not filtered because i'm pretty sure. . .
. . .that everyone on my friends list knows about The Tran by now. as in, i am FTM. a transgendered guy. transman. whatever you want to call it--assigned female at birth due to the appearance of my junk. said junk contained gonads that mass-produced estrogen that gave me some pretty prominent woman-type characteristics (anyone who has ever seen my chest unbound can laugh right now). now, i'm undoing the damage.
sometimes people wonder why i (or some other trans people) bother with hormones. gender's fluid, right? so what difference does it make if you have a male body? can't you just live as a man without getting into all that stuff? well, i'll answer that right here and now. i, personally, have been obsessed with male puberty since my own puberty. i wanted it to happen to me. i wanted to grow a foot and get a nice deep voice and sprout facial/body hair and produce sperm. well, the growing a foot's not going to happen, and i've come to terms a thousand times over with the lack-of-sperm deal, but damn it, i still want those other things, for me. so i can notice them while taking a shower or getting dressed or whatever. it's my fucking body and they're my fucking changes. a person on the street might not know they're there and perceive me as a woman or a young kid, or that person might think that i went through those changes years ago and am just an ordinary guy. but i know what's up, and that's what matters.
another reason that i want the effects of T is that some of those people who perceive me as a young (male) kid put the line of young pretty low. it was all right in high school--i just had short hair and wore guys' clothes, and baggy was in back then. i looked like just another teenage boy and it was all right. now, i have adult responsibilities and privileges, like making a deposit at the bank or buying beer--or going to a job interview, and that can be tough when people are squinting at you and asking for ID. (plus it makes them tend to scrutinize your ID a little closer, instead of just looking at the birthdate, and it can be pretty invasive.) and come on--who's going to take you seriously as a potential employee--or as a member of the workforce--when you look like you're sixteen? so yeah, i want the changes testosterone brings, but i kind of have to cave in to society's expectations, too. it's either get read as a kid or get read as a woman, and and since i am living as a man (because that's what i am, whether the chromosomes say so or not), i can't do that with any sense of sanity.
so i'm on T. i have been, steadily, for nine months. my voice has pretty much changed, though i still sound like a woman over the phone sometimes and it goes up and down throughout the day. i smell different. i've gained some upper-arm strength and my metabolism has gone up a bit, resulting in a body that's still rather round but definitely less squishy than it once was. i don't have much body hair yet, but i have a hell of a lot more than i did pre-T, plus nascent hair in spots where there previously wasn't anything more than faint peach fuzz, like my stomach, knees, thighs, and, yes, my face. as for below the belt, well, i won't bother people with details that are beyond TMI, but i will say that there's a LOT going on there, too. and i'm happy with the changes. i'm happy with the fact that my body will continue to change. if it freaks you out, if you think that nature is something that isn't to be messed with, fine. but i will say that without hormone therapy, i, personally, would be going nuts by now. i didn't like--and i'm still not completely comfortable with--my body as it developed on its own. and i don't think there is anything unnatural or artificial about dispelling the myth that biology is destiny. all these parents dreading that their "daughters" will get breast cancer from binding or ovarian cancer because of T? doesn't happen. sure, anyone with mammary glands or ovaries can get cancer there, and there are FTMS who do, but FTMs on T are not at an increased risk. i have yet to meet a trans person on hormones who is having more health problems now than s/he was before s/he started--in fact, most of them are doing better: they like their bodies more, so they're nicer to them. i also know a diabetic whose sugar goes to normal levels when he injects T, a Parkinson's sufferer whose tremors have subsided slightly since she started estrogen, and hell, i have lupus and am less bloated, have fewer flares, and haven't needed chemo or corticosteroids since starting T. sure, if you abuse hormones/take them off the street from shady sources, you might have problems. but when it comes to theories versus visible results, i tend to trust the testimonies i can see/feel.
if you have read to this point, bless you. otherwise, disregard.