4 ryn: thnx so much for your beautifully worded explication of non binary transition. I’m about to start mine with the same concept of a goal of total androgyny in mind. I’m wondering what your experiences on low dose t gel was like? Did it move you toward an androgyny you liked? Did your relationship to your body and to gender change dramatically? Thnx!
Lee says:
I think you misunderstood the answer! Ryn hasn’t taken low-dose t gel. Ryn wrote “I consider myself non-binary trans feminine [...] an amab person, I am taking estrogen.”
However, I was on low-dose testosterone gel for about 10 months, so I can try to answer about T. Ryn will/might add on with their experience with E.
As far as how testosterone impacted my gender feels- I guess I went from feeling more transneutral to transmasculine, but I still don’t identify as male-aligned.
Low-dose testosterone didn’t change my body very much, and top surgery was a much bigger game changer for my relationship with my body.
Being on low-dose T didn’t change how often I passed very much, so it was more of a mental change for me. I don’t think that low-dose T changed my relationship to my body or my gender drastically- the biggest change was an improvement in my mental health due to a decrease in dysphoria, and an increase in confidence I guess.
I had originally wanted “confuse cis strangers on the street” androgyny, but it wasn’t exactly what I ended up getting. I had wanted people to not gender me at all, but instead I ended up getting gendered as male 50% of the time and gendered as female 50% of the time.
It’s really hard to pass as non-binary- I’ve found that strangers who can’t tell what gender you are sometimes refer to you with (maybe randomly chosen) gendered pronouns and gendered terms anyway because they’re stuck in a binary mindset and don’t know what else to do, or they become hostile and you find yourself getting shouted at when you enter the women’s locker room so you go to the men’s locker room and then they tell you to leave there too.
I didn’t really like that- while being gendered as female and male in equal parts might be as close to androgyny as I could get, I was dysphoric when people saw me as a girl. Some people’s ideal presentation is being able to switch between passing as male or female, but it just wasn’t right for me.
In the end, I decided that I would rather be seen as male most of the time than get misgendered as a girl, even though in an ideal world I’d be able to have people automatically use gender neutral terms for me and pass as non-binary.
So I changed my dose from low-dose T to a “standard dose” after a little less than a year on low-dose T, and now I’ve been on T for about 2 years in total, one year on low-dose and one year on standard-dose. I’ve documented more on my medical transition here.
Now I’m getting gendered as male mostly, which isn’t euphoria-causing but it doesn’t make me dysphoric either. Strangers still gender me as female maybe a quarter of the time, give or take, but they also tend to give me the benefit of the doubt in men’s bathrooms now so I don’t get shouted at these days (knock on wood).
I know that right now, if I changed my presentation/gender expression (like growing out my hair, or even just wearing a pink women’s shirt) I’d be able to go back to being seen as a woman pretty easily despite my 2 years on (varying doses of) T.
Strangers now tend to see me as a feminine guy instead of as masculine woman, but being gendered as female bothers me less these days because I have less dysphoria now as a result of my medical transition.
Forgoing the ability to easily pass as a woman is kind of scary, and it sort of makes me feel like I’m giving something up or losing something that was a part of me.
It hasn’t happened yet, but as I continue on T, I think that doing something like wearing a dress is going to stop making strangers think I’m a cis woman and will start making them think I’m a man in a dress.
While I don’t regret taking T at all, this isn’t really what I anticipated happening when I started hormones. But I do feel much more comfortable in my own body now, and even though I’m often gendered as male I still see myself as androgynous when I look in the mirror.
Right now, I feel content with my body & where I’m going, but I don’t know if I’ll continue on T forever. I had a hysterectomy about a year ago, but I chose to keep my ovaries in case I decide to stop T at some point in the future.
Ryn says:
Like Lee says, passing as non-binary is hard. I’m now taking a dose of estrogen that is in line with what most binary trans women are given. I was started on low dose in part because I was non-binary and in part because I was leaving the country for four months promptly after starting and couldn’t do any followup tests during that time.
Honestly overall I haven’t moved so much towards “androgyny” per se. My body and presentation have feminized, and I tend to get gendered as a woman more often now, which I realized I was okay with and sometimes I kinda like. Society does not like androgyny. They will shove you in a box as hard as they can. I realized being out and non-binary in the world is really hard, like Lee said above. Honestly, they explained a lot of things I feel really well. While I could be gendered equally as a man or as a woman, I don’t like being gendered as a man– it makes me very dysphoric. My relationship to my body has changed. I’m not as dysphoric about it in general anymore. My transition of course is ongoing, as is my journey of self-discovery around my gender. I’ve been realizing more and more that I am, while not a woman, a very femme-aligned non-binary person. Like I said in the original ask, as a nonbinary person, my transition is my own. My psychiatrist, who prescribes my estrogen, is very willing to work with me to adjust my doses if I need to achieve what I’m looking for. He recognizes that the trans journey is not a “one-size-fits-all” situation. I think your best options, as far as shooting for total androgyny, is to figure out once you start your transition what makes you the happiest, and shoot for that. That might change, and your presentation and hormone regimen can change with it. Keep up with your doctor and your therapist, and just keep sort of an eye on your own thoughts and feelings. Figure out what makes you feel what way. Figure out what presentation, what clothing, gets you gendered certain ways and how that makes you feel. I wish you the best of luck.