u/toastythesecond

Since starting HRT about a decade ago, let’s just say my rear has got very kardashian looking and my hip bones have broadened significantly where some men seem to stare at my behind.

My manager has me bending over a lot to reach the bottom shelves so I often crouch instead, One time he said “Looking good Tina” as I was fixing the shelves so there was plausible deniability.

On christmas eve I said to him “I’ll have to work extra hard today if I want Santa to come” and he laughed. Sadly he was already in a relationship (not that he would automatically want to date me if I knew I was a trans woman).

Lately, I’ve started crouching so it’s harder to ogled.

The other week a customer walked past carrying a jar off a shelf and brushed it right against my buttocks.

He then said to one of my coworkers “She’s an absolute beauty that one.”

I knew what he was doing but I was too affirmed by it that I let him pretend it was an accident :3

I know it would be be bad for a cis woman whose used to being affirmed but I much prefer this to how I used to be treated in my early years of transitioning where people on the streets would hurl abuse at me demanding to know what gender I was.

Now that I’m passing far more often, I’m taking literally anything.

It’s gotten to the point where my female coworker has started giving me advice now to wear rings on my fingers so that men stay away.

But I don’t know. I kinda like the affirmation. xD

I’m following one of my male coworkers and he runs into two friends and they instantly start talking about their last f*pping. They form a circle closing me off.

My coworker says to them “Well, I just had my last wnk and was fpping like mad.” One of them then says “Um, there’s a woman here.” The other makes eye contact with me and says “Oh look, a lady. She won’t understand.”

I pretend to act confused like I’ve always had a vagina knowing full well I know what they’re talking about.

Another time a boomer coworker was slagging off a female manager to a group of men and me and said “I don’t mean any offence against women but what does some 23 year old girl know to be managing my department?”

And then looked at me again and said “You can’t have it all ways. You want equality, you should be doing more lifting around here.”

I have to admit I felt affirmed being dismissed like that on all those occasions xD

Boomer: “muh sir”

Gentleman in his 60s: “Hello sexy, how are we today?”

”If I was young I’d be dating you.. Your boyfriend must be so lucky.”
Me in my head: “What boyfriend is that?”

Another random gentleman: “Hello, my lady. How are you on this fine night?”

Me: “I’m okay.”

”Good. I should think so. I will be back next time the same time to check on you. I expect you to be here the same time waiting for me.“

i’ll certainly take those interactions over the misgenderings. I’ll take anything. Literally. I’ll take actual harassment to feel affirmation.

I work 3 times a week and honestly the real world is much worse than the news, social media or doomscrolling.

If anything avoiding all trans-related news or subreddits can make mental health worse because it creates unrealistic expectations of what people are actually like.

If you don't work or work remote then it will be a benefit, sure, but otherwise it's not going to make a meaningful difference.

I work in Brighton and I wouldn't bother working anywhere else, honestly (except maybe London or other urban places). And even then I still dread going into work. If I could avoid working at all I would.

Saving up money for gender-affirming surgeries gives me an incentive to work other than basic survival. If I could tolerate more exposure to pain, I would work more hours.

I come home some days from work suicidal or wanting to self harm because of the way people are.

My hometown is a hellhole. I only go out there (into the wild) when I need supplies and with my headphones in.

I won't go into any detail as I made a deal with myself where I don't think about the outside world while I'm at home or I self harm as punishment.

This idea you have to go out is only true if you actually need to. Animals don't leave their habitat to go places that are unsafe unless they need food or have some kind of necessity for doing so.

I’ve just become extremely cynical as a result.Where is the moral outrage from our fellow Brits that their trans brothers and sisters are being treated so badly? There just isn’t any.

The malpractice towards trans people doesn’t even make news anywhere. We only know about most of it through word of mouth. It’s like our suffering is just white noise completely painted over.

That last sentence is a feeling I’ve been trying to describe for years. This shouldn’t even be normal.

Should I even be watching England play tonight?

I guess this is partly my fault for assuming pigs wouldn’t fly but I went to a library in a town to print out a medical GIC document. I needed it printed and I couldn’t do it at home because my printer ran out of ink and they don’t sell them locally.

I assumed like in a lot of libraries you’d have something like print credit where you pay to print it off the computer but no one actually sees what you’re printing. Big mistake.

Printer turned out to be behind the library counter. I tell them the document I’m printing is sensitive and the woman behind the counter tells me their whole privacy policy. She’s gendering me correctly as a woman at this point and saying stuff like “show this lady to the computer.”

Next thing I know, there’s something wrong with the computer and she’s peering over my shoulder and saying “You can try this one instead as long as you’re not going to look at anything inappropriate.” She hasn’t seen my document at this point, just a weird thing to say.

I said “Of course not, why would I be? I just said the thing I was printing was sensitive as in confidential nothing inappropriate.” I’m still being gendered as a woman at this point.

Turns out I was logged on the children’s computer and the adult computers were at the back.

I open my document when she goes back to the counter, I press print and it goes to her monitor to print off.

Next thing I know after she gets my document I’m getting a whole load of microaggressions and being told “Look sir, make way for this lady behind you, you’ll have to wait, printer’s broken down. The document you sent will take a while.”

I’m then waiting an hour before before it’s finally sorted out. It was genuinely broken, but I’m suddenly just sitting there next to these other people waiting who she just suddenly decided I was a man in front of, after seeing my document, feeling like I want to get up and leave. Maybe it was a coincidence but the timing seemed a little suspect that she was suddenly changing my pronouns.

She genuinely seemed angry when she said “Look sir make way for the lady” like I had deceived her that I was ‘actually a man’ in the face of the woman I was standing in front of.

I just ignored what she said and finally got my document printed but I’ve never felt more embarrassed, uncomfortable and exposed for some years.

If I had known it would’ve gone down like this I just would’ve just waited for my new ink cartridge. I could foresee something like this happening but I was in a rush to get my document printed.

I won’t complain about my experience because I don’t want that hassle right now. I just wish I had just waited until my next ink cartridge arrived. I feel like it had a really bad effect on my expectation of other people which was already low enough.

My T is suppressed. I get around 125 pg/ml for E on average. Apparently this is low or the WPATH standard which isn’t as good for feminisation.

I’ve seen loads of big changes just not breast development.

Ideally for transdermal.

Would it be worth being switched to transdermal instead of oral so I can avoid a bad E1:E2 ratio?

What are safe but highly effective levels for E to trigger more breast growth?

What app can I a trans woman get in touch with a trans man on who is into trans women?

Ideally a trans savvy one.

I started HRT at 19, I’ve been on HRT for 9 years, had massive feminisation everywhere except the breasts, where I remain flat chested.

My iliac blades have broadened significantly to above average female proportions, a prominent behind and a soft face and yet I have had almost no breast growth at all.

Here’s my regimen and level history:

2017 Q3 100mcg Evorel Patches + 5mg Finasteride OD E: 95 pg/mL T: 328 ng/dL Breast buds start to form

2017 Q4 100mcg Evorel Patches + 100mg Spiro OD

• 5mg Finasteride OD E: 89 pg/mL T: 14 ng/dL AAA Breast Growth

2018 Q1 to 2019 Q2 125mcg Evorel Patches + 100mg Spiro OD

• 5mg Finasteride OD E: 136 pg/mL T: 17 ng/dL Breast Growth stops

2019 Q3 to 2021 Q3 6mg Progynova OD + Decapeptyl + 5mg Finasteride OD E: 136 pg/mL T: 17 ng/dL No breast growth

2021 Q3 to 2025 Q3 (post-op) 4mg Progynova + 5mg Finasteride E: 120 pg/mL T: 6 ng/dL No breast growth

2025 Q4 to 2026 Q1 1 Pump of Estrogel 0.6 daily

• 4mg Progynova + 5mg Finasteride Breasts grow slightly to AA cup or just below AA

So adding a pump of estrogel on top of my Progynova dose in the last 6 months seems to have a small but rather insignificant growth in breast development. It’s big enough where everyone I talk to agrees something has happened but small enough where it could be explained by something else.

My theory is that the evorel patches were doing something until Spiro came along. Then when Spiro was dropped and patches were discontinued in favour of Progynova, the E1 ratio prevented breast growth from restarting.

Now adding a single pump of Estrogel on top of my progynova dose seems to have actually done something but it’s very small. It’s not breast growth that you would expect to happen in 6 or 7 months but it seems to be something however small.

So judging by my history it seems like the solution after the next blood test is to go gel only or could the combination of Progynova and Estrogel be doing something gel or patches wouldn’t alone achieve?

I’m thinking of going to 2mg Progyniva + 3 pumps of estrogel to replace my current regimen. 2 Pumps translates to 2mg progynova according to the table I was given.

Unfortunately E injections aren’t an option in the UK unless I resort to costly DIYing.