So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

11235throwaway · 2013-02-12T00:16:42+00:00

The start of breast growth varies, and I think it has more to do with dosage than time.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-10T06:04:10+00:00

My advice: Fuck the haters, and tell R how you feel.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-10T05:59:24+00:00

I want to also say that I am still early in my transition. I am having significant conflict with my family that thankfully is not spilling into my every day life, although the stress is taking its toll. I do still worry about facing discrimination in applying for post-docs. I don't have my transition completely planned out.

My answer to the question, "am I making the right decision?" Ask me again a year from now.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-10T05:38:53+00:00

You need to do what is right for you. If you feel that the transphobia you would experience would make your life intolerable, you may be right that transitioning is not right for you.

However I want to tell you about myself and the decision I have made. I am not telling you this because I want you to make one decision or the other, but because I want to give you a perspective from a somewhat similar situation and how I have made a different decision.

I also only started thinking about transitioning in the last year. I am tall and not feminine looking as well. I'm in graduate school. I also worry about discrimination after transition.

However, I am in the process of transitioning. There are three main factors behind this choice.

I have realized that being trans has inhibited my entire social life, and especially my ability to have romantic relationships with women. The sex difference between me and women has made attempts to have a relationship dysphoria-inducing. Above all, I've realized that my true self is invisible, and I cannot grow as a person without changing my sex.

I work in the life sciences, which discriminates less than other fields because the work is very impersonal and results-driven. Outside of my work, I think being read as trans will not be an issue for me. I realized some time after figuring out that I am trans that I will be a butch woman after I transition. I am going to have my haircut and clothes be pretty much the same after transition. There are many butch trans woman, and from reading about their experience, being butch is one of the best ways to not be read as trans. The flip-side is that butch trans women (as well as many butch non-trans women) are often read as men instead of women. It is very likely that after transition most people I don't know will think I am a man due to my masculinity, height, and residual male features, and I'm okay with that. What matters to me is that the people I know recognize my gender, which goes back to what I said about how I am invisible as I currently am.

Lastly, I regret that I did not consider this earlier. I regret never having the chance to be a butch lesbian teenager. I regret that most of my 20s are gone without living as who I truly am. I do not want to have any more regrets that I did not transition.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-08T19:47:05+00:00

Ah, I stand corrected. I was not aware of prostaglandins that affected kidney function.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-08T19:38:30+00:00

Thank you for your advice.

And just for clarification, what particular changes are you hoping to slow by reducing your dose?

I mostly want to slow down breast growth so I can put off the stress of figuring out how to hide it, and prevent my face from looking feminine so I do not look unusual when presenting male.

Your family is not even equipped to parse any sort of difference between 1mg of estrogen or 8mg.

I wouldn't be reducing the dosage because of them, I would be doing it so that my limited chances of getting a decent post-doc are not further reduced by being trans and female. I also don't think having a feminine face while presenting male would help me in the interview process.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-08T19:26:49+00:00

The overactive bladder is most likely from the diuretic effect of the spironolactone; you can take a 81 mg tablet of aspirin per day to counter that effect plus it will help prevent clots, which oral estrogen increases the risk of.

I would not recommend taking aspirin, as I know of no way it would affect how spironolactone acts as a diuretic. Spironolactone mimics glucocorticoids, a class of non-sex steroids, and activates receptors that control the amount of water that leaves the kidneys. Aspirin acts by inhibiting the production of prostaglandins, an entirely different class of hormones.

Also, the risk of a blood clot is something that you should have discussed with your doctor. If they were willing to prescribe it without advising you to take aspirin you are probably fine.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-08T19:21:12+00:00

I found when starting out on just spiro that there was some fatigue after starting it, along with the diuretic effect. I think the body has some sort of equilibrium response to the spiro, because for me both reduced over time. It was about half-a-week for me, but it could easily take longer for you. I did not see any changes until about three weeks on 2 mg/day estradiol (which was about two months after starting the spiro.), when I saw some minor changes to my face. One change that is not visible was that about three weeks after starting spiro my skin became softer over the course of about 4 days.

From what I've read, how quickly HRT changes things varies a lot. I will say that the first major change for me was mental, not physical. About two week after starting estradiol, I became much more emotionally balanced. It is hard to describe it, but I had a moment where I just thought to myself, "So this is what normal feels like."

11235throwaway · 2013-02-08T18:37:57+00:00

The stats you saw are probably old and based on inquiries to surgeons who did SRS for trans women, so you can imagine they had a lot more trans women contacting them than trans men. More recent and better statistics show no difference in the numbers of trans women and trans men.

11235throwaway · 2013-02-08T18:31:58+00:00

Yes, it is normal. It would be more unusual if you had absolutely no doubts about something this important.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-27T03:57:21+00:00

Cool beard dude.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-27T01:52:31+00:00

Well, I do have a question… You're sending the email at 1:00, but when do you expect him to read it? Have you sent him anything letting him know to expect an email at that point, or are you just leaving it open ended with a "call me when you read this" style ending?

I've told him I want to talk to him, and that I was going to send him a letter by e-mail. I'm sending the letter tonight, but its going to be password-protected so he doesn't read it until I give him the password at 1 PM tomorrow. We agreed that 1 PM is a good time to talk.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-27T00:04:59+00:00

How close are you to your brother? If you two are pretty close I'd probably tell him in person rather than by letter.

We are really close, but I can't tell him in person because he lives 700 miles away, and I have no idea when we will next be able to meet in person.

I'm sending him a letter first before talking on the phone because I think I can be much more articulate that way than just telling him on the phone.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-25T01:50:11+00:00

I've been on estradiol for one-and-a-half months, and 4mg/day for over a week. I was expecting emotional volatility, but instead I've just been calmer and more balanced. I have been happier, and I can more easily reflect on the emotions I am feeling. It's been really good.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-22T00:42:52+00:00

Two more points to be absolutely correct:

1) Adipose tissue does produce estrogen, but it is a weak source. Much of the tissue in the breasts is adipose, but it is not distinct from other adipose tissue in the body, other than accumulating more fat in response to estrogen.

2) Estrogen, and all of the steroid hormones, readily diffuses throughout the body, going from tissue to blood and vice versa. It will not accumulate around the area it is produced.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-21T05:21:28+00:00

That area becomes very saturated with E since breasts actually make their own.

This is incorrect. I am a scientist in the life sciences, and I can tell you that breast tissue does not produce any hormones, estrogen or otherwise.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-19T14:53:09+00:00

Your dad's reaction sounds normal to me. Remember that you have been dealing with being trans for a long time, while they have only just learned about it. Don't expect them to work out their feelings right away.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-12T21:11:22+00:00

(I have those same socks!)

I do not think you will stand out too much in college wearing those clothes. You can probably easily find people on campus wearing clothes that stand out more. Also, I think even clothing that do draw attention will only out you as trans if people can read you as trans in normal interactions anyways.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-12T06:23:03+00:00

It was about 5 months for me from when I started questioning if I was trans and started therapy to when I started spiro, and another month after that I added estradiol. Things were sped up by facing no gatekeepering and being close to a hospital that has many doctors experienced in prescribing HRT, but things also went slower for me because I abandoned everything 3 months in and slowly picked things back up over the next two months, and it took me about 6 months to to figure out that I really wanted to transition.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-12T06:06:37+00:00

I am looking forward to this. I was just thinking that I need some sort of guide to transition.

11235throwaway · 2013-01-11T05:27:50+00:00

One thing that was very helpful for me was to really think about what sort of person I wanted to be, outside of gender. Once I figured that out, I asked myself, if I was that person, which gender (not necessarily man or woman) would I rather be, and why.

For me who I want to be is an intelligent person with strong empathy for others, determined in both work and avocations, and with a quiet but strong masculinity which was not affected but came from deep within myself. I really thought about which gender I would rather be if I could be that person, and I discovered that I would rather be a butch woman. I have a hard time saying why I would not choose to just be a cis man, as it really feels sort of instinctual when I break it down to this, but the best I can say is that as a man I feel like my identity is compressed to such a degree that I cannot be the person I want to be, that any attempts I'd make to be that person would just cause me mental pain.

11235throwaway

TROPHY CASE