Anon said: re: hysterectomies. If a woman also gets her ovaries removed, she WILL go through menopause. It seems like young FTMs getting this extremely drastic surgery is just another manifestation of how little we are taught about our bodies. A uterus isn’t just an empty baby pouch, ovaries aren’t just egg bags, our reproductive system has a function beyond being a placeholder for a potential fetus
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From what I understand, testosterone treatment for FTMs is so toxic to the female reproductive system, the decision to have a hysterectomy, sometimes leaving the ovaries intact, sometimes not, is a way to do away with the problem.
It’s one of the reasons why “just trying T”—which some women wanting to transition talk about doing—is a terrible idea; testosterone sets in motion a cascade of effects, including chronic yeast infections, uterine adhesions, and a raft of other problems that I hope some of the detransitioned women (or current FTMs?) reading this blog can tell us about.
The problem with testosterone treatment for females is that it is essentially uncharted territory. There is so little long term research that we can’t say that there’s a 20% risk of X or that you need to do Y within three years. There is really nothing more than vague guidelines (which vary from doctor to doctor) and no one is tracking the long term health of FTMs. Most of what we have to go on is personal anecdotes.
If the prevailing method of informed consent hormone treatment is going to be maintained (which I do not think it should be), then the consent guidelines need to be rewritten to emphasize that any of the expected changes and possible side effects are little more than educated guesswork, especially regarding long term use.
It’s a huge uncontrolled experiment.