I have a few serious questions
@bridgeburn and
@HillTopLumber if you guys don't mind ...
I find you both intriguing because you're doing what I partly wish I would do ie. Just nuking the hormones completely. (But I would only ever do it long term if it becomes a truly desperate situation since I'm happy with my current regimen and the tweaks I have planned ie. reducing daro, adding equol & genistein).
Ok Ideal, I'll answer seriously and honestly and tell you my detailed perspective on hormones, masculinity, and femininity. maybe its a bit personal but I'll make it public cause why care anymore what people think of me.This will be a long post. Some of this may piss guys off, some people may get defensive when I say things they don't want to hear. but these are just my honest views and if you stop and think about it you'll probably see some truth in it.
- Did you ever experience gender dysphoria growing up? Ie. Did/do you ever with sincerity wish you were a woman, even if it's just for brief moments?
I don't remember growing up wishing I was a girl or dysphoria. and I don't think that my thoughts were too particularly transy. I remember before imagining that if I was a girl I would choose to have extemely long hair, probably growing it past my a$$ lol.
and of course I was an ectomorphic skinny weirdo in school who got picked on so I have thought that girls must have it easier in terms of bullies.
Puberty though was not so good. The way I remember it is I starting getting horrible body odor and people telling me I stunk, becoming extremly horny and jacking off all the time, my temple hair suddenly dissapearing, I lifted up my long hair one day and saw my temples had rapidly vanished into bare f*****g skin, and I got alot of acne and shittier looking skin.
How hetero/bi/homosexual would you say your natural orientation is, understanding that sexuality is a continuum?
I am attracted to girls. I can't imagine liking guys, men are full of testosterone and Dht and all that sh*t I don't like.
I also think that at least up until menopause that men's looks decay faster than womens. In general, a woman who is 30 years old will have better skin than a man who is 30, also she would have maintained her childlike cuteness since puberty more.
I'll admit that If I honestly met a transgirl who was really beautiful, had a great personality and a feminine persona but hadn't had the surgery, probably the penis would not bother me. I don't know how gay you think that is but I think most guys would feel the same but are just too embarrassed to admit it.
This may be going a bit off the direct topic but still about attractiveness and sexuality. And since I have progressively gotten crazy obsessive to a point that I despise anything related to Dht including masculinity, I will say a few things:
In the grand scheme of attraction, male features are inferior and this could even apply to women's attraction to us to a certain extant.
If you put more female traits on a girl she will not lose any attractiveness and more likely she will just become more attractive! but It doesn't work the other way around, too many masculine traits on men can actually decrease their attractiveness.
Men have to be somewhere in the middle to be more attractive to most women. There has actually been studies on this.
Most women do not actually prefer the face way on the right;
And even Society overall agrees with this way of thinking too, that femininity is valued dose dependently while masculinity can only be valued in a moderated fashion. Think of all the companies who want their employees to be clean shaven, Facial hair is a male trait and yet even many cis men choose to shave because they think it looks more proffessional, younger and cleaner. But do women ever do anything to reduce feminine features?, unless in some extreme circumstance like getting breast reduction because her boobs are so big they cause back pain, otherwise No.
And Baldness is a primarily androgenic induced Male feature, but how many hollywood movies pick bald characters for lead roles, Only if the character is meant to be an older guy, like a "dad" character, of course anyone in their 20s or early 30s with traces of "premature balding" would not have the part. The only roles for bald guys is older characters, or goofy side charcters, loser characters, or the villian. and the only acceptable possible attraction role for any bald guy is when he's the bald badass hypermasculine killing machine whose job is to be a brutal monster entertaining us with violence.
Also it is known that women are more likely to be bi sexual or get bi curious later in life than men..
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/11820710/Women-more-likely-to-be-bisexual-study-finds.html
I remember hearing some guys in high school claim that if they were born a girl that they would definitely be a lesbian and I thought that was a little dumb to assume. How could we honestly know what we would be under such different circumstances? If we were a cat, we'd be f*****g other cats. and If I had a vagina of course I'd want it to get penetrated someday, especially If I was born a girl who grew up watching Disney movies of falling in love with a prince, that would simply be the romantic ideas and desires that would have formed.. but I would not be surprised that if Disney movies, tv shows and mainstream media played equal number of stories involving same-sex couples or charcters in same sex romantic situations that children were exposed to then there would be an increase in the number of lesbians and bi sexuals. Maybe there would be some increase in gays too but I am certain that there would be an unproportional rise in the number of lesbian acts in comparison.
and there is a reason for all this. I would say, because in some weird objective cosmic collective human perspective, male traits are inferior overall just as testosterone is inferior to estrogen not only in attraction but other ways too, and if there is a God then surely God agrees too because God took a giant flaming sh*t on our gender and I'll tell you exactly how in the rest of this post.
I also have shared the same feelings you describe at many times HillTopLumber about how negative the male sex drive is to carry around with you, especially when you are not a top tier man, when most of your lust for women will never be reciprocated.
exactly. male sex drive is torture, consider all of the pain it has caused you. It's great now to be able to get aroused whenever I choose to but to not absolutely need to. To not be in complete desperate bondage to it like men are.
men are more likely to cheat, and even men who are relatively decent morally when it comes to all other aspects in life fall short when it comes to lust.
Many men will put "hoes before bros" betray thier friends because "all is fair in love and war" and be f*** boys who lead girls on just to get sex.
And guys are put under tremendous social pressure by other guys to be total w****s and if your not, they think something is wrong with you. Other guys will egotistically brag about their number of partners and make the "non top tier" men even more frustrated.
I like the fact that now I look at women like human beings not sex objects, now I care more about affection and love than sex which sounds lame but I like feeling this way, I never want to go back to the libido testosterone gave me.
What Hilltop says here about objectifying women is true. Hrt is honestly changing the way I think and made me lose interest in p**rn. I don't rank people on number scales and I'm letting go of riddiculously superficial hyper-analyzed preferences. I am able to focus on romantic ideas and overall story and I prefer this more pure form of libido as well.
- If it was possible to save your hair to the current extent you are doing now (hypothetical), but without nuking your hormones and sexual function, would you switch to that "other approach" and restore your normal male hormone levels and sexual function? Or would you rather stay the way you are now even if there was no difference to your hair?
- How long do you plan to pursue your current approach? Ie. For a few years then step down, or for life as you are doing now?
No! I feel utterly betrayed, I'm not going to ever give testosterone another chance. Hrt opened my eyes and I plan to stay on it forever. Even if a cure comes out tomorrow I would keep taking estrogen.
At first, I just started all this for my hair. I wasn't planning to continue forever, I didn't expect to start thinking the way I do now or to gradually turn into an estrogen junkie. I may have not showed it too much but I honestly like estrogen for more reasons than just hair. I actually like the way it makes me feel and It is giving me my youth back..
here are some old pictures of me:
and here are some during the past few months:
Androgens ravash our bodies and make us uglier and older. We go from young and cute to balding, old, and gross. We watch hair appear everywhere else on our body except for the one place we actually care about it and that just feels like a slap in the face from god. I was a nasty, horny, stinky, balding old man and I looked like a damn 40 year old pedophile!
And perhaps my biggest problem with testosterone is that it doesn't just make us look older. It Actually makes us older!!
-When people get thier pets castrated it increases thier lifespan
-and historically eunuchs in Korea lived longer
http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(12)00712-9
-Also, Women live longer In humans and in many other species as well!
When a man ejaculates he is cumming out his life force, men are designed to f*** and then die and that's all evolution cares about! but women need to stick around longer to take care of kids. The universe is designed to be fucked up and of all the things fertility and hair had to linked to it has to be lifespan. but lets take a good look at estrogen now:
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Estrogen increases collagen
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15955089
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Topical estrogen accelerates cutaneous wound healing in aged humans
"Compared to placebo, estrogen treatment increased the extent of wound healing in both males and females with a decrease in wound size at day 7, increased collagen levels at both days 7 and 80, and increased day 7 fibronectin levels. In addition, estrogen enhanced the strength of day 80 wounds."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1867002/
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It has antioxidant properties
"Estrogen deficiency in ovariectomized mice induced a downregulation of ecSOD and MnSOD expression, which was associated with increased production of vascular free radicals and prevented by estrogen replacement or treatment with PEG-SOD. In humans, increased estrogen levels led to enhanced ecSOD and MnSOD expression in circulating monocytes. Estrogen acts antioxidative at least to some extent via stimulation of MnSOD and ecSOD expression and activity, which may contribute to its vasoprotective effects."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12816884/
"Females live longer than males in many species, including humans. We have traced a possible explanation for this phenomenon to the beneficial action of estrogens, which bind to estrogen receptors and increase the expression of longevity-associated genes, including those encoding the antioxidant enzymes superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15944465/
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Our bodies as a product of nature only care about its own self preservation so that we can reproduce. Whenever a female runs out of eggs, that gives the signal to produce less life giving estrogen and then she experiences age related health issues. I wouldn't be surprised if women lived even longer if they didn't go through menopause.
In fact, this study shows women who took estrogen therapy for a longer amount of time after menopausal lived longer than non users and those who took it a shorter amount of time. Risk of death decreased with increasing duration of estrogen therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3373269/
and guess what else,
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estrogen deficiency leads to shorter telomeres in mice.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18936784
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and human women have longer telomeres than men
https://www.researchgate.net/figure...-age-The-X-axis-gives-the-age-of_fig2_7291931
SO, I think male hormones are f*****g poison and inferior in every way. They are a sick cruel joke of nature and they are death and that death is symbolized in baldness. There's no greater symbol of mortality than a bald scalp, it even looks like a f*****g skull!!
I used to think nature was my friend, and had very conservative and fearful viewpoints on drugs of any kind, I thought marijuana was just as bad as meth and that finasteride would make my dick fall off. Yet, here I am on dutasteride, 50mg cypro, 5mg estrogen and sometimes I take a bit more cause I feel like it. and I don't have any problems yet getting or maintaining erections.
Maybe I'm completely wrong here and there's some scientific reasons or I'm just lucky but I think it could be that I am in a relationship, I'm having sex with someone I care about and because sex drive becomes more mentally and emotionally linked then it would make sense that people who are single would experience more problems when it comes to sexual function. Because living alone and needing to masturbate is less exciting and having a one night stand or random hookups are less comfortable, and the nocebo effect could all potentially psychologically lead to ED.
Hopefully I will be able to continue to perform, but as of now, I really don't seem to need testosterone for sexual function.
What then is the actual good point of testosterone?? The good point to me is that it has the ability to convert to estrogen lol.
Maybe you could say that testosterone helps build muscle and enhance athletic ability as a good point.
This is certainly helpful some situations but the way I look at is that androgens give a tradeoff between short term strength and long term health. I look at testosterone as a drug kinda like meth. meth can give you power and energy but if you use it too much it will decrease your lifespan. Masculinity has more value in a primitive brutal world like in the caveman men days and medieval ages, in that time it was more necessary to have short term strength for survival. but now the world is more evolved. No matter how strong someone gets, If some a**h** full of muscle is in front of you but you have a gun in your hand, then you're the one with power. The adult world is a business society and money, a network, and knowledge is what gives us power now.
With that said I don't think I've lost much strength, not that I was particularly strong to begin with. And I've heard it's still possible to gain muscle strength while on Hrt but you have to train more often to maintain it.
and women actually do have some athletic advantage over men as well. They are less sore after excercise:
"Due to its alleged antioxidant properties, 17beta-estradiol (E2) may protect against muscle injury, oxidative stress, and apoptosis.
Men reported greater soreness levels at 24, 48, and 72 h after exercise, whereas strength changes were similar among genders. At baseline and independent of exercise, females had higher E2 (P < 0.001) and SOD in conjunction with lower 8-iso levels when compared with men. Bax increased in both genders, whereas bcl-2 increased only in women with no cytochrome c changes for either gender after exercise. The bax/bcl-2 ratio in women significantly decreased after 6 h (P = 0.03) and returned to baseline levels after 24 h. Men exhibited greater cell death at all time points (P < 0.05), whereas myofibrillar protein content and total DNA content decreased in both genders at 24 h after exercise. No changes in LDH were found (P > 0.05)."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18799987
"Animal studies point to a difference in those microtears: male rats show more muscle damage than female rats after eccentric contractions, for example. But studies of humans show something further down the chain. A
study in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that men and women experienced the same amount of muscle damage, but men's muscles had more inflammation post-exercise. Though more study is needed to learn exactly why women feel less pain from their gain, it could explain why they have an advantage over men in intense endurance events like ultramarathons."
https://curiosity.com/topics/after-exercise-women-arent-as-sore-as-men-curiosity/
- Do you have any desire for a long term relationship or children?
I'm in a long term relationship. I started balding as a teenager that's not exactly the kind of genetics I want to spreading, but we talked about this and both think that kids would be difficult for many many other reasons as well.
EDIT: The loss of fertility actually bothered me. I was downplaying cause I didn't want to own up to the fact that I jumped on HRT without researching enough to know sperm should be frozen.
Ok, that's all I'm going to say for now. I'm a bit nervous to press the reply button, I don't know if I'm making sense to other people and what kind of backlash I'll receive from everyone's tough man egos, but these are my points of view.
