Hai! I’m new-ish here. I’ve known for a bit I’m trans, but barely started anything substantial really. I’m easing into it, but I’ve had this thing stuck in my mind recently.
Whats something relatively small or cheap/easy that helps make you feel girl? I have a few loungey clothes and stuff and been working on body hair removal but I’m looking for something… Else? I’m not sure what. Just thought this could be a good place for ideas or advice.
I’m just looking for new easy ideas that might help me feel more ‘at home’? Idk I wanna be a comfy chill relaxed girl.
estrogen 😆
EDIT: before someone points out this isn’t a small thing, I think HRT should be thought of as relatively small step - so many women wait really long to start estrogen for no reason other than perception that this is some huge step that you can’t undo.
I think estrogen should be one of the first things anyone does when exploring because it gives you so much information about what feels good for you, and it can potentially be so life-saving, and because it is such a low-cost and low-risk thing to do.
There is no reason not to start with estrogen as the first little step:
Three months is a long time to figure out if estrogen is the right thing for you, if it helps, if actually it’s crucial for your mental health and basic functioning, etc.
Even past 3 months you don’t have to socially transition, you might have another 9+ months before you can’t boy-mode anymore, I have a friend on oral estrogen who is still boy-moding a year later without issue (though your mileage may vary - I don’t think I could boy-mode anymore because of my breasts). I know a woman who has been on estrogen for much longer who still boy-modes at work, and people see what they want to see - I can’t see a man in her, but because they all knew her as a man, that’s what they see still.
All this to say, estrogen should come first. It’s not a big deal.
My grandma took estrogen and then died. It’s a really big deal among her descendants.
I can’t tell if this is serious, or a joke I don’t get 😅
Heritable diseases are seriously preventing me from doing E.
Yes. This.
I’d been aware of the existence and effects of feminizing HRT since–well, probably my mid teens? And always thought that I’d really like it, if only I was trans. Funny thing, 25 years later, turns out I’m trans (I was also starting to get some uncomfortably dark thoughts regarding my continued existence). So I never really worried about it, just realized one day “oh right, I can do this now.”
And yeah, probably a lot of it is placebo, but I feel so much better on estrogen. When I was in the process of cracking, I read a lot of comments saying the same thing and thinking “yeah, right”. But no, starting HRT has been, by far, the best part of my transition so far.
The initial (reversible) effects will definitely let you know if it’s right for you.
Three months in is when I started getting “oh shit, this is awesome”-level changes.
This is pretty much exactly what I did, started HRT, let it cook for about 8 months, and them was able to transition socially in a much more ‘flip the switch kind of way’.
Most of my dysphoria was hormonal though, I did not like the way T made me feel at all. The social aspect was less immediately urgent for me personally, but that may not be true for everyone.
Bonus info: Calvin Klein sells a no-show sports bra that does a very good job of hiding breast development for a while under even a fitted T-shirt. It has enough padding to hide pokies and protect from bumping against stuff early on, saving a lot of pain and trouble.
CW: suicidal ideation
yeah, I socially transitioned three months before I started estrogen. That was because the same day I figured out I was trans I realized I just wouldn’t ever transition if I didn’t force myself out of the closet by being public in that moment. The temptation to never transition and rationalize a way out of transitioning was too great, and I realized I had been doing that my entire adult life.
Needless to say, social transition without any hormones was hell for me. Obviously I should have been on estrogen my whole life, I had awful biochemical dysphoria, and I honestly marvel how I survived and didn’t kill myself. There were previous attempts and lots of suicidal ideation from the time I was 13 years old. When I was 18 - 19 I made very concrete plans and took steps to make that plan happen, but I couldn’t pull the trigger (metaphorically speaking).
During the three month wait for estrogen there was one night I woke up in the middle of the night in extreme distress and had to carefully manage extremely intense suicidal impulses. I just don’t think anyone should go through that, and even though at the time I downplayed how much I was suffering, I look back now and balk.
I suspect many other trans women without estrogen feel the way I did, and it’s incredible to me how much we as a community tolerate this harm. If the problem were diabetes, nobody would be wringing their hands about when or whether they should start insulin, it’s only because of transphobia that we all think it’s reasonable to not address a serious hormone condition. (Though not every trans person requires HRT or has biochemical dysphoria, since so many do and it’s such a low risk for those who don’t need it, I think it’s worth encouraging any trans person to start hormones ASAP as a kind of obvious harm reduction.)
EDIT: also, taking hormones made it more obvious to me that transitioning wasn’t the … optional step I thought it was. I had previously thought it was just a way for me to indulge in the desire to wear women’s clothes and try to be socially accepted as a woman - desires I thought were much less important than other considerations like a career which would have been threatened by transition / being visibly trans. Once I was on hormones I understood that transition was fundamental to my health and well-being, and that by not transitioning I was risking my life. It’s not a choice for me, it truly isn’t - it only seemed that way when I was pre-transition and didn’t know better. Taking estrogen helped clarify the necessity of HRT, which I did not believe in before then. Before I would have thought of estrogen just as a means to an end, something you do to look like a woman so you can live as one socially, not realizing estrogen is an essential hormone to make your body work correctly when you are a woman and that the wrong sex hormones can wreck havoc.
It took me embarrassingly long to realize that if I’m seriously contemplating suicide, I should not be worrying too much about HRT what-ifs and fears I had. I eventually told myself that even if I opted to stop later, it’d be a good idea to start just to reduce my suicide risk.
When the other option is likely death, you really don’t have anything to lose by trying.
this exactly, I look back and wonder why I waited for three months, I should have started DIY as soon as possible while waiting for my endo visit, or at least gone to a Planned Parenthood if they could work me in sooner. I was reckless with my life, but I guess I was used to being reckless that way in the past. I also just didn’t take seriously the suicide risk, and it was only after HRT that I realized that was unreasonable. I was too accustomed to life that way, I didn’t know it could be any different.
That’s a goal for one of these days! Not yet though 😅 too much crazy shit going on and I don’t feel secure enough to start transitioning where I am now.
I get that, and you have to make your own choices about that, but estrogen can be supportive without necessarily forcing you to socially transition, there are many people who take estrogen but are in the closet still. Depending on how you dress, speak, and interact, you probably can pass as a male for longer than you think.
It depends on a lot of things how soon you will start to appear as a woman to people. If you have short hair and not a lot of body fat I think it would be easier, since it’s hard to grow breasts without much fat. If you are heavier you are more likely get more breast growth and it might be harder to hide that without a binder, but even that can be managed. If you have facial hair or heavy beard shadow, that heavily skews perception towards male.
You might look back and think waiting for security in your life before starting estrogen was a mistake, especially if estrogen is necessary for your brain to work well like it is for me. Even without that reason, your body will undergo further androgenization, which for me increased significantly in my 20s.
Just worth thinking it through. If you have to keep it secret from family or people you live with, you could always take the DIY route to avoid the paper trail that visiting a doctor causes.
Just don’t underestimate how important estrogen is, I did and I regret it deeply - I would do anything to go back in time and start as early as I could.