u/noela0093

I scroll on TikTok a lot when I'm bored, and lately I've been noticing a pattern with some of the videos I've been seeing...

Usually, it's a passing, conventionally attractive trans woman, and she goes

“What transphobes think trans women look like”

*shows a bunch of crossdressers/transphobic wojaks*

(Or in worse cases, actual non-passing trans women)

and then...

“What trans women ACTUALLY look like”

*shows herself or famous trans public figures being conventionally attractive and passing*

It shouldn't have to be said why this is problematic but just to clarify, I am a trans woman, I've been on HRT for 1.5 years, I've had 10 sessions of laser and I look so much more like the crossdressers/transphobic wojaks used in those videos than the passing, conventionally attractive trans women posting these things.

Some of us will never pass. Some of us will never be conventionally attractive. I know for sure I never will. Not all of us have the money or the privilege to look pretty and feminine in the way that society defines...

I get why they post these kinds of videos, but ultimately all it does is reinforce the idea that you have to be passing and conventionally attractive to be valid as a trans women, and that non-passing ones are somehow "fake" or not woman enough.

I understand that privilege blinds people in many ways, but I wish passing, conventionally attractive trans women understood that trying to lift themselves up by shitting on the rest of us is harmful.

And this isn't just a trend on TikTok either... I've seen this kind of stuff on Twitter too and pretty much all social media platforms.

And by that, I mean, for trans women specifically, especially those who start transitioning later (25+).

It irks me so much because in reality it's so much harder and rarer than people think, and only FFS can fix your facial bone structure.

I feel like survivorship bias is a huge part of it.

I've run into something that doesn't make sense to me and I'm wondering if anyone has experienced something similar or has an explanation.

Here's my timeline:

April 2025: Started HRT with Progynon Depot (10 mg/1 mL ampoules, estradiol valerate).

My doctor administered the injections once a week into my upper arm. He said they were intended to be subcutaneous, but because I'm very skinny, they could have been partially intramuscular.

January 2026: Blood test taken at trough (right before my next weekly injection). My testosterone was fully suppressed (~0.10 ng/mL), but my estradiol was only 77 pg/mL, so my doctor doubled my weekly dose to 20mg/1mL once per week.

February 2026: After I doubled the dose to 20mg once per week, a trough blood test showed 282 pg/mL.

April 2026: Another trough blood test showed 308 pg/mL, so everything seemed stable.

Last month, I switched to self-injecting subQ into my abdomen. I didn't change the total weekly dose at all. I simply split it into two half-dose injections (10mg/1mL) every 3.5 days.

Last week, after being on this schedule for about a month, I had another blood test. It was taken exactly 3.5 days after my previous injection (so again, a trough).

My testosterone is still fully suppressed, but my estradiol came back at 1122 pg/mL.

This is what's confusing me.

As far as I understand, splitting a weekly dose into two injections should reduce peaks and increase troughs somewhat, but I wouldn't expect a trough to go from around 300 pg/mL to over 1100 pg/mL without increasing the total weekly dose.

Has anyone seen anything like this before?

Could switching from upper-arm injections (possibly partially IM) to abdominal subQ really make that much of a difference, or does this sound more like a lab error or something else?.

28, MTF, a little over a year on E, boymoder

I recently started progesterone, and my breasts have been having a growth spurt.

They’re still very small, but enough to be visible through a tshirt.

Now that it’s starting to get hot outside, I can’t really layer anything on top of that and it’s making me self-conscious.

Also, since my face doesn’t pass at all in the slightest due to masculine facial bone structure, I kinda hate that I look like I have boobs now?

Like, I don’t mind the boobs themselves, but the fact that I still look 100% like a man, and yet I’m starting to grow boobs?

That’s making me feel very dysphoric and uncomfortable.

I don’t know if prog does anything else other than encourage breast development. Does it help with facial fat redistribution? If so, I’d have to continue but if not, maybe I should quit prog for now

(28, HRT 1 year, MTF)

So I don’t pass AT ALL, like I don’t even look remotely androgynous. I still look like a cis man.

HRT has not been kind to me and luck is definitely not on my side. I have a Chad jawline, massive chin, protruding cheekbones, tiny eyes, prominent brow bone, long midface, gaunt cheeks and a HUGE Adam’s apple. (Yes, I know HRT doesn’t change bones but I haven’t had facial fat redistribution either.)

So I’m constantly in agony over my extremely bad luck.

One of my friends is also a trans woman, and she hasn’t been on HRT for that much longer than me, and yet she perfectly passes facially. (She’s on Reddit too and she gets a lot of compliments too whenever she posts.)

Her face is like the opposite of mine. Perfectly round, feminine, rosy, delicate and pretty with no sharp features.

It would be one thing if she was able to see that for herself, but for some reason she refuses to acknowledge it, and even tho everyone tells her she passes, she refuses to accept it.

That can make things very awkward between us, since here I am, someone who actually looks like a cis man, and she’s telling me she looks like a man even tho she 100% passes facially and everyone tells her she does.

It really feels like I’m an overweight person who weighs more than 300 pounds, having to listen to an anorexic girl talk about how fat she is, if you know what I mean.

How can I stay friends with someone like that without jeopardizing my mental health?

I genuinely like her, we have so much in common on the inside (despite having nothing in common on the outside) and we genuinely have a good chemistry so I don’t want to block her.

But also, it’s getting harder and harder to stay friends with her when I continue to look like a cis man while she looks like a cis woman and she can’t even see it.

This genuinely isn’t a self-hate post.

I’m capable of flipping the switch and feeling good about myself sometimes in a “I’m beautiful in my own unique way despite not passing at all” kind of way.

But at the end of the day, I’m a non-passing trans woman in a very unforgiving society (Japan) and I’m considered very ugly as well as non-passing in my country, mostly due to my masculine jawline, massive chin, protruding cheekbones, as well as prominent brow bone, tiny eyes, hooked/Roman nose and a huge Adam’s apple.

And I’m genuinely not exaggerating anything. I genuinely just look like a cis man despite being on HRT, since my facial bone structure is extremely masculine even for a cis man of my ethnicity.

I wish I could ignore all the noise and live in my own world, but unfortunately I still live in a society, a very fucked-up one and I’m forced to boymode 24/7 out of necessity. So how do I cope with that?

(28, HRT 1 year, will start saving up for FFS soon but it’ll take years)