The male and female hormones are the ones most of us know about from our sex education classes back in junior high. They are the ones we refer to when we talk about men acting like men will do or when being emotional and controlled by their hormones. They are the ones that work in our bodies to make us male or female both physically and mentally.
What are male hormones?
Male hormones are androgens. The one we talk about the most is testosterone. Good old “T” gets blamed for a man’s attitude as much as it gets credit for a man’s appearance or sexual virility. Testosterone in produced in the male testes and secreted into the body to produce the factors that we identify as “male: Larger bone structure, muscles galore. Hairy body, larger Adam’s apple, deeper voice, sexual appetite and procreation are all the things that we identify as male traits that are borne out of Testosterone.
What happens when we age?
Low Testosterone is the bane of men’s lives and they age they often seek supplements that will help increase the production of testosterone from their natural reserves. Men who have low “T” tend to suffer from depression, weight gain, loss of sexual appetite, baldness, and progressive aging.
Transgender HRT
Male to female Hormones Replacement Therapy helps people who are born with male physical traits but mentally and emotionally identify as female. Some transgender females want and even need to have HRT treatment to help their bodies match their identity. It is not a matter of wanting to be the “other” gender. It is a matter of being the correct gender. As a transgender male, I understand what these women are experiencing.
HRT treatments for male to female transgender or transsexual patients provides that the patient with increasing dosages of estrogen to promote female physical traits in their body. Body hair may naturally lessen, the voice pitch may change, and other gender markers may become more pronounced over the course of treatment that lasts for 10 or more
years, depending on the individual cases.
The dosages are administered via injection, orally, via gel application, or transdermal patch. There are other pathways, but these are the ones most often used.
What does it really mean to be male or female?
Male and female hormones are the sex hormones that provide the gender markers for both physical and mental traits. Although we tend to make a false association that a man who is masculine has more “T” than less masculine perceived man, all men have Testosterone. The same is true about women. All women have estrogen but some women appear more feminine than others. What I have come to realize is that social constructs of what makes a person masculine or feminine have very little to do with what makes a person male or female. That is in the genetic code and that is related to male hormones or female hormones.
