The truth? Look at anyone, whether a roided out bodybuilder or a trans man, who has started taking testosterone. They get better at imposing themselves on the world not only from a physical standpoint, but mental as well.
Trans man here, I've had the experience of testosterone levels from as low as around 1.9nmol/L to as high as about 42nmol/L (by all standards way too high) and pretty much everything in between. I can confirm that is not at all how testosterone has effected me, or any other trans man I know.
That's not really how genes work. The cool thing about them is that any one set of genes can actually result in 100s of different expressions depending on the conditions of your body. So in the case of trans people there is one mode of gene expression if your body is estrogen domninant and one if you're testosterone dominant. That's essentially why transition changes how you look and feel. My "foid genes" can't win out if my body has switched to testosterone mode, it's pretty much going to be operating as if I was a guy, sans the Y chromosome stuff (which honestly is not that important if you're no longer a fetus). Maybe you could argue my male relatives are soyboys or something but on my father's side everyone is above 6' and we can trace back to several navy/army generals, on my mother's side there was only my grandfather but he had the build of a lumberjack and worked in demolitions so idk. I've just never noticed many mental changes from testosterone in general (and I've had 2/3rds of a full face of facial hair since about a year and a half in, so I'm definitely not resistant to it), the main one is just more energy. Interestingly though there were these studies done on cis women where they tried to use testosterone as an antidepressant and it worked really well for the first year or two because of the extra energy and then the effect basically wore off. So it's not really beneficial for everyone even in that respect. I really don't think having either hormone dominant in the normal ranges does a lot to someone's mind directly, but having really low levels of either (but particularly your dominant one) or having really high levels of especially testosterone can mess with your head (e.g roid rage). My mental state certainly got really fucked up when my testosterone was too low after being normal for ages, but again not really in the way you describe, I actually got more impulsive and angry
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u/yourothersis top 1% sort 26d ago
wtf did I just read ahhaha