Transfem
A community for transfeminine people and experiences.
This is a supportive community for all transfeminine or questioning people. Anyone is welcome to participate in this community but disrupting the safety of this space for trans feminine people is unacceptable and will result in moderator action.
Debate surrounding transgender rights or acceptance will result in an immediate ban.
- Please follow the rules of the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance.
- Bigotry of any kind will not be tolerated.
- Gatekeeping will not be tolerated.
- Please be kind and respectful to all.
- Please tag NSFW topics.
- No NSFW image posts.
- Please provide content warnings where appropriate.
- Please do not repost bigoted content here.
This community is supportive of DIY HRT. Unsolicited medical advice or caution being given to people on DIY will result in moderator action.
Posters may express that they are looking for responses and support from groups with certain experiences (eg. trans people, trans people with supportive parents, trans parents.). Please respect those requests and be mindful that your experience may differ from others here.
Some helpful links:
- The Gender Dysphoria Bible // In depth explanation of the different types of gender dysphoria.
- Trans Voice Help // A community here on blahaj.zone for voice training.
- LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory // A directory of LGBTQ+ accepting Healthcare providers.
- Trans Resistance Network // A US-based mutual aid organization to help trans people facing state violence and legal discrimination.
- TLDEF's Trans Health Project // Advice about insurance claims for gender affirming healthcare and procedures.
- TransLifeLine's ID change Library // A comprehensive guide to changing your name on any US legal document.
Support Hotlines:
- The Trevor Project // Web chat, phone call, and text message LGBTQ+ support hotline.
- TransLifeLine // A US/Canada LGBTQ+ phone support hotline service. The US line has Spanish support.
- LGBT Youthline.ca // A Canadian LGBT hotline support service with phone call and web chat support. (4pm - 9:30pm EST)
- 988lifeline // A US only Crisis hotline with phone call, text and web chat support. Dedicated staff for LGBTQIA+ youth 24/7 on phone service, 3pm to 2am EST for text and web chat.
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Taking a look at Quest's website, hormone tests are about $225 if you aren't going to go through insurance. Ideally, you'd get these done every 3 months until you figure out your dosage levels. So ideally, you would budget ~$1000 for that. Also, these would still leave medical records that would clearly indicate something is up if you are worried about like worse-case scenario (and getting around that may require access to equipment with costs over $100k and would require some training? idk really know what option their are for this, but assuming something like LC-MS). Technically not strictly necessary, but there is so much variation in how people respond to doses that you pretty much have to do some testing to make sure you are in target ranges. If you manage to get an antiandrogen, those might require additional testing (ie: checking potassium levels if you are on spiro, which would ideally be done before starting)
The hormones would be far cheaper than that afaik, although you may want to get that in bulk upfront if you are concerned about the political changes limiting supplies. And I think I heard a rumor that getting antiandrogens from the grey market in the US is harder right now? So monotherapy may be the only option.
I think anyone starting HRT in the US now should consider DIY and think its probably better than nothing. But I think if I were starting again today, I'd go through informed consent again if at all possible and only switch to DIY if that became the only option. And by that point, hopefully I'd have a decent idea how dosing works for me that going a while without testing wouldn't be a problem.
Also, if you use injections, they tell you to only use the vial for a month, but a single vial can technically last far longer (the trade-off being the more its used, the more likely there are to be contaminants - one month is sorta like a best sell-by date used by companies to cover their ass). So stockpiling is viable via non-DIY.