now.

But now I'm post-op and like, what? I just get to feel even more excluded from that sort of celebration? It's mostly just all encompassing, like it is nearly the totality of what constitutes celebrating trans bodies, with a teeny tiny exception carved out for transmasc bodies which I am absolutely not qualified to have an opinion on, not even gonna try, and damn near nothing for post-op transfems.

The thing that gets me the most is porn. Sure, it contributes to the feeling of unwelcomeness that nearly every post that gets slapped across my dash is about The Gock, but I don't seek that out. I'm not out here looking for text posts about how cool gock is, I haven't had one for 7 years. But I seek out porn. And any time I see porn that depicts transfems, even when that porn isn't fetishizing transness, the thing that defines a transfem is her dick. Aside from literally one instance, I never see a girl with a scar on her abdomen, I never see a cross section of a pussy with no womb, I never see someone with two holes and an estrogen patch. It just isn't there.

And on one hand, it feels like I don't deserve to complain, that I'm lucky to have even gotten to have surgery, but on the other hand, fuck you! I get to complain about shit like this, I get to complain that the overall atmosphere of transfem sexuality necessarily including gock, I get to complain that this shit makes me feel like surgery was a mistake even though if I take a couple hours off social media and think hard about it, I don't have any real regrets, I get to complain that when transfem bodies are celebrated, that almost never seems to include my transfem body. I get to complain that trans representation doesn't represent me.

So fuck it. Neopussy Tuesday.

[amartianonmars]

I was really enamored with all the fem Dethklok designs I saw around but I myself have a very specific vision for each girl, all described under the cut.

Natalie 'Nat' Explosion: She's taller than the average woman at 5'11 and has maintained a strong build from high school field hockey (most high schools I know don't really do women's football). She doesn't really go too heavy on the makeup besides stage makeup besides her signature black lipstick (which is just an overused eyeliner pencil) for that 'demon gurgling blood' look

Pickles the Drummer: She left her house after her mother didn't accept her transition into womanhood and joined an all female glam metal band, and while she has left that behind she can't help to do her makeup like the good ol' days. Usually its 3 days old and just cleaned up with a fresh coat of lipstick, her black nail polish reapplied usually when Nat does hers. She's pretty tall at 5'8" but still only the third tallest in the group. Her womb tattoo is a play on Snakes N Barrel's (there's a 'snake' in my 'barrel' so to speak) and she wears low rise jeans and shirts she cut herself to show it off. While the estrogen has kept the 'male pattern baldness' gene at bay, she still a white woman with dreads so she is still balding .

Winona 'Winny' Murderface: She's the shortest female member at 5'5", and she has the Napoleon complex to match. She rarely showers and shaves (the hair keeps coming up in weird patches) and has five identical outfits she cycles through. She never wore makeup growing up as an ugly duckling, every attempt shut down by bullying classmates and a conservative grandpa who claimed she looked like an 'ugly harlot' so Murderface usually goes bare face. Though every once in a while, Pickles and Seeveya will find a missing tube of lipstick in her bathroom that she claims to have 'never seen before'. Despite her 'masculine' interests and pick me behavior, she has bad luck with men, though her interests don't really seem fixated on them (she's gay AND homophobic)

Seeveya Skwisgaard: It's not actually her name (Svea, meaning literally 'from Sweden' according to Google), she pronounced it when introducing herself and everyone made assumptions on how it was spelled until it was bastardized to hell and back and she's too deep into fame to change it by the time she made it to Dethklok. The tallest member over Nat, she stands at 6'0" and is essentially built like a Swedish supermodel with the ego to boot. While she likes to keep her hair short and her appearance androgynous, she is extremely self conscious of being perceived as masculine due to her strong facial features and her small chest. Her makeup style is specially curated over years of trial and error, and she wakes up extra early despite her drug and booze fueled partying to make sure she's still the most beautiful woman in the room.

Toki Wartooth: Toki is the second shortest member of Dethklok at 5' 7", though the way she carries herself makes her seem much shorter. She's not the makeup type and lacks the patience for nail polish, though her natural beauty gives her no need for it. Despite this she does play dress up with Seeveya's (very expensive) products from time to time (including secret makeover sessions with Winny) and does love fun accessories, especially if she makes them herself. Despite her cute interests and fun demeanor, her build is strong from years of working in building in her old country. Her being used to hard labor means that when she's pent up she's usually at the gym for a few hours to relieve stress. Otherwise she's building planes, making bracelets for her band sisters, or working on her model planes.

Charlotte 'Charles' Offdensen: She's 5'6" (5' 8" with the heels) and is usually seen with a power suit and business ready makeup no matter the time or hour, her bun as tight and high strung as she is. Her strong energy and confident voice makes her an opponent as a business woman, though her glasses seem to be missing, well, the glass? Her plain-Jane appearance overlook her as the threat she truly is on the battlefield.

[catboybiologist]

has anyone ever told you that you're perfect as a biological man and you should learn to love yourself as the man that you are????

so cw for discussions of transphobia and all that. So first off, yes, but I'm still trans. End of that discussion.

But anyways, I got this and a similar ask back to back, from either a transphobe or a troll making a weird joke. While the asks themselves are uninteresting, they made me want to talk about something that's been brewing in my head a while. And that's how the phrases "biological man" and "biological woman" make no goddamn sense, as a biologist. So I'm gonna use this ask as starting point to launch into that greater discussion- I'm not really responding to the asks itself, more dumping some thoughts I've had kicking around for a while. (Also sorry this blog is so transfemme language centered sometimes, I'm just writing from my perspective and don't want to exclude anyone I'm sorry. The rest of this post will be from a transfemme perspective but applies to transmascs as well for testosterone and other elements of ftm transition).

The reason it doesn't make sense to me is like, what exactly do you mean by biological? You're describing a massive biological system, and all of its components. So let's dissect what you could mean by "biological".

Obviously you're not talking about the entire human biochemical system, because biology includes our thoughts and behavior. So if someone socially or identity transitions, we're already eliminating some biological factors from what we consider as "biological" here.

Soft tissue secondary sex characteristics are easily acquired by HRT. Shit, I have some breasts growing already, and I'm 4.5 weeks in. So that can't be what you're talking about.

So maybe you're talking functional genetics? Well if we wanna talk that way, we gotta talk about gene regulation. The entire point of taking HRT is the change patterns in gene expression across the body, suppressing genes associated with masculine secondary sex characteristics and promoting genes associated with feminine secondary sex characteristics. Estrogen, like any hormone, is a signalling molecule that is trafficked between cells and across the body. Its job is to kick off a network of downstream signals that carry out a variety of individual functions. So in terms of active genes, a trans person on HRT will functionally be the sex of their target gender.

Okay okay, maybe for some reason you don't care if they're off or on, if you have a gene that has the potential to make you male, you're a man, dammit! Well, as mentioned before, everyone has the genes required to give you secondary sex characteristics of either sex. So under that definition, everyone is biologically both a man and a woman at the same time. And also biologically cancer. Not "biologically has cancer", biologically IS cancer. Also, we're all every organ all at once everywhere on our body. Changing patterns in gene expression are how one organ differentiates from another, and how many visible traits arise. As mentioned earlier, this includes many genes responsible for secondary sex characteristics.

But chromosomes! Y chromosome is a man! The only reason the X and Y chromosomes have relevance to sex determination is due to the Sry gene, which is linked to the Y chromosome. Why is this the case? Well, your chromosomes are paired. Normally, pairs of chromosomes are the same size and have the same genes. This is helpful, because it means you can have two copies of every gene- if one becomes nonfunctional, you have a backup, or you can express multiple spicy variants of the same gene. Somewhere in our evolutionary history, one of these pairs of chromosomes experienced a large scale deletion, causing many of these genes to be missing. It's fine if you have the backup copies on the other chromosome- but some kind of patch needs to be developed to help make sure that, on average, most offspring have at least one copy of the full chromosome. So, the individuals that linked the Sry gene to the Y chromosome, the chopped-up version of the chromosome, passed down some offspring. But there's nothing intrinsic about why it has to be this way- most animals don't have chromosomal sex determination at all. Even in mammals its fairly common for an X chromosome to grab the Sry gene, creating a phenotypic male with an XX karyotype. It's an evolutionary patch, nothing more, and a rule that is frequently broken. And if we want to talk about evolutionary patches being biological determinism… well then let's start talking about how vitamin C deficiency is the "biologically mandated" state of the human. And besides, chromosome structure is really mostly relevant for how it functionally affects gene expression, and we already talked about how gene expression is changed by HRT here.

Alright, alright dammit. I'm talking about the genitals, dammit. If you have a penis you're a man! Okay great. Tell me if you would classify post-SRS women as "biological" women then. Also, we're really starting to reach here.

Fine! I'm talking about bone structure and bone structure alone! I mean yeah, some elements of bone structure will always remain in someone that's had testosterone in their system long enough- its rock deposits in your body after all, its difficult to reverse. But some don't! Even adults on transfemme HRT experience hip widening, changes in height, and other changes in their bones (they just take a LONG time, and I've often ranted about the massive amount of misinformation regarding how long HRT takes to show its full effects). Additionally, there's plenty of surgeries for facial structures- is FFS the true hallmark of a "biological" woman? And also… no matter what metric you start drawing lines on here, you're gonna end up excluding some cis women as well.

To be abundantly clear, NONE of this is to say that you aren't valid if you aren't medically transitioning. What I'm doing here is pointing out that "biological" is a useless, overexpansive, arbitrary adjective that, even using the most transphobic definitions, still includes most trans people. The line is drawn… somewhere in here, to them. And more often than not, it will be drawn wherever excludes the most trans people, which will invariably exclude some cis people, and they'll all eat each other alive.

The reality is that "man" and "woman" are useful conventions that can be generally applied to classify most people into one category or another. And that's not unique to gender, it's literally how language works. As with pretty much any linguistic classification, its observational, not prescriptive. When thinking up of names for animals, we don't think up of a definition first, we see a group of animals that share similar traits and then think up of a name that will represent that species. But then, if we find more edge cases later, or an edge case becomes more prominent, we either adjust the definition or subdivide the group further with accurate terminology. Imagine if, around the time humanity discovered weasels, we made a definition of weasels that only included the European Mink. Then we found the least weasel, and people started crusading about how its "not biologically a weasel" and "defend weaselkind". It's just so… arbitrary. Where it begins and ends is up to us as a society, and linguistics, meaning that "biological" as an adjective here isn't doing much.

What is a woman? Well, some combination of the factors above, and many, many more I didn't talk about here. It's a classification cluster of people exhibiting certain traits that is not easily reducible to a simple adjective. And guess what, so is literally anything we see in the world. What is a race? What is a nationality? What is a species? What is continent? There are useful, simple definitions for each of these things- and those definitions are helpful on a first pass! But once you start to examine it more closely, that utility breaks down, and you have to get more nuanced. Which is exactly what happens for trans people, but for some reason, people aren't willing to have that conversation in the same way we're able to have quirky debates over whether or not Australia counts as a continent or an island.

I want to develop these thoughts further at some point, but I hope this is at least a good summary of my perspective on all this, as a biology grad student, and I hope that some people find utility and comfort in my explanation!

[dee-the-red-witch]

how did you get past “just being gnc”? asking for me, i’ve been in that mindset on and off for years. if you don’t mind sharing

I... okay, look, that's like a question with two other subtextual ones rolled up into it in a donut all at once. And I have an all-day road trip tomorrow, so I don't have a ton of spoons to spare, but I'm still gonna try and tackle all three. And I'm gonna hit the subtext questions first, because they're important and play into it. 1. What's a good way to come out as trans?

There fucking isn't one. For anyone of any gender. There is no perfect way for anyone to come out. It will always be awkward, there's always going to be some kind of price to pay, and you are never going to know that full price up front. It's also just about always less than the price of NOT coming out, though. 2. What's a good way for *ME* to come out as trans?

Okay, this one ties into my own story some, but the shorter version? I don't know. I can't tell you. Because I don't know your details and what's going to work for you or how. What I can tell you is that nobody is going to magically guess it for you, no one's going to give you permission to do it, and you're gonna have to start it yourself. There's folks that will absolutely help later down the line, but you have to initiate and start things, even if it's babysteps. Case in point... 3. ENOUGH SUBTEXT, DENICE, how'd YOU get past just being a guy?

It's complicated. I'd been in denial since the late 90's. so there was a LOT of personal bullshit, and art, and other work, and everything, packed up in and around my gender like mad. Like a wad of gum with a bunch of other stuff stuck to it- and sometimes when a piece finally got pulled free, part of the gum came up with it. Bad analogy, probably. Still. When I finished writing, and laying out, and publishing my first book (and practically screaming HI! IT ME! AM TRANS! in the afterword and other bits, because that's what happens when I write a historical horror novel with a GNC-transmasc-ish protag) I felt empty. Hollow. For months. I was trying and struggling to get a second book off the ground, and having this weight start settling over my head. Only it was like three months early for my usual denial ideation episode. Meanwhile, on facebook, my friend J who was dealing with the tail end aftershocks of a nasty divorce from an even nastier asshole. And of course she was going off about a very rational distrust and dislike of Men and some of their behaviors in particular, and I just had that goddamn black wave of ideation set in on me in full and was mentally internally screaming "But I'm not a fucking man!" and I did the one thing I'd never done in twenty plus years of dysphoria, denial and ideation. I said it out loud. Nobody in the apartment to even hear me. But I said it. And repeated it. And so help me, that depression/denial/ideation wave that I knew was going to end with me hurting myself or worse started immediately fading. I started switching my pronouns over to they/them on my social medias almost immediately. Like I said. Baby steps. But it was enough- one of my partners noticed the update and flat out asked me about it the next time she was over, and that's how I ended up coming out as nonbinary to both her and the rest of my immediate family. And a few days later online all over as well. Realizing I was a girl took a bit, because enby felt right, but not all the way right. I'd started t-blockers already because I knew I had dysphoria issues (just no idea how serious they were) and then started E. All of which was made easier by being in an informed-consent state and having a doctor who had zero issues with prescribing them, and more than a little bit of a mad scientist nature. Three days into Estrogen I just had this one weird moment of driving and hitting a sunny patch of road and suddenly I was happy and laughing in a way I'd NEVER been. That's when it started really clicking for me. When I realized that what had been holding me back was a lot of internalized shame and conditioning that I needed to unpack and get rid of. That's all where I started. (and yes, it meant a whole extra round of comings out and updates and everything, but well, here I am.) I hope that wall of text helps some? But yeah. Take baby steps. Things move from there as you figure it out. But you can't figure it out while you're holding yourself back.

[kencoded-kengirl]

OK IM GOING TO POST A HOT TAKE NOW!!! i think the sibs were actually perfectly capable of inheriting the company. and i think a lot of you guys give logan’s shitty rhetoric with regard to his children being unqualified, like, way more credit than it deserves.

“roman is a moron” “there is something wrong with roman” well, actually, no and no. if asgarov and matsson taught us anything it’s that roman is actually quite politically capable. also, he’s great at delegating and managing people (see jamie laird and even gerri). the second criticism also is literally just very thinly veiled homophobia, it’s genuine nonsense. it’s a reason for logan not to choose roman, not a reason why roman isn’t capable.

“kendall isn’t made for the world” or any variation of “kendall wouldn’t be good at the CEO job” is once again patently false. whenever kendall is tasked with managing waystar it is usually to great success. his alliance with stewy in lifeboats. living+. vaulter when he acquired it and when he gutted it. his friendship with naomi pierce which watered the ground for both PGN deals. there is little evidence that kendall would be fine if not great at CEO, and the fact that he’s “not a killer” is arguably a benefit and not a loss.

even something like “shiv being a woman is a minus” is just a complete lie. it is not a minus for a rich and palatable white woman to run a company like waystar. logan says this to her and then promptly spends the rest of the season begging her desperately to lend her estrogen to his cause, because PGN want a woman CEO, or because waystar is entrenched in a sexual abuse scandal! there is a solid patch of the show where roman and kendall’s favorite shot at shiv is to say that she’s only being considered because of her gender! after season 1 there is almost unanimous agreement that her womanhood is actually a plus.

it baffles me that some people take these criticisms for granted when logan is the father in the Watch These Kids Get Abused By Their Father! show. almost every “reason” he names for why his children can’t lead the company is just a tactic to belittle and hurt them. it is so fucking hurtful to label roman a freak because of his sexual preferences, just like it’s hurtful to say that kendall is incapable after he’s spent his whole life training to be capable, or to reduce siobhan to her sex. “well, the siblings are all incompetent, it never could have been them—” bullshit! the only person who told us that is the person who was determined to keep it from the second they started to want it!

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

(image description: the first image shows several profile drawings of drow, titled "drow skin color based on snail consumption". the drow shown are a matriarch, chamberlain, baby, minstrel, and a more average drow representing everyone else. The matriarch, chamberlain, and minstrel all have colorful red and blue patches on their noses, eyelids, and upper lips. The chamberlain and average drow have almost the same skin color, being a warm-toned purple. the matriarch has more vivid blue toned purple skin, and the baby and minstrel have paler, more pink skin, with the minstrel's skin being even more warm-toned and covered in freckles. all of them have white hair, facial whiskers, very long ears, and golden eyes.

the second image is a colored sketch of a snail with pale blue-grey flesh and a grey spiral shell with some pointed spikes along it, as well as blue and white speckles. end description.)

I've been working on worldbuilding details for my drow! I'm renaming the wandering amab drow minstrels instead of just wanderers, and more importantly I've decided that domesticated cave snails are a major source of protein in the drow diet. A special breed of this snail is even utilized as medicine to trigger the natural estrogen boost of a normal afab drow transitioning into a matriarch. Like naked mole rats, this change can happen on its own if certain environmental factors are met, but the snails contain some chemicals that can cause the change to happen in a more controlled and efficient manner. The matriarch snails also have more blue pigments in their mucus gland compared to the regular meat snails.

like the real life pigment of tyrian purple, these snails are used to create vivid blue-purple dyes, with the most vivid dyes being reserved for the matriarch's clothes. and like flamingos, drow gain their purple skin color by eating a lot of these snails.

this is why babies and minstrels have the least purple skin. babies are only purple from a pigment transfer in the womb and from any excess pigment they might gain from breastfeeding, but will become much more purple when they're old enough to eat snail meat. minstrels are wandering outcasts, so their purple skin usually fades and they only manage to have any purple color when they occasionally pay a visit to other drow caverns, trading stories and goods from outside for a short rest amongst their own kind.

and sometimes a night with a matriarch, if she's willing. matriarchs give birth to all the other drow, being a eusocial species. amab drow are less common, so they're more restricted in their roles and expected to become chamberlains to the matriarchs, with their presence also helping to maintain allegiances between populations. minstrels are the amab drow who decided to abandon this way of life and do their own thing. but since their wandering also allows them to visit caverns much further off, they're still very important, providing genetic diversity, stories, trade, and news to every population they visit.

drow society changes a lot over time, becoming less reclusive as equality and intermingling between people species becomes more and more common. eventually, it is normal for drow to travel outside the caverns in their adult years just to seek education and familiarize themselves with other cultures. as a result, minstrels go from being outcasts who are begrudgingly tolerated to more accepted members of drow society, though their instinct to wander never really goes away.

I'm in the process of writing a new story that takes place a couple centuries before my main story, which will show the life of a drow protagonist back when the various people species were still wary of interacting with each other, so I will very directly be exploring the ways drow society changed over that time period.

[sayingyournames]

nobody asked but @greenvlvetcouch and I were talking about gnc sirius and anyway - here's some mismatched trans-wolfstar head canon in which one or both of them is trans:

sirius doesn't bind when it's just him & remus, unless they're leaving the house and even then, he'd rather wear one of remus's big sweaters. his chest is small enough and he's not really dysphoric about it, and remus will sometimes watch his tits move when they walk around target and that - that is gender in its simplest form.

every time they go to a thrift store (they do this often, it's cheap enough that sirius really can just buy anything that catches his eye) remus will look through the skirts and hold them up for Sirius's approval. they share them, sirius has to wear platforms to keep them from dragging the ground.

remus is dysphoric about his chest, but some nights he'll sleep shirtless and sirius will kiss his sternum, ghost a touch along the bottom of remus's low, full chest and remus will let him - "feels good when you do it, feels right"

trans femme sirius wears cropped tank tops and thick layered necklaces, rings on every finger. doesn't want to change his name, doesn't care what pronouns people use for him but she likes to be called 'remus's girlfriend.' their estrogen dose is low - she prefers the pills to injections, and for a brief time wears estrogen patches which James initially thought were nicotine patches and congratulates her on quitting cigarettes.

remus doesn't know what to call it but they don't want anyone to gender them, ever. they want to wear loose linen dresses and high-waisted corduroys and be Sirius's 'darling' his 'baby' his anything but his 'boyfriend' but also, deeply, wants to be his spouse

[pumpkinsy0]

T4T Two-Bit and Tim bonding (my favorite messy platonic besties with benefits)

everything about these two starts w t’s🙄🙄

idk what exactly u guys wanna hc them to transition to so ill just make this as general as i can as i usually do, just swap the pronouns if u gotta🙏🏽🙏🏽

•i already hc two bit as chubby and tim is decently buff, they found their own way to change up their chest without getting top surgery and theyre equally impressed w each other

•if they do bind their chest, they (or at least one of em) uses bandages to wrap em up (which im sure u shouldnt do that, but look theyre kinda desperate here)BUT they use the excuse if “patching em uo after a fight” to do it if its like in the middle if the day

•let tim do jobs for money to get surgery and fund a bit of money for the both of em,,,,,tell me yall see the vision

•lets b honest, they BOTH steal the hormones that they need, tim can get some of his gang to help and two is just good at stealing, period lmao

•when they hook up i dont think they really talk about each others bodys, maybe like a passing comment, but even when its changing they just, let the other b and they like that

•i feel like what they love about each other is that they dont HAVE to explain themselves, they never did, so when it comes to both of em being trans, they rlly appreciated that part especially, they wanted to b themselves without worrying about their relationship going to hell and they found that w each other, they told the other and nothing changed n they liked that

•ok look i said that but im giggling at the idea of them after hooking up and theyre like “sooooo anything knew w u” as pillow talk

•theres been times where tims been held in those gendered cells when he gets arrested and two bit WILL make it his mission to get him out there fast, yes tim can hold his own, but its more to deal w the mentality of it all

•tim doesnt like admitting that he hates it bc he feels like it makes him look weak but two doesnt rlly care about that, hes getting u outta there king🙏🏽🙏🏽

•im pretty sure theres estrogen and testosterone gel, and if they were to use one of those, two bit will rub it onto tim and b like “hey there, lol😏😏” and tim just grumbles under his breath cause mannnn hurry UP ur enjoying this too much

•they have this tree they carve into that just measures their heights to see how much it changes, its either that or they could use it to just generally measure other dimensions on em (PAUSE)

[tallangrycockatiel]

I can track my cycle by my beard growth.

I've been feeling some sort of way about this for a while and apparently that's tipped over into "make a tumblr post about it".

It sounds real simple:

Everyone has some level of both estrogen and testosterone

For those that have them, menstrual cycles are controlled by estrogen level cycles. Higher estrogen builds up the uterine lining. Lower estrogen then causes it to shed.

When estrogen levels are lower, testosterone has relatively larger effects.

Testosterone drives facial hair growth.

I have a menstrual cycle and nothing hormonally unusual going on (afaik). So, obviously, I can keep an eye on my facial hair and think "Ah. It approaches." when I notice it growing more than usual.

I can track my cycle by my beard growth.

This makes perfect logical sense, and yet my brain has been quietly boggling over it for weeks. I am nearly thirty and only put this together because I decided to stop plucking my chin hairs (which I've been growing since puberty! Because it's normal!) just to see what would happen.

This is something about shitty sex ed and something about binaries being fake and something about going a little insane over getting good masc gender feelings from having a visible patch of facial hair now when the fact that I have it means that it's perfectly normal for cis women. Jfc can we stop being so weird about bodies.

[ftm-radio]

therapist: I know estrogen has patches, but is testosterone just injections, or...?

me: oh well you see, testosterone comes in the form of injections, patches, OR gel, which is the kind that I want because— [proceeds to ramble about hormone balances and testosterone highs and lows for like a full minute]

therapist: wow you have clearly done your research!!!

me: haha yeah 😊

therapist: you know, I think you're definitely ready for HRT, we just have to get you to actually see a doctor

me: haha yeah 🥲

[metamatar]

i appreciate ur semi pedantic additions!! i almost always learn things from them. i am autistic though so pedantry rarely bothers me, but!! i do still really appreciate your additions wrt fruit picking, the state of open insulin, etc, and i think they're important to add and you phrase those additions in ways that don't undermine the arguments of the original posts which is a rare skill!!

im cursed with can't let people be wrong on the internet in front of me.

i've mentioned this before but i find the relationship many people have with technology both fascinating and frustrating. tech is simultaneously capable of all the miracles in the ad copy but also all those miracles were actually very easy. there's very little sense of the relative extent to which problems are easy or hard, what counts as a breakthrough and whether those breakthroughs are even generalisable to other problems.

i dont think these really require expert knowledge – say autonomous driving – if you have played with the camera in your phone and then break down all the decisions a driver makes while you drive has you'd immediately understand why that is much harder than an aircraft autopilot and why a camera only sensor suite is dangerous.

people often confuse the actual availability of bathtub-ish hrt with a hypothetical bathtub insulin. think about delivery – you can get birth control in so many forms, injectable, oral, patches. insulin still has to be injected! this is suggestive! looking at how synthetic ethinylestradiol (most common estrogen) is produced vs a biologic like insulin is produced immediately makes clear why these are different problems.

to be clear this relationship is one manufactured by breathless venture capital and the increasing enclosure of science and technological literacy behind paywalls. tech journalism is really bad and basically about access and selling products now.

[catboybiologist]

I stumbled upon a surprisingly recent study on 2 methods of estradiol administration, and the results are baffling, demonstrating transdermal estradiol correlating with a significantly higher decrease in androgen levels when compared with oral-sublingual estradiol. bonkers results, but I'm no biologist, I got no clue if it's quite as "big if true" as it seems

thanks, and hope it's as exciting as I think it is!

https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/8/8/bvae108/7691571

This has generally been known. Any transdermal method is better than sublingual, which is why injections and patches are popular. The usual reasoning for this, however, is that you can increase your effective dose more without stressing out the liver. The method of T suppression from that point is thought to be through pituitary signaling.

I gave the paper a quick buzz through but not an extensive read. Increased suppression at the same circulating estradiol level is interesting. The estrone might matter, delivery to the pituitary might matter. I'll think about it. Imma see if I can get a sense of it based on that paper and estrogen signalling in general.

[scriptlgbt]

Hey, I have a character in my story, ftm trans, and I read that a lot of trans men never stop taking T, once they start. But I also read that a lot of the changes (if not all) coming from T will not change back if the ovaries are not present/active anymore. So now I‘m wondering: is it true that most trans men take T for their whole lives, and would it be realistic if my MC still took T around 20 years after his transition and everything? Or would it be more realistic if he had stopped?

To answer the main questions first:

It is definitely realistic and normal for someone to continue to take T their entire lives. The effects of T are ongoing, many being reversible and changing, like the effects of any hormone that runs through our endocrine (hormone) systems.

If someone stopped taking T but still had ovaries, it is typical that this would be similar to the effects of a trans woman taking estrogen, only, a bit of a longer path to get there. A lot of the things that estrogen will not change for trans women who have already gone through a testosterone-dominant puberty, will also be similar to what permanent changes occur for those who initially had an estrogen-dominant puberty, then took testosterone, then stopped taking testosterone. There are some things that are variable (like fertility, which is very understudied for trans people in general) but the gist is pretty similar. Things like skin texture, fat redistribution, libido, etc, are often very impermanent. Voices can deepen, but they don't necessarily go back without other interventions. A lot of body parts may grow but not shrink to the same degree.

If someone stopped taking T but did not have any estrogen-producing part of their endocrine system, it is typical that they will still need hormones. Going without either T or estrogen can be really exhausting. (Fun fact though: your body odour is pretty much stinkless, or so I've heard.)

I wish there were any concrete guide I could recommend that lists permanent and impermanent changes to give you a better idea of this, but all the ones I've come across are a bit off. (Like saying that taking hormones makes you infertile. It can make you less fertile, but that doesn't mean it's reliable birth control, and should not be used as such.) Your best bet is to look up as many as you can and compare and contrast the common ones, and google any that vary or are left out of some but not others.

More of a general point:

I think a major thing that a lot of people gloss over is that "transition" is not some before and after thing. There is no set, universal, beginning and end to it. There are many, many moving parts to it, that change dramatically between individuals. Someone could have socially transitioned 13 years ago but have an 88 year old grandmother who supports them but doesn't fully get it because grandma never got internet, and they're okay with that because she's 88 and terminally ill and they know the love is there. (This hypothetical is about me.)

Someone could want to go on hormones for just enough to get a few of the permanent changes they wanted and then go off of it because they enjoy the weight distribution of estrogen.

In far too great numbers, there are also people who go off of hormones because they no longer have access for some reason. Poverty, moving and not being able to find a new doctor, testosterone being a listed controlled substance, supply issues, pharmacists who "lost" the prescription (multiple times), dosage issues, Trans Broken Arm Syndrome, dealing with health issues in the reproductive system that cis doctors have no experience with, inability to access clean and appropriately sized syringes, needles, and a sharps bin, not being able to do injections after insurance stopped covering the gel or the patches, etc. (I have personally experienced most of these.)

Any kind of gender transition is not uniform. It is a mix and match to figure out what feels right for the person doing it. Sometimes external factors like discrimination and poverty can limit what is possible for us, and that sucks. But what we choose as far as names, pronouns, surgeries, hormones, all of that, is ours.

Everyone is different.

-mod nat