Three Years on T and I Don't Want To Be A Man Anymore

Gender reflections after three years of being on testosterone. Go check out the short film I made about it on my YouTube!

On September 29th, 2024, I hit three years of being on testosterone. I went on T because I wanted to experience what it meant to be a guy, and I have, in fact, learned so much about what it means to be a man in the world. At the same time, I have surprised myself with the ways I have truly come into my personhood.

When I started testosterone I went with the gel. The thought of sticking a needle into my own skin made my skin crawl and set off a flight or fight-type panic in my brain. It’s not that my pain tolerance is low; when it comes to getting a tattoo, a piercing, or even getting shots by someone else I can silence the panic alarms in my brain and withstand it. But to give myself a shot? This would mean reconciling a distant relationship my body and mind had for years.

As a child, there were times I would just stare out at the world and an unnerving feeling would churn in my stomach. How is it that I can only ever see outwards? Why couldn’t I see my own face? Or my entire body for that matter? Everything else with eyes could see me in my entirety, but I, who possessed this body, couldn’t? It felt wrong—limiting. It was like something deep within me had memories of being able to see in 4 dimensions but now as a human, I was stuck with just these two eyes.

Over time when those thoughts would emerge I would quickly snap myself out of it or risk going mad. I never voiced this to anyone because it seemed like everyone was comfortable with having a human body in a way that I didn’t. I knew I would sound crazy. Even as I write this now I worry about how odd I must sound.

But I was one of those kids who showed signs of puberty early, or at least before the other kids I was around. In fourth grade, I developed mosquito bite tits; one day it was like I woke up and suddenly there was a jungle of hair between my legs; and I was growing out of my clothes faster than my parents could afford. Every other nine and ten-year-old in my class were still kids, but my friend Crystal and I were getting pushed into womanhood early. It was then I noticed a shift in how adults were looking at me, more specifically my parents. There was a slight uneasiness between us now. It was not just that I was “the baby who was growing up oh so fast,” but I was growing into a sexual being.

Growing up in a fundamentalist Christian household, with my father being a priest, sex was never talked about but still had this elusive presence. My parents always warned me never to be in a room with only boys and/or men, but they never explained why— yet I felt like I always knew what they were implying. When watching reality TV with my teenage sister, she would have me close my eyes if kissing scenes got too steamy— I didn’t have a full understanding of what things were leading to, but I knew it had to be related to this secret act no one would explain to me.

Once I asked my mother why they called Mary a “virgin” and why that was so important. The question was a sort of test for my mother. I knew that virginity was connected to sex, but unsure of how exactly. It was such an emphasized part of Mary’s identity but it seemed forbidden for me, as a child, to ask what it meant. I remember the air in the room getting tense and my mother had this nervous awkwardness about her all of a sudden.

“It means she didn’t give herself up… or put herself out there.” The answer cleared up nothing, but given the tension in the room, I sensed it best not to ask any follow-up questions.

Now that my body was developing, there was an inexplicable strictness about how I carried myself. I had to start wearing bras, which I hated. When I didn’t there was always some woman around quick to remind me that I needed one. By fifth grade, my doctor told me to expect my period because I was showing all the signs that it could start any day now. It was also in fifth grade that I had my first sex-ed lesson in school.

I remember being much too excited for sex-ed lessons. Mainly because my siblings, who were now in their early twenties and had been exempt from sex-ed lessons by my parents when they were my age, were strangely excited to know vicariously what it was like. In raising me, I think my parents now realized it was easier for school to teach me everything, relieving them from an uncomfortable conversation. Sex-ed was also exciting because I knew this was the start of finally learning what the act of sex was and why what was happening to my body was so connected to it.

I finally got my period in sixth grade, it was then I really started hating puberty. It was not because of the bleeding, the cramps, or how uncontrollable my emotions were now, it was that my body had morphed into this full hourglass figure and everyone made it a point to remind me of it. My mom had become even stricter about my clothing— no shirts that were too revealing of my arms or chest, no skirts tight enough to accentuate my ass, and no dresses that were too “grown up.” At the time we had moved to a small town in Oklahoma, which was even more white and racist than Texas. It was bad enough that I was the only Black person in my friend group, but now my body was curvier and wider than the other white girls. I was this spectacle, yet at the same time incredibly invisible. My body was oversexualized by all, yet conversely, I was on no one’s romantic radar. In fact, it was deemed laughable to see me as such.

This is the experience of many dark-skin Black girls who grew up in predominantly white spaces. You’re the Hottentot Venus that everyone points, pokes, and ogles at; and no one ever dares to consider you beautiful, desirable, or lovable.

I soon came to detest my body. There was a point in high school when I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror, my voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard and was unrecognizable to me. To be in this body felt dangerous, worthless, and abnormal. I would practice disconnecting from each of my senses; repeating to myself I was not truly in the present and everything outside of mind didn’t exist. My mind was safe and if I could concentrate hard enough, the worlds in there could almost feel real.

When my pleas to move out of that town were dismissed by my parents, forms of media became an escape from the torment around me. I dove deep into online fangirl culture; books, shows, emo and pop punk bands became deep obsessions of mine. I made fan accounts on every social media platform dedicated to each obsession. Through those accounts, I connected with fellow fangirls who became some of the few sincere friendships I had at the time. It was here the seeds of my gender identity started to form.

I still never questioned my gender, but I deeply identified, sometimes kinned, (true Tumblr nerds know what that word means) with several characters. My most beloved characters were emotionally tortured gay boys who were deeply in love with each other but family, society, or their own emotional unavailability kept them apart— oh my HEART, the FEELS. I would write or read fanfiction and it would feel like a self-insert somehow. Rarely would the characters I identified with were women and if they were they were very androgynous. I deeply envied not getting to be someone’s boyfriend and yet at the same time, when I fantasized about being with women, that desire still felt very sapphic, and I liked that.

When I moved to New York for college, I finally had the freedom to fully express and explore my identity. I played around a lot with my style, enjoying both masculine and feminine looks. One day I wore this black and white checked suit with a red tank top and paired it with my knock-off Doc Martens. My hair was in long black-to-silver ombre braids at the time and I felt so proud of this look. I had my friend take photos of me for an Instagram post. The pictures captured me beautifully, but when I looked at them I felt this inexplicably deep frustration and disappointment twist inside me.

“This isn’t what I’m trying to do. This isn’t what I’m going for,” I kept thinking. But I didn’t quite know what I meant by that.

My new friend Elliot hadn’t been the first Transmasc person I had met or befriended, but it was with him I first felt comfortable voicing these confusing thoughts. I had never thought to call myself Trans before because all the Trans narratives I had been exposed to spoke about feeling “born in the wrong body,” and I had never felt that. I hadn’t been in touch with my body for years, I didn’t feel like I was “in” anything. Up until then, being a woman felt like something that was decided for me and I had no say in the matter.

But when learning from Elliot that many Trans people had such different connections to their bodies, not just feelings of misplacement and hate, it was like I had discovered there were more ways to be human.

With that, I thought, “fuck it, I’ve always wanted to try out being a boy.”

The opportunity was just too compelling. I had always wanted to possess a boyish swagger, a boy’s rambunctiousness and sarcasm, and most of all I wanted to date boys as a boy. Conversely, I realized there was more to girlhood that I really enjoyed. I loved being one of the girls, I loved how it felt to be an intelligent girl, and nothing felt more powerful than being a girl who knew how beautiful and alluring she was. I wanted the irresistible charisma of both an effeminate dude and an androgynous lesbian. I wanted to possess the alluring beauty pretty boys who almost look like girls and girls with sharp almost boyish features.

But it felt wrong to cherry-pick gender like this; it felt like wanting my cake and to eat it too. Of course, being non-binary was an option, but at the time that label felt incomplete for me. It wasn’t specific enough to what I wanted to do. I wanted to be like one of those photos that change depending on the angle it’s held. I wanted to possess all energies of the gender spectrum all at once.

Two years into my gender journey, I decided to get on testosterone. Within an instant, I felt the relationship with my body shift. It was like my hands were finally on the steering wheel. I was finally presenting myself accurately. Three months into being on T-gel I decided I wanted to switch to injections. I wanted the changes I was seeing to happen faster and it was a hassle to put on the gel every single day.

At my doctor’s office, Callen-Lorde, it is a whole process to get your testosterone injections done at home. You have to go through three teachings. In the first, the nurse teaches you how to set everything up for the injection. How to safely attach the syringe to the needle, how to draw out the correct dosage, then finally how to inject yourself. The nurse does it for you the first time. In the second, you set everything else up yourself, but again the nurse does the shot. In the third, you do it all yourself and you’re approved to go home with it.

In the first and second appointments, it all went smoothly up until the actual injection. I would take a few deep breaths and ask the nurse to give me a countdown. She would always agree but I could tell from her confused expression that she was wondering why I would do injections when I so obviously had a fear of needles. I couldn’t even look at it happening.

In the third appointment when I had to do it myself, it took a good minute for me to catch my breath, even though I was just sitting there. I uncapped the needle and held it over the disinfected area of my thigh. Intramuscular shots pinch more than subcutaneous injections, but at the time I wasn’t aware of that.

My hand hovered over my thigh, I made a motion to inject but my hand trembled violently on the way down and I jerked my hand back. I took a few more deep breaths. I don’t know how long I sat there just staring at my thigh, but it was long enough for the nurse to remind me that she had other patients to attend to.

Right. I just had to do it. Just do it. I got this. It won’t even hurt.

My hand came down swiftly on the side of my thigh but the moment I felt the pinch, everything in me seized up and my hand jolted back. The tiny dot on my thigh began to bleed, I felt dizzy.

“See now why would you do that!” The nurse sounded just as panicked as me. “Went and pinched yaself, probably hurt yourself more than if you had just done it.”

Strangely, her strong accent and scolding tone felt comforting, it was like my mother was in the room. In my daze, she bandaged up the spot and took the syringe from my hand. She replaced the needle. Reeling from the adrenaline rush the panic had surged in me, I didn’t feel a thing when the nurse did the shot in my other thigh.

After that, for months, actually years, I would go into the clinic every two weeks for my injection. The same thing would happen each time: I’d set everything up, pull my pants down, wipe down the side of my thigh, and I’d uncap the needle and hold it over my thigh. Then I would just stare at it. Eventually, I would decide that today was just not the day and hand it off to the nurse. While most may find it laborious going to the doctor’s office this often, I quite enjoyed my Callen-Lorde visits. Most everyone there is queer and the space had a warmer human energy than any doctor’s office I’ve been to. I reveled in being in the care of so many Queer and Trans folk. It felt familial. I knew this dynamic was one-sided, I was still one of many many patients. But I like to think this familial feeling is an intentional part of their care system.

In my first year of being on T, I reveled in this feeling of having a body. I started working out, liking the feeling of being sweaty and sore, of having to catch my breath. I would often forget to take the, “My name is Savior and this is my voice…” videos but when I did, I replayed the videos again and again. My voice out loud was aligning with what it had always sounded like in my head. It felt like I was finally coming into myself.

In my second year on T, I really started to pass as a boy— or a man, I should say. I realized this by accidentally outing myself a number of times. Assuming everyone could tell, I would make some sort of remark or joke hinting at my Transness—I felt like I had to say the thing everyone was thinking. But instead, people were completely thrown off, “What do you mean you miss using the women’s restroom?”

In that year I truly reveled in the boyhood I was striving for. My cis boy roommates and I would drink endless beers in our living room and play SuperSmash for hours. My hair was constantly buzzed down. My voice in every room felt louder and more serious, even though I was speaking at the same volume. I could be in a group of men and feel like I fit in— but this came at the unfortunate cause of losing my place as one of the girls. That summer I downloaded Grindr, ready to fuck boys as a boy— my body count shot up that year.

But I felt incomplete. The more I was accepted into manhood, the more distanced I felt from women which was devastating. I truly valued being in community with women. It felt inaccurate to be seen as a man interested in women. My attraction to women felt very gay. Despite my invitation into this boy’s club, I still felt most comfortable surrounded by queer women and gender non-conforming sapphics.

It was in this year that I suddenly dove so much into lesbian media, making an effort to search for all that was out there. I found myself relating so much to characters like Poussey, and artists like Cheryl Dunye. It was never a one-to-one identification, but it was honestly the closest I had ever gotten to seeing myself in media.

With all of this, I’ve realized I did not want to be a man, I don’t think I ever did. But I still really enjoyed being seen as a boy and using he/him pronouns, the idea of being someone’s girl-boyfriend, and being referred to as guy/boy/dude. With all the validation I was receiving from being seen as a boy, the few times I was perceived as a girl didn’t feel totally invalidating.

But I’m still not a woman, nor am I a man either. I don’t mean to infantilize myself in any way. But, to me, there is a seriousness to claiming womanhood and manhood that I simply do not feel passionate about. My soul feels genderless, it’s energy is beyond masculine and feminine; after this life, it will go on to become something I can’t even conceptualize. But for now, it is learning what it means to be human.

As I approached the third anniversary of being on T, I decided that I needed to start doing my shots myself. I wanted more control over how I take it, frequency and dosage-wise. On my commute to Callen-Lorde, I kept doing breathing exercises, calming my body early. I kept telling myself I could do this, I trust that I can do it.

It felt pointless to deny the fact that I was nervous and had a deep case of the jitters. I accepted that and knew I would probably feel that until the shot was done. There was no use in denying that it was going to pinch and my body would probably seize up like it always does. But I had to remember to breathe, that was essential.

In controlling my breath my mind could communicate to my body that everything was under control— there was no need to panic about this pain, I was still in control and I could trust myself.

When I got to the clinic, it all went the way it usually does at first. I prepared everything for the injection. In my last appointment, I requested to switch to subcutaneous injections, so the shot would go into my lower belly fat— which would supposedly be less painful. I pulled my shirt up, wiped an area of my stomach with the alcohol wipe, and then picked up the ready needle. I took in a few more deep breaths. I pinched the area of my belly that I was going to stick the needle in. I took in a few more deep breaths and positioned the needle over my skin.

I stared at it. I kept up the internal mantra I had been thinking on my way there, “You can do it. You can do it. You’ll be okay. I trust you. The longer you think about it, the more nervous you’ll be so just do it.” I still sat there frozen. “Imagine someone said you would lose a million dollars if you didn’t take this shot.”

The needle came down and punctured my skin. As expected, my body seized up, but this time my hand didn’t pull the needle out in panic.

“Ohhhhhh my god,” I couldn’t go through this quietly, “oh my god, holy shit, oh my god, you’re okay, you’re okay. Oh my god, oh my god.”

I kept babbling until all of the testosterone had been pushed out. I pulled out the needle, probably way too fast, and discarded it into the sharps container

“Holy shit,” I was breathless.

I looked over at the nurse, wide-eyed and invigorated. She looked back at me bewildered and slightly concerned, “You good…?”

“I feel great,” I must’ve sounded wired. “God, finally. Long time coming amiright?”

“Yeeeeeah…” This, evidently, wasn’t as big a milestone for her as it was for me. She left to get my bag of syringes and needles to take home.

Ever since I’ve been on cloud nine. My mind and body had come so far in reconnecting with each other. For so long they had been in an intense cold war with one another, but now they were not only allies, they were one.

In hitting my third year of being on T, I have reveled in being a sort of shapeshifter. An androgynous being up for interpretation. I have thought about gender so much that it’s like I have unplugged myself from its matrix. When I dress myself for the day, I am deciding how I want to be perceived in this simulation of gender.

Gender has become this thing of extreme fascination for me— a study and a game. It doesn’t help that I also minored in gender studies in college. It’s become a fourth-wall-breaking performance that I change up however I wish. Every outfit feels like I’m putting on an archetype of a person and as I go about my day I enjoy analyzing society’s perception and reception of this archetype. I’m Mystique; ever experimenting and chameloning. Gender has become a sort of art medium for me, and my body is the canvas.

I sometimes get this fear that this way of interacting with gender only feeds a certain transphobia— as though I’m giving transgender people a bad rep by being so playful with my gender. There is already so much transphobic rhetoric that sees being transgender as an insult to the “sacredness” of manhood or womanhood. I don’t put that in quotes to mock the fact that people take gender and its roles seriously, I have a deep respect for the ties people have to their gender identity. But gender is so made up. We humans have been rewriting and reinventing its definitions for years, it has never been consistent. But that does not diminish the meaning or importance of people’s gender identities. Just because it is made up, doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold weight. I recognize that.

But for me personally, this method of expression has truly allowed me to blossom as a person. The once alien feeling I had about my body as a child now has transformed into a sense of grounded control. I often ask myself if I still would feel trans if I lived in a more conservative era and didn’t have the vocabulary for this feeling, and the answer is a mix. Sure I could have lived as a woman, but I would have never felt human.

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Check out the film version of this here