Debunking Trans Myths Episode 1: This is your penis on estrogen
The myth:
“HRT is attempting to transform my penile shaft into a vaginal canal. It’s shrinking and the skin has lost its elasticity and is leaking vaginal fluids!”
The truth:
No, it’s not. Your penis isn’t responding to the estrogen but rather to the lack of testosterone. Your male organ has become very very sick due to the lack of the male hormone required to keep it healthy. It appears to be shrinking due to the loss of elasticity in the skin, and that loss of elasticity is due to it being strangled of testosterone and not allowed to get random maintenance erections.
Surely if your penis was attempting to turn itself into a vagina, to the extent that it’s “leaking vaginal fluids” (it’s not, we’ll get there), it would GAIN elasticity. Try to recall that the vagina is a muscular organ which can not only lengthen in preparation for sex, but stretch to accommodate a baby’s entire head and then snap back to normal. Your penis would be getting stronger and larger, not weaker and smaller and brittle, if the estrogen was attempting to induce vaginal behavior out of it.
As for the leakage of “vaginal fluids” through the skin, well…they’re not vaginal fluids. Vaginal fluids are produced by the vaginal mucosa - the mucus membrane that lines the vaginal canal - as well as by the cervix. The unbroken epidermis that covers the penis will not produce fluid other than sweat. It will, however, become unhealthy and dry out as it’s robbed of the testosterone necessary to keep it in working order; naturally, as a male-exclusive organ, it relies on male hormones.
The fluid that is oozing out of your penile skin is in all likelihood serous fluid, which is the clear, colorless or pale yellow fluid, sometimes with a very faint odor, that leaks or “weeps” from wounds. Many transwomen report that their dry penile skin is painful, particularly if a partial or full erection is achieved. This is likely the result of micro and macro tears caused by the dry and non-elastic skin being stretched past its limit and breaking. While not being deep enough to produce blood, they instead weep serous fluid, which often emerges from the skin as little beads and can feel slippery when fresh and sticky when dry.
The myth (part 2):
“Oh yeah? Well my transmasc friend is growing his clit out on T! It’s trying to turn it into a penis! So estrogen is clearly trying to turn my girldick into a vagina!”
The truth:
While it’s true that your friend’s clitoris is lengthening, it’s not turning into a penis. Testosterone, while powerful, can still only do so much. Your friend merely has a large clitoris, not a penis. Testosterone does not have the power to rewire her genitourinary system; that can only occur during fetal development.
One could certainly argue that in your friend’s case, yes, testosterone is *attempting* to force her female genitals to mimic male ones, though there’s only so far they can go. But that’s not the case with your penis and estrogen. It’s the same reason why testosterone produces changes that are irreversible, like voice deepening, broadening of the shoulders/chest, height, and facial masculinization - because bodies can continue to develop features with the addition of testosterone, but they cannot go back to the former pre-testosterone state. A female can grow a pseudo “penis” (to a limited extent) on testosterone, but a male cannot un-grow his and reverse development; he can only make his organs very sick. Estrogen simply cannot override the changes that testosterone caused, because development only happens in one direction. You can’t unbake a cake.
The myth (part 3):
“But penises and vaginas are literally the SAME tissue, just arranged differently! They literally started off as the same fetal structure before hormones told them to branch off! Therefore my penis is indeed trying to deconstruct itself back into a vagina thanks to the estrogen that I’m putting in my body!”
The truth:
The beauty of fetal development is that the fetus, well…develops. We literally begin as two cells. That’s it. An egg and a sperm meet, and that’s us. So by your logic, because those two tiny cells divided and eventually formed my entire body, then my liver and my pancreas must be the same exact tissue, just arranged differently. Except that they’re not the same tissue. Far from it. Why not? Well because as things develop, they change. They differentiate. If development didn’t cause change at the cellular level, we’d all look like formless blobs, wouldn’t we? The fact that the penis and the vagina look and function so differently should be more than enough to tell you that they’re vastly different in cellular structure as well. You can’t achieve an epidermal layer to the penis, in contrast with the mucosa of the vaginal, without tissue and thus cellular changes. And these changes occur during early fetal development - an adult man cannot reverse the clock and try to force his developed tissue to revert back to its pre-differentiated fetal state.
Many MtF surgeries utilize the scrotal tissue to form the “labia”. These results are highly clockable due to the appearance and nature of the scrotum. Its deeply-ridged characteristics are quite visually different from the typically smooth skin of the labia majora. It behaves differently, too. There are in fact videos from post-op transwomen that demonstrate that the contractile nature of the scrotal tissue endures even after it’s been surgically reformed; labial tissue, in contrast, does not expand and contract in response to temperature. This is a good demonstration of the fact that, despite originating from the same root, male and female genitals are composed of different tissue that look and function very differently.
To conclude, estrogen isn’t turning back the clock, it’s merely damaging your male anatomy. It may be difficult to hear, but male and female organs are not composed of interchangeable tissue in different arrangements. While females may demonstrate limited growth of the clitoris when flooded with high levels of testosterone, they do not develop into penises, as the penis is the organ that conducts urine and sperm out of the body.
Stay tunes for more episodes of Debunking Trans Myths!