My first week on hormone replacement therapy
I recently decided to take the plunge and try out hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to make my brain and body more closely align on gender. It seems to have come to no surprise to most people who know me that I see myself as more non-binary than a man, which I have described at various points as feeling more girly than society typically allows or a femboy in an otter's body (though I'm probably round enough to count as a bear to some people). The term that I feel the most affinity with is demiboy, but I don't want to hold a seminar every time I describe my gender identity, so non-binary is fine.
My goal is to move more femme, but still barely hang on to the masculine name and pronouns. A friend recently described it as "he/they, heavy on the they", and that tracks for me. Because I'm on HRT, that would make me the second transgender Sega Tera Drive owner (Nix McRetro is the first, to my knowledge). I owe a lot to members of the transgender community, and in particular the transfurs community, in seeing that I was a likely egg and helping me grow and discover exactly how I feel about my gender. When I get to where I think I want to be, I am open to the possibility that I actually want to move further femme than that... but one thing at a time. I definitely want to wear more gender-ambiguous clothes, and in particular wear more in the mallcore goth genre that I keep putting Ziggy in.
Maybe Don't Do This During A Furry Convention
I have been thinking about doing this off and on for a couple years, and I rejected the gender binary many more years ago (though I didn't really change my appearance back then... and you can tell in photos that I'm way less happy when I look like a stereotypical man). I have been experimenting dressing more femme in secret for probably 6 years now, and in the past 2 years have started to do it less in secret. As with a lot of people, becoming active in VRChat and being able to wear avatars with all kinds of gender expressions, and eventually making my own avatar, was what really made me realize the appearance I wish I had. Those of you who can relate know the feeling you get when you're perfectly content turning the world's mirror on and chatting, or joining an immersive world and trying to get the perfect angle with the camera for the best selfie. Sometimes I join Furry Hideout, turn the mirror on, sit down, queue up some music, and then just vibe and bounce my hair and ears around by moving my head.
The main reason I decided to take the plunge now is that I'm worried that the opportunity will dry up during the current regime, and I really don't want to be in my 50s when I've finished transitioning.
What this means is that I started HRT the day before I left for Further Confusion. The first couple days on HRT were rather emotionally dysregulated for me, and it made me have a less enjoyable time at FC. I would strongly recommend waiting until after the con if you are ever in this situation.
Baselining: Not Just For Information Systems
Before I started, I had a bunch of labs done so I knew where I was starting from, and to help me make a choice on a first medication. I figured that if my DHT were high, I could try finasteride to see if simply suppressing DHT does what I want. That ended up not being the case, so I am now on 0.5mg estradiol and 25mg spironolactone twice daily.
Here are my baseline lab results:
- DHT: 20 ng/dL
- Estradiol: below measurable limit
- T: 562 ng/dL
- SHBG: 25.7 nmol/L
- Potassium: 4.3 mmol/L
- Albumin: 4.3 g/dL
I also took a lot of photos of myself in the mirror so I can compare week over week. Don't forget to put them in your hidden album!
Day 1: Prior Confusion
I got my prescription and took my first dose as soon as I got home. By evening time, I was packing for FC, and could already tell something was quite different. It was almost like it was causing more ADHD - I kept losing track of what I was doing, going on side quests and forgetting why, and getting more and more frustrated at my inability to figure out what I was doing. Since this day, I talked to some friends who are also on HRT and have been for some time, and they shared with me that they had to up their dose of Adderall after transitioning.
I was genuinely surprised I felt anything so quickly and with only one dose, but research shows that people who are transgender have neural pathways that are more like the gender they want to move to than cisgender people, and starting estrogen will activate those. Not everybody has the accelerated experience that I had, but it's apparently very common.
This seems to have only lasted a couple of hours in the evening; afterwards, I stopped having this symptom, and I never had it again.
Day 2: The Pickle Thing
My second day was interesting. I got checked in to my hotel, picked up my badge at registration, had dinner with friends, and spent a bunch of time talking to people I haven't seen in a while. These encounters, which were sometimes as simple as a hug and a how are you, felt a little different to me. Instead of feeling a little like furry social protocol as I'm used to, they felt.. I'm not really sure how to describe it. Nice? Like I'm not experiencing the delight in seeing someone followed by them moving on to greet the next person as a square wave anymore. I also found that I started to cuddle my Sonic Mania Build-A-Bear more than I usually cuddle my stuffed animals when I was in bed. Maybe I would describe my feelings as feeling more affectionate? I'm really not sure.
Before I went to bed though, I experienced the pickle thing. I ended up walking over to 7 Eleven and buying a whole bunch of pickle flavored potato chips and salt and vinegar chips. This hit me like a light switch, and I started eating them on the walk back to the hotel. I'm still currently off and on experiencing the pickle thing, and have eaten more okra pickles than I have in a decade.
Oh, and overnight, I feel like I spent more time awake pissing like I've been holding it for 3 hours than I did asleep. I had to have woken up at least 5 times.
Day 3: Floating Point Emotions
On the first real day of the con, I started to feel emotions completely differently. I was in a funk during the day, and it wasn't until I attended a trans panel that I started to get over it. Normally, I would experience emotions as sort of a constant intensity and then they'd go away after a little time. On estrogen, however, the intensity varied, and I felt myself feeling emotions for a lot longer. A friend described their experience pretty concisely: before HRT, they couldn't hold a grudge, and now, they can. This tracks for me as well.
I'm still experiencing this feature of estrogen, but in the time since FC, I've begun to be able to control and harness it more effectively.
Day 4: OwO What's This?
It's now Saturday, and I'm starting to be able to feel chilly and I'm starting to feel a little ... I don't know ... girly? I'm normally the one who is too hot in a light jacket unless it's less than 50ºF outside, but now I'm wearing a jacket and a little chilly when it's 55ºF outside. I wore my $70 Halloween costume fursuit and wasn't particularly hot for the fursuit photo, though I did end up in the headless lounge feeling like I'm an imposter among crewmates once I spent some time indoors in suit. This is the first day that I feel something other than gender dysphoria when I look at myself: I look at myself in the mirror and feel like I'm starting to look a little bit pretty. Just a little bit, though. I can see that maybe I can be as femme as I am in my VRChat avatar for the first time. I'm excited for the future.
Saturday night, I spent a lot of time on the party floor talking with friends who had a similar journey with HRT, and they gave me a lot of insight into what to expect, and validated that HRT can take effect this quickly. They also shared the research I linked above about how transgender people tend to have the neural pathways of the gender they want to be, either in addition to or instead of the neural pathways of their birth-assigned gender.
Day 5: The Other Pickle Thing
Content Warning: I talk about my reproductive organ in detail in this section. Not erotically, but informatively. Skip this if you aren't interested in TMI or if you aren't an adult.
I got maybe two hours of sleep and woke up before my alarm fully alert and ready to get ready. That sucks, but I don't know whether it's an estrogen thing or not. The biggest change today is that my junk has been upgraded and I'm unsure how it works. I have nobody to be embarrassed to about it, but I feel like I'm prepubescent again and trying to figure out how to make it work, and am embarrassed about it. What I am able to figure out is that orgasms, ejaculations, and erections are now completely decoupled from one another, and I'm not sure how each thing is controlled yet.
I also figured out that every side feels different now and learned what multiple orgasms are like. I'm not about to suggest starting HRT because I think the girlcock experience is better, but the girlcock experience is better, for me. I'll try to do my best to describe how the experience is different, though. Before HRT, my experience was that it builds and builds until there is a single moment of climax, and it tapers off quickly. There are ways to extend this period and increase the intensity, but it follows roughly the same curve every time. After starting HRT, it's more like how earthquakes have foreshocks, mainshocks, and aftershocks, and both the period and intensity of each are extremely variable. The "aftershock" period is also significantly longer than I would have imagined - like one or two minutes - and it's almost like having a near instant refractory period throughout the entire experience. Wikipedia suggests that women don't have a refractory period in the same way men do, and I can confirm that my experience aligns with how the Wikipedia page describes it.
Other than that, I had my first gender euphoria moment. I was in the elevator wearing my Sonic and Shadow hoodie and made small talk with someone in the elevator. They looked at my con badge and noticed that Ziggy is a Sonic OC and offered me a friendship bracelet. It turned out to be a Shadow friendship bracelet. We were both in a hurry, so we didn't exchange socials, but putting this bracelet on made me feel gender euphoria, and I doubt they will ever know just how meaningful a cheap bracelet from Hot Topic was to me.
I loved how it made me feel so much that I have worn it almost every day since and have ordered a whole bunch more in an attempt to try to figure out what my style is going to be (while simultaneously having no sense of style).
Day 6: Doors XP
Further Confusion 2025's theme was Animal Business, which was basically "the Windows XP era office, but furry". Today is the last day of the convention, and I'm already starting to feel post-con depression. I was kind of feeling it off and on the entire con, but I'm not that sure it wasn't just regular depression and new hormones. I'm also noticing that my chest and sides are more sensitive and that doors are feeling heavier now. That sensitivity made my Amicus kigu, which was already the softest and most substantial kigu I own, feel a whole new level of soft and awesome. They're out of stock, but if Pawprint Press makes any more, I would strongly suggest getting one. Also, I thought I was being unique and edgy by bringing my Amicus kigu, but of course I was among dozens of people with one, given I was at a furry convention and Amicus is a character in an explicit gay furry visual novel.
Day 7: Back to Real Life
I'm now only noticing slight changes, but today I noticed some rather substantial slight changes. My skin is starting to feel softer, my belts are now too loose where I normally wear them because my waist is moving, and my facial hair is becoming slower to grow and easier to remove. I didn't get con crud, but I did get something much worse: 4 hours of "Agile" planning that I am powerless to argue against because if there's anything that Amazon loves more than getting work done, it's creating a paper trail so that managers can figure out what Least Effectives to jettison and which Top Tiers to fail to promote. It may be day 7 of HRT for me, but it's at least Day 12 at Amazon.
Hiring, LGBT friendly, remote-first, and not going to make me do a coding question involving algorithms stuff that nobody uses day to day and which I last studied 20 years ago? Hit me up.
What's Next?
I really don't know. Before I started, I was sure that I didn't really want to change my wardrobe much and that I would absolutely hate having breast growth. Now, I feel at least a little differently about it. I've been hanging out in the Trans Academy Discord and VRChat world and meeting people whose aesthetic I adore, and clearly I have at least some shopping to do if I want to emulate them. Most people seem to have a little bit of breast growth, and I don't think I'd hate it so much anymore.
What happens if my feelings about it are actually just fear of commitment to this whole transgender thing, and I actually love it? I guess I have to figure that out when I get there. I haven't even put too much thought into what I might change my name to if I were to want to create a deadname for myself. Because it would be funny, make some people irrationally angry, grant me lifetime access to having ziggy in my login at any employer, Dr. Loki Skylizard is a real person who is a respected professional in his field, and it would follow the pattern of trans people picking rarely/never occurring names, why not Ziggy Tsisdetsi? The syntax for hamster in Cherokee is tsi-s-de-tsi ga-na-li-i, or literally "mouse friend" (though it's an odd version of friend because it's abstract, and I don't quite understand how the prefixes work yet). I could go whole hog and have two last names, but it'll already be pain trying to get people to pronounce "jeez-day-jay" correctly-ish.
I'm happy so far -- and in fact, happier about my appearance than I have been in probably 20 years -- so let's just see where it goes from here.