I wonder how many recent trans people tried/considered doubling down on their assigned sex (eg males taking more testosterone) instead first. Maybe (for some people) either end of gender spectrum is comfortable and being in the middle feels bad¿ Anybody know? Don’t want to ask my friends because this Q will certainly anger them
If it worked, sounds potentially compatible with whatever the inverse(s) of agender is/are? Can at least say that many cisgender people get hormone therapy when they aren’t getting what they would like out of their hormones (i.e., menopause, low testosterone, etc). Hormones do useful things, and having them miscalibrated relative to your preferences can be unpleasant.
It’s also not uncommon to try to ‘double down’ on a quality you’re repressing, i.e., if someone’s actively trying to be their assigned sex, they may in fact try particularly hard to conform to it, consciously or otherwise. Even if not repressed, I know I’ve deliberately answered a few challenges in life where I discovered ‘this is particularly hard for me’ with ‘then I will apply additional effort to achieving it’, and I’m sure I’ve also done it subconsciously.
Hey, Luke. I don’t know if I’m still your friend, but I’m not angered, and I’ll bite—plenty of people I know have tried this. Joining the military is common, although I have no idea if this is to effect hypermasculinity or not (most of my trans friends are dmab.) Janae Marie Kroc is probably the most extreme example I can name, but I expect if you find a forum for exmilitary trans folk somewhere you’ll be able to find a lot more data on this.
I think I could argue that in the years I knew you personally (like 2015 to 2017) I was trying to do this in some kind of way. LK was one of the first people I publicly floated my name to—we were out running around campus, I don’t know if you were still dating at the time. I have absolutely no idea if either of you care. N=1.
They are, consciously or not, trying to hide in the closet. This is not the worst idea anyone’s ever had, especially in a hostile environment.
I appreciate that you’re still working in an environment I gave up on ever making progress in. I just...wasn’t equal to it. I hope you’re well.
Hey!!! Thanks for replying. But did you or anyone you know consider chemical cisgenderization? Or any mention of such in the forums? I would it expect it to be a much stronger effect than eg joining the military. Although I hear it is common for men in the military to take steroids, so maybe there would be some samples there.… I imagine taking cis hormones is not an attractive idea, because if you dislike the result then you’re worse off than you started.
(Oh and we were still together then. LK has child now, not sure how that affects the equation.)
“Chemical cisgenderization” is usually just called “detransition.” To do it, you stop taking hormones. Unless you’ve had the appropriate surgeries (which most of us haven’t because it’s very expensive) your body will do it by itself.
Transfeminine HRT consists of synthetic estrogen and an anti-androgen of some sort (usually spironolactone or finasteride.) Estrogen monotherapy, in higher doses, is coming more into vogue now that more has been published that suggests it’s more effective.
Anyway, I know some people who have tried. I’m told the dysphoria comes right back, worse than ever. I know at least one (AMAB nonbinary) person who actually needed to take low-dose T after their orchiectomy, although the dose was an order of magnitude less than what their body naturally produced, but that’s rather an exceptional case.
Actual desistance rates are on the order of a few percent*, and >90% of those are for reasons other than “I’m not actually trans.” [0]
Well there’s this frequently observed phenomenon where someone feels insecure about their gender, and then does something hypermasculine like joining Special Forces or becoming a cage fighter or something like that. They are hoping that it will make them feel confident of their birth-certificate-sex. Then they discover that nope, this does not work and they are still trans.
People should be aware that there are copious examples of people who are like—nope, still trans—after hoping that going hard on their birth-certificate-gender will work,
Ascertainment bias, of course, because we only see the cases where this did not work, and do not know exactly how many members of e.g. Delta Force were originally in doubt as to their gender. We can know it doesnt work sometimes.
I mean, the problem is if it works we won’t hear about such people—they just live happily ever after and don’t talk about uncomfortable period of their life.
I wonder how many recent trans people tried/considered doubling down on their assigned sex (eg males taking more testosterone) instead first. Maybe (for some people) either end of gender spectrum is comfortable and being in the middle feels bad¿ Anybody know? Don’t want to ask my friends because this Q will certainly anger them
If it worked, sounds potentially compatible with whatever the inverse(s) of agender is/are? Can at least say that many cisgender people get hormone therapy when they aren’t getting what they would like out of their hormones (i.e., menopause, low testosterone, etc). Hormones do useful things, and having them miscalibrated relative to your preferences can be unpleasant.
It’s also not uncommon to try to ‘double down’ on a quality you’re repressing, i.e., if someone’s actively trying to be their assigned sex, they may in fact try particularly hard to conform to it, consciously or otherwise. Even if not repressed, I know I’ve deliberately answered a few challenges in life where I discovered ‘this is particularly hard for me’ with ‘then I will apply additional effort to achieving it’, and I’m sure I’ve also done it subconsciously.
Hey, Luke. I don’t know if I’m still your friend, but I’m not angered, and I’ll bite—plenty of people I know have tried this. Joining the military is common, although I have no idea if this is to effect hypermasculinity or not (most of my trans friends are dmab.) Janae Marie Kroc is probably the most extreme example I can name, but I expect if you find a forum for exmilitary trans folk somewhere you’ll be able to find a lot more data on this.
I think I could argue that in the years I knew you personally (like 2015 to 2017) I was trying to do this in some kind of way. LK was one of the first people I publicly floated my name to—we were out running around campus, I don’t know if you were still dating at the time. I have absolutely no idea if either of you care. N=1.
They are, consciously or not, trying to hide in the closet. This is not the worst idea anyone’s ever had, especially in a hostile environment.
I appreciate that you’re still working in an environment I gave up on ever making progress in. I just...wasn’t equal to it. I hope you’re well.
Hey!!! Thanks for replying. But did you or anyone you know consider chemical cisgenderization? Or any mention of such in the forums? I would it expect it to be a much stronger effect than eg joining the military. Although I hear it is common for men in the military to take steroids, so maybe there would be some samples there.… I imagine taking cis hormones is not an attractive idea, because if you dislike the result then you’re worse off than you started.
(Oh and we were still together then. LK has child now, not sure how that affects the equation.)
“Chemical cisgenderization” is usually just called “detransition.” To do it, you stop taking hormones. Unless you’ve had the appropriate surgeries (which most of us haven’t because it’s very expensive) your body will do it by itself.
Transfeminine HRT consists of synthetic estrogen and an anti-androgen of some sort (usually spironolactone or finasteride.) Estrogen monotherapy, in higher doses, is coming more into vogue now that more has been published that suggests it’s more effective.
Anyway, I know some people who have tried. I’m told the dysphoria comes right back, worse than ever. I know at least one (AMAB nonbinary) person who actually needed to take low-dose T after their orchiectomy, although the dose was an order of magnitude less than what their body naturally produced, but that’s rather an exceptional case.
Actual desistance rates are on the order of a few percent*, and >90% of those are for reasons other than “I’m not actually trans.” [0]
[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8213007/
Well there’s this frequently observed phenomenon where someone feels insecure about their gender, and then does something hypermasculine like joining Special Forces or becoming a cage fighter or something like that. They are hoping that it will make them feel confident of their birth-certificate-sex. Then they discover that nope, this does not work and they are still trans.
People should be aware that there are copious examples of people who are like—nope, still trans—after hoping that going hard on their birth-certificate-gender will work,
Ascertainment bias, of course, because we only see the cases where this did not work, and do not know exactly how many members of e.g. Delta Force were originally in doubt as to their gender. We can know it doesnt work sometimes.
While I was typing this, quetzal_rainbow made the same point
I mean, the problem is if it works we won’t hear about such people—they just live happily ever after and don’t talk about uncomfortable period of their life.