This is a blog dedicated to helping and supporting any and all trans identities, whether they be mtf, ftm, nonbinary, intersex, etc. This is a trans help blog where asks about advice of any area are WELCOME! The Admins are: Samantha (mtf/nonbinary. she/her), and Jesse (Trans Guy. he/him). We are both knowledgable in areas of medical, legal, and social transitioning. Positivity memes will frequently be reblogged, so if there's anything you specifically would like tagged or taken down, please tell us! WE ARE CURRENTLY LOOKING FOR NEW ADMINS, PLEASE CONTACT IF YOU'RE INTERESTED! WE'RE LOOKING FOR TRANS WOMEN AND NONBINARY PEOPLE TO DIVERSIFY THE ADMIN SPREAD!! (trans m*ds, please don't spread hate, dysphoria is not a requirement for a trans identity!) (obviously t*rfs, misogynists, r*cists and M*ps do not interact!) OUR TRIGGER WARNING TAGS ARE AS FOLLOWS: self harm tw, addiction tw, ed tw, eating disorder tw, abuse tw, transphobia tw, suicide tw, rape tw, emetophobia tw (things that mention / talk about vomit), vomit tw, genitalia tw, bio body tw, genitalia tw, bio male tw, bio female tw, breasts tw, male genitalia tw, female genitalia tw, period tw, dysphoria tw, t*rf tw, transphobia tw, social dysphoria tw, biological dysphoria tw, real person tw (used for picture submissions or reblogs with real people pictured), scopophobia tw (used for picture submissions or reblogs with real people pictured), gif tw, flashing light tw, long post tw, and outdated language tw.
I see you talk a lot about hrt and you seem pretty informed. I also see that you have had really good effects from hrt.
So what I wonder is how much you think it is luck and genetics vs you making the right choices. I can't help but be jealous sometimes. I've had rotten luck and ok genetics it seems.
What's your take on this? Do you think you've been lucky or do you think everyone can do it like you have if they just did it the same way?
So whenever I answer an ask like this, I end up getting spammed with a ton of hrt related questions, and it gets a bit exhausting. So here's my usual disclaimer: I'm not a doctor, nor any kind of medical professional. I'm not an expert on this. I have a little more knowledge about the theory behind hrt than the average person, but not the medical practice. I'm just giving my experiences here.
So I couldn't say for sure, but I think the answer is both? I can't say how much luck is a component, but that said, I think that there's a lot that helped me out just from the troubleshooting end.
This answer ended up being long, so here's a tl;dr:
Be liberal on your estrogen, conservative on your antiandrogen. Eat a lot, exercise a lot.
Huge ramble under the cut.
It's hard to say that I looked feminine pre HRT. I had (and still somewhat have) all of the "ultra masculine" skeletal features that make people think their transition is going to go poorly, but the soft tissue changes have reframed how they look and function. I used to think that I would never come close to looking feminine without super intense FFS, and that feeling is almost completely gone now. So I didn't feel particularly lucky going into any of this. Now I do, and I'm finally actually relaxing how good hrt has been to me.
I did several things that I think accelerated my hrt. Unfortunately, I can't have a control group here. I also operated over a short period of time, during a period where hrt has a variety of effects. I have no way to tell for sure if these things did anything, or if it's all just masked by standard hrt progress, which comes and goes in bursts.
Also note: I don't think anything has dramatically affected my "final" results. I think there's a lot of things that have accelerated my results. But with ongoing, years long processes like HRT, the biggest, key ingredient is PATIENCE. I keep seeing 2 years thrown around like it's the end of hrt progress. This is, quite frankly, ridiculous. 2 years is startup and troubleshooting time. Whatever development happens in the first two years is a bonus, not a normal timeline.
So never, ever feel like you've fucked up your transition for good. You can always tweak it. And, you can always wait.
That all said, here's the bulleted list of the things that I think contributed:
Intensely focusing on getting my blood estrogen high. Stop thinking about dosages, start thinking about levels. From anecdotes I've seen, most doctors will underdose your estradiol. You should be shooting for 200pg/mL minimum. Many doctors will use this as a maximum. That is outdated information. Your estrogen should be on the high side of cis women ranges. If you're lost, use cis women metrics as a guide, or the WPATH. Personally, I've been blessed with a fantastic provider that I've never had to push back to or argue with, but I've heard some nasty horror stories.
Note that achieving the level I said above is often difficult with pills. Pills do have a maximum safe dosage because of liver metabolism. This will vary from person to person. But if you're getting past 8mg oral per day, consider switching to injections, patches, or gels. These methods bypass digestion and (somewhat) dodge the liver, making it easier to safely get higher blood levels. Even if you try to take them sublingually, a lot still ends up consumed orally.
HRT methods that allow for large differences between estrogen highs and lows seem to be more effective than steady state HRT. This is completely shooting in the dark here, but from my vague anecdotes from comparing injections with peaks and troughs to more steady (but still lover bypassing) methods, it still seems like injections are somewhat more effective. That is not a scientific assessment at all. But that's the only explanation I could think of that matches a little bit of what's known about hormonal physiology
With everything above: if possible, drop your antiandrogen ASAP. A pattern I've seen over, and over, and over again, is trans women being overdosed on antiandrogens while simultaneously being underdosed on estradiol itself. Remember: sufficiently high levels of blood estrogen are antiandrogenic on their own. If you need a AA to keep your T or other androgens low, your E is likely too low anyways. There's multiple reasons why having too much androgen suppression without raising estradiol is bad, but for a whirlwind summary, there's two things I would break it down to. One, having too low of both T and E is really bad, and is basically one of the only ways you can do HRT "wrong" in a way that's medically harmful (the other being stressing your liver). It has effects both short term (mood, metabolism, and energy) and long term (bone density and general growth). Also keep in mind that cis women have androgens too- and you need to make sure you're not over suppressing androgens to below cis female levels. Two, antiandrogens are rarely just an antiandrogen. As opposed to hormones themselves, which are found in your body anyways and are "understood" signals for your genes (among other things), antiandrogens are operating based on how we develop their effects as pharmaceuticals. Does this mean they're intrinsically bad? No. Don't fall into a "natural is better" fallacy. However, it's worth noting that AAs can have effects beyond just androgen suppression because they're not an endogenous signalling molecule. One of these effects might be overall suppression of growth and development. That is wildly unconfirmed, I know transfemmescience disagrees and has a pretty thorough breakdown, but unfortunately there's too much variability in individual trans women's HRT regimens to have consistent studies on fine details like that imo. Again, this is my opinion as a patient, not as an expert.
Don't start progesterone too early. I'd say delay it more than the general advice. 6 months after good blood levels is probably good. Notably, it's probably not a good idea to start it 6 months after the first pill crosses your tongue. Wait for the levels. Probably not that big of a deal though.
This last one I'm incredibly reluctant to even talk about, but I've been coming to the conclusion more and more that it was a fairly major factor in my progress. I didn't do it intentionally but it 100% happened. And that is weight cycling. From January to August of 2024, I dropped almost 30 pounds from training for backpacking and actually doing rigorous backpacking for 3 months. I've gained back all of that weight since. Most of my notable soft tissue and appearance changes have happened as a function of putting that weight back on. This isn't just about chest or thigh growth. My face was thin at my lowest weight, and when I put weight back on, soft tissue in my face has grown back in with a far more feminine look. I do NOT like talking about this, though. Why? Because I think deliberately weight cycling is more dangerous and hurtful than it is helpful. Diet culture, counting calories, and constantly comparing your weight and progress to others is an easy way to an easier disorder. If you develop habits centered around those things, that will fuck up your life permanently. What would I recommend instead? High input, high output. Eat a LOT, exercise a LOT. Get into a steady state with that. It's much healthier long term. Remember, at best, weight cycling is an acceleration, not working towards better "permanent" results.
And uh, I think that's it? Again, keep in mind that the main ingredient is patience. All of this is about making things faster, not making things better in the long run. If any of this seems unattainable for you, then don't worry! All you gotta do is wait.
And again, not medical advice, not scientific rigor, just anecdotes and what worked for me.
I don't have a better way to end this other than good luck? And also that you're probably being too hard on yourself anyways.
reading progressive sex ed caricatures with accurate and detailed and realistic diagrams of sexual organs + shows their variation, but all i can think about is how there is no discussion of what srs is besides the fact that it exists
this one has been passed around recently from the mayo clinic and that actually makes me so happy because how many of transfeminine people are aware of what their options even look like?
thereâs a diagram for phallo and meta from springer link(i believe) and. honestly iâd never seen these before and i dont think iâve ever seen any diagrams. i know vaguely because of reading papers or listening to people talk about their experience but iâve never seen it, yk? it makes me more confident in my choice to get meta when iâm older
Thereâs a website called Transbucket that has a whole archive of before and after photos, surgery costs, surgeon names and locations, and general feedback on complications, sensation, everything. Itâs been around for at least a decade, and there are photos of some folks five or eight years down the line. Itâs organized by procedure, and itâs very comprehensive. Itâs NSFW of course but itâs an amazing resource!!!
Are you considering or have had transition care? | Transbucket.com
to be clear: the right views any sex that isn't purely procreative as deviant. it's not just kink, or queer sex they find abhorrent. And they genuinely believe that the better educated you are about sex in general, including about gender shit, the more deviant you are. they're legitimately trying to claw everyone down to hell with them.
Now? Before 2003 it was legit technically illegal in some states for even straight couples to have oral or anal sex, and there are still laws in some states restricting how many dildos you can own etc.
I don't really know what the goal is with putting a numerical limit on dildos, but with republicans the answer is usually "There isn't one. Die."
This is your periodic reminder that it is currently right now illegal in the united states to own porn that the average person in your community would be offended by. That's the legal definition of obscenity (a piece of media that 1. Exists to turn people on 2. has no other "redeeming" purpose and 3. would be offensive to most people in your jurisdiction) and you can theoretically be arrested and go to jail for owning "obscene" media or giving it to other people.
"But that's ridiculous," you say, "porn that the average taxpayer would think was ~offensive~ is absolutely fuckin' everywhere, on the internet and in real life, and nobody gets in trouble for it." And you'd be right about that. Realistically, this is a law that cannot be enforced: it is way too easy to break, way too hard to track, and way too many people are interested in breaking it.
Same with the pre-Lawrence v. Texas laws against "sodomy" that headspace-hotel is talking about. Yeah, it was illegal to give a blowjob in the privacy of your own home. But of course most people who like blowjobs never even thought twice about those laws, because it's usually pretty easy to Not tell a cop what you do in the privacy of your bedroom with your spouse.
"So if laws like this don't actually stop people from doing whatever sexual things they want to do, why are you concerned about it? You just said these laws don't hurt anybody, right?" Here's the thing. The purpose of laws like this is to create an atmosphere where you can get away with doing ""deviant"" things... if you hide it from polite society, if you keep it secret, if you know your place.
What you can't do is go out in public and say that actually gay people can have happy relationships, or that masturbating sometimes doesn't make you a depraved sex addict, or that it's okay to want to enjoy having sex and not just do it as your Duty To Your Husband.
You can get away with doing what you want in private if you never challenge the dominant cultural message that what you're doing is gross and immoral and people who do it are disgusting freaks. If you dare to speak up and point out that your ""shameful secret"" is actually normal, off you go to jail.
That's the purpose of laws like this. To make it impossible to challenge the rhetorical stranglehold of conservative christianity on society. To shift the Overton window once and for all to the right. And that's why we need to fight laws like this with all our strength, every time the right tries to push them forward, even when the specifics are stuff like "you can't own more than five dildoes" that might seem like a silly thing to go to war over. It's not about the specifics. It's about limiting everyone's speech to things a conservative preacher would say from the pulpit.
Younger Americans NEED to understand why Lawrence vs Texas went to the Supreme Court.
In 2003, police raided the private home of two gay men and charged them with sodomy. I cannot emphasize enough that THEY WERE NOT CURRENTLY HAVING SEX AT ALL when the police raided them. But the cops had âprobable causeâ to believe that they had, at some point, had non-procreative sex, which was illegal under Texasâs sodomy law, so they were charged with a crime.
Ultimately, the SCOTUS ruled that sodomy laws are unconstitutional because US citizens have a right to privacy: what consenting adults do in their own homes is their own business.
What you need to know is that in four states, including Texas and. Missouri, sodomy laws are still on the books. That means that if SCOTUS strikes down Lawrence vs Texas, these laws immediately go back into effect, and more states can add their own.
What would that look like?
If youâre on Tinder and your profile says youâre gay or bi, the police can subpoena your profile and use it to arrest you.
If youâre on Scruff or Grindr, the police can subpoena your location data and messages and use them to track down and arrest you and all your hookups.
If youâre in a same-sex marriage, the police can subpoena a list of same-sex marriage certificates and arrest every single coupleâeven if theyâre widowed or divorced.
If your school has an LGBTQ club, the police can subpoena a list of members and arrest kids & college students.
They could subpoena data from FetLife and Facebook and Twitter and, yes, if they thought to do so, Tumblr. Rainbow flag in your profile? Theyâre drawing up charges.
And all of these people getting arrested and charged with sodomy, when convicted, will not only have their lives ruined by jail time, but will also likely be labeled sex offenders for the rest of their lives.
This is not ancient history. This was not âback in the day.â I WAS IN COLLEGE WHEN THIS HAPPENED.
And the Republicans are frothing at the fucking mouth to bring these horrors back.
really any time during normal activities when Iâm inadvertently reminded that my body has become irreversibly female I have some quiet euphoria all to myself
Yâknow who has to deal with the fallout of u having ur little fun pissing off terfs? Trans women
Making a hate group angry isnât a fun little bonus. Members of that hate group will attack and blame trans women when they are angry. The fact that ur so focused on pissing off terfs that u canât conceive of supporting trans women without including the element of making terfs angry is weird. Your goal should be to protect trans women but you and many other ppl reblogging this post and making nearly identical comments seem really concerned with the âfun bonusâ of making members of a violent hate group angry. And if u canât conceive of the fact that your fun little bonus does harm to trans women, or donât care, guess what? U donât care about trans women. U view trans women as a tool to make terfs mad for ur amusement
The fact that ur deliberately ignoring the premise of this post, the fact that so many self-described allies are preoccupied with âpissing off terfsâ adding âreblog to make a terf mad!â on support posts, CONSTANTLY reminding trans women of the ppl who spend their entire day posting abt how they want us dead or banned from society? Makes u a pretty shitty ally to trans women. Iâm out here begging ppl to actually concern themselves with the safety of the trans women in their life and everybody is taking that as an opportunity to make jokes abt how itâs âicing on the cakeâ as if making terfs angry and lionizing them to attack their perceived enemies isnât directly contrary to keeping trans women safe
The trans women in ur life are suffering for u to have ur fun. Do better
I have so much love in my heart for trans girls like. girls girls girls literally omg youre a GIRL ISNT IT WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! any girl whoâs been like âI wish I was a girlâ and then found out they actually ARE a girl is a precious jewel. I love girls
Part of trans advocacy is recognizing that a trans person might be wary of others, that they might come across as angry or sullen, that they might outright say "I will not trust you" and recognizing that they still are a person who needs rights. Part of this is fighting for their rights, anyway.
Part of trans advocacy is understanding that trans people who are like this have damned good reasons to be and even if youâre not like that or are trans yourself you should fight for their rights BECAUSE the way the world treats non-cis people is probably WHY they are like this.
There are angry, untrusting members of every marginalised group who have good reason to be like that and if you donât understand that you might be one of the reasons why.
uhh hi! im a trans woman who's thought abt getting breast augmentation surgery, and since i heard you were getting a reduction i wanted to ask about the pain caused by being busty. like ik it's hard for your back, but is there a comparable experience, like carrying around a heavy backpack? sorry for bothering u i just dont wanna make a decision before i know what i'm getting myself into hsdfvbkjcxh
hi!! first of all no worries, ur not bothering me! i think it's funny that I get to be the Titty Authority on this
i'm gonna complain about the Pain Caused By Being Busty, as far as my own experience, and then I'm gonna give you a caveat afterwards!!
i don't remember what it feels like to not have the weight sitting there, so i don't have a lot to compare it to. but it's like:
when they're hanging out w/o a bra, the weight pulls my shoulders forward and it makes the upper/mid back hurt.
when I wear a bra, the combined weight of the titties is held mostly in the straps of the bra, so that amount of pressure is just consistently pressing into my shoulders for however many hours the bra is on. sometimes it'll press into a nerve really crazy.
ALSO when i make a sudden movement and i'm braless, they Clap.
sometimes, their pressure/presence on my chest makes it hard to take a big, proper, deep breath. on occasion I'll lift them up and take a big inhale as a treat lol.
running is harder bc they really just go absolutely fucking everywhere, even if I'm wearing what is Meant to be a very good sports bra.
and they do be toasty in the summer!
so those are the downsides. the caveat: according to the bra size calculator I just punched my measurements into, I am an "I" cup. that's a stupid letter. there's no WAY you'd go for that letter. you would probably be getting something much more reasonable lol, and I imagine the euphoria of seeing them in the mirror / having them fill out clothing certain ways would be worth them potentially feeling heavy, even if you were getting Bigguns.
for a comparable experience: I don't know about a backpack, because the weight is distributed different... the best idea I can come up with, and you can let me know if this is stupid, would be to wear a sports bra, and STUFF IT with something heavy-ish. like, literally water balloons. or ankle weights. 3, maybe 4 pounds in total, distributed evenly. I think that could give you an idea of how it could feel!
My favorite pirate joke is âwhy does it take pirates so long to learn the alphabet? Because they spend years at câ not because itâs THAT funny but because itâs a relatively simple joke that nobody ive told it to has ever correctly guessed the punchline for because they all think itâs gonna be a joke about arrrr
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