Thank you for sharing this! I don’t see this type of discussion often and it’s important information.

I have a similar background, I was measuring at ~40nmol/L (~1150ng/dL), and it was probably higher than that when I was younger. I knew from early childhood that I wasn’t cis, but by my mid-teens I was struggling with a lot of internal dissonance between my internal ethos and identity and how my hormonal state affected by emotions and cognition. There were also physiological issues from excessive T that I needed medical intervention to address. I struggled through that for years, but when I finally started HRT I very quickly found an enormous relief and much calmer and happier state of being.

Our cases are good examples of how more of the wrong hormonal profile doesn’t make you cis. It might just make someone’s problems worse and create new problems along the way.

Totally. Gender can be pretty neat when you’re not being oppressed by it and have the freedom to pursue your own identity

Different transfem here, but I can say that I’ve had a big change in sleep patterns. I’m a much lighter sleeper now and wake up a lot easier and earlier than I used to. It was a fast and persistent change

My sense of smell is much better now, and that was also a very fast change. I enjoy food more as a result, and have a wider palette. No special cravings, though.

You asked earlier about mental changes - for me that was profound. I’m much calmer and happier now, and feel emotions ‘flowing’ and processing better than before. I used to struggle with anxiety and anger, but now I’m generally more balanced and when I do feel difficult emotion it’s easier to make sense of it and move forward. Before I would often have a sense of what I call emotional “heat” where I knew I was having a strong emotional reaction and felt a drive to act on it, but I would struggle to understand of articulate exactly what I was feeling. Now, in similar conditions I don’t feel such a big impulsive motivation and it’s easier to think through and express the nuance of my emotional experience. This was the change I wanted the very most from HRT and it’s been wonderful to experience.

Of course, everyone is unique and has different receptors, responses, etc. I started from having exceptionally high T levels, and now have typical cis female T and E levels.

I grew up in NC and there are a lot of things to like about that region. But this is one of the big reasons I’d never live there again as an adult. The disenfranchisement is unacceptable, and sadly almost all my my highschool cohort has left the state for better conditions elsewhere, as well. Sometimes I lament not staying to contribute to pushing back against this stuff, but ultimately I have to prioritize my family’s well being, so we now live in a much less cynical state.

I agree that socialization is a big part of this tendency, as other commenters are saying. However, having experienced living with a testosterone dominant body and an estrogen dominant body, I’ve found that it was much harder for me to process other people’s emotions on T. While I would care about people and what they were expressing, I often would feel overloaded by strong emotions. On E I don’t notice that as much, and have a lot more patience and capacity to emotionally engage with others.

I’m sure this stuff varies a lot from person to person, and there isn’t one single factor that determines how men and women would typically behave. But in my own life there’s a pretty big hormonal component to this