Some things from me:
- Early on, darkening of the perineal raphe was quite a surprise (aka the “sack stripe”). It’s not something I’ve seen mentioned in most HRT guides.
- How incredibly unreliable my own perception of how feminine I look is. People were treating me as a woman well before I could see even hints of it in my face.
- It’s nice that women will sit next to me on the train now. As the carriage fills up I quite often find myself in the center of a cluster of women, which is very affirming.
- Makeup areas in bathrooms. I had no idea this was a thing, and they’re great!
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That it worked. Wasn’t sure it was possible. I was a depressed mess back than. Now everything is fine, except the state of the world I guess.
And that I am still me but with a fem body. I did not turn into a “lady”, my personality and interests are mostly the same.
Yeah, this! I was sure I’d be one of the people where HRT wouldn’t work. And even if it did, I was sure I’d never pass, ever. And now it’s not even two years later and I’m just some woman. It’s crazy. If I’d known that, I’d have started so much sooner.
Also: the social leeway I get now and pretty privilege. I didn’t think that it would be this significant.
“except the state of the world”
Yeah, that’s fucked! lol
The number of people who misgender me simply because they hear I am trans. Not maliciously, they see me, a guy, and hear I am trans, and immediately assume I am transitioning to womanhood. They often get very weirdly offended and a bit hostile when I politely correct them and explain that I am FTM.
It is so frequent that I expect it to happen now, especially if I am dealing with anything medical. I have had to explain this to my insurance company at least a dozen times, because they were denying coverage for things and citing my identity, because “trans don’t need testosterone, they need estrogen” or “trans means you want a uterus, so you can’t get pap smears”.
Even in queer spaces I get this! Every year for Pride I have made a game out of it, where I wear an outfit that is androgynous or masculine and a big pronoun pin. If I get misgendered more than I am gendered correctly by other people at Prise, I wear a bigger pin the next year. I am on year 5 of this experiment, and I need a bigger pin for this year.
It mostly surprises me because I will go to places that I have been told by other trans people (most of whom are my friends who are trans women) are accepting. I don’t understand how so many places can be accepting of some trans people and not others. And that is without me getting super specific and telling people that I am technically nonbinary.
How incredibly unreliable my own perception of how feminine I look is. People were treating me as a woman well before I could see even hints of it in my face.
So so true. We so often just can’t see ourselves accurately, and even knowing that isn’t always enough to change it. For me at least, I had to learn that the version of me that I see isn’t the version that everyone else sees, and most importantly, my version isn’t automatically the “correct” version.
But otherwise, honestly, I don’t even remember much of what else surprised me anymore.
The true severity of my fatigue and health problems, with testosterone mostly out of the picture. I was expecting a dip in my stamina, loss of grip strength, a bit more of a struggle moving heavy objects. I wasn’t expecting a POTS diagnosis, and spending whole days in bed if I pushed myself too hard the day before. I’ve experienced orthostatic intolerance and post–exertional malaise since my teens, and for decades dismissed it as “just one of those things”. As it turns out, testosterone was giving me the strength to push through something debilitating, and now I need to take it seriously.
My positive takeaway is the reassurance that transitioning was the right thing to do. Things really suck right now, but I have never once considered detransitioning as a solution.
How are your t levels? It’s quite possible to end up with levels so surpressed they’re lower than the cis female range. Some trans women will take supplemental low dose T for just this reason.
I’m going to give more of an answer than you probably wanted, so the TLDR is that there is a correlation with T, but my T was never below the safe female range.
I was going to quote my labs from 2 months ago, but then I remembered I just had new ones done a few days ago.
In December my T was at 0.6 nmol/L (17.31 ng/dL).
In February, my T is at 16.97 nmol/L (489.45 ng/dL).My estradiol has plummeted from 1200 to 270, with no change in regimen, but it’s not below the ideal range so I won’t consider it relevant here.
The change between these tests is that I was taken off CPA and put on 100mg Progesterone with the assurance that T suppression would be similar, but that I may require an increase to 200mg to stay in female range. I was directed to take it orally, but I’m well aware of the popularity of rectal administration and its benefits. I gave that a try when it became clear that progesterone’s metabolites don’t agree with me. I struggled with this method and returned to oral. My doctor said it should be fine, after all.
Regarding my POTS/CFS/dysautonomia or whatever is the right term for the new hell in which I live, I did notice that my days were getting physically easier in recent weeks. Hardly back to peak physical performance, but better. Mentally, it’s the worst I’ve felt since starting HRT at the beginning of 2025. I had actually been saying for a while that this feels like a testosterone–flavoured depression. Looks like I may have been right.
The moral of the story is that mental health is more important to me than physical health. I’m going back to the less awful regimen, and will trust my endocrinologist slightly less now.
This has been a big concern of mine. My mom has chronic health issues that gives her similar issues, and I already take after her in more ways than I’d like. I worry I’ll inherit these problems if I go on HRT.
👆
Moms side of the family has some hereditary weirdness with regards to similar issues, chronic pain, and rare blood pressure issues that don’t normally get tested for because “haha hysterical woman”. I can get an earlier bead on things than she did (50…) but it doesn’t mean it won’t suck.
Does the misogynistic healthcare bias persist with female doctors, in your experience? My GP/PCP is also a woman in her thirties. I feel so seen when I talk to her, and she’s taking my woes very seriously, referring me for all sorts of tests and working through different drugs to find what works best. Seeing her always gives me a boost of optimism because it feels like I have someone powerful on my side.
I don’t know, sorry 🫤 I’m still very much closeted until i can get some distance between me and Ohio, and possibly a new government, out of my own paranoia.
That and i haven’t seen a doctor in close to a decade 😅
My moms case is a lot of military docs (tricare) so YMMV
I guess I didn’t expect to feel so female after transition. I always thought I would be stuck “male”.
I think I really didn’t understand biology and how significant hormones are and how insignificant something like sex chromosomes are (they really initiate one developmental cascade or another more than they play a pivotal role in the on-going function of cells).
Even though I had already intellectually challenged my bio-essentialist views, I think on some level they were still entrenched in my perspective and how I saw things … estrogen makes you female. Where before transition I thought “trans women are women” felt like some kind of technicality (like, trans women will never be female but maybe they have a social role as women, so they’re social women but not biological women), after transition I now realize that trans women are biologically female in ways I never expected (and which I think is rarely appreciated or understood).
That my 5’5” baby face might be intimidating to women, especially at night. I’m not after you, I’m just walking! I totally understand the wariness of male strangers, it just makes me feel the need to go ‘I’m not a creep!’ which of course would make it worse.
Relevant John Mulaney bit
When I started taking E, my breasts started developing about 3 weeks in and by about 2 months, I had some solid tissue behind my nipples which I would squeeze and feel around to gauge how much it had grown. This was not the surprising part. What shocked the ever loving crap out of me was the fact I had fluid coming from my nipples! I did some reading on it and apparently it’s because milk ducts were forming, but nobody warned me my tits would leak!
I was expecting to instantly feel better. To feel that it was the right thing to do.
Nope. Just feel worse for different reasons.
