Testosterone: male

"And then Alex started reading and calling people. And one of the people that he called was this guy who wrote an article for GQ magazine about what happened to him when, because of medical reasons, he stopped producing testosterone. And for four months, he lived without testosterone before they caught the problem. And the way he described living without testosterone was really incredible.

Man

Everything that I identify as being me, my ambition, my interest in things, my sense of humor, the inflection in my voice, the quality of my speech even changed in the time that I was without a lot of the hormone. So yes, the introduction of testosterone returned everything. There were things that I find offensive about my own personality that were disconnected then. And it was nice to be without them. Envy, the desire to judge itself, I approached people with a humility that I had never displayed before.

I grew up in a culture, like all of us, that divides the soul from the body. And that that is your singleness, that is your uniqueness, and nothing can touch that. And then I go through this experience where I have small amounts of a bodily chemical removed and then reintroduced, and it changes everything I know as my self. And it violates the sanctity of that understanding, that understanding that who you are exists independent of any other forces in the universe. And that's humbling. And it's terrifying.

Ira Glass

I think when it comes to this stuff, most of us do not know what to believe. We're caught between thinking that our hormones and body chemistry can determine so much about our personalities and wanting to believe that they don't. And so today on our program, we bring you four stories exploring that question. How much does testosterone determine?

Act One of our show, Life At Zero, in which we hear about what it means to lose all your testosterone. Act Two, Infinite Gent. A woman gets pumped up with several times the testosterone that most men have and describes some surprising changes. Act Three, Contest-osterone. In that act, at Alex's suggestion, all of us on the staff of this radio program decide to find out who has the most and who has the least testosterone with lab tests, to see how the levels match with our personality traits, an exercise, I have to say, most of us, at this point, would not recommend that you try at your workplace or with your friends. Act Four, Learning To Shut Up. In that act, a mother asks her teenage son all her questions about what it means to be a boy, which is, of course, exactly the sort of thing you do not want your mother asking you on tape at 15. Stay with us.

Life At Zero.

Ira Glass

Act One, Life At Zero. Testosterone is the hormone of desire. And by that, I don't mean sexual desire. I mean desire, period. In this act, we continue with Alex's interview with that magazine writer from GQ. He wrote about his experiences with testosterone anonymously.

Man

When you have no testosterone, you have no desire. And when you have no desire, you don't have any content in your mind. You don't think about anything.

Alex Blumberg

And during those months, how were you behaving? What was different?

Man

It wasn't that I was behaving. It was that I was not behaving at all. I was, when I was awake, literally sitting in bed and staring at the wall, with neither interest nor disinterest, for three, four hours at a time. If you'd had a camera in the room, you would have thought I was comatose.

I would go out. I would buy some groceries early in the morning. And that would be it. My day had no content.

I had no interest in even watching TV, much less reading the newspaper or a book. Food, I didn't want my food to taste good or interesting. And when you're blessed with that lack of desire, you can eat a loaf of Wonder Bread with mayonnaise. And that will be your day.

And I only saw my girlfriend on weekends, since she was living in New York, and I was living in Philly. So I could get away with it five days at a time. And needless to say, there was absolutely no desire.

People who are deprived of testosterone don't become Spock-like and incredibly rational. They become nonsensical because they're unable to distinguish between what is and isn't interesting, and what is worth noting and what isn't.

Alex Blumberg

Describe your thoughts on your morning walk in this state.

Man

It's very quiet at 5:30, 6:00, 6:30 in the morning. And yeah, and I would see a brick in a wall, and I would think, a brick in a wall. I would see a pigeon and think, pigeon. It's the most literal possible understanding of the world.

Alex Blumberg

So in this time, when you're without testosterone, you're walking down the street. You're just ticking things off, just making these very simple observations.

Man

Like a grocery list.

Alex Blumberg

Yeah, like a grocery list exactly. You also have a thought that comes to you all the time, right?

Man

Yes.

Alex Blumberg

Talk about that.

Man

Which is a very strange-sounding thing, which is, "That is beautiful." Everything I saw, I thought, "That is beautiful," which is odd-sounding, I know, because that sounds like the judgment of a person with passion. But it was the exact opposite. It was thought, and sometimes even said, with complete dispassion, with objectivity.

And you see, I was looking at absolutely everything, the most mundane sight in the world, a weed in the sidewalk, and thinking, "Oh, that's beautiful." The surgery scars on people's knees, the bolts in the hubcaps of cars, all of it, it just seemed to have purpose. And it was like, "Oh, that's beautiful."

Alex Blumberg

It's so staggering that that is the core thought that you were left with. If you see things factually, you could have just as easily settled on monstrous or disgusting. And so it's just interesting to me that the adjective your brain, and what was left of your personality, chose to ascribe to everything is "beautiful." Why do you think that is?

Man

When I think about that question, the issue of God comes into the equation for me. In a way, being without testosterone brought me closer to God, but not in the afternoon talk show sense of being, I don't know, more humane, but actually thinking like God. And of course, I don't mean thinking as God, but I meant thinking like God in an aping, superficial kind of way. He sees things as they really are. He sees you as you really are.

And I had this omniscient sense when I was without testosterone that I was seeing through the skin of things, that I was seeing things as they really were, and that the objective conclusion, not the judgmental one, but the objective conclusion was, they are beautiful. Everything is beautiful, from the bugs to the cracks in the sidewalk to the faces of other people. And it was automatic. Perhaps to see things objectively is to see them, all of them, as beautiful.

But you have to understand that the thought was expressed in the most flat-line, boring way possible. "Oh yeah, that's beautiful. It's beautiful."

You would think that this would be a terrible thing, a terrible state to be in, and for most people, it is. But it was weirdly pleasant. And there is a certain appeal, an impossible appeal, to that Rip van Winkle existence of being without testosterone.

You just have to remember that it doesn't matter if you have nothing, if you want nothing. Very tricky to get inside that mindset. In some ways, it's difficult for me to even remember it now. But it had its allure.

Alex Blumberg

Well, I can understand that. Because desire often feels like a burden. It often feels like if I just didn't want that thing, not having it wouldn't be so painful.

Man

There you go. All that wanting."

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- ... transcript

Testosterone: in female

"Ira Glass

Act Two, Infinite Gent. Well, we just heard from somebody whose testosterone dropped to nothing. Now, we have the story of someone whose level got a huge boost. Griffin Hansbury was born female. But seven years ago, after college, Griffin took action to become a man. And he told this story of what it was like to experience the massive increase in testosterone that accompanies this change. He talked with our producer, Alex Blumberg. A warning to listeners that they talk about looking at women and wanting sex during this interview.

Griffin Hansbury

I went to Bryn Mawr College, which is a women's college, and chose a women's college because I strongly identified as a woman at the time, as a feminist, and as a dyke. I had my leather biker jacket and my big leather belt and my black t-shirts and my Doc Marten boots, my combat boots. And that felt pretty comfortable for a while.

And then my sophomore year in college, I was lying in bed with my girlfriend. I don't know if we were talking or what it was. And it just sort of hit me like a bolt of lightning, as they say. And I just knew that I had to change my body. And so I started doing the research on it. And the only way to do that was to take testosterone.

My first injection was a pretty large one of 2 ccs of 200 milligram strength depo-testosterone, which is a fairly high amount. Just to give you a sense of how much that is, the average amount of testosterone in an average male body is between 300 and 1,000 nanograms per deciliter of blood. After that shot, and after an average shot, my testosterone levels go up to over 2,000 nanograms per deciliter, so that I have the testosterone of two high-testosterone men in my body at once.

Alex Blumberg

You have the testosterone of two linebackers.

Griffin Hansbury

Exactly. Exactly. That's a lot. That's a lot of T. And what's amazing about it is how instantaneous it is, that it happens within a few days really. The world just changes.

Alex Blumberg

What were some of the changes that you didn't expect?

Griffin Hansbury

The most overwhelming feeling is the incredible increase in libido and change in the way that I perceived women and the way I thought about sex. Before testosterone, I would be riding the subway, which is the traditional hotbed of lust in the city. And I would see a woman on the subway, and I would think, she's attractive. I'd like to meet her. What's that book she's reading? I could talk to her. This is what I would say.

There would be a narrative. There would be this stream of language. It would be very verbal.

After testosterone, there was no narrative. There was no language whatsoever. It was just, I would see a woman who was attractive or not attractive. She might have an attractive quality, nice ankles or something, and the rest of her would be fairly unappealing to me.

But that was enough to basically just flood my mind with aggressive, pornographic images, just one after another. It was like being in a pornographic movie house in my mind. And I couldn't turn it off. I could not turn it off. Everything I looked at, everything I touched, turned to sex.

I was an editorial assistant. And I would be standing at the Xerox machine, and this big, shuddering, warm, inanimate object would just drive me crazy. It was very erotic to me.

Alex Blumberg

The Xerox machine.

Griffin Hansbury

The Xerox machine. Or a car. I remember walking up Fifth Avenue one day, and this red convertible went by. It was a Mustang. And I remember just getting this jolt in my pants, this very physical, visceral, sexual reaction to seeing a red convertible.

Alex Blumberg

What did you do with that? I mean, what did you think?

Griffin Hansbury

Well, I felt like a monster a lot of the time. And it made me understand men. It made me understand adolescent boys a lot. Suddenly, hair is sprouting, and I'm turning into this beast. And I would really berate myself for it.

I remember walking up Fifth Avenue, there was a woman walking in front of me. And she was wearing this little skirt and this little top. And I was looking at her ass. And I kept saying to myself, don't look at it, don't look at it. And I kept looking at it.

And I walked past her. And this voice in my head kept saying, turn around to look at her breasts. Turn around, turn around, turn around. And my feminist, female background kept saying, don't you dare, you pig. Don't turn around. And I fought myself for a whole block, and then I turned around and checked her out.

And before, it was cool. When I would do a poetry reading, I would get up, and I would read these poems about women on the street. And I was a butch dyke, and that was very cutting-edge, and that was very sexy and raw. And now I'm just a jerk.

Griffin Hansbury

So I do feel like I've lost this edge, this nice, avant-garde kind of-- and I've gotten into a lot of arguments with women friends, co-workers, who did not know about my past as a female. I call myself a post-feminist. And I had a woman say, you're not a post-feminist. You're a misogynist. And I said, that's impossible. I can't be a misogynist.

And I couldn't explain to her how I had come to this point in my life. And to her, I was just a misogynist. And that's unfortunate because it's a lot more complicated than that.

Alex Blumberg

I'll say. Wow. Testosterone didn't just turn you into a man. It turned you into Rush Limbaugh.

Griffin Hansbury

I know. That I was not expecting. That I was not expecting.

So I had to relearn how to talk to women. And I had to learn how to rephrase things, how to hold my tongue on certain things. And I'm not very good at it. So I get in trouble.

Alex Blumberg

That is so fascinating. Because as a man, I think, from the time I went through puberty, I feel like that's something that I've been learning to do in a certain way, is just figure out how to say things without getting myself in trouble.

Griffin Hansbury

Right. Yeah, yeah.

Alex Blumberg

I would not have thought that you would have had that problem.

Griffin Hansbury

Right, because I should know better or something.

Alex Blumberg

Or something. Are there other ways, other than the visual, and other than the libidinal, are there other ways that you feel like testosterone has altered the way you feel or perceive?

Griffin Hansbury

Something that happened after I started taking testosterone, I became interested in science. I was never interested in science before.

Alex Blumberg

No way. Come on. Are you serious?

Griffin Hansbury

I'm serious. I'm serious.

Alex Blumberg

You're just setting us back a hundred years, sir.

Griffin Hansbury

I know I am. I know. Again, and I have to have this caveat in here, I cannot say it was the testosterone. All I can say is that this interest happened after T. There's BT and AT, and this was definitely After T. And I became interested in science. I found myself understanding physics in a way I never had before.

Griffin Hansbury

It's true. It's true.

Alex Blumberg

Wow.

Griffin Hansbury

I did.

Alex Blumberg

How about in the way you feel things and in the way you perceive of your feelings? Is there any change there?

Griffin Hansbury

I have a hard time crying. Before testosterone, it was great if I was frustrated or angry or sad, have a good cry. You'd feel better afterwards. And I do wonder if there isn't a chemical component behind it because I now have a hard time doing it. And it's very frustrating.

What I will do is when I feel that pressure build up, I'll go into my room. I will close the door and force myself. I have to force myself to cry. And the quality of the crying is different than the quality of the crying was before T. It's very dry. I find myself moaning and sobbing, but with very little tears.

Alex Blumberg

You've answered a lot of questions for us today. You reinforced a lot of stereotypes that we've almost dispelled with.

Griffin Hansbury

I know I have. I know it.

Alex Blumberg

Did you have an idea of what kind of man you were going to be before the transition? This is my model. Who was it?

Griffin Hansbury

I used to watch a lot of Beverly Hills 90210, and Jason Priestley was my ideal, at least physically. I wanted sideburns so bad. And that was the first facial hair that came in. I got these beautiful sideburns.

So it was like the James Dean, Jason Priestley kind of model, I think. That didn't quite materialize. I was better at that as a dyke than I am as a man, I have to say.

Alex Blumberg

And how do you feel about it? Is that sort of a--

Griffin Hansbury

It's a bit of a disappointment. It's a bit of a disappointment. I often ask people, "What kind of a guy am I? What do you see?" And unfortunately, people often respond that they see a nerd, which I never was before. I was always really cool and popular and hip and whatever.

And now I'm five foot four, and I work out, but I'm not real muscular. And I'm pretty small. I'm pale-skinned, and my hair has started to thin. And I've got glasses.

And of course, I'm also, I'm a sensitive guy now. I used to be the butch dyke. And I was seen as very aggressive. And I was more masculine in many ways, outwardly, anyway, before testosterone.

And now I don't have to prove anything. So I can lay back and talk with my hands and all that stuff that you're not supposed to do. So I'm still very much learning how to be a man in the world.

There's a lot to learn. Men, walking down the street is a constant battle. It's a constant contest.

I began to notice, once I started to pass as a man, that single men, walking alone down the street, will veer away from their path to walk towards me, get in my space, and then veer back. And it's very much like a little aggressive move. I've had men, just angry guys walking down the street, just body check me. So I really feel like I have to sort of puff myself up, so that people will keep their distance a little bit. But if I'm off guard, and I'm walking around, and I'm enjoying the scenery, it's pretty much guaranteed that somebody will shove me.

Alex Blumberg

Were there specific things that you were hoping for?

Griffin Hansbury

I think that the main thing that you hope for, that one hopes for, and that I hoped for when starting testosterone, was to pass as male, to be perceived by the world as a man. But I do have a love/hate relationship with passing that my whole deeper self becomes invisible and my history becomes invisible. And I think that's hard. It's a hard place to be.

Especially because when I got my first job as a man, they didn't know anything about my past. It was very corporate. So I had to let go of any edgy clothing and facial hair and whatnot that I had before. And I became really boring. I felt like, wow, people must think I'm really boring. If they only knew that I'm so fascinating.

Griffin Hansbury

Throughout those almost four years, I had to conceal a lot. I would lie about where I went to college because I went to Bryn Mawr, and I couldn't say I went to Bryn Mawr.

Alex Blumberg

What college did you say you went to?

Griffin Hansbury

Well, Bryn Mawr is in a bi-college relationship with Haverford College. And so I would say I went to Haverford, which is kind of-- I don't want to say anything bad about Haverford. Some of my best friends went there. But I think Bryn Mawr is a superior school to Haverford. I do. And I think it's a superior education. And when I have to say I went to Haverford, it's like a little knife in my heart. But no offense to my Haverford friends.

Alex Blumberg

What do you feel like the biggest thing that you do miss is?

Griffin Hansbury

Maybe the close relationships that I had with women. I still have close relationships with the women I've known since before T. But I don't make close relationships with new female friends. It's hard to do. There's a barrier.

So I miss being part of a cool bunch of women. I actually like women better than men. It just so happens that I fit in more as a man. But I think women are really cool. Sisterhood is powerful, all that stuff.

Alex Blumberg

And what do you think is the biggest thing you've gained?

Griffin Hansbury

The biggest thing I've gained. It's just so great when people call me "sir," even after seven years. I don't always hear it, but it still rings a little bell inside my heart, like, "Oh, sir." It's wonderful.

And it's something that when I was a little kid, I used to wish for. "Turn me into a boy," you know, Pinocchio. And you never really think it's possible. But it is possible. And the other nice thing about it is, knowing that that's possible, that you can actually make this enormous leap means that, well, then anything else must be possible too. Because this is certainly unbelievable.

Ira Glass

Griffin Hansbury lives in New York. He talked with our producer, Alex Blumberg. Griffin just completed a memoir about his own experience transitioning from female to male. He's looking for a publisher.

Alex Blumberg

You know what occurs to me is that you're in a perfect position to offer romantic advice to anybody who needs it.

Griffin Hansbury

I know, I know. And I have a friend with a website. And we've been dying to do an online advice column called "Ask a Guy Who Used to Be a Girl." We haven't gotten it off the ground yet.

Alex Blumberg

You would make a million dollars.

Ira Glass

Coming up, who has the most testosterone, the slightly femme-y host of a public radio program, his staff, or a gay man in New York City? Answer is in a minute from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International when our program continues

bibiribi (imported) wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:11 pm ."

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- ... transcript

Interesting read; especially the male one. Too bad they didn't bring two of each gender in since I experience a different effect when low on T and actually do want my food to taste good. Bread with mayo would not work well with me. The one thing the male one surprisingly didn't talk about is becoming more sensitive the lower one gets whereas the female one talked about it in reverse. Those emotions sure are strong now; especially being docile.

Whereas since my T has tanked, I've made halfhearted attempts to get on the four-soylents-a-day diet, but somebody else shops and cooks, so…

Having said that, several of the key points the guy in Life At Zero made are so on-target that they gave me a cold sweat.

bibiribi (imported) wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:11 pm It wasn't that I was behaving. It was that I was not behaving at all. I was, when I was awake, literally sitting in bed and staring at the wall, with neither interest nor disinterest, for three, four hours at a time. If you'd had a camera in the room, you would have thought I was comatose. I

can lose hours staring at the space between my monitors, wondering what I should be doing.

bibiribi (imported) wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:11 pm I had no interest in even watching TV, much less reading the newspaper or a book. Food, I didn't want my food to taste good or interesting. And when you're blessed with that lack of desire, you can eat a loaf of Wonder Bread with mayonnaise. And that will be your day.

I've done that. But usually it's an evening.

bibiribi (imported) wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:11 pm People who are deprived of testosterone don't become Spock-like and incredibly rational. They become nonsensical because they're unable to distinguish between what is and isn't interesting, and what is worth noting and what isn't.

Raw IQ and mindfulness is good at covering for that, but it can only ever get 90% of the way there.

bibiribi (imported) wrote: Thu Feb 09, 2017 5:11 pm You just have to remember that it doesn't matter if you have nothing, if you want nothing. Very tricky to get inside that mindset. In some ways, it's difficult for me to even remember it now. But it had its allure.

I've spent years where my mantra is "what do I want?" because having lost that feeling, I find it terribly directionless, since my forebrain is trying to force the issue - I can lose a half hour a day easily to reasoning out what I should want but don't. Usually if I'm caught, I "was thinking about lunch…" What I want is something to want - the usual conclusion to this intellectual replacement for lust or zeal or drive reaches, but that's an unproductive reductio-ad-absurdium, and a failure state of that attempt.

That wasn't my experience at all. Everything in my life improved without T in my system. The only problem were hot flashes and the other side effects that I could easily handle. I was in a better mood, more focused and more productive without it.

My life and mental health has greatly improved without any testosterone. YMMV

Chesleyt (imported) wrote: Sun Apr 26, 2020 4:30 pm My life and mental health has greatly improved without any testosterone. YMMV

Same here. Though, I still feel like I have a little bit of residual T left in my from the injections. I await its full depletion and the bliss that comes afterwards.