Continuing with the questions that I will need to answer when applying for the gender clinic (there’s quite a lot!) let’s do one of the hopeful ones:
What do you hope to achieve from hormones?
Breasts!
Done. Right, next question.
I’m joking of course and there is much more to it than that.
Obviously breast growth is a big part of why I want to do hormone therapy, but there is something to say about why that is.
The wish to have breasts goes right back to the beginning of when I first felt that I should be a girl not a boy when puberty started, before I was even aware that transgender was a thing or that changing sex was possible. Back then, it was just a wish and an impossible dream. I wished I could be like the girls and as the most obvious outward change in their appearance was the growth of breasts, I suppose I identified that with’being a girl’ and attached great significance to it.
Through wearing a padded bra, I can create the outward appearance of having breasts and give my chest a female shape. I find seeing myself like this in the mirror brings me happiness and feels right, because in my mind, that is what my chest should look like. It’s the body shape I should have. There’s nothing verifiable in that, it’s just a feeling, but it’s how I feel.
I wish they were real though. I feel right with the shape of breasts, but then I take off the bra and they’re gone. I wish they were there permanently and for real. I may have seen how I would look with breasts, but I have never experienced how I would feel to have them as part of my body. The curves, the softness, the weight of them on my chest, how it feels to run with them (not good, I’m led to believe), all of that is unknown to me. And going right back to my beginning as a trans girl, I longed to experience the female puberty that started my feeling this way, and feel how it feels to develop as a woman.
Of course physical changes aren’t just for the chest. I believe I am too old for any skeletal changes that could give me feminine hips, but I’m hopeful that the altered fat distribution from oestrogen will give me some roundness of the hips and bottom, with less around the belly and waist to give me a bit of a feminine shape. As with my chest shape, I have been able to fake this to some extent through the use of shapewear underwear. The whole effect, under a clingy dress, is actually pretty good and I do believe my body shape appears feminine. It is still faking it though, and I don’t want to take off my femininity when I undress. Going back to male feels like such a loss.
Although I can do a fair job of faking the appearance of my body, there is no such thing that I can do for my face and this is something that really pains me. When I look in the mirror and see myself in a dress, with hips and waist and breasts and really great legs, I feel great…until I see my face and there is a man looking back at me. Dysphoria is very context specific. I don’t notice my face being masculine when I’m presenting male. In fact, there are many times that I catch sight of myself in the mirror or on a video call and marvel at how feminine my features are and see the woman inside. When presenting female, I feel the opposite and that my face lets me down. Given that my body will be mostly hidden by clothes anyway, and that can be helped with underwear, the effects of oestrogen on my face are arguably the most important of all as that is the part of me that will always be visible. Maybe becoming pretty is too much to hope for, but the feminising effects of softening the edges and filling out my cheeks will hopefully make a positive difference. I am quite fortunate in not having a particularly prominent jaw or overly masculine features, so I could hopefully get by with just the effects of hormones and avoid the need for facial surgery, but I shall have to wait and see how that turns out.
Finally there are the effects that can’t be seen; the emotional changes. I try really hard to be empathetic and to have emotional intelligence which I understand to be natural for women but have to be worked on for men. By and large, I think I am able to think in a more female than male way, but it would be great to have that naturally rather than through effort. All my life I have been closer to female friends and the greatest compliment has been to be accepted as one of the girls. Even so, there is a difference and there is always a limit to how close I can be. There has sometimes been a problem with overlapping friendships and attraction and the complications that can bring. To be free of that and of male tendencies altogether would be wonderful and so liberating. To be able to have better connections and to think and feel with women is the dream. It has been great to sometimes be accepted into a group as an ‘honorary girl’, but it would be so much more to actually be one.
Ultimately, there’s a lot to this that I am only able to imagine based on what I have learned from women (natal and trans) as there is no way to know how it really feels other than by experiencing it. Which I suppose is why I have to at least give it a try.
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