Ran across a thread today in which a mother was under the impression a doctor could treat her son with testosterone to curb the GID and make the son feel more male - that it was just a hormone imbalance.

My mom had actually suggested the same to me when I came out to her last year.

But there are no doctors out there who really doing that are there? 

If they do give a mtf testosterone what happens? (or vice versa for ftm?)

My parents sent me to a doctor who did this when I was in a summer break from college and living at home.  I just got very uneasy/depressed within about a week and started pumping the gel down the sink instead of putting it on me.  I didn't want to feel male in the first place, so something that made me feel more male just made things worse.

I think, even though it's not really the norm, that there are actually doctors who do this. But my personal opinion is that this method plainly doesn't work at all.

Actually, the only serious theories linking an hormone imbalance with transsexualism I have seen were about an imbalance in the uterus that would have caused the brain to develop in the opposite direction than the rest of the body. The claim is that a male who, for an unknown reason, would have been exposed to too much estrogen when his brain developed would be born with a female gender identity. The same would go for genetic females.

As for homosexuality, the claim is that an exceedingly high exposition to the same-sex hormone (testosterone on a male; estrogens on a female) would make the person develop a higher-than-normal attraction to same-sex pheromones.

None of these are 100% proved and accepted, but even if they were, they are in no way related to the hormones one is exposed to after their birth.

This is what my wife and physician want me to do. They are saying I am not really trans and this is all a delusion I have made up myself-yeah right. I imagine it would make what male traits I have now even stronger and very possibly would send me over the edge-making my life another magnified living hell. After feeling the calm and peace that Estrogen gave me I can't imagine going the other way.

Randi

Quote from: A on June 29, 2011, 06:09:24 PM
I think, even though it's not really the norm, that there are actually doctors who do this. But my personal opinion is that this method plainly doesn't work at all.

Actually, the only serious theories linking an hormone imbalance with transsexualism I have seen were about an imbalance in the uterus that would have caused the brain to develop in the opposite direction than the rest of the body. The claim is that a male who, for an unknown reason, would have been exposed to too much estrogen when his brain developed would be born with a female gender identity. The same would go for genetic females.

No no no Your confused about such a mechanism... Every fetus male or female is exposed to huge dosages of estrogen through the mothers placenta. newborns can be born with slight breast development or lactating as a quirk of this. Although this exposure is important (involved in normal neural development) it has nothing to do with gender identity.

Testosterone would be the switching factor, The default configuration is female, which is then overridden by Testosterone.

Even if it is hypothetically such a mechanism increasing exposure to testosterone in later life wouldn't effect it. The critical period has past.

this happens more with pepole with intersex conditions who also have GID they are encouraged to take more of their assigned genders hormones to try and "normalize" them. As nearly all of our stories confirm, you still feel the same about yourself and your identity no matter how many hormones you take.

It's the same retarded method used on gay men back in the 1950's, They originally gave them testosterone, to "man them up" and to stop them liking men... Of course it made them hornier and have MORE sex with men.

¬.¬ idiots.

All testosterone did for me was to make me horny and more angry, which in turn made me depressed.  It did give me more energy and helped with my muscle weakness, but for me, the negatives far outweighed the benefits.

Well if your T is near zero then doctors can give you a little T to increase your libido.   However if your T is normal then more T will only make you more aggressive and more agitated if you are TG.

In an amusing thought, isn't standard steroids testosterone based?  And don't they have a side-effect of feminizing a cismale body and mind because it then thinks it's producing too much hormones?
Either way, if the opposite gender hormones are too high with normal same-gender hormones, you can have some HRT-like development and supposedly even a little bit of cross-gender behavior.  It'll also botch your reproductive ability to some end.  I had this happen to a friend, as she had some masculine hair, felt tomboyish or something, and I think her build takes a little bit from a male too.  ---HOWEVER, she still was quite female in her mind and body.  I didn't even know that this was going on with her until we discussed my ->-bleeped-<-.
So if you have HRT-like developments, maybe, but I really wouldn't buy into it, especially if you don't really have developments that come from the other gender.

I think we put too much down just to pull out over potentially being hormone-imbalanced.  It's like, you went through all this trial, went through all this experience and mindset...and now that you finally have come to the end of the journy---"nah, let's just go back the way we came.  It'd be medically proper."  It's like a slap in the face.  But...that's just how I feel.