Flea, unregenerate lookist woman-hater though she may be, occasionally posts amusing anecdotes about her sex-toy store on her blog, so I cruise by whenever there’s nothing better on the internets. Anyway, she told a story about her netflix cue, and it’s a very good metaphor. She’s a bit of a magpie with links and recommendations; when she hears about something interesting, she puts it on her netflix cue. It’s become a very long list. At this point, there’s a wait of several months between want-movie and watch-movie. Sometimes, she doesn’t even remember the movies she’s selected when they arrive.
Blogging is working out in similar fashion for me. I haven’t yet developed the blogger’s gift for grabbing something, sticking it up there with a pithy comment or two, and then letting an interesting conversation develop in comments. I don’t want to write a post. I want to write a novel. Then I want to edit that novel. Right now there are approximately a dozen novels, each one with the shelf-life of a medlar.
So I’m gonna try my best–and see how well it’s going so far?–to write a relatively succinct, introductory post on something Jay brought up today: Your Brain on Testosterone.
I have heard the following things from real, live transguys (not a complete list):
You can read maps easier.
You can catch a ball easier.
You can draw better.
You’re more aggressive.
You get angry all the time.
You’re horny all the time.
You start wanting women.
You start wanting men.
You start wanting everyone.
You hate all that touchy-feely processing bullshit.
You’re less verbal.
You have trouble finding words.
You can’t remember stuff as easily.
You can’t think as clearly.
You’re less emotional (we all know that rage doesn’t count as an emotion).
You can’t cry. Ever. At all.
Apparently, the ones for transwomen go in exactly the other direction.
I rejected all of these as social pressure and self-fulfilling prophecy (except for the horniness, which doesn’t mean that men are the sex that wants it, merely that fourteen-year-old boys are horny). I had no patience for people who repeated them. Then I had a conversation with a transguy friend (“Bob”) about another transguy friend whose doctor had warned him about not being able to cry any more. I was disgusted.
Me: What a load of bullshit.
Bob: No, it’s true. I can’t cry anymore. I used to have a good cry whenever I needed to release a little tension, and now I can’t. I can choke up a little, but that’s it. It’s really frustrating. I miss crying.
Me: But–
Bob: Do you cry?
Me: Actually, now that you mention it, um, no. I tear up.
Bob: Right.
Me: But no sobbing. No crying jags. I used to do it all the time. I thought I was just depressed and heartsick, and now I’m happier. I mean, I am happier.
Bob: So am I.
Me: But I didn’t cry when my granddad died. Or when my aunt died. I haven’t cried in eighteen months.
Bob: Me neither! It sucks!
Me: Eh. I just punch things.
Bob: And masturbate.
Me: Right. Angrily.
A few other friends confirmed their own dry eyes, and it got me thinking.
I believe that a lot of this–and the extent to which it is assumed to be universal–is coincidence and social pressure. Take aggression, for example. Men are supposed to be more aggressive and less reserved. Everyone around you conspires to pressure you in that direction, and to make you feel extremely conspicuous and weird if you continue to be passive and reserved. As you transition, you start to pass, and people start expecting you to act like a man. Most of the things on the list could easily be explained that way.
Plus, transition could well be the most stressful period in any given transperson’s life. The entire world reorients itself around you in a matter of months. You’re negotiating a code of social interactions and behavioral cues that are new to you and whose dicta you would have been punished for following a few months before. The name on your ID–and likely the picture–probably doesn’t match your face anymore. You’re probably contemplating surgery and the attendant trouble and expense. You may be losing friends, a lover, your family, your job, or your home. And for most of us, there’s a period of at least a few months–sometimes years–where we don’t pass as men or women.
I don’t think all of the aggression, anger, and volatility is hormonal.
Or take attraction and orientation (heck, take libido). You know what’s not sexy at all? Living in a body you can’t live with. Once you start to feel comfortable in your body, it’s a lot easier to allow other people near it. It’s also much easier to deal with all of the interactions leading up to intimacy. And recognizing a developing sense of self may give you the objectivity you need to see your desires clearly.
I know, furthermore, that there are puh-lenty of transguys who vehemently deny every item on the list. Most of them don’t apply to me. I’m not more aggressive. I’m not more verbal. My memory hasn’t suffered. I still can’t read a map. And there seem to be a lot of non-trans guys out there who cry like babies and can’t catch a ball to save their lives.
There’s are also problems in terms of trans lives with the idea of transition making you a completely different person. It’s backhanded reinforcement for the binary, for one thing, this idea that two genders can’t really be part of the same biography. It also lends support to the idea of transition as a kind of death–of a daughter, a girlfriend, a best friend, a proud butch dyke–which is some fucked-up shit to be dealing with if you’re actually transitioning, lemme tell you.
But then, I can’t cry. And my friend can’t cry, even though he desperately wants to.
Beautiful piny. Just beautiful. I will link-o-rama soon. I’m so glad you are blogging!
Having known several transmen as they adapted to testosterone, I would say that, in all of the cases I saw, the effects included at least a period of increased extroversion that eventually moderated as their body and mind adjusted. My favorite effect, though, was that several exhibited a strong tendency to pick up the check for whatever women happened to be having dinner with them.
It has got to be rough going through puberty a second time. Even more so when not surrounded by other people going through it at the same time.
Great. Deep.
The only way to know is to do a double-blind placebo study, and it can’t be done. Right?
Do transfolks undergoing hormone therapy have higher levels of (say) testosterone than men born men? ‘Cos I can cry just fine.
Of course, I am very sensitive and tender.
Queue, not cue.
No. Our cycle is slightly different, but our levels are the average of yours. Not all transguys can’t cry, mind.
And yes, it should be queue.
See! You should have edited the post. You “had trouble finding words”. The list is TRUE! Bow to the inexorable logic of evo-psych.
Hormones seem to have complex but real effects on the brain; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see significant changes in someone whose hormonal balance changes (for any reason). But those changes do seem to be very individualized; I’m very suspicious of any simplistic “add estrogen and you get a sobbing empath” just-so story.
Hypothesis: the history of someone’s hormonal makeup is going to have an impact on how current hormone changes play out. I bet the age at which the hormonal transition begins has a relationship to the specific change you’re describing, and probably others on the list, too.
Huh. I have a lot of trouble crying and get angry quite easily. I don’t usually punch things, but I do swear rather than crying when upset or hurt. Does that mean I’m really a guy? In that case, how do I explain the caesarian scar?
I used to date a guy who was in a study that was looking at the effect of testosterone on depression. He had pretty severe depression and took something like 150 or 300 mg of Paxil a day; he also received testosterone once a month or so. He reported that he felt great just after the shot, and that the effect lessened as the month wore on.
Long story short, if you feel happier, it could be the extra testosterone, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything about being male that makes one happier.
Social factors are a big thing–one kind of semi-spoken secret about heterosexuality is that one very important thing straight men get out of intimate relationships is the freedom not to be Big Men all the time. My dad, of all people, warned me about this in an oblique way, telling me that any boyfriend/husband I’d have would consider me his best friend, that’s “how men are”. And true enough–I’ve since then found myself in repeated situations where a man who loved me let his guard down and cried and exhibited other “womanly” behaviors, because that relationship gave him the privacy not to have to be the Big Man anymore. It’s disconcerting, and while I wish men could be more free, I’m happy at least that they can find that small outlet.
The thing that really bothers me is the stereotype of the weepy pre-menstrual woman vs. the grouchy pre-menstrual woman. I’ve never known anyone to suffer the former, plenty to suffer the latter. I’m inclined to think the major effect hormone changes have on the brain is they put you off-kilter, make you feel “not right” and therefore crabby.
Hypothesis: the history of someone’s hormonal makeup is going to have an impact on how current hormone changes play out. I bet the age at which the hormonal transition begins has a relationship to the specific change you’re describing, and probably others on the list, too.
One of the basic concepts taught in endocrinology classes is the idea of activational versus organizational action of a hormone.
That is, if during development a particular hormone was absent and that particular hormone is responsible for making certain behaviors possible (organizational) then it doesn’t matter how much of the activational hormone you inject later, it’s not going to elicit the same response as it would in an individual who was “primed” during development
But depending on when the hormone is being released and what the rest of the body is doing, the same hormone can have either an activational or an organizational effect. Incidentally (rather interesting I think) the hormone responsible for what is typically thought of as “masculanizing” the brain during fetal development is actually estrogen (to which testosterone is the precursor molecule.)
I think one of the most interesting parts of endocrinology classes was always picking apart the actions of what are typically thought of as “male” or “female” hormones and seeing how oversimplified, and just plain wrong, that way of thinking is. Hormones and behaviors are intertwined but it’s not a clear-cut case of cause and effect. The two feed back on each other and in humans the variations between individuals are much greater than the variations between sexes.
Oh and I definitely agree with Amanda about hormone changes putting you off-kilter more than anything.
Amanda said:
- The thing that really bothers me is the stereotype of the weepy pre-menstrual woman vs. the grouchy pre-menstrual woman. I’ve never known anyone to suffer the former, plenty to suffer the latter. I’m inclined to think the major effect hormone changes have on the brain is they put you off-kilter, make you feel “not right” and therefore crabby.
Huh. Oddly enough, pre-menstrually I’m BOTH a raging bitch and prone to crying. Sometimes, rather often actually, at the same time. Ain’t that fun? :)
I think it depends on the person, really. Meaning, it may be your individual hormone levels, or your individual reaction to stress, or the individual socialization that you, personally, went through with your individual parents. (OK, I’m done with the parallel construction now. ;) I personally have a tendancy to get teary whenever I am really, REALLY pissed off. Let me tell you — that does NOT help to win any arguments. Ever. *sigh* But I can’t tell you if that is because of hormones, socialization/nurture, or inborn personality, because I’ve been like that as long as I can remember.
Interesting observation, though….
piny, I definitely hear your ambivalence about crying and transitioning.
Before I started taking any estrogen I had the same “what a load of bullshit” thought that you express when I encountered transwomen/men who suddenly became able/unable to cry when they hadn’t before. I wanted to believe it was an entirely social phenomenon. It’s taken me a while to get to this point, but right now I’m fairly convinced that how easily I cry is influenced greatly by my hormones.
(This is just personal anecdote and I’m not trying to generalize from myself, so please take it as such.) It’s not as if I have ever really had any control over crying. There’s no conscious “is it ok for me to cry?” thoughts or even any feelings during or afterwards of “is anybody caring that I’m crying?”; it just happens and that’s that. Nowadays, it just happens more frequently. I think it’s because there’s really no conscious internal or external validation that I can’t swallow that crying is motivated by social pressure to any large degree for me.
Well, I tend to tear up (sometimes with sob, sometimes without) when I’m stressed or being confronted with something that is very uncomfortable (example: I had a liiiiiiiittle too much to drink a couple of weeks ago, and as a result hurled all over the passenger side of my dad’s car; what followed was a very uncomfortable confrontation, and I cried). But I can catch a ball pretty well.
But I can’t draw for shit.
But I can read a map very well.
But I am incredibly touchy-feely.
But I want women.
But I love the cock.
But I often have trouble finding words.
But I’m very verbal.
But I’m horny all the fucking time.
Godsdammit. Life would be so much easier if I was just a stereotype.
(Damn Internets and its random eating of posts…)
Sorry if I was unclear. My working theory is that transitioning into a more comfortable body has made me happier and less depressed in general, not that testosterone improves your mood. (The stereotype actually goes the opposite way: rage, aggression, and general assholitude are supposedly our lot.) And it’s not like I’m euphoric all the time, or that I don’t get sad; I just seem to express that grief differently.
…I don’t think I buy it in Bob’s case, either. He’s really unhappy about losing crying jags. And I don’t know if it’s a possibility for me; it isn’t as though expressing the same emotions openly in other ways is something I have trouble with now.
I’m a weepy PMSer. And it blindsides me every time, since I’m really irregular (which probably means it’s not really a normal thing). I don’t cry for no reason, but for significantly less reason with a little voice in the back of my mind saying “why the fuck is this bothering me so much, I don’t get it” and then it comes, the blood, nearly every time. Damned annoying, but it’s a pretty short window, maybe twelve hours every five to six weeks.
Amanda:
I’ve only known two women intimately enough to know where they were in their cycles on any given day, but both are definitely the weepy sort.
I really don’t know your views or your writing well enough to know if you’re kidding or not with your first sentence, Piny.
i’m a woman and i make maps for a living. need directions?
i don’t know what that first sentence means either, but i love the flea!
I’m kidding. A lot. I figured “unregenerate” would get that message across–although, this being the internets, you can’t really ever assume anyone’s being sarcastic when they say something ludicrous. I really like your blog, and definitely don’t think you’re a woman-hater et al., and I said so in comments after the first post that referred to you. And I’ve commented amicably on your blog before, although there’s no reason you’d remember.
That’s cool, thanks.
Sorry to have been unclear.
I was actually having a conversation with my friend about hormone effects on ftms a few weeks ago, and I was complaining about all the attention the (supposed) effects of testosterone get, when I never hear anything about mtfs suffering from a hormone-induced onslaught of stereotypically feminine behaviors. Maybe I just need to look harder for the latter, although part of what I was complaining about the visibility of one group’s comments over the other, but the argument about the “testosterone effect” doesn’t sit well with me because, as others have pointed out, it seems too convenient and simplistic to break down such complex chemical reactions into the type of gendered packages that’ve been terrorizing women (and men) for so long. Let it be read into the record that my boyfriend (born male) cries at the drop of a hat but loves talking everything to death, and is also the horniest human being I’ve ever met. I get a little bitchy around my period but not “weepy” and rarely cry in any case. We are both turned on by everything and everyone, which is probably why we are together. Anyway thanks for the opportunity to talk about all of this, piny. And thank you for being anti-capitalization of proper names, I find that to be a large pain the ass as well.
I tend to hear less about it because the communities are generally separate and because all of my research focused on what might happen to me, but it’s there. Check out the link to Jay’s blog.
And I want to stress that I really, really don’t believe in just-so stories about hormones and dimorphism. These stereotypes clearly don’t hold up in the aggregate. It infuriates me when people use transpeople to support those simplistic generalizations about men and women in general, given that transpeople are diverse and given that transpeople suffer as much from sexist generalizations as y’all do. I did not mean to write the post as a, “I thought evo-psych was mumbo-jumbo, but then I started hormones,” and I don’t mean to imply that these generalizations are not harmful. It was just an interesting conversation to have, and one that made me want to write about one particular aspect of transition and the beliefs that have attached to it.
Anyway.
I really appreciate this. It’s incredibly demeaning when people capitalize my name, since I clearly identify as lowercase.
“As you transition, you start to pass, and people start expecting you to act like a man. Most of the things on the list could easily be explained that way.”
And this is an “Easier” explanation than the fact that your shooting hormones into your body everyday???
Yeah, cause we all know that Hormones may be able to do little things, like shrink testicles and make a man grow breasts and a woman grow chest and facial hair, but only social pressures are powerful enough to force massive changes like … crying less. Funny, because I doubt I could grow tits even if the entie world expected me too.
I’m sorry but this is willfull blindness at its most incredible. Its the FREAKING HORMONES!!!!
This has nothing to do with stereotypes of sex differences and tdenying the impact of the hormones as a way of denying sex differences is equally as moronic as overhyping them as a way of promoting sexual stereotypes.
Hormones, like all drugs, effects different people differently. The fact that some transmen dont feel these symptons is utterly inconsequential and besides the point. The fact that a given symptom may line up with a sexual stereotype is a very stupid reason to not deal with it honestly – coincidences do happen and your body is not a poltical testing ground.
The simple fact is that when massive changes follow soon on the heel of the commencement of daily doses of sex hormone, claiming that “social pressure” is a better explanation than the hormones (the ones changing your freaking body before your eyes)
is an example of over-politicizing things that should not be.
On the off-chance that you’ll ever show up here again:
Give me a fucking break, will you? And read further than the few paragraphs it takes to shoot a bug up your ass. Yes, as you’re so keen on reminding me, I’m a fucking transsexual. I’m taking hormones precisely because they cause changes in my body such that I have gone from passing fulltime as a woman to passing fulltime as a man. I have never denied that hormones probably have some neurological effects. I explicitly rejected the idea that it’s social pressure that’s preventing me or Bob from weeping, because, hey: that explanation makes no sense. And as a fucking transsexual, you’d think I’d look askance at any GUT of human behavior that attributed everything to socialization, wouldn’t you?
However, as someone who–unlike you, I presume?–has actually gone from living fulltime as a woman to living fulltime as a man, I can tell you that social pressure is indeed powerful, that it does indeed cause changes in behavior frequently attributed to hormones, and that it is frequently ignored as a factor. Most other transsexuals agree with me in attributing some changes in behavior to social pressure rather than hormones. This is particularly true of changes related to behavior–look at the difference between, “testosterone makes you angrier,” and “testosterone makes you more prone to expressing anger openly.”
My body is a political testing ground; you should try, sometime, to find responsible, apolitical information about what hormones may or may not do to a transperson’s head. Something–maybe it’s this line, “the fact that your shooting hormones into your body everyday???”–makes me think you haven’t bothered with that yet.
Hey Piny, it’s your thread. Go ahead, throw the bum out!
Willfull blindness?
I would say that piny’s eyes are open quite a bit wider than many of us here and yours are closed tight by the chains of ignorance. Read up before jumping in here. This isn’t the “I love wrestling” or the “Hot Chicks with Big Tits” blog.
No Thomas, take the example of my cats. When an ant, a fly or any other small insect is so unfortunate as to come in the path of my cats, they play with it a while, smashing it under their paw, jumping upon from behind, practicing their pouncing moves.
Then once finally bored, they devour it.
This isn’t the “I love wrestling” or the “Hot Chicks with Big Tits” blog.
We thought it was, until Jill came out with her B-trayal.
Hey Piny. This may be slightly off topic but I was wondering if you had seen this. I read and really liked it but then I’ve always been an advocate for non-gendered bathrooms especially when most of the time they’re all the same anyway. I really love the new “Family Bathrooms” that have been gaining popularity, too.
As a trans-woman, I’d like to share a few of my ideas on the matter.
I started taking estrogen twelve years ago. After starting estrogen, I experienced a significant decrease in libido. I also found it easier to cry. And, yes, on occasion, I found myself to be unusually grumpy and irritable.
However, I’d strongly warn folks against concluding that this is an indication that men tend to be “hormonally wired” to be emotionally constipated and perpetually horny. So too, I’d warn folks against concluding that women are “hormonally wired” to be emotionally unstable. I mean, just on general principles, those notions are eye-rollingly sexist and are insulting to everyone concerned.
However, there’s even more to be considered.
The physiological changes that I have gone through are different from the changes that most cisgendered (non-trans) people go through during their lifetimes. In my teens, I went through the usual physiological changes that puberty brings about in a male human being. Then, during my mid-twenties, I altered my body by taking large doses of estrogen, and later by undergoing castration and the construction of a vagina. How many traditionally gendered people experience such a combination of physical changes? How many people experience the physiological changes of puberty and then radically alter their physiology through drugs and surgery? Does it really make sense to draw conclusions about the physiology of the general populace by using transsexuals as experimental models?
Like you, piny, it really bothers me when people try to draw broad generalizations about human behavior by using transpeople as a physiological roadmap. Apples and oranges, anyone?
I have lived as a woman for eleven years, now. The greatest change in my life has been in how people treat me now that they perceive me to be female. This has changed how I relate to both others and myself. The social changes that I have experienced during those eleven years have had far more impact upon my persona and my emotions than a mild libido, occasional tears, and infrequent PMS could ever have had.
Amen. And I think that speaking, as you do, about the realities of our experiences is a good way to counter some of the dubious politics that people spin around hormones and people’s choices to start them, stop them, or be on them indefinitely.
As a legally-female-by-choice socially-male genderqueer, I find social pressure (“be a man”, which is often “don’t be a woman” on some level) a lot harder to deal with than my actual body.