(05-12-2011, 07:47 PM)Pansy-Mae Wrote: All of these extracts postulate either a definite positive or definite negative reaction, but nothing seems to allow for a middle of the road response, and I very firmly believe that is my case.
1) Yes, I've lost the need to cross-dress but it comes back if I drop PM for about 4 weeks.
2) No, I haven't noticed any calming/well being type feelings - if anything I personally feel as though I am more easily angered/irritated, although my wife says she hasn't noticed anything.
3) After a few months ( I think its about a 6-month cycle) of continual PM, I get the "Why am I doing this?" feelings, which eventually lead me to stop taking PM.
4) After a few weeks of no PM, two things happen:
a) I start to panic that my growth is deflating and I have to go back on the PM.
b) I start to want to cross-dress, but that disappears as soon as I start PM again.
Now on that basis I have some of the classic symptoms of both of the states that Ann Vitale postulates.
So I am on a see-saw, of which there is no obvious way to get off.
Hi Pansy-Mae,
Well, Patti doesn't appear to have any symptoms at all. As I said to her,
"On the other hand, estrogen doesn't give you anxiety either, which leads me to the theory that the amount of androgen deprivation, varying as it will in a continuum, will produce varying degrees of this response, and if estrogen exposure has no effect on your anxiety, calming/aggravating, that suggests to me that you have an androgynous brain."
Now, you
do have some, but not all of the symptoms.
1), 3), and 4) above match the TS response. I think (3) in particular matches the case mentioned in the paper on "Testosterone Toxicity" whereby someone had the full GRS, got fed up, tried to transition back to a male, took male hormones and immediately started to cross-dress again.
Can I suggest that the effect in (2) is subtle? Is it possible that you were exposed to more androgen in the womb than I, but not enough to prevent your brain being predisposed to transsexual behaviour? I suspect I had very little exposure, because I have a deep, deep calming effect - but this is only in contrast to the screwed up person that I had become.
Is it possible that you do not experience calming
or anxiety, like Patti, but that the easily "angered/irritated" that your wife doesn't notice is due to your increased emotional sensitivity enhanced by estrogen?
If you had more exposure than me, but not enough to be "bog standard" male, isn't it possible that you would enjoy feminine expression and a longing to have been female without experiencing the profound gender anxiety that Vitale describes? Unless there is a critical "tipping point" value of androgen, this would make sense. And given the complexity of lifeforms, I think a continuum is more likely.
Don't forget, Darwin's theory is only concerned with behaviour that gets you to mating. What happens to you after that doesn't matter a damn in evolutionary terms. If, as an adult, you get sufficient testosterone going that you get the urge to breed, then the fact that (if you are lucky enough to get there) in middle age you get neuroses and paranoia is neither here nor there. It isn't sufficient evolutionary pressure to make androgen exposure in the womb a critical value.
So, going along with my theory (which may be a load of dingo's kidneys) I could conceive of a set of people who don't get screwed up about life, the future, whether there is a global conspiracy to funnel money from the West to the East under the cloak of Global Warming (to take a random example) BUT who feel very much more comfortable expressing their femininity by e.g. dressing as women, growing breasts, etc.
So, given a graphic distribution of foetal androgen exposure, I would say that I was in the group of extremely low exposure, confirmed by my anxiety without PM (and the dubious 2D:4D test ratio of 1.0), Julie may have had a bit more because I don't think she gets more than just a bit grumpy, you have had even more androgen exposure than us, and Pattie, who never loses the desire to dress has possibly had more still.
However, none of us have had enough androgen to be "straight" males that experience anxiety when exposed to testosterone, don't want to dress up, don't want to grow breasts.
"That's my theory, which is mine, and I own it. Ahem". (Remember that?)
B.