The painful logistics of being a man

Your ass is gonna learn why men spend $300 USD on gamer chairs.

Your ass is gonna learn why men spend $300 USD on gamer chairs.

Your ass is gonna learn why men spend $300 USD on gamer chairs.

     I could throw up my hands here and say, “Not everyone’s American! Not everyone has the same healthcare coverage (or lack thereof)!” And that would be true. I can’t tell you how much a pack of syringes will cost you, nor can I give you a quote on a private double mastectomy, a phalloplasty, nor the quads you want installed in your prosthetic scrotum. I don’t know how much you’re willing to spend on a bowtie collection, nor how much money you’ll get from selling said bowtie collection once you realise bowties are stupid on anyone who isn’t a British space alien and how much money you’ll have to fork out for a real set of novelty dog collars with cartoon sushi prints on them.

     I will tell you what you’re going to have to prepare to obtain and maintain, and you can do the painful monetary and time accounting yourself in your own spreadsheet.

• How much could it cost, really?
  • The real value of time
• Cost of hormones
  • Testosterone
  • Oestrogen (and, how to avoid needing it)
• Cost of wardrobe
  • Get yourself some good fucking underpants before it’s too late
  • What to do with your old clothes
  • Table of Men’s Garb
  • Learning how to dress
• Cost of food
  • Kitchen Appliances
  • Groceries
  • Supplements
  • How to start meal planning
  • How to start learning how to cook
• Cost of exercise and sleep
  • Sleep aids
  • Gym membership? Or—how to not pay for a gym membership
  • All the shit you will buy to avoid paying for a gym membership
  • You bought a gym membership anyway because it has a pool/sauna/fun exercise machines that you don’t have at home
  • Making the most out of your gym membership
• Cost of your newfound libido
  • Your sanity (permanent loss)
  • Hours of your life, gone. Permanently
  • Sex toys
  • More sex toys (because the first ones you bought didn’t satisfy you enough)
  • You will actually pay for porn at least once in your life
  • You will spend hours of your life trying to find free porn that satisfies you, because you don’t want to keep paying for porn
  • You finally found someone willing to have sex with you. Is it worth it. Can they even make you cum
• Cost of hair
  • Finding a barber you vibe with
  • Hair products
• Cost of toiletries
  • Make-up
  • Cologne
• Cost of furniture and appliances
  • Seats, seats everywhere
• Cost of breaking shitty habits no one taught you how to break
  • Cost of therapy
  • Cost of your screen addiction
  • Cost of office supplies
• Cost of recordkeeping
  • Picking your name
  • Changing your name
  • IDs
  • Informing everyone about your new name
• Cost of surgery
  • Taking care of yourself post-op
• Final Considerations
  • Images of men

     I want you to take a look around and look at everything that you own. It might be a lot; it might be not much. The point is, it took you time to acquire those things, didn’t it?

     Right now, I’m going to ask you—can you afford a one-week vacation? Could you afford to not work for a whole week, right now? And I don’t mean just monetarily. Do you have any pressing life issues, that right now, you could leave aside for one week? Or would your world and life stability implode if you just left things alone for just one week?

     Imagine everything you have to do in one week. Of all the things you’re already juggling—do you have the time, and energy, to add one more ball to that?

     Let’s think about getting a testosterone prescription: Let’s literally list out, all the things we have to do, in order to get that settled.

Timmy’s first endocrinology appointment

• Research which clinics you can go to
• Call to see if they have availability
• Look at your own calendar for your own availability and schedule an appointment
• Figure out how to get there, and how long the commute will be each way
• Call out from work/school if necessary
• Prepare whatever ID, documentation, and funds you need for your first appointment
• Arrange transportation as necessary

     I haven’t gone into whatever legislative, medical, or other bureaucratic prerequisites you’ll need to actually obtain a testosterone prescription. This very first step—seeing a clinic to begin talks about testosterone treatments—contains a multitude of different steps that, depending on your life schedule, may take up an entire day of your week. Let’s say you work long hours, and you typically use THAT one day for R&R. Welp, not today, buddy.

 

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THE REAL VALUE OF TIME

     We all live with the Reality that there are only so many hours in a day, and only so much we can put our energies into. We have to make choices. You choose to do one thing, at the expense of another. Chances are, you’ve made some piss-poor choices in your life, many of which involve overextending yourself. Or am I wrong?

     Unhappily, we live in a society that pushes us to do everything—everything pleasurable, as quickly as possible, as often as possible—we have to be constantly entertained and constantly work to afford not only the bare necessities of life, but our constant entertainment. You piss away the hours to get your screen-fix and then spend extra money on fast-food and junk food and complain that you have no more hours or money to go to the gym and prepare a healthy meal. Right? Now your posture sucks, your room is a mess, you’re lonely because you don’t go outside to meet new people and spend time with friends, and you sacrifice restful, timely sleep to be economical by getting free dopamine hits out of your smartphone or tablet way past a responsible bedtime.

     I’m going to ask you again. Realistically, what could you fit into your life now on top of what you already do during the week? Or to be more precise: What are you willing to sacrifice in order to prioritise what you need to do?

     Oh, and if you do get testosterone treatments? You’re going to have to clear your schedule anyway, because you’re going to spend the next five years of your life rampantly masturbating hours at a time thanks to your newfound male libido. You’re welcome.

 

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     Notice I said hormones, not just testosterone. Yes, you could be a man who needs oestrogen. If you have any plan on using your vagina for anything, whether it be private masturbation, sexual intercourse, or childbirth, you’re going to need topical oestrogen treatments if you don’t masturbate penetratively at least once a week. If you don’t? You’re in for a world of pain, injury, and possible infection, thanks to testosterone’s effect of causing vaginal atrophy: leading to a substantial wasting away of tissue, desiccation of remaining tissue as lubricant production winds down, changes in the pH of your vaginal environment, resultant changes in vaginal flora (the delicately balanced, protective biome of microorganisms in your puntang), and of course, loss of elasticity. The good news is that if you’re on testosterone you’re going to be masturbating daily and probably multiple times a day, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to stuff your cockpit.

     Let’s break down what you might need to pick up from the pharmacy:

• Testosterone
  • Injectable form
    • Testosterone ester
    • Syringes
    • Piercing needles (8 gauge)
    • Injection needles (25 gauge)
    • Band-aids
    • Alcohol wipes
  • Topical form
    • Cream / Gel
    • Patches
• Oestrogen
  • Intravaginal application
    • Applicator (plunger)
    • Capsule

     If you already go to the pharmacy to pick up medications, great! You don’t have to make too many, if at all, extra trips. If this is your first prescription, then you’ll have to learn how to get to your local pharmacy, and when is a good time for you to pick up (Immediately after work? On a day off? Lunch break?).

 

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TESTOSTERONE

     The form of testosterone prescribed to you, plus your own individual needs, will dictate how often you need to administer your treatments. The first few months of testosterone treatment should be microdoses that are gradually increased, as your body will not handle sudden testosterone shock well. I, personally, inject testosterone cypionate twice a week. In any case, you will need to see your prescribing doctor at least quarterly to monitor your hormone levels, and do other blood panel work.

     If you do not feel euphoric and masculine after your very first microdose of testosterone, then testosterone treatment may not be for you.

     The first subefficacious dose of testosterone is in itself a diagnostic tool. You will not sprout a beard, you will not gain a six-pack, you will not go down an entire octave in your voice; but your body will respond immediately to that first flow of hormones. If you feel bad, stop immediately. That’s your cue to ask yourself incisive questions and explore the roots of your dysphoria.

Example testosterone regimens

     So, you’ll likely need to change at least one part of your weekly routine to accommodate testosterone treatments—and that doesn’t include whatever you’ll need to do to overcome a fear of needles, if you have one.

     What day(s) will you inject? Will you do it in the morning, or at night? How long will it take you to inject?

 

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OESTROGEN (and, how to avoid needing it)

     This is fairly straightforward. You either cum at least once a week during penetrative sex/masturbation, or you compensate via topical oestrogen treatments, just like any other menopausal woman who doesn’t get enough sex.

     No, clitoral orgasms will not prevent vaginal atrophy. You may reach climax with any part of your body (or mind), but your vaginal muscles must be engaged via penetrative thrusting.

Example oestrogen regimens

     The above example regimens assume that you have not allowed vaginal atrophy to progress to the point where you need a minimum of months of remedial therapy in order to be able to use your vagina again, let alone the antibiotic regimen you’ll likely need after fucking up your vaginal flora to the point where your body is susceptible to constant yeast infections. In either case (infection or not), you will likely need to apply topical oestrogen daily, and you will not be able to comfortably resort to vaginal masturbation and orgasm in order to strengthen and restore your vaginal structures. Seriously, even pushing your finger gently against the labia minora, without any penetration, will hurt.

 

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     You’re a man now! But, how do you dress like one? Do you just, simply walk into a clothing store, and drift into the men’s section? Sure, you can do that. And fashion is so capricious and time-sensitive, fads come and go. And there’s Pinterest! And I mean, cis men don’t usually need a manual to figure out how to dress, right? …Right?

Get yourself some good fucking underpants before it’s too late

     Are you on testosterone? Is your clit growing? Congratulations, and I am so sorry for your pain. Unfortunately, unlike natal males, you don’t come with a helpful, protective foreskin to protect the most sensitive part of the human body. You have a tiny sheath, meant for tiny clits, not the aggressively expanding Tootsie Roll in your pants—and that sheath isn’t going to expand, either.

     Gay men’s underpants. It’s the only way. (I highly recommend International Jock.)

     Why? Why not simply get men’s underpants at the local clothing store? Just like all the other cis men? Here’s why you can’t do that:

1. Uncircumcised cis men have foreskins, which allow them to wear and endure all sorts of shitty, scratchy fabrics around their junk.
2. Circumcised cis men were mutilated shortly after birth, so have no memory of what it’s like to have lived with a body part of theirs that’s suffered so much friction and desiccation that they have lost 70–90% of the sensitivity in their glans by the time they could speak their first words.

     You, my friend, are operating as a newly circumcised adult male. Mazal Tov! and enjoy your unintentional brit milah. Now, you could actually live with this, and, after a year or so of relentless irritation, pain, and nerve desensitisation, lose the sensitivity in your clitoral head so you can live in peace again… Or. You could just get the gay men’s underpants. The fashionable, and extremely comfortable gay men’s underpants. It’s your choice.

Table of Undies

You can get more if you want, but do us all a favour and get at least five pairs. Thanks.

 

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What to do with your old clothes

     For anything you will no longer wear, the easiest answer to this question is to simply donate, or personally pass them down to someone else. Resale is another option and potentially profitable, but will take more time and effort, and may only be worth the hassle of listing for collector’s items.

“It does not spark joy”

• Donate to a thrift store
• Donate to a free clothing drive
• Pass down to family
• Yard sale
• Sell online
• Gift to your girlfriend
• Scrap for a creative project
• Give to your cat

     It’s possible to keep these articles for sentimental value, though I have to question why you would do so. After all, most people don’t keep their own baby clothes.

 

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     Below are all the minimum articles of men’s garb you should own. This covers formal events such as job interviews, casual outings, cold weather, hot weather, and swimming. An in-depth guide to men’s wardrobe will be published in Culture: Men’s Wardrobe at a later time.

 

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Learning how to dress

     So you have a list of what you can do with your old clothes. And now you have a table of clothes you need to get. But how do you figure out what you want to get? What do you want to wear? How do you wear them together?

Some questions to ask:

• Do you have a local, cultural, or subcultural heritage you want to reflect? This is your opportunity to stock your wardrobe with a vyshyvanka or two.
• Are you content with a few comfortable shirts in your favourite colours that are easy to pick and choose for the day, or do you demand more intricacy and thought in your presentation?
• Are you the kind of guy who loves rocking graphic tees from his favourite band or movies? Do you want people to know your interests first, or do you prioritise vibe?







• Do you like bold, flashy designs, or do you prefer something more subtle that focuses on texture? Repeating patterns, or a larger, irreducible image?
• What are your personal requirements for your shoes? Do you need something skateboard-ready with heavy, reinforced stitching? Sneakers optimised for running and basketball? Dress and dancing shoes with quality heels that satisfyingly click on surfaces?
• What kind of wallet do you want? Do you want a big wallet that can carry a smartphone? Do you want something sleek and minimalistic, or elaborate tooled leather?
• Do you know a good local tailor who can make alterations as needed? If you’re short of height, this will be a MUST in order for formal clothing (tops and bottoms!) to fit you correctly.

     More elaborate garb, hairstyling, and make-up will require more time. How early are you willing to wake up to look the way you want? Keep in mind it may take months of practice to reduce the time spent fixing mistakes, and years to get something down perfectly every time and very quickly.

 

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     You know what you spend on meat now? Triple it. Just triple it. There you go. You’re a vegetarian? Correction: You were a vegetarian. Enjoy your newfound revelation of why certain men marry certain women, and why men obsess over steaks and not salad. You need meat.

     And you’ll need more than meat. You want to grow a beard, right? And sideburns? And manly arm and chest hair? In addition to your basic macronutrients, you’ll need a whole multifarious team of micronutrients to support your wonderful pubescent development: which means you’ll have to actually respect your nutritional needs if you want to get the most out of your masculinisation.

     If you want to look like an adult, you'll have to eat like an adult. If you want to eat like an adult, you'll have to cook like an adult. Obviously you need to eat more than the below to support your body, but here’s a simple backbone to build your daily nutrition around.

 

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How to start meal planning

• Familiarise yourself with the local grocery markets. Note items which are of particular interest to you, which items are quality (e.g. some grocery stores have better meat departments than others), and prices (is ice cream cheaper at this store than the others?).
• Gather the weekly coupon circulars, if available. Note sale days, e.g. Whole Foods’ Tuesdays buy one, get 50% off on the second pack of 80/20 ground beef. Eventually, you’ll learn seasonal sales (e.g. on autumn squashes), too.
• Meal planning: decide on your meat first, then build the rest of your meal from there. Air-fried chicken thighs can be paired with Basmati rice and steamed vegetables. If you buy beef stew chunks, throw in chopped potatoes, onions, carrots, canned beans, and chard into the slow cooker along with your saved chicken stock. 80/20 ground beef? Incorporate salt and Italian seasoning, cook in red wine, then add the meat to a jar of pasta sauce and boil pasta. Salmon on sale? Get garlic powder, lemons, salted butter, and canned pineapple for pan-seared fillets.

 

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How to start learning how to cook

• Familiarise yourself with your cooking area. Arrange your kitchen so that flour and other baking supplies are near sugar, grains pulses and pasta are stored in the same area, and frequently used seasonings and spices are easy to reach (along with the mortar and pestle). There should be an area where you keep potatoes, and another area where you can keep onions and garlic; finally an area where you keep fresh fruits such as apples and lemons in plain sight. Pre-made snack foods such as Goldfish crackers should be kept in its own area.
• Start with the basics. Do you know how to fry eggs the way you like them? Do you know how to boil your favourite pasta with enough salt? Do you know how to dice potatoes? Do you know how to grind whole black pepper in a mortar and pestle? Do you know how to season meat properly? (Slap it like it’s been a bad girl!) Master these, and you’ll be much happier with even your most simplest meals.
• Ensure mise en place. Do you have enough bowls and other containers to start cooking what you want comfortably? Do you have wooden spoons to stir pasta, tongs to pick up hot chicken wings, and chopsticks to mix dry ingredients such as flour and salt?
• Focus on one dish that really interests you, first. If you really like oyakodon, watch a video about oyakodon. If you’re very inexperienced with cooking, take notes on what you observe in demonstrations, and read online advice about specific recipes. If you focus on one new dish at a time, you’ll build mastery and confidence faster, rather than burning yourself out (and your food) across multiple dishes.
• Seriously, go read. Go pick up ANY culinary book at your local library that vaguely interests you, and start reading. You want to learn about herbs? Go pick up a book about herbs. You like chocolate? Read about chocolate. French Provençal interests you? Pick up a Provençal cookbook. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have the technical mastery or equipment to practice molecular gastronomy, if you think that shit is cool, read it. The point is to cultivate a love of food and cooking so that you’ll be excited to cook, even when you fail, and so you gain an appreciation of food. That way you’ll finally stop settling for dinners of instant ramen and Bud Light.

 

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     Exercise? Sleep? What is this, a men’s fitness magazine? No way, Guadalupe! I’m gonna man my way into a manly body through sheer force of will! Also, who cares about those stereotypically hard, strong, shapely, chiselled, dependable, glowing, sinewy sculpted bodies anyway? There’s more to being a man than being a giga chad, an absolute unit, an Adonis of flesh and bone who can kick ass and give really, really good bear hugs. You don’t have to take care of your body to be a man. You know, the body that’s… trying to go through male puberty…

     I’m not saying that you have to cut your body fat composition down to 11%, or that you need the upper body strength to benchpress half a dozen children. But your body, as much as you may dislike it or even dissociate from, is what’s doing all the hard work of masculinisation. Building lean muscle mass and other new tissue, rewiring the brain, and all the other major and minor sex differences plain and hidden to the eye takes immense energy, resources, and the careful coordination of various intracellular and intraorgan processes. Your body doesn’t exist in a virtual reality vacuum on VR Chat. It depends on consistent, quality sleep, and the regular internal intramural engagement that exercise provides in order to keep things going well. Or would you abuse and neglect a 12-year-old boy so that he gets only 5 hours of sleep and never goes outside and plays?

     You’re going to keep looking like a 12-year-old boy if you keep abusing your body. You can’t expect to make quick or heavy headway in your puberty if you don’t get enough sleep and don’t exercise regularly, no matter how much testosterone you inject—and frankly, injecting too much testosterone, without engaging in a proportionate amount of exercise, leads the body to convert excess testosterone into oestrogen. So go work out. I don’t care what you do as long as you do it.

 

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SLEEP AIDS

 

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     Was this an extensive guide to the logistics of masculinisation? Yes, absolutely. Annnnnnnd, that’s just the start. This is just a cursory examination of the difficulties of becoming—and, living as—an adult male in society. If you found this page intimidating, I’m going to be the bearer of bad news and inform you that you have the rest of your life ahead of you.

     Real life will hit you with problems and questions that I can’t even begin to touch anywhere on this website. As I’ve noted elsewhere, the end of pubescence marks the start of adulthood. You have all the other shit to deal with after your sideburns have grown in: marriage, religion, illness, injury, grief, death, career development, higher education, property, wills and estate management, taxes. Figuring out shit like “Which pair of trousers do I wear”, and, “Do these pants make me look gay” is the easy stuff! You’re going to look back at all this and think, “Man, I was stressing out over this?”

Images of men

     You might notice that this guide features many photographs of real and average men, not cutesy comic book-style illustrations often found in transgender media and publications. From the very first photo of a man slumped over his keyboard, to the ginger bearded man standing in his underpant in front of his camper; fat men, skinny men, Asian men, black men, old men, very old men. I’m not interested in generic feel-good clip art; life isn’t composed of non-threatening cartoon characters: you will, actually, be interacting with real humans of flesh and bone, and you will be amongst them.

     Did these images of men going about their daily lives make you feel uncomfortable or threatened? Or did you see them and perceive, a fellow member of society, someone familiar and known to you in the world you participate in? Did you see a man similar to someone you know, and similar to someone you want to be? If the very sight of an average man, one who isn’t obviously queer or genderqueer makes you uncomfortable, then gender transition might not be right for you. You might want to ask yourself some questions about why you want to join roughly the other half of the human population, yet why that half bothers you.

     Do these men look like brutish, privileged oppressors to you, or are they your neighbours?

     One thing that nobody tells you about testosterone treatment, is that. Even if you were afraid of men… As your levels rise, as you begin to masculinise in not only the “obvious” ways of greater muscle mass, a deeper voice… your brain also begins to masculinise in at first subtle, then increasingly obvious ways. The sex differences in behaviour and cognition that are apparent and obvious even in toddlers become more pronounced during and after puberty, and as a man—you begin to seek other men’s company. You want to spend time with other men, doing the things that you enjoy, and though you may keep your female friends, your closeness and platonic intimacy with them becomes increasingly subdued. Women’s conversations and women’s ways of bonding begin to interest you less and less. You start missing the presence of other men. They no longer look to you as the “alien enemy”, the “performative oppressor”, or any of that malarkey, unless you’re extremely neurotic. You begin to see other men as dudes you can high-five and laugh with. No, nobody tells you that, but I’m telling you that now. It’s a process that takes years for an FtM, especially after a lifetime of female conditioning from both within the body and without (socially), but it happens.

     You stop yearning for women’s things as much and stop yearning for the platonic company of women in the general; you start yearning for men’s things, and the platonic company of men in the general. It becomes much easier—and natural—to make friends with men. You stop seeing men as the enemy, a threat. And just as… men. That’s about it.

“I’ve got news for everyone: Men are hurt just as much by abuse, or hurtful words, as women. Any form of coercion to get a man to do what you want is not only unproductive, it is damaging. Just because I am married does not make me a slave. Men are human beings.”   —Steve

“All of us men have been told for years now that a woman ‘needs’ to be listened to. We’re told not to try to solve the problem or to advise her, just listen and be sympathetic to her needs. Most women don’t understand why men haven’t learned this by now. Here’s why! What she doesn’t seem to understand is I really do want to be her White Knight. I really do want to come riding to her rescue. I really do want to sweep her off her feet and carry her away and live happily ever after.”   —Curtis

     A lot of work goes into being a man, not only for yourself, but for other people. It’s daily, often tedious, it never ends, and—it’s worth it, in my opinion.

     Ask yourself if this is the work you want to do.

 

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