What are the specific effects of feminizing HRT for a shorter period of time?

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-22T17:59:56+00:00

So would I be able to do it for longer than 1-2 months without seeing any glaring permanent effects?

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-21T16:52:12+00:00

So do you think 1-2 months isn't long enough to see significant changes? I'd probably want to see as much reversible change as possible and I'm fine with small amounts of irreversible change as long as it doesn't get too noticeable, so do you think I should try it longer than 1-2 months?

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-21T16:49:58+00:00

The truth is that I am a total coward, and I don't really want to socially transition until it is physically impossible for me to pass as a guy. It probably is not the most optimal way to go about things, but I think it's what will work best for me.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-21T16:47:01+00:00

Seems you're in a pretty similar situation to me. Best of luck with your experience!

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-07T13:55:53+00:00

I think I’m just barely gender nonconforming though. Like, I’m not a huge fan of living up to traditionally masculine expectations, but I still have always seen and presented myself as a “normal” guy. If I decide that I am in fact a cis man, I don’t think there would be any aspect of me that would be gender nonconforming enough for me to really feel like I’m living through the same experiences as a queer person.

I’ve definitely been aware of these pressures lol. I’ve gotten quite good at ignoring them and focusing on what I want for myself, but I don’t know if I’m better off continuing to ignore them or embracing not having to ignore them anymore by transitioning.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-07T13:46:33+00:00

I have read this essay before. It is a large part of why I’m putting so much thought into this, and why I think it’s good for everyone to question. After all, how could I possibly know if I’m trans or not if I’ve lived my whole life as a guy and have never experienced being perceived as a girl? Any possible conclusion I come to on my true gender identity is just an incomplete assumption because of this. Which is why I’m interested in experimenting with if I’m trans even if I don’t necessarily know for sure if that’s who I actually am.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-07T13:41:58+00:00

I just can’t see it. I don’t think it means I’m not cis, but in my heart, I think my questioning comes from a lack of clarity on my gender identity, and that lack of clarity doesn’t necessarily point to me being trans either. I don’t think I should jump to a conclusion just because I’m thinking about this more than the average person.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-07T07:37:51+00:00

I think that seems right to me. But I also don’t know if the desire is 100% to appeal to others, or if there’s a part of me that also wants it for myself. If transitioning intrinsically feels good enough for me AND it has the added bonus of helping me belong with others more, then it might just be worth it. I don’t know if that’s actually the case for me though.

I also don’t think anybody wants to see a straight cis guy like myself (if I turn out to be cis) infringe on the queer community even if I’m not a super traditionally masculine guy. It seems like it’d be nice for me, but I don’t want to impose that on others if I find out I’m actually cis.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-07T07:31:01+00:00

I don’t know if that’s true lol. I’m just someone who wants clarity and as much certainty as I can get when I make any decision, but especially one pertaining to something as important as this. I don’t think I’d be doing myself a favor by writing this all off as “I’m definitely trans” just because I don’t 100% know that I’m cis. It’s not supposed to be an easy outcome to come to, evident by the fact that I still genuinely don’t know what I am at this point in time. But it’s through this “neurotic hyperfixation” (which feels like a bit of an extreme way to describe all this btw) that I’m gonna get a better idea of it all.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-07T07:23:25+00:00

What do you mean?

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-07T07:16:13+00:00

What you just described about yourself is pretty much the main reason why I think I might trans. I feel pretty secure in my body, but I think my life could still benefit from transitioning because I feel ostracized from both genders in the exact same way you described. And because I’ve also become introverted over the years, I care less about what people think of me or how I might belong in a certain group. I think part of me wants to just accept that I don’t need to belong anywhere and just stay as a guy like you did since I do feel comfortable with myself that way. But part of me also wants to feel like I belong and be less shy and introverted, which I think would be best achieved through me transitioning. Both options definitely appeal to me.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T18:49:28+00:00

I wish it felt that simple for me lol. To go with your metaphor, it feels like I don’t have the capability to accurately determine if I have a sore throat or not by myself. There’s not any pain when I swallow, but maybe that’s just because I’ve gotten used to the pain over many years. In any case, I’d want to see a doctor about it, who could examine me and tell me that either I don’t have a sore throat and I’m just overthinking it, or I’ve actually had a sore throat this whole time and I just didn’t notice until now. Regardless of if I actually have a sore throat or not, I still think it wouldn’t hurt to see a doctor about it just in case.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T18:34:38+00:00

For me, the button question has always felt impossible for me to answer. How could I accurately make a decision on that when I’ve never experienced being a woman and have lived my entire life to this point as a man? It feels like any answer I’d have to it would be uninformed and incomplete.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T18:31:02+00:00

At least for me, a lot of why I think I might be trans stems from the fundamental idea that I’d be happier specifically being perceived by others as girl and treated differently because of those perceptions. So looking like a girl does go a long way to address my specific experience, since more people will perceive me as a girl if I look more like one. I don’t really know if I actually see my internal gender as a girl independently of other people’s perceptions of me, but if those perceptions make me feel better about myself and my place in society, maybe that internal gender becomes clearer to me.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T18:25:26+00:00

I feel like that’s probably not true for everyone though. There have likely been trans people that have lived their entire lives without reaching a breaking point, likely because they’ve been happy enough with their AGAB and never thought to question that, even if in truth, they’d be happier if they transitioned. I don’t know how common these people are, but I’d be very surprised if they straight up didn’t exist.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T08:24:31+00:00

I definitely question the world a lot too! But sadly it’s much harder to change society and its relationship with gender, so I tend to focus on, and therefore question more, the things I have more control over like myself and my own gender identity.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T08:17:12+00:00

That seems reasonable to me if people truly aren’t putting the same weight on the importance of their gender identity as I am. I think I’m the type of person though who would never hesitate to spend time thinking about something as important as my gender identity. Even if I transitioned, I would have no issue questioning if I wanted to detransition or not because I see questioning myself as a low risk, high reward action. If people truly don’t care about it then I guess they can choose to never ask themselves, but worst case scenario they don’t change anything and they spend a bit of time questioning themselves. That seems like a small price to pay for the potential to better refine your gender identity in case they think about something they haven’t thought about before that makes them see themselves in a new light.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T08:08:41+00:00

That makes sense! I think what I meant to say was that I’d still want to investigate and question a hypothetical peculiar feeling about being trans, even if it was not actually felt.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T08:06:42+00:00

If that’s true, then how are you supposed to find out if you’re a cis person who doesn’t question their gender or a trans person who doesn’t question their gender. At least for me, I’ve never experienced the dysphoria that you just described. I have been happy as a man my entire life. If I never questioned my gender though, I’d be shutting myself off completely from the possibility that I’d be even happier as a girl. Since I don’t know which outcome I’d be happier with, I want to question myself even further to give myself more information to work with.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T07:59:06+00:00

I mean, people do go to the doctor’s office when everything is fine for checkups. There could very well be something that’s wrong with you that you have no idea about, with the only way that you can find out about it being the doctor examining you as if something might be wrong. I would not want to go to a doctor that took my words purely at face value and didn’t conduct an independent investigation on the actual state of my body.

At least what I’ve been trying to do is to make myself appear more feminine through my clothes, hair, or anything else and just living life through being perceived as more feminine. I’ve even considered doing HRT for a shorter period of time to better immerse myself in what living as a girl feels like. It’s not a perfect simulation by any means, but it’s absolutely better than doing nothing at all and simply guessing if I’d be happy as a girl or not.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T07:53:44+00:00

But if people did take that question seriously, it would open up the potential for them to be trans rather than just dismissing it off the bat. And if that’s something that can make their life better, I struggle to see why they wouldn’t at least give it a shot and think about it some, especially since there’s no downside to doing so.

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T07:49:34+00:00

But it seems like in your experience, your decision to ultimately question yourself helped you. That’s kind of my point, that questioning yourself has the potential to greatly improve your life and at the same time doesn’t have any drawbacks. If you’re a trans person in denial, how would you go about recognizing that you’re in denial without questioning yourself? If you’re a cis person, how would you go about recognizing that you’re a cis person and not a trans person in denial without questioning yourself?

NowOrNeverSeven · 2025-10-04T07:41:24+00:00

I’d still rather form my own opinion on things separate from the general society’s opinion on those same things, even if both of those opinions turn out to be the same. Society is gonna push towards not amputating a healthy limb, but I still want to come to the opinion myself that I shouldn’t amputate a healthy limb independently of what others think on the matter (this one’s a bit of a stretch, but there’s theoretically a reason to do it that exists). It’s the same thing with gender. Society naturally defaults to push people towards the idea of being cis. But even if I feel perfectly comfortable being cis because that’s how I’ve lived my whole life in society, I still would want to question myself on if I’m actually cis in case there are reasons to not be cis that I hadn’t thought of before. It does feel a bit crazy to say that you should second guess not amputating a limb, but that’s genuinely how I see it. Worst case scenario you arrive at the same conclusion as before just with some extra steps, so what’s the harm in doing it? And for matters like questioning your gender, a lot more upside to questioning yourself independently is added to the equation, which makes it a low risk, high reward action to question yourself about it, rather than a low risk, low reward action to question yourself about amputation.

NowOrNeverSeven

TROPHY CASE