You're in the Wrong Bathroom! by Laura Erickson-Schroth

Author:Laura Erickson-Schroth [Erickson-Schroth, Laura; Jacobs, Laura A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8070-3388-3
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2017-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

MYTH 16

Testosterone Makes You Angry and Estrogen Makes You Emotional

Searching YouTube for the word “transgender” yields more than a million results, many of which are personal “before and after” photo lineups or time-lapse videos of transition. YouTube and social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram allow trans people to document the experience themselves and to share the changes with their friends, family, other trans people, and the general public. Much of this material focuses on physical transformation, but other posts document the psychological experience of transition—the joy, the sadness, the frustration, and often the peace that result from a decision to take a leap.

Emotional changes during transition vary considerably. Relief is common, as is decreased depression and anxiety. Some trans men report feeling more angry or irritable after starting testosterone or find they can’t cry as easily. Trans women on estrogen or progesterone sometimes feel their mood shifts more easily or that they’re tearful at times when they might not have been before. Because there are so few studies of the emotional effects of hormones during transition, most of what we know is anecdotal, and it’s hard to say which experiences are most common. In a culture that expects men and women to conform to gender norms, it’s important to question if we expect (and, in turn, pay more attention to) hormonal effects that match what we think those hormones will do.

Testosterone is associated with masculinity and evokes images of muscle-clad young men pounding weights, soldiers going off to war, anger, fights, and sexual prowess. Estrogen and progesterone, on the other hand, are associated with femininity and call to mind a sense of comfort, warmth, motherly love, and kindness. We also think of them as causing stereotypically female emotional responses, like mood swings and tearfulness. Without scientific studies, we don’t know if most people who transition experience hormones in these ways. Even with studies, we may never know if all the effects of transitional hormones are directly related to the hormones themselves or whether our beliefs about how they will affect us end up shaping the way we experience them.

The concept that chemical messengers could travel through the body to affect organs remote from their source originated in ancient China. However, it wasn’t until the 1930s that researchers were able to isolate hormones such as testosterone and estrogen in order to use them medicinally. These two hormones in particular became known as “sex hormones” and entered into popular culture as symbols of masculinity and femininity. However, everyone’s body, regardless of biological sex or gender identity, produces both of these chemicals. Though the typical male range for testosterone is higher than the typical female range, and vice versa for estrogen (until menopause), testosterone is not an exclusively “male” hormone and estrogen is not exclusively “female.”

Many people are surprised to learn that estrogen is produced by cells in the testicles and that the chemical structure of testosterone and estrogen is similar, so much so that it takes only one enzyme (aromatase) to convert testosterone to estrogen.

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