Am I “Trans Enough” to Take Hormones?I’ve been dysphoric about my body sin
Am I “Trans Enough” to Take Hormones?
I’ve been dysphoric about my body since the moment my sixth grade health teacher told me my hips and chest would grow with puberty. I cried inconsolably that afternoon and spent the next few weeks desperately searching for a solution; a way to cheat adolescence and maintain my androgynous form. I broke down in an anxious heap, terrified at the prospect of growing up to become a woman, and started praying to God to never let me grow boobs.
10 years later, I sat in a doctor’s office, waiting on a different powerful being to help answer the prayers that God never did. After years spent desiring a more masculine form, I knew that I wanted to finally seek out hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to help ease the gnawing feeling of being mismatched with my own body.
But I felt like a complete fraud for doing it.
When I came out as nonbinary, I worried constantly that I wasn’t “trans enough” to warrant starting testosterone. That fear was amplified the first time I researched the process of medical transition; everything I found online was a one-way, no-turning-back formula: You could be either a trans woman or a trans man. There was no space for someone like me.
Reading about trans men’s experiences with testosterone, I felt like a spy collecting research on someone else’s territory. It seemed like everyone’s experiences were focused on the ultimate goal of presenting as a man in public. Effects of testosterone, like beard growth and baritone-level voice drops, were laid out like landmarks only to be celebrated as part of a straightforward journey to manhood. As my self-confidence splintered, my Google search history quickly morphed from “What is testosterone?” into “Am even I allowed to take testosterone?”
On my own, I struggled with whether or not HRT was right for me and my dysphoria. Though I didn’t find my experience reflected online, I knew that because my own goal was to transition to appear more androgynous, there were some changes I wanted with testosterone and others that I did not. I found community in the shared desire for body fat redistribution and the masculinization of my facial structure, but I felt my stomach drop in panic and isolation as I scrolled through photos of trans men celebrating their facial hair growth. When I read through checklists of the physical changes testosterone causes, I darted between excitement and panic. Then I read the line at the bottom of every web page: “You cannot pick and choose the changes that you want when you start testosterone.”
