Hormone madnessarynessocityishness
Apr. 14th, 2007 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_fantastic_ms_fox"I now have a lot more respect for 14-year-old boys"
- participant at a transgender support group
- participant at a transgender support group
I empathize. Both he and I were/are dealing with having the hormonal oscillations of an adolescant member of our preferred gender.
All this crazy hormone shit is good - it's really good - but it's interesting and, at times, six kinds of intense.
At least I assume it's the hormones: a given change in my mental state may be a result of:
- the (rising) level of estrogen in my body
- the (falling) level of testosterone in my body
- the fact that these hormones are fluctuating (for the mathematically inclined it's the derivative of the level) and that will screw with your head
- the placebo effect
- being relieved to finally be addressing my gender issues with superscience
- a lot of stress at school/work followed by relatively little stress
- being worried about what I'm going to do when my body starts to look "weird"
- changes in air pressure, humidity, temperature, sunlight...
- some specific combination of the above
- whatever
Anyhow, here's what's going on:
Sex Drive:
It's less of a drive now; more of an appreciation. Sex is "nice;" welcome when it's there. Many people are attractive. I may want to get close to some of them; but I don't have the desire to get laid. I still benefit from getting laid, you could even say I "need" it as part of a rounded lifestyle, but it's not an active deal. I also don't feel the need to masturbate (or to keep masturbating once I've started), although, like sex, I still enjoy it. This may be in part because I have less of a desire to get outside of my body and into safe headspace.
Body feelings
I sleep a lot more, and I need it. Fortunately, I tend to stay asleep (hooray!) except when I get up to pee (which, since I'm taking Spiro, is one to two times a night).
I get hungry when I'm low on calories. I don't just crave food, I actually have the empty tummy feeling.
Chocolate often seems like a good idea.
Like I said earlier, touch feels a lot different now.
My nipples hurt - in part 'cause I'm growing the sensitve parts under them, but have no fat to pad it with... yet.
The patch gives me morning sickness; s a light nausea, salient in the absence of the vertigo of carsickness, or the upset stomach of illness.
Mood swings:
So, there's a lot of talk from/about (some) transmen who experience fits of rage and the impulse to do violence whenever they up their testosterone (AKA "T") dose. But which of the above factors underlie this, and why don't all Transmen get this?
And then there's the big question: what does this say about men? I'm not sure, but I've hit a few fits of visceral rage. It was scary, but wait - I'm not on T. I "shouldn't" be getting this.
Weird. Why? Maybe I'm somehow predisposed to this reaction? Or maybe it's for me, being female in no way precludes intense physical anger, so I notice it and integrate it as part of the whole experience. In other words, "female" means many things to many people, and this is what it means to a utopian gender nut and women's studies' student. Maybe many hormone-using trans folk get this (wthether it's E or T), but maybe the "E" crowd dismisses it
I do have the feeling of needing to cry a lot. Happy, sad, whatever. Some transmen report the feleling of needing to cry but being unable to do so. A biochemical connection? Or just the product of acting out a role and/or sorting shit out?
Locative Embodiment
Sorry for wordiness, but I'm not sure how else to put this. It is now easier for me to slip out of my head and into my environment. I am there. I see the panorama of the urban landscape. I hear background noise. They fit together. The world is more beautiful to the point where it distracts me, and not in some abstract "that's a pretty scene" sense: I'm in it; it's all around me. This is great.
Cognition
My mouth often feels locked or paralyzed, but now it seems more mutable: I can move it expressively but annuciation remains difficult.
The part of my brain that handles word formation is gummed up and tends to swap syllables when I speak, and word fragments when I write. I did this before, but mostly with foreign languages. So what starts out as one word, often ends up as another which can leave me sounding a little insurgent... I mean inartistic... motherfucker! I mean "inarticulate."
I am cultivating the practice of listening to the part of me that knows what needs to be done now; the part that can make decisions without concious and meticulous assessement. This subtle self-listening is getting easire, but I think that it has less to do with "better intuition" and more to do with just feeling more comfortable with being me.
And yesterday, I felt coy and coky all day. It was awesome. I've not felt that in a while. The last time was when I was involved in the doubleplusgood prank election campaign. In both cases, I was being me.
I'm often trans in my dreams now. When I'm male, I'm more likely to be me in the past, or someone else entirely (such as the Malcolm-McDowellesque "god" who made a universe that runs on a vast computer inside a vast void of nothing; and this is where the universe of Battlestar actually takes place; and where I must have gone mad from being the only creating one, because I have done so many terrible things yet feel like they were acceptable and my god/self-given right, and I can see the degenerate babbling husk that I will become, but that's another story - - - the other dream was recreating being taunted and woke up weeping, then realived that this was the same social dynamic as the CFS would impose - - - but that too is another story)
Body language and identity.
I'm told that my body language was already pretty androgynous, but is now becoming distinctly female. Som efo this has to do with beig relaxed. Some of this may come from the hormones. But a lot of this has to do with how I dress, which is kind of scary.
When I wear the jean top (the girliest piece of deniable clothes I have), I culr up on the couch, hold my hand to my mouth when I laugh and so on. When I wear the leather jacket, I plod and have to remind myself that you might feel like it, but you don't look like a butch girl. That is, unless I'm wearing boyish clothes around some of my old male frends, in which case I feel like "one of the guys" which is very strange because I've never felt like that before.
Anyhow.
So why aren't other people calling me "she?" I ask.
I dunno, it says, I guess they're just stu- oh no wait, I guess that does make some degree of sense... ah... whatever.
Yeah.
So... I've gone nuts.
And it's good.
- the (rising) level of estrogen in my body
- the (falling) level of testosterone in my body
- the fact that these hormones are fluctuating (for the mathematically inclined it's the derivative of the level) and that will screw with your head
- the placebo effect
- being relieved to finally be addressing my gender issues with superscience
- a lot of stress at school/work followed by relatively little stress
- being worried about what I'm going to do when my body starts to look "weird"
- changes in air pressure, humidity, temperature, sunlight...
- some specific combination of the above
- whatever
Anyhow, here's what's going on:
Sex Drive:
It's less of a drive now; more of an appreciation. Sex is "nice;" welcome when it's there. Many people are attractive. I may want to get close to some of them; but I don't have the desire to get laid. I still benefit from getting laid, you could even say I "need" it as part of a rounded lifestyle, but it's not an active deal. I also don't feel the need to masturbate (or to keep masturbating once I've started), although, like sex, I still enjoy it. This may be in part because I have less of a desire to get outside of my body and into safe headspace.
Body feelings
I sleep a lot more, and I need it. Fortunately, I tend to stay asleep (hooray!) except when I get up to pee (which, since I'm taking Spiro, is one to two times a night).
I get hungry when I'm low on calories. I don't just crave food, I actually have the empty tummy feeling.
Chocolate often seems like a good idea.
Like I said earlier, touch feels a lot different now.
My nipples hurt - in part 'cause I'm growing the sensitve parts under them, but have no fat to pad it with... yet.
The patch gives me morning sickness; s a light nausea, salient in the absence of the vertigo of carsickness, or the upset stomach of illness.
Mood swings:
So, there's a lot of talk from/about (some) transmen who experience fits of rage and the impulse to do violence whenever they up their testosterone (AKA "T") dose. But which of the above factors underlie this, and why don't all Transmen get this?
And then there's the big question: what does this say about men? I'm not sure, but I've hit a few fits of visceral rage. It was scary, but wait - I'm not on T. I "shouldn't" be getting this.
Weird. Why? Maybe I'm somehow predisposed to this reaction? Or maybe it's for me, being female in no way precludes intense physical anger, so I notice it and integrate it as part of the whole experience. In other words, "female" means many things to many people, and this is what it means to a utopian gender nut and women's studies' student. Maybe many hormone-using trans folk get this (wthether it's E or T), but maybe the "E" crowd dismisses it
I do have the feeling of needing to cry a lot. Happy, sad, whatever. Some transmen report the feleling of needing to cry but being unable to do so. A biochemical connection? Or just the product of acting out a role and/or sorting shit out?
Locative Embodiment
Sorry for wordiness, but I'm not sure how else to put this. It is now easier for me to slip out of my head and into my environment. I am there. I see the panorama of the urban landscape. I hear background noise. They fit together. The world is more beautiful to the point where it distracts me, and not in some abstract "that's a pretty scene" sense: I'm in it; it's all around me. This is great.
Cognition
My mouth often feels locked or paralyzed, but now it seems more mutable: I can move it expressively but annuciation remains difficult.
The part of my brain that handles word formation is gummed up and tends to swap syllables when I speak, and word fragments when I write. I did this before, but mostly with foreign languages. So what starts out as one word, often ends up as another which can leave me sounding a little insurgent... I mean inartistic... motherfucker! I mean "inarticulate."
I am cultivating the practice of listening to the part of me that knows what needs to be done now; the part that can make decisions without concious and meticulous assessement. This subtle self-listening is getting easire, but I think that it has less to do with "better intuition" and more to do with just feeling more comfortable with being me.
And yesterday, I felt coy and coky all day. It was awesome. I've not felt that in a while. The last time was when I was involved in the doubleplusgood prank election campaign. In both cases, I was being me.
I'm often trans in my dreams now. When I'm male, I'm more likely to be me in the past, or someone else entirely (such as the Malcolm-McDowellesque "god" who made a universe that runs on a vast computer inside a vast void of nothing; and this is where the universe of Battlestar actually takes place; and where I must have gone mad from being the only creating one, because I have done so many terrible things yet feel like they were acceptable and my god/self-given right, and I can see the degenerate babbling husk that I will become, but that's another story - - - the other dream was recreating being taunted and woke up weeping, then realived that this was the same social dynamic as the CFS would impose - - - but that too is another story)
Body language and identity.
I'm told that my body language was already pretty androgynous, but is now becoming distinctly female. Som efo this has to do with beig relaxed. Some of this may come from the hormones. But a lot of this has to do with how I dress, which is kind of scary.
When I wear the jean top (the girliest piece of deniable clothes I have), I culr up on the couch, hold my hand to my mouth when I laugh and so on. When I wear the leather jacket, I plod and have to remind myself that you might feel like it, but you don't look like a butch girl. That is, unless I'm wearing boyish clothes around some of my old male frends, in which case I feel like "one of the guys" which is very strange because I've never felt like that before.
Anyhow.
So why aren't other people calling me "she?" I ask.
I dunno, it says, I guess they're just stu- oh no wait, I guess that does make some degree of sense... ah... whatever.
Yeah.
So... I've gone nuts.
And it's good.