What It’s Like to Medically Transition As a Nonbinary PersonAt the time of this writing, I&

What It’s Like to Medically Transition As a Nonbinary PersonAt the time of this writing, I’ve just re-started hormone replacement therapy (HRT).I’m nonbinary, but not everyone knows what that means — especially not in the context of medical transition. If you’re assigned male at birth, people assume that the “point” of transitioning is to get to female; to move from box “M” into box “F.” But the more I compared myself to a hypothetical woman, the more I felt stuck.From the waitlist to the waiting room, I told people I wanted to be a woman. I thought that if I adhered to that script, it would keep doors open for me in terms of receiving medical care. But the truth is, I didn’t know what I wanted — I wasn’t trying to become a woman, but I didn’t know what I was trying to be. I wanted to transition, but I didn’t know how. I quit taking my hormones in January after starting only a couple of months prior. The physical changes began happening too quickly, and it left me feeling like I was losing my sense of control. Still, I knew that permanently stopping HRT wasn’t the right choice; it felt like failing.Trans people are often mocked for being confused and emotional in regards to the choices we make with our bodies. For the sake of the trans community, I feel like I’m supposed to know what I want and who I am. But there are no roadmaps for me to follow. After all, how do you embody a category of experience that many people don’t even believe exists? How do you make sense of your body and how it’s changing when all available narratives feel too gendered to apply?I talked about this over the phone with my friend JP, a 26-year-old self-identified dyke living in New York. JP has been on varying dosages of HRT for years. Their initial plan was to try hormones out by going on them long enough to see physical changes, and then stop taking them in order to assess how they felt. They weren’t sure how long they’d take them, but felt they needed to do something. I can relate. But JP’s doctor at the time (who no longer works at the same clinic) had a different idea.“My doctor took it as some sort of failed experiment, rather than a person making choices,” JP says. “They didn’t understand what I actually wanted from HRT. She put me on hella spiro [spironolactone] and estradiol, and when I didn’t take as much as I was prescribed and my lab results reflected this, she prescribed me more.” JP began to hoard their hormones, taking their estradiol as close to appointment dates as possible in hopes of throwing off their blood test results.The idea that every trans person has a unique relationship to their body seems intuitive, but can be an oddly foreign one to healthcare providers. The drug regimen JP was prescribed is by no means unusual, but it completely misaligned with what they actually wanted in terms of transitioning. JP does a lot of physical work, and in some cases, high doses of spironolactone can cause side effects like mood swings, fatigue, and muscular atrophy. They don’t see any merit to shrinking their muscles to fit what they consider a Eurocentric beauty ideal they don’t adhere to as a Black butch person. Over and over, JP would tell their endocrinologist that the spironolactone was affecting them negatively, but felt the doctor was dismissing it as unfounded or irrelevant to the goal of “feminization.”Continue reading: Freddelanka -- source link

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