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skullamity · 7 months

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PSA for trans men and trans mascs on T who are afraid of/concerned about or experiencing male pattern baldness: Talk to your endocrinologist who monitors your T about hair loss before you talk to anyone else, you have options!

When the hair in the top of my head started to thin, I talked to my regular GP. She told me it should be fine to use Rogaine topically. There were no other options, either because she was somehow not aware OR was under the impression that alternatives might interfere with HRT. If this was the case, she did not relay this info to me, and if she had, I would have made an early appointment with my endocrinologist, who specialises in HRT for trans people specifically, and asked her about my options.

But, since I only have appointments once a year with my endo now because my levels are generally super consistent, I decided to try Rogaine. I lasted about a month, because it basically meant I had to wear a lined hat at all times to make sure I wasn't getting any on my pillow/cats/child. You need to apply it two to three times a day and leave it on your scalp for a couple of hours for the best results, every day, forever, and if you stop using it, your hair goes back to whatever it was up to before that made you concerned in the first place. I quit after a month and resigned myself to eventually going bald.

I finally had a phone appointment with my endo last week (was supposed to be in person but she had an emergency and was working remotely for the day), and when I brought this up and that I had tried Rogaine but couldn't deal with all of the above + my scalp was not reacting well to the alcohol in the foam so I quit, she was like ????? what? why didn't your GP just prescribe you finasteride???

I am now on finasteride! It is a dirt cheap, tiny ass pill. I only need to take a quarter of a pill once a day (my endo also helpfully explained to me that pill cutters exist and are also dirt cheap, so perfectly cutting a pill into quarters takes about 5 seconds and I got it for a whopping $8). Just like Rogaine, I WILL need to take it every day, forever, but it's not going to get all over my pillow and make my cats sick or cause my kid to grow a beard or whatever. It isn't going to dry my scalp out, and it also the cost comparison is a joke. I take it every morning at the same time I take my adhd meds, so it's easy to remember.

I have seen so, so many trans men and mascs online lately worried about this, probably because I've seen so many conservatives and the kind of detrans people that conservatives like to parade around put a lot of emphasis about how T will make you UGLY and make all of your hair fall out. I do feel sorry for any detrans women who are dealing with wonky hairlines or male pattern baldness, but also it sure is convenient that none of them see fit to mention that if you are experiencing those things, you can literally just talk to your endocrinologist about what your options are and then take a quarter of a pill every day to fix it. Almost like making you aware of that might move you away from their end goal, which is getting you to detransition.

#trans man #trans guy #transmasc #hair loss #transmasculine #endocrinology #finasteride

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vaspider · 9 months

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Aight y'all.

So, my doctor is fucking rad and got me topical finasteride & minoxidil - the whole "topical finasteride" thing is pretty new - bc the one thing I have always been truly vain about is my hair and, well, testosterone.

I'm having to pay out of pocket right now (about $40/mo), but OR House Bill 2002 kicks in soon & I should be able to get it covered as a gender-affirming thing sometime next year.

Since this is a thing that transmascs deal with a lot, I figured I'd document this and also let y'all know that it's an option! I found out from someone talking about it online, and I'm pretty stoked bc I knew that taking finasteride orally would potentially block some of the changes that I actually want from T, whereas topical finasteride really doesn't seem to affect stuff systemically nearly as much.

So, here's my starting pictures. I've got a monthly reminder in my phone for updates, and we'll see what we see.

Pardon my unwashed, scraggly mess. I need a haircut, too.

Addendum: minoxidil is poisonous to cats. I don't have cats, but I'm also taking the precaution of wearing a silk-lined (and thus double-layer) sleep beanie and showering as soon as I get up so that I don't accidentally get it on a friend's cat or anything.

#adventures in transmasculinity #hair #trans issues #selfies

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baeddel · 1 month

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my 1st year of hrt

i don't post here much now, but as i have shared so much of my journey with you, for so much of which i wasn't able to transition at all, i wanted to make a post about my first year on hormones.

this post will be nsfw because of frank discussion about genitals, sexual functions and sexuality. it's also long, sorry.

ORAL, INJECTIONS

i have the entire time merely done what the diy wiki told me. between the time that i first looked into it, with the sort of long and helpful advices i received from friends, up to now, the whole thing has become much more well-understood and by that measure much easier to transmit and there are more plentiful resources. so it is really easy to diy. it's also much easier to get hormones and blockers and many more kinds are available.

i started off on 50mg bica and 6mg oral estradiol. i knew i wanted to use bica becuase it's supposed to keep your horny. a major hesitation for me was losing my libido, since being an extremely high libido person has been such a core part of my identity for pretty much my entire life. it turns out i had no reason to be afriad for reasons i'll explain later, but in the end i'm not sure how much of a role the bica played in that.

the chepaest place was actually from Lillian at the time we bought it. this regimen worked out to an amount per year that i don't really have and my first year was paid for entirely by my incredible and wonderful and amazing girlfriend @shimakaze-revivalism which i am so thankful for. it worked out the best to go for oral at that time but i had no preference for it over injections; gel seemed annoying to me.

to be honest i don't really recommend all that because it's basically ten times as expensive as monotherapy with injections. good golly! i didn't realize injections were so cheap until another girlfriend pointed it out to me around the time that i was due to refill. plus, not only am i used to injecting because of diabetes, but i like needles. since starting i have fallen in love with this method; i look forward to injection day and delight and savour in the entire process. i inject intramuscularly in my thighs with a 1" needle. the needle presses my skin into a deep valley before finally piercing through at which point my thigh snaps level and swallows the needle. i salivate a little bit when i do it. it hurts for a few days wherever the needle went, sweetly. if i'm too rough it bruises. my girlfriend is frightened of neeldes and i make her watch. i take 0.1ml at 10ml/400mg which according to Transfem Science (click) is equivalent to 8mg per day of estradiol orally, a little more than i took before. i stopped taking bica so i am on estradiol monotherapy.

because Lillian had issues right around the time of my order it was delayed by a bit and i went without hormones for a little while. this was utterly miserable and felt physically awful. i'll talk about it a bit more later. then my wonderful girlfriend lent me hers after we worked some things out so that she wouldn't also be left short. so for about a week or two i was taking 4mg estradiol and some amount of finasteride; this regimen felt bad and i struggled to stay hard or cum until i changed to something else. the phenomenally sweet and kind @hypnosister was bringing some estradiol gel for me to tide me over the rest of the way (—the second time she has given me hormones to cover for my errors), but my estradiol miraculously arrived the exact same day she did, so i never used any gel.

as you can tell, the principle ingredient in my hrt regimen has been the milk of human kindness. i owe an unpayable debt of gratitude. hopefully i can be more competent and independent in the future.

BLOOD TESTS

my plan was to get tested every 4~ months and monitor my blood.

there is a private blood test service you can get here in NI. they send out a little kit and you make a sample and send it back. supposedly. so far i have not known anyone to succeed. strangely, they don't allow refunds until you've tried it three times. for me i quickly realized my problem was that i have to use a lancet to draw blood several times a day to monitor my blood sugars, which means my fingers are scarred and calloused around there already and i'd never be able to draw enough blood as the test wanted. the last test i simply sent back undisturbed; they gave me my refund.

you can instead book an appointment with private clinics they work with and they will draw blood intravenously. however, at the time, agoraphobia would have made this a profoundly difficult journey, and i started off transitioning in secret and couldn't ask anyone for help getting there. so in the end i haven't been getting blood tested at all and don't really know what my hormones are and don't know how my liver is doing. this isn't ideal, but things are starting to change for me; i am now out at home, and what's more, i have started to beat my agoraphobia (!) and can get about now on public transport on my own. so i will go in a few months to monitor how my injections are doing.

SIDE EFFECTS

when i first started i was extremely nauseous. this went away after a month or so. after that there were simply no negative side-effects.

going off of hormones felt bad, but it was as bad as i felt before going on hormones. being on hormones simply feels much better; i'll talk more about that later.

LIBIDO, BONERS AND CUM

as i mentioned this was my biggest hesitation before starting. my libido had always been so high as to be debilitatingly intense. i would masturbate several times a day. if i hadn't masturbated recently i would be unable to concentrate; i would be so horny i'd get dizzy, feel faint... something in me had to be ceaselessly arrested, cooled, soothed and put away, shortly to lift its hatch and claw at me again. in a lot of ways it was really a big problem in my life and looking back it wasn't a good thing. but it was who i was and i was scared of losing it. it also seemed like an important component of maintaining a lot of sexual relationships. or was it the special solvent that held all my work together? a manic energy. without which i would become slovely and pointless.

erections are also of course an important part of performing in the way i was used to; and i could cum a lot. like, a lot. thick, goopy, white cum. which girls like. because i am not attractive in any other measure, giving up this source of puissance felt like giving up everything. so it was really frightening to me to be honest. these are all ways that the idea of a loss of libido or sexual function felt like the end of myself as a person.

this is i understand probably a distorted source of self-worth, but, in any case, hormones did not in fact oblige me to give it up, and i worried for nothing. hormones drastically improved my sexuality in every single respect. first of all, it did hurt my libido, but only so much as to take the edge off. it let me master it; and having mastered it, i was able to do things i could never do before in my life, like chastity games, and everyday life wasn't so painful, and i had more freedom about how i spent my time, since i didn't have to masturbate before anything that took concentration. but i'm still a very high libido person; what's more it made me much more engaged with sex with partners rather than masturbating.

there was a brief period of time close to the beginning where it did affect my erections, i believe, but this passed and i now have erections like normal. neither my penis or scrotum changed size or appearance. and thankfully my loads did not diminish at all; though on bica it was a little more translucent and less goopy white, it seems to be back to normal on monotherapy. it takes several minutes to clean up after.

but here's the thing; on hrt, my sexuality improved in ways i didn't even anticipate. these are: 1. every sensation feels so much better, to such an extent that sensations seem to take on a profound meaning. it is especially lovely to use the soft parts of a girl's thighs. 2. orgasms are completely different. not just a quantitative but a qualitative difference. they make me shiver, they last forever, my toes curl as i gasp and perspire. afterwards i am submerged in bliss; wheezing asthmatically, sticky or soaking wet. 3. when not having sex, i mostly cum handsfree, neither using my hands nor any implement, or any special technique but to look at something or think of something or talk to someone. either naked or under my clothes. i could do this before but it took more effort. 4. when having sex, i cum much, much faster, which is a really good change for me, because performing was always a source of anxiety, and now i have no problem with that, unless i'm having blood sugar problems which can't be helped.

i understand that most people don't have my experiences when they start hrt. although for most people sex feels better and orgasms feel better, most people cum less and have more problems performing after hrt rather than the opposite.

in the few weeks that i went off hrt i went pretty much back to normal, and it felt awful. i went back to masturbating several times a day, became less interested in having sex, and derived much less enjoyment from masturbation which was little more than habitual. i could still cum handsfree but mostly i didn't. by comparison it all simply felt bad. at this point i would take estrogen merely as an aphrodisiac.

BOOBS

i have little boobs. if it really is accurate to talk about transfem bodies this way, then i think i am in Tanner Stage 3. i don't really care about having boobs so i don't really think about it. mainly i felt A LOT BETTER about my body after i started removing my chest hair, no matter what my chest looks like.

early on in transition i asked you all if my boobs would stop being sore. some of you said no. well listen up fuckers, you were dead wrong! after three or four months they stopped hurting entirely. but then afer i started injections they began to hurt again, and now they still hurt. maybe they'll just hurt every August, no matter what i do.

WEIGHT GAIN, FAT DISTRIBUTION

i literally weigh 50 pounds more than at the start of 2023. however, 30 of those pounds i put on before even starting hrt. so i think it's a coincidence; regression to the mean. in the past i constnatly lost weight mysteriously, now i am quickly gaining it. i'm a little worried about it really, but i feel a little better about myself with chubbier cheeks as well.

i have definitely gained more of an hourglass shape now that i didn't have before. but i still think my body is very ugly and i'm ashamed of it. looking more feminine doesn't mean looking or feeling any more attractive necessarily and you have more body image issues than gender dysphoria. it's necessary to consider them a little separately. to be honest, i have no idea what i wanted hrt to do to my body. no matter what outward physical change i consider i will say 'that's some accidental change and is not the reason i'm on hormones, so i don't really care about it.' then why transition?

HRT AS WILL

this is to me the most fascinating change and the one i could anticipate the least; hrt completely changes my fundmanetal first-person experience of reality. i have no idea how to describe it; surely any words are inaccurate metaphors which cannot possibly denote anything to you if you haven't felt it. i simply feel that, before hrt, i was out of alignment, and that when i am on hrt, my alignment has been restored, and i have achieved some kind of invisible perfection. every waking moment feels so much better, and stopping hrt made me feel awful for that reason only. i knew what it was like to be on it. Tiresias.

this is the biggest thing for me; even if hrt did absolutely nothing else i would take it for this reason alone. not only that, but i would still regard it as deeply important, fulfilling some deep need. i would pay a high price for it.

do you know what i mean? what is this?

oh god... have you felt this? it's rather... rapturous... ah haha...

it means that i'm chosen...

maybe i have eyes on the inside. if you kill me you'll get a Caryll Rune: Clockwise Metamorphosis.

when i think about other things to add to my transition progress, such as progesterone, this is the primary lens that i look at it through. how would this change my inner experience? what effect would it have on me at the level of pure feeling? i don't really care what it would do to my body. what new chamber of the soul is unlocked thereby?

PERIODS

i was promised that i would get periods when i started hrt. this seems to have been a myth. if i want periods i suppose i would have to actually vary my own hormones throughout the month. in the past i actually had a pretty intense dysphoria about not getting periods, and the idea that i'd get them one day was very relieving to me. thankfully i don't really care about that anymore; all of my desires orient themselves with reference to transfems, so not having periods doesn't create any kind of distance between myself and my peers.

CONCLUSION

anyway, transition is going extremely well in my estimation. there are other aspects of transition than just hrt; gender-affirming clothes, laser (cheap here), optionally voice training and such. i think for some people a year is kind of a long time, but i tend to have a long-term view. it's something healthy but it also makes me slow to act. in any case i still see myself as just starting, and i will get to other things soon enough. i like changing. i like doing things that change me. you have to resist the temptation to see every possible avenue of transition as a form of assimilation to cisnormativity. we have a culture; we do certain things that change us, sometimes forever and sometimes for now.

thanks for reading.

#trip report not medical advice

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officialspec · 9 months

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started taking finasteride for hair loss and i think its such a funny situation to be in as a transmasc. taking medicine to block the testosterone i put into my body on purpose

#trans stuff

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what-even-is-thiss · 9 months

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For some reason even though all the older men on all sides of the family from all angles kept their hair well into their 60s all of my cousins started balding in their 20s. Including me now. I’ve got a consultation to discuss meds for it soon. Idk what hair losing genetics were lying dormant in all these people but they have come out in full force.

Anyways, looks like I’ll probably start taking finasteride soon. I’ll probably be talking about it a bit mostly because there’s very little information about trans men on T going on finasteride so fingers crossed I don’t get my period back. That’s probably the only thing I’m worried about. Some people claim it’s rare, some don’t. Idk. I don’t wanna buy a wig, I know that much.

It can also lower sex drive but frankly as an asexual person I just see that as a fun bonus.

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transgenderpolls · 6 months

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*if you would only hide it through hats or other less drastic means, pick one of the previous answers

#testosterone #hrt #trans man #transmasc #ftm #trans #transgender #nonbinary #polls #submission

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femcelbassmentdweller · 1 month

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Overview of My First Year of HRT (2021-2022)

Hi, my name is Sylvie, and I'm transfemme! I started hormone replacement therapy on September 25th, 2021 and I've been through quite a lot on my journey to a year of HRT so I'm making two separate posts: this one focusing on the medical side and physical changes, and another that will focus on the social side of transitioning. So, here we go!

I realized I was trans the last week of August 2021, then September 9th I came out publicly, September 15th I had my first appointment with Plume, and I received my first Estradiol script September 24th, but consider my official "first day" of HRT the 25th.

I started HRT on sublingual Estradiol pills, 2mg twice a day (morning and night). Psychologically, taking the first pill hit me like a psychosomatic lightning bolt, and the first meaningful change estrogen granted me was an opening of my feelings- I could suddenly experience a "true range" of emotion, I experienced ambivalence for the first time. Physically, within the first week, I was experiencing tingling in my chest/nipples and by three weeks they actively ached, and after about two months my nipples looked different (darker, larger), and my chest started to stick out (36" to 37")

At 2 months my Estradiol was increased to three times a day and Progesterone 100mg (at night) added. By two months, my body's sensitivity had reached astronomical levels, particularly in areas that weren't sensitive before: for me, this was my nipples, armpits, and butt. My skin overall became more sensitive, slight touches made me quiver and my pain tolerance dropped sharply. During my second month my body's smell changed too and my sweat production cut back.

At 3 months, Spironolactone 50mg once a day (morning) was added and during this month my nipples had noticeably expanded and become dark enough to see through shirts, and my chest had grown enough to be noticeable small mounds in a tight shirt (38"). Also by 3 months, random erections completely stopped happening, whether asleep or awake.

Between months 3 and 5 a lot of things happened in my life; the stress and inactivity caused me to lose 50 lbs. As a result, I lost a ton of muscle mass. My thighs, upper arms, and butt became soft and jiggly, I could not lift things I could before, even with great effort.

3 month bloodwork results: E @ 133 and T @ 320

At 4 months, I asked my doctor for Finasteride, which is a DHT blocker- DHT is an androgen created by testosterone and an excess of DHT is related to hair loss, as well as some research I read back then relating to DHT and thicker/darker body hair. Since starting Finasteride, I have only shaved and used Nair on my body itself and I have experienced 75%-80% body hair loss, and much of what hair remains is now vellus hair (light, short, soft).

Between months 4 and 5, I started experiencing sexual dysfunction. Even if aroused, it was a 50/50 shot of whether I could get hard or not. Likewise, I began producing much less semen. This was when I started experimenting with different forms of masturbating too (i.e. using a vibrator).

Between months 5 and 6 I started gaining weight again, and this was when my breast growth was the greatest, going from 38" to almost 41". However, in the growth it seems I lost the sensitivity I had in the early months- my nipples and armpits are still erogenous zones, but not as potent. Additionally, I noticed fat redistribution caused my hips and waist to take a more stereotypically feminine, almost hourglass appearance (and increased from 32" and 34" respectively to 35" and 38" by 10 months).

6 month bloodwork results: E @ 258 and T @ 22

Months 7, 8, and 9 saw only slight breast growth (41 1/2") due to losing weight again from stress, but at this point I have very little body hair left, and even areas which were full before (armpits, groin) thinned out significantly over time- the most astounding of all being my butt, which the cheek hair just disappeared without me doing anything, like the hair just fell off.

Somewhere during months 8 and 9, I completely lost the ability to become erect without medication (doctor prescribed me Sildenafil, aka viagra) and no more ejaculating. Reaching orgasm became a concentrated effort instead of something that came easily, and very little clear liquid would come out during.

9 month bloodwork results: E @ 57 and T @ 28

For some reason my levels dropped between 6 and 9 months, and during that time I became very mentally and emotionally unwell due to the hormone imbalances. My doctor suggested a few things: me not waiting/letting the pill dissolve long enough in my mouth or the pill just not having the same potency on me anymore. So...

At month 10 I started injections and almost immediately started feeling much better. There is a hormonal low day for me every week, the day before I do my injection again, but it's not hard to deal with. I feel like myself!

Now months 11 and 12, nothing really noteworthy to update except I'm desperately trying to eat more so I can gain weight to grow my boobs. Just stopped taking Spiro though, but I use Tgel to maintain my girldick because I'm a Switch.

Lastly, I'd like to say I'm open to any questions anyone might have, and I'll do my best to answer them. You can DM me, email me secretly from a fake account ([email protected] is my email), whatever! I just hope this information is of some value to someone out there!

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