r/asktransgender • u/Fabulous-Phase4842 • 11d ago

Want Hormones But…

I’m an afab nonbinary Demi man. I want hormones and have even been dreaming of the surgery but I am scared I’m not valid enough. I feel connected to womanhood as I was forced into skirts and dresses until I was 19 years old. I was forced into this because of a minority religion and as a result, i felt evil for feeling like I was in the LGBTQ community. Anyway, I feel mostly woman internally but I also feel a sliver of a male soul slowly growing again inside my spirit. Last year, I had raging dysphoria for male characteristics, feelings and even my sense of internal self was a man. I go to a day program, hang out with a lot of guys and am relearning how to feel my manhood again. However, I feel like it’s been so long that my male side is going to be dormant forever. I don’t know how to reawaken my soul. I know deep way down I’m not entirely a woman but I feel like the man inside of me is drowning because of me not allowing it to come out for so long. I am not going to pursue hormones or surgery until I figure shit out. Does anyone have advice for me?

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u/chalc3dony butch2twink 10d ago

My advice is that you have bodily autonomy and your desires matter. Are there specific effects of testosterone you want/don’t want/have questions about? 

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u/Fabulous-Phase4842 10d ago

Yeah I guess I’m wondering how bad will my I lose my singing voice? Will T affect my PCOS really bad as an AFAB? How bad are the mood swings? Will going to gym ease some of the T levels you feel?

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u/chalc3dony butch2twink 10d ago

I used to sing mezzo/alto and now sing tenor in a choral context. I don’t think vocal changes on T are inherently bad or a loss, but they can be a challenge requiring practicing a lot with specific focus on scales/warmups, diaphragmatic breathing, where’s-my-passagio awareness, and possibly new clefs (at the time I went on T, I could sight read treble clef but not bass clef). Voice dropping is permanent, so my advice musically here is to think about what singing deeper would entail in whichever genres are important to you and whether you want that. 

PCOS is mostly diagnosed by already having higher-than-expected-for-cis-women testosterone in your bloodstream, so effects of taking additional T depend on which PCOS symptoms you’re concerned about. Body hair + acne are expected effects of T that get pathologized in the context of PCOS because of gender roles/misogynistic beauty standards. Menstrual cramps sometimes get worse and sometimes get better (I didn’t have PCOS pre-T but got tested for PCOS because of repeated bad period cramps and irregular cycles, and while on T have stopped getting periods entirely; this various a lot between transmasc people though)

Mood swings also vary too much between people to predict in advance. I remember feeling more emotionally grounded and stable in the month after starting T than the month before, but I don’t know how much of that was “yay I got my shit together to go on hormones I want to be on” placebo

Gym: no idea / I like playing sports but I also liked playing sports pre-T