femininity

[reno]

I know I'd be in the minority of FTMs that enjoy being feminine, so perhaps no one even knows the answer I'm searching for..

All I really want changed about my physical self is a voice drop, a flat chest, and no more monthly.. horridness, ever again. Would being on a low dosage, enough to cause a voice drop, mean I get to keep having soft skin and manageable body hair? Or does *any* dosage make skin feel more coarse and body hair to grow in -for me- an unwanted abundance?

[Carson]

A low dosage doesn't make some changes not happen, it just makes them happen more slowly.

[Banf]

Voice deepening is one of the earliest and most permanent effects. Theoretically you could just be on T long enough for your voice to drop, and get top surgery. But monthly leakage will return if you quit T, and you may have some trouble getting surgery like that. ):

[Ryan]

Voice deepening isn't really one of the earliest affects at all. Voices usually break around 3-6 months on T, but some deepening will happen before that in some cases.
The earliest permanent change is the genital growth. You're also likely to get considerable hair growth before your voice breaks too.

If you want to stay feminine, then my advice would be not to take a masculinizing (if that's a word, haha) hormone.

[kyril]

Seth, I'm not interested in being hairy either, but to a certain extent it sort of comes with the package (modified, of course, by your particular genetics).

If you can tolerate a female fat distribution and working three times as hard to develop muscles, I guess you could go on T long enough to get the permanent changes, and then stop (so your skin, hair, body fat, and hormone balance slowly revert back to female-type) and either get a hysto or go on some sort of female birth control to stop the monthly. You'd have to put up with whatever level of facial hair you developed or else get electrolysis.

The alternative would be to stay on T but be sort of effeminate or "metrosexual" as it were, taking really good care of your skin and waxing/shaving/epilating any hair that bothers you. Lots of men manage to keep their skin quite soft and stay mostly hairless, but it takes time and a bit of money.

[Nygeel]

T may or may not do anything or everything. For some people a voice drop is the first thing they notice, for others it's hair. There is no way of knowing exactly what you'll get from T, or when you will get it.

One option that might work: go on T until you get the changes you want then stop taking it. You'll have a monthly when you stop, but the effects of T that don't go away will remain. Voice lowered, genital growth, body hair and facial hair should for the most part stay.

I'm really not into how binary the trans community seems to be online (from what I've seen). I myself am probably somewhere between gender queer and a man...it sucks.

If you have any male siblings that have gone through puberty see how their skin reacted. You will probably go through similar changes as they did.

[Arch]

If you don't want a hysto and can stand the idea of putting female hormones into your body, you can take birth control pills and have four or five periods a year. Not a perfect solution, but better than bleeding every month.

If you go on a lowish dose of T, the changes would happen more slowly, and you would have a bit more control. If you started to get hairy enough to worry you, you could stop.

I've been on a "full dose" of T for just over a year. My skin hasn't gotten that much coarser at all, but I've always had immensely delicate skin. My ex, a cisgender male, has pretty soft skin. It really depends on your genetics.