My transgender diary: 'The unexpected effects of hormone replacement therapy, HRT'

David Thomas
David Thomas Credit: Edd Horder

Author David Thomas still lives as a man, but has begun the male-to-female gender transition that will eventually result in becoming a woman. Each week he chronicles his progress. This week, he talks about the effects of female hormones on his body

So there I was, running up the last flight of stairs to my attic apartment, taking them two at a time, as I do. I got to the top and thought to myself, ‘That shouldn’t have been so hard.’ 

It wasn’t that I was huffing and puffing for breath, so much as the dull ache in my legs. They just weren’t up to the job in quite the way they had been a few months ago. So I thought, ‘Maybe I’m just tired.’ After all, I’d had a few nights of not sleeping very well, and that can take the spring out of anyone’s step.

But even so, the actual physical effort of pushing myself up the stairs was greater than it should have been. Hmm…

A few days later, I was out in the garden. The house that I live in has half an acre or so of land that is cut off from the rest of the garden.

It was, in consequence, neglected for decades and became completely overgrown by brambles, nettles, ivy and ground elder. 

Over the past few years, various apartment owners have hacked back this jungle to create an allotment area that produces an amazing bounty of fruit and veg. Even today, though, there is still plenty of wilderness left for newcomers who want to grow their own grub. 

It must be one of the most baffling things about male-to-female transition: I am deliberately, knowingly weakening myself
It must be one of the most baffling things about male-to-female transition: I am deliberately, knowingly weakening myself Credit: EDD HORDER

Now, there’s nothing I like more than a good, hard day in the garden. Show me brambles to attack and deadwood to clear and I’m happy. Or I was, anyway. But I’ve been working away in that wilderness over the past couple of weekends and I just can’t hack it the way I used to. I get tired far more quickly. Tasks I once carried out without a second thought are now completely beyond me.

Of course, age might have something to do with it. But only last year I was helping out in another part of the garden, cutting dead branches and even small trees with saws powered by nothing more than my muscles, and I managed fine.

Within the past few months, however, I’ve become noticeably less strong. I’ve lost muscle mass from my shoulders, arms and legs. And the real reason, of course, is the little plastic Estradot patch that sends 100 micrograms of oestrogen into my bloodstream every 24 hours. 

That must be one of the most baffling things about male-to-female transition to anyone who is not transgender, and I can absolutely see why. People like me are deliberately, knowingly weakening themselves.

And it’s not just about bone and muscle. I’m training my voice to sound higher, lighter; and thus it comes across as less authoritative. I’m spending far more money than I can really afford to give myself a body and appearance that will make me far more physically vulnerable than I am now.

You might not think so to look at my picture on this page, but in real life I still dress and look like a reasonably normal man. So I’m treated like a man. And I feel safe in the way that a man does in virtually all of his everyday life. 

I still have all my male privilege, in other words.

But that is going to change. Coming home from a day in London, I walk from the station across to the multistorey car park where I leave my car. And as I do, I increasingly wonder about how I will feel when I am making that journey wearing a dress, and shoes that tap on the floor the way a woman’s do, and male ones don’t.

And of course, there’s a double jeopardy of being trans, particularly if one is still in the ‘living in role’ period that is compulsory before the final genital surgery can take place. According to a report published last year by Stonewall, the LGBT rights group, 41 per cent of trans people had experienced hate crime incidents within the previous 12 months, 28 per cent had been the victims of domestic violence and 12 per cent had been attacked by work colleagues or customers. 

I know all this and yet I continue on my path. Am I mad? 

Quite possibly, but as my body weakens, softens and changes shape, so I like and accept it more. It feels as though I’ve swapped an uncomfortable, ill-fitting pair of shoes for a cosy pair of slippers. And the further I go into this process, for all the moments of doubt, uncertainty and sheer terror, the more relaxed and easier in my skin I feel.

I am, in the most literal sense, not the man I used to be. I’m a testosterone-free zone. I can’t bound up stairs, or tear down brambles. But that’s entirely fine by me.

Read David Thomas's latest column on telegraph.co.uk every Thursday  from 11am 

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