at what age did you start HRT?

[seldom]

Officially starting Age 28!    First Month!

[Kaitlyn]

I started just a couple months after my 20th birthday and I haven't stopped, and while I wish I had started even sooner, I'm glad that I did manage to start as soon as I did, even if it was a bit risky.

[Rachael]

risky? whats risky?

[Kaitlyn]

Well... the only way I managed to start then was by self-medicating. Which I'm not anymore, but still.

[rhonda13000]

48, DIY.

[Hypatia]

I started at 46 (which was last year) - surprised to find that the forties are the smallest age cohort in this poll. Here I'd been thinking the forties were the most common age to begin it.

How I envy you youngsters who have so much more self-awareness, information, support, and resources than were available when I was young. I remember wishing in my early twenties that I could transition - and telling myself it was impossible, never gonna happen, just forget about it. <sigh> The lies we tell ourselves out of fear and ignorance.

[mikke]

19.

[Alexandria]

I started officially 6 months ago (jan 2007).  I am now 22 years young.  However, my mom (who has been by biggest supporter), listened as I cried to be a girl when i was 15-16 and with my doctors permission gave me  alsdactone (which made me pee a lot) and said that it would "slow down or even stop my male side", until I was older and could decide for myself.   (my mom is a nurse, and was able to get this for me)......i started therapy off/on when i was 16, Yag laser treatements when i was 19....and now the real deal.....looking forward to SRS in 1 year (or less maybe).....

[Berliegh]

I didn't start officially till I was 38. Before that I used to steal birth control pills from girlfriends while I was in my 20's....

I think I started way too late but when I wanted to transition in the early 1980's there wasn't the internet or the help and support there is today.

I envy the girls who got going while they were still quite young and you look fantastic in your aviators..

[NatalieC]

I started December 12th last year. Wow finally my body is getting what it desperately needs. Im in my early 30's and noticing how good I look with this strange thing called Eostrogen. Why didnt they give it to me as a child. I dont know whats wrong with these people around here! Oh well...At least my breasts will get bigger now.

[Hypatia]

I think I started way too late but when I wanted to transition in the early 1980's there wasn't the internet or the help and support there is today.

Same here. (Wish I'd known about the workaround of stealing my sweetie's BC pills... somehow that didn't occur to me.)

But when I think back to my teenage years in the 1970s... and how much my Dad yelled at me for simply growing my hair long... if I'd come out with this, he would have f***in killed me. I grew up in terror of his explosive anger. I was raised in a religiously conservative environment, sent to Catholic schools all the way through college... nowhere I turned was any support to be found. I simply wasn't aware that the possibility even existed.

I remember my Dad yelling at my Mom when he thought she was going too easy on me. Now I understand why: they were worried if they didn't toughen up on me more, I would grow up gay (horrors!) and it would be all their fault. I would have been sent to mental hospitals and given thorazine or electroshocks as they did in those days to control rebellious kids. I knew kids that had happened to, and we all knew it was a perpetual threat hanging over us if we got out of line. Wish I had an estrogen pill for every time some macho control freak got in my face with "What you need is to be sent away to MILITARY SCHOOL!" For anyone who hasn't gone through this, you have no idea.

[Berliegh]

I think I started way too late but when I wanted to transition in the early 1980's there wasn't the internet or the help and support there is today.

Same here. (Wish I'd known about the workaround of stealing my sweetie's BC pills... somehow that didn't occur to me.)

But when I think back to my teenage years in the 1970s... and how much my Dad yelled at me for simply growing my hair long... if I'd come out with this, he would have f***in killed me. I grew up in terror of his explosive anger. I was raised in a religiously conservative environment, sent to Catholic schools all the way through college... nowhere I turned was any support to be found. I simply wasn't aware that the possibility even existed.

I remember my Dad yelling at my Mom when he thought she was going too easy on me. Now I understand why: they were worried if they didn't toughen up on me more, I would grow up gay (horrors!) and it would be all their fault. I would have been sent to mental hospitals and given thorazine or electroshocks as they did in those days to control rebellious kids. I knew kids that had happened to, and we all knew it was a perpetual threat hanging over us if we got out of line. Wish I had an estrogen pill for every time some macho control freak got in my face with "What you need is to be sent away to MILITARY SCHOOL!" For anyone who hasn't gone through this, you have no idea.

That sounds awful Hypatia. I never experienced that kind of abuse. My parents were my adopted parents and were very religious but never unkind or uncaring. I grew my hair long, really long in the late 70's (and kept it long ever since!) and they didn't ever protest about it. I wore femine clothes and it wasn't ever an issue either. My adopted dad was a lovely man who gained a lot of respect in the community and was well liked. I think he knew which direction I was heading but was quite intelligent and mature about these kind of issues.

Maybe in the U.K people are more liberal than American's. As for stealing birth control pills in the 1980's, it was something I couldn't stop doing. My girlfriend would give them to me in the end but they didn't have enough in them to do anything. I never really tried to conform and I ended up singing in rock bands which gave me a little more scope to be different.

[MaraOnline]

I am 25. I started sprio a month ago and will be starting estrogen soon.

I think it doesn't matter what age we start HRT, we always wish we had started earlier

[Kat]

Started Spiro...something and Estro...something (I am so bad with these kind of names)
1 month ago, turned 18 in Feb.

I think it doesn't matter what age we start HRT, we always wish we had started earlier

So true... so so true...

[Rachael]

i agree, i wish id started before puberty started, but sh*t happens i guess...

[loveluv]

19 xoxo