Susan's Place Transgender Resources

Community Conversation => Transitioning => Hormone replacement therapy => Topic started by: RhinoP on February 09, 2012, 01:50:53 AM

Title: Beard Hair Thickness/Strength = More Testosterone?
Post by: RhinoP on February 09, 2012, 01:50:53 AM
One simple thing I'm wondering about, basically, in my age group (18-25), I'm all the time seeing all sorts of different types of guys, guys who range from the most feminine looking to the most masculine. One thing I seem to notice a lot is that young mens' beard hair type seems to vary a lot - some young men my age have very cotton-y, soft, baby-fuzz beards, while others, like me, have hair strands thick, pokey, and strong enough that it could literally damage your corneas if you were to put your eyeball on my chin. It's like being a porcupine. Does the thickness/strength/pokey-ness of the hair on one's face relate to high amounts of testosterone? It would certainly match the pattern I see where only the "squared jawed" or "older" men have the pokey beards, while the softer looking men seem to have the baby fuzz or softly wooly/curly beards (or even no facial hair growth at all.)
Title: Re: Beard Hair Thickness/Strength = More Testosterone?
Post by: 8888 on February 10, 2012, 04:21:40 AM
Just from personal experience... hyper masculine jaw, intense sex drive, hormonal acne... but fine hair. I only needed to shave once a week at 20, at 21 I started HRT now one year later my sex drive is low, acne diminished but hair is only 20% thinner/softer. I see a lot of people around with thick hair but no obvious hyper masculinity in their bone structure/behaviour.
Title: Re: Beard Hair Thickness/Strength = More Testosterone?
Post by: Bird on February 10, 2012, 07:07:28 AM
I can only tell my experience.

The first time I had my T tested, it was near the upper limit for guys. My sex drive was hard to control, I had a lot of facial and body hair as well. On another hand, I have always had lean muscles, soft facial features, a soft voice, tiny hands and feet. So I was a mixture of both things, soft features but a lot of hair.
Title: Re: Beard Hair Thickness/Strength = More Testosterone?
Post by: pebbles on February 10, 2012, 02:52:06 PM
not necessarily two factors determine how intensely you are effected by Testosterone or Estrogen

1: Amount as you said
2: Sensitivity

Some people are much more sensitive to certain sex hormones than others. so in my case I have an average amount of Estrogen in my blood stream yet my breasts are barely a B-Cup other transwomen or cis-women get much better reactions begin D/E-cups the reason for this is different sensitivity to Estrogen.

I have no idea how much T was in my body I'd significantly garbled my testicles up with abuse to impair their function before I even started HRT and then I proceeded to damage them even more after that.
Title: Re: Beard Hair Thickness/Strength = More Testosterone?
Post by: TraciMC on February 17, 2012, 08:07:11 PM
I have no idea what my T was before I started HRT.

I had that super coarse, dark, facial hair you talk about, but rather feminine facial features aside from my forehead.  So no correlation there for me.