Monday, July 15, 2019

Neither male nor female: Why some nonbinary people are 'microdosing' hormones



Neither male nor female: Why some nonbinary people are 'microdosing' hormones

The goal is to appear "somewhere in the middle" on the gender spectrum, one nonbinary Los Angeles resident said.


By Julie Compton

Marisa Rivas never felt comfortable living as a woman, but doesn’t identify as a man either.
Last year, Rivas, 30, a college admissions coordinator in Los Angeles, had a mastectomy. This year, Rivas started using gender-neutral “they” and “them” pronouns.
Then, at the end of June, Rivas went to the Los Angeles LGBT Center in West Hollywood to talk to a doctor about going on “low-dose” testosterone, known colloquially as “microdosing.” Rivas hopes to achieve a sharper jawline and a more androgynous physique without overtly masculine features like facial hair. The goal is an appearance that is not clearly male or female.
“I still want to be somewhere in the middle,” Rivas said.
Hormone microdosing is of growing interest to some nonbinary people like Rivas who want to masculinize or feminize their bodies in subtle ways. There is little research on the technique’s prevalence, but doctors who treat transgender and nonbinary people say the medical community should consider the needs of those who want to change their bodies without medically transitioning fully to the opposite gender.
“There’s this kind of assumption with transgender individuals that everyone should get surgery and everyone should get hormones to become as ‘male’ or ‘female’ as possible — and that’s simply not true,” said Dr. Tri Do, an internist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

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