Most recently I went off because I couldn’t afford my medicine anymore. I knew what I was in for: severe depression, bouts of insomnia and oversleeping, increased anger. If it went long enough, hot flashes and god knows what else. I started to worry about decalcification, of my bones and teeth. I don’t want to lose my teeth because I’m a transsexual.

Speaking of which: in my web research, I’ve found indicators that women who are on The Pill are at increased risk for dental caries, as are post-menopausal women, so apparently I can’t win now that I’ve started hormones. The grain of salt: there is a lot of talk about estrogen out there, especially from the medical sectors. For what ranks as one of the most-prescribed drugs in the world, estrogen certainly isn’t understood very well. Does it prevent or cause heart disease? Cervical cancer? Happiness? Depression? How about some better research. We could redirect all those freaks who pour nail polish into the eyes of rabbits (hint—their eyes are already red, and haven’t we already figured out that the Sally Hansen Chrome Nail Makeup is as good as it gets: one coat is all you need, and it dries completely in less than five minutes? C’mon, lets go see what estrogen does to humans).

There are a couple of great books about the history of hormones: Beyond The Natural Body: An Archaeology of Sex Hormones by Nelly Oudshoorn and Reinventing the Sexes: The Biomedical Construction of Femininity and Masculinity by Marianne van den Wijngaard. My redux of these two books: Scientists went looking for the little germs that "makes us" men and women, feminine and masculine, and guess what—they found exactly what they were looking for. Any fourth grader with Coke-bottle glasses can tell you that’s bad science. These books appear to be going out of print, so find them while you can. I believe them both to be crucial to contextualizing the history of hormones, if you’ll pardon my dialectical materialism.

Anyway, it can’t be denied that the hormone cocktails that trannies consume steer our physical development towards one specific sex body type. It’s obvious. But each of us, tranny or otherwise, has a much more complex relationship to the body and how it is engendered. I dare say that the relationship is so complex that right now it’s darn near inexplicable. As a person who has gone through something that resembled a male puberty, then something like a female puberty, and then a couple of semi-menopauses, you might think I’d be more articulate about all this hormone business. But no, dude, it’s just a fuckin’ trip.

On the surface of it, I was born into what seemed to be a male body, although I inhabited it somewhat effetely. There’s been no emergent reason to understand my body as necessarily intersexed, so I’ve never been checked for potential chromosomal anomalies or whatever. So what if they exist? I’d still be a transsexual, except that I’d be a couple thousand bucks poorer. And us trannies don’t need to get any poorer, especially since we are already paying to be research subjects for some doctors and pharmaceutical organizations.

When I first got my hormone levels checked, I apparently had some astronomical testosterone count. You could have knocked me over with a feather boa. My first pass at pubes came way late, and with it the first time I was notably disinterested in sex. It was only after I started consuming estrogen that I found myself becoming much more comfortable in my body. My moods swung in new and interesting ways, as did my appetites. When I go off hormones, which means I’m either back to testosterone, or (more likely) relative hormonelessness, the detachment and disassociation returns. Getting back on hormones means that I’m comfortable.

I keep asking myself what this means about my "natural" body and its sex, or gender? Could it have been "meant" to have estrogen, just because it sure feels like it should have been? Is this is an intense psychosomatic process? Why exactly does estrogen make me into such a happy and functional human being, the best antidepressant I’ve ever had? If our science guys aren’t going to waste their time figuring out the long-term effects of estrogen on, say, breastesses (especially the ones they like to jerk off to) you can bet I’ll be waiting a long time for a definitive study on its psychological properties.

There has recently been an ad on teevee for an online web survey, clearly directed at women, which is supposed to help you figure out whether or not you are bipolar. We see a woman on the computer, running around shopping, pleading with her doctor, raving at a nightclub, and frantically painting part of her wall red. The voiceover claims that she goes to the doctor when she’s feeling down and depressed, but her doctor never sees her like this: manic, active—dare we say insane? The end result, of course, is that she will self-diagnose as bipolar and submit to some great little anti-depressant pill—which will hopefully not turn her into a pit bull. This is clearly geared towards women, and apparently career women. Could it be possible that the problem isn’t her, but the conditions under which she has to live? Perhaps she just needed to find out about the good Sally Hansen nail polish—I mean, who hasn’t lost their shit when their nails just aren’t coming out right?

I know that the things that make me act insane include living under the thumb of capitalism and the imminent collapse of my physical health and the crappy health care I’ll get afterwards. Sexism kinda gets on my nerves as well, as does the way FX selectively edits episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to make more room for commercials which tell me I’m bipolar. But what’s a girl to do, especially when a chunk of her emotional stability is already owned by Bristol-Meyers Squibb?

I’m due for my next injection today. I’ll let you know how it goes.