tl;Dr, it is quite possible that T will be an option for you, with adequate medical supervision.
Personally, no (I am FtM binary with fairly standard plumbing) but I have a friend who has PCOS and takes T, so it’s definitely an option for some people. You would want to make sure you were working with a trans-friendly gynecologist, and you might also want to be seeing an endocrinologist to make sure you didn’t run into issues not related to reproductive health. My understanding is that taking T tends to suppress production of estrogen and progesterone, so starting T might actually calm everything down for you, but it’s also the kind of thing where your specific needs may be unrelated to anyone else’s experience.
Also, I talked to a gynecological surgeon who works with a lot of transmasc people about the long-term effects of T on my ovaries, and she said that it was really no big deal, and it would probably reduce my risk of ovarian cancer. (Apparently anything that stops ovulation reduces the risk of ovarian cancer). It may be a different situation with PCOS, and I didn’t ask about fertility, but it sounded like the ovaries don’t care about T. She said there are some genital tissues that can respond poorly to being deprived of estrogen in the long run, but in a “this is uncomfortable” way, not a “this is bad for your overall health” way, and that can be treated with topical estrogen (which doesn’t affect overall hormone levels).
However, there are reasons why microdosing T might not be what you want, even if you really don’t want a huge amount of masculinization. My endocrinologist told me that everyone needs a minimal level of either estrogen or testosterone to maintain bone density, and transmasc people will do fine with either as the dominant hormone, but if the dose of T is too low, it will suppress estrogen production without replacing its benefits for bone health. That creates approximately the osteoporosis risk of a postmenopausal cis woman. I know microdosing is considered appropriate by some doctors, but I personally trust my endocrinologist on this one. He has a lot of trans patients, but he also deals with endocrine conditions specifically related to bone density, among other things, so I think he is qualified to know what is necessary for bone health, and to make a good call on whether it’s worth adjusting HRT for that reason. He is the most chill about gender-affirming care of any doctor I have ever had, so I don’t think he’s just saying it because he doesn’t understand trans care. The range that’s appropriate for bone density also goes pretty low, and it’s possible to target that zone (at least, with injections it is; I don’t know how other delivery systems are customized).
And you might not actually need to keep the lowest possible level to achieve your goals. I think people tend to overestimate the speed and suddenness of masculinization on T. It’s like cis-male puberty, in that it takes time, and you pass through intermediate stages. (I have never heard of anyone going to bed one night with peach fuzz and waking up with a full beard, for example). It was at least a year before I personally got to the point where I could no longer easily present female, and a lot longer before it became actually impossible to hide the fact that I take T. And a lot of my friends have been taking T at a higher dose than I do for many years without getting the level of results I have. So if your goal is to have increased masculinization without going all the way to looking like a cis guy, taking a standard dose for just a year or two and then stopping might be your best bet, rather than microdosing for an extended period and risking bone issues later on. My understanding is that loss of bone density can sometimes be reversed, but it’s difficult, and there is generally a lot of pain and inconvenience involved in diagnosis and treatment. It can be monitored with bone scans, and probably would be with microdosing T, but still, I personally would think really hard about whether the advantages of microdosing outweighed the risks. If you really hate a standard dose, microdosing might be worth it, but it’s not the kind of thing you would know in advance. You may find you actually like the high end of the range best.
A doctor is the person to tell you what your options are, of course, so take all that with a grain of salt. But if it were me, I would look into T before committing to therapy to get your existing equipment to do it’s job, since I think the two types of hormone therapy would be mutually exclusive. (If you are taking T, you want to be outside the recommended hormone levels for cis women, so taking treatments meant for cis women would be undesirable).
uhhhhm how do you feel about it, OP? i feel like these open ended questions are kind of hard to approach without a little more context… like yea, beauty expectations on anyone, men included, are bad. so like… do you wanna talk about a particular aspect, the effects on trans men specifically, how it affects passing, or what…? or, tell us what inspired you to ask this question
Apologies, I am not sure how everything works, I haven’t tries to post since I was on reddit, and they had the crossposting I couldn’t figure out here.
I think some people may be concerned about my lack of post history. I swear I’m a lemmy lurker for 8 months now, but I saw this girl that could use help, and you guys are the best people I could think of to share it to. She hasn’t even shared this gofundme with me, I happened across it on a Twitter post and saw it didn’t have any activity.
I’d like to give people the benefit of doubt, it may be because several trans people have posted for aid in trans related lemmy communities recently and have been helped out. But even if it’s not a scam it’s a good reminder to always be vigilant about who you send money to if you don’t personally know them.
Probably not the person you might want answering this, but I’ll share my two cents anyway:
I believe men are somehow shit outta luck if not conforming to the strong, tall, muscular, athletic and handsome ideal that seems to be peak masculinity. Although there seems to be an improvement on that front. Further normalising the androgynous look is going to help a lot of transmasc people feel less anxiety about passing. Not in the least because some of these aspects about the general beauty standard for men are unrealistic, even for cis men.
As for me, I’m more than happy to contribute to normalise the androgynous look. I’ve never been happier with my appearance than since I’ve been experimenting with incorporating more feminine traits. Growing my hair out, getting a more feminine haircut, dyeing my hair, braiding my hair, removing body hair, styling eyebrows, that sort of thing. Oh, and most important of all, just doing all of this while never elaborating on it. It’s always just “hey this is my new thing, I will not be taking questions on this”.
I feel like men should not be denied those sorts of thing while still being considered men. And all of us should be free to pursue our own beauty standards. Now to make society submit to those truths…
I’m a middle-aged, straight cis man and always believed that, but as I’ve aged I’ve also found out that a lot more women were attracted to me than I ever knew.
That old bit of clichéd advice is true:
Be attractive. Don’t be unattractive.
Play up your good sides. Don’t emphasize the ugly sides.
Sometimes you have to let it go, accept yourself, and find out who your people are.
All that said I’m tall and strong. I don’t deny either white nor male privilege. I don’t think of myself as handsome but others thankfully disagree. And I’m very fat, not at all athletic. I’m not the easy ideal at all. But I’m not the antithesis of it either.
I’ve also known some truly hideous men who were able to consistently get sexual attention when they wanted it.
yea i used to be on those, was never a fan of all the waste they produced. still, testosterone is testosterone. my protip for those is to open em with scissors lol, tearing them always made getting the gel out a pain in the ass. again, ymmv depending on what gel packets you get specifically
The main reason I’ve been on the gel packs is because I wanted to start out with a lower dose than normal and they don’t have pumps for 25mg. It’s a lot easier with the packet to measure out approximately half and take that.
I’m hoping to increase my dose to fifty at my Drs appointment tomorrow (very nervous about the increase but also not). I would much prefer to use a pump than the packets.
I agree with the scissors part. They’re very annoying to open by hand.
Also, it’s very nice to see somebody else on here. Welcome!
Thanks! Ive been struggling with depression alot more than usual recently so im hoping it does the same for me. A positive is that My reelmagik stp came in the mail the other day and im enjoying it so far! Im waiting for my adhesive sheets to come in though…
Yeah unfortunately the one I posed about is too short as well, but you get what you can take with trans man rep.
Pleeeease comment on whatever you want. This community needs more engagement, doesn’t matter how old the post is. I’m happy to reply to anyone’s posts and comments on here.
Yeah, the arc was good in yours, but I kind of want more. For sure, I was super excited when I found BRtR in my library, I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a trans man in any manga.
Haha, alright, I’ll keep that in mind! Just not used to the slower places yet.
I think the mechanics are the same as how it was explained to me for E (but I’ll happily stand to be corrected by someone with direct experience).
Your existing body fat doesn’t get redistributed. Rather, the distribution pattern of new body fat changes over that 6-month period of time.
If your weight remained perfectly stable then this wouldn’t cause any visible changes, but in the real world we’re constantly gaining and losing fractions of a pound over the course of the day.
Over time, you’ll eventually burn through the body fat in places where it isn’t building up anymore and gain it where it does. You can accelerate this process by deliberately burning off your old body fat, but large swings in body weight in a short period of time are generally considered to be unhealthy for a number of reasons.
Just keep working slowly toward your ideal and you’ll get there!
Get any sort of regular exercise, even if it’s just a few minutes walk every other day.
Try to get to bed early enough that you usually don’t need an alarm to wake up in time.
Grab a scale and any sort of weight-tracker app that can estimate your caloric balance over a period of two or three weeks. (I’m using play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.cachapa… and this is my 2023 holiday bump:
It’s way easier to add one or two data points to the graph every day than to count calories and estimate your burn rate, and the long baseline better captures your overall habits and averages out any variance in hydration.
Set a reasonable goal. A caloric deficiency of just 200 per day (the green line through my graph) will shave off 15 pounds a year.
Stay hydrated!
Be patient with yourself. Small changes in diet and exercise are probably all that’s needed to put you on track, and occasional indulgences (like the five-pound Halloween candy binge visible in my graph XD) are just blips in the trend line of your habits.
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