I feared taking testosterone would make me angry – but I feel more like myself
Let’s talk about testosterone.
It’s been widely profiled as the ‘angry hormone’, the chemical that increases with aggression and laughs in the face of empathy.
And yet, it’s a chemical I’ve chosen to have injected into my glute muscle every two weeks, so I can keep growing the lean muscles, beard and body hair that prompt other men to call me ‘mate’.
It’s these little changes in how I look, helping me feel seen by others, that make the biggest difference to my life.
Even so, fear-mongering bigots would have me defined as a ticking ‘roid rage’ time bomb instead – based on common misconceptions of testosterone, or T.
Realising I was a trans man in 2021, aged 29, meant weighing up a lot of choices. When I’d come out. How I’d go about it. Skipping long NHS waiting lists to go private.
But even then, I was certain that testosterone was something I wanted – if not needed – to help bring about the physical changes that would help others see the inner me.
Despite the stories from some in my community that they couldn’t cry since starting T, and the worries that it could change my emotions for good, going ahead with treatment was more than worth the risk.
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I’m relieved on my own behalf that I didn’t come across any transphobic comments about T two years ago.
I was so sure of what I wanted, I doubt I would have been swayed by their so-called ‘arguments’ anyway.
But I know we aren’t all so lucky. We deserve the basic dignity of not being interrogated and feared for the care we often seek at our most mentally and emotionally vulnerable.
The dark side of all this for me at that time was the grief and anger of knowing I’d grown up so painfully unaware. I’d seen trans women on TV, but never a single trans man. Nobody to help me realise the truth behind my teenage daydreams about being a guy.
The older I got, the more frightening this became – but I repressed it, hid my emotions.
In the knowledge of how lonely I’d been made to feel for no good reason, because society had failed to help me know myself, I found myself saturated with raw rage.
This was pre-T in 2021, the same year I’d take the financial plunge into private gender care. And it was the angriest I’ve ever been.
Angry with a world that hadn’t let me see a single other person like me.
Angry at an incompetent NHS system that meant I was on a seemingly unmoving waiting list to become myself after all these years.
An eruption had been decades in the making, but the fury was still frightening.
What started as an argument about money, or something else seemingly unrelated, would probe at the truth underneath until I was a stereotypical crying wreck on the bathroom floor.
This truth, that I’d always felt out of control – of my sense of self and how to express it – was a gaping psychological wound I was only just daring to look at.
Having unearthed the depths of pent-up emotion, I worried what testosterone would do with it – especially when information about my T prescription warned that it could make me angrier.
Though I welcomed the chance transition brought to live as my genuine self, I was wary of that rage becoming more common and intense.
I was afraid.
Hear William talking about getting a smear test as a trans man below
But if I could have peeked just a few months into the future, I’d have been surprised by how much more relaxed I’ve felt since starting my medical transition that December.
In fact, coming to terms with my identity was the beginning of having a balanced relationship with my emotions.
I’ve found I’m less prone to outbursts, which in hindsight might have been caused by the stress of my old tendency to hold in sadness and anger.
Being more comfortable in my identity and emotions has helped me find stability with both.
The more you look at what testosterone actually does, the more ridiculous it is to use as a scapegoat for acting out of anger irresponsibly, or painting transmasculine people as powerless against the emotional influence of hormone therapy.
Testosterone has been a Class C listed drug in the UK since 1971 under the Misuse of Drugs Act.
The chemical is present and healthy in every person, not just men or people assigned male at birth.
It drives the development of the ‘male’ sex organs, and then in puberty, fuels facial hair growth, voice drop and other physical changes that denote the external appearance of masculinity.
But also, in everybody, healthy testosterone levels support your sex drive, strength, and fat distribution.
The idea that it is the sole cause of anger, or automatically makes some people more violent than others, is at best an unsupported theory.
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In fact, the mood swings, low energy and anxiety, which could foster anger in anyone, can actually sometimes come as a result of too little testosterone in cisgender men.
But where does that leave trans men?
One scientific study noted increased anger amongst a group of 52 trans men after seven months of testosterone therapy, but also found that ‘increased anger did not appear to be linked to any increase in risk for aggressive behaviour, self-harm, or psychiatric hospitalisation’.
The scientific outlook on testosterone and anger agrees on one thing – that the increased irritability can stem from a hormonal imbalance.
The most common goal of hormone therapy for trans men is to try and mimic the ‘normal’ production of testosterone in cis men.
When gender-affirming hormone therapy is being carried out safely with medical guidance, this process is consistently monitored by blood tests.
The ones I have every three months break down my hormone balance into testosterone and oestrogen levels, and ensure there aren’t the kinds of spikes or dips a cis man might also suffer.
Personally, I feel more emotionally unstable around the time my period would fall than I do between injections.
Except today, people on Twitter continue to cry about the ‘consequences’ of transmasculine folks having hormone therapy, or even being allowed to exist.
When we aren’t the spectres in one transphobe’s tirade, we’re infantilised by others. We allow ourselves to be manipulated by the ‘trans agenda’, they say instead, and later by the hormone that they suggest will make us violent, insensitive monsters.
But I know who I am. That fact alone has helped me regulate my emotions better than ever before. I’ve been empowered to understand how I’m feeling.
Being on a regulated testosterone prescription has no impact on my self-control. Anyone who says otherwise is, in my opinion, being misled by transphobic hate speech.
When anger does arise, I’m able to express it safely. I no longer let it fester the way I used to.
A slight pain in the backside every fortnight is a small price to pay for that.
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