lgbtq+ allys when they find out diy hrt is usually bought online with crypto
(and before you say it no i’m not a cryptobro, trans people getting strays from people blanket taking shots at crypto just has me feeling a certain way)
this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2025
270 points (96.6% liked)
196
4547 readers
1909 users here now
Community Rules
You must post before you leave
Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
Moderator Guidelines
Moderator Guidelines
- Don’t be mean to users. Be gentle or neutral.
- Most moderator actions which have a modlog message should include your username.
- When in doubt about whether or not a user is problematic, send them a DM.
- Don’t waste time debating/arguing with problematic users.
- Assume the best, but don’t tolerate sealioning/just asking questions/concern trolling.
- Ask another mod to take over cases you struggle with, if you get tired, or when things get personal.
- Ask the other mods for advice when things get complicated.
- Share everything you do in the mod matrix, both so several mods aren't unknowingly handling the same issues, but also so you can receive feedback on what you intend to do.
- Don't rush mod actions. If a case doesn't need to be handled right away, consider taking a short break before getting to it. This is to say, cool down and make room for feedback.
- Don’t perform too much moderation in the comments, except if you want a verdict to be public or to ask people to dial a convo down/stop. Single comment warnings are okay.
- Send users concise DMs about verdicts about them, such as bans etc, except in cases where it is clear we don’t want them at all, such as obvious transphobes. No need to notify someone they haven’t been banned of course.
- Explain to a user why their behavior is problematic and how it is distressing others rather than engage with whatever they are saying. Ask them to avoid this in the future and send them packing if they do not comply.
- First warn users, then temp ban them, then finally perma ban them when they break the rules or act inappropriately. Skip steps if necessary.
- Use neutral statements like “this statement can be considered transphobic” rather than “you are being transphobic”.
- No large decisions or actions without community input (polls or meta posts f.ex.).
- Large internal decisions (such as ousting a mod) might require a vote, needing more than 50% of the votes to pass. Also consider asking the community for feedback.
- Remember you are a voluntary moderator. You don’t get paid. Take a break when you need one. Perhaps ask another moderator to step in if necessary.
founded 8 months ago
MODERATORS
I haven't heard anyone gay say it's too illegal, just maybe unsafe. I would hope those who need it would be able to get it through proper care, but diy might be the next best choice.
it's really not that dangerous at all if you do sufficient research.
Be gay do sufficient research before committing your choice of crimes so that you do so safely?
The smart criminal practices harm reduction and follows standards of care when self medicating
Definitely do regular bloodwork when you’re starting, though. You can’t research your way out of how your body reacts to a new medication.
TIL you can order your own blood work. That is huge.
Yep! Without a doctor ordering it you’ll probably have to pay out of pocket, but it’s cheaper than a new liver, you know?
The maybe unsafe is the motte and the too illegal is the bailey. Not saying you are committing the fallacy, but that's how people who do it do it. They are clearly uncomfortable with the fact that DIY HRT is illegal and generally against medical guidelines, but only hand-wavey arguments about safety are heard.
Yeah. People that say that generally have no idea how dangerous it is or not :/
The maybe unsafe is the motte and the too illegal is the bailey
oh wow, you got reccommended that "fuck jordan peterson" video this morning too?
Going through puberty is unsafe. Like, physically unsafe. Testosterone and estrogen both have consequences. It doesn't really matter where they come from.
You can cause yourself some serious health issues if you fuck your HRT dosage up, which is easy to do if you're DIYing. If you do sufficient research beforehand, and get regular blood tests though you should be fine.
Honestly, depending on where you live, well-researched DIY can be safer AND more effective than going to a doctor. Atleast in the US most doctors don't know shit about trans healthcare, since it isn't a standard part of med school curriculums. My first endocrinologist straight up just asked me what medicines and dosages I wanted then wrote me a prescription for them. Fortunately I had been researching HRT pretty voraciously before even making the appointment so I was able to guide him through my care well enough till I found a better doctor.
You can cause yourself some serious health issues if you fuck your HRT dosage up, which is easy to do if you’re DIYing.
Not really with E! I don't know enough about T to dispute this. With E there can be consequences if you do tens or hundreds of times the regular dosage for an extended amount of time. You can read about them by looking up the increased clotting risks of pregnant people (who have way higher E levels than any trans person would reasonably take accidentally for many months) :P
Not that having too high levels are recommended or will be comfortable. There are technically elevated risks if you take even double the dose for a long time, but not by a lot.
T will fuck up your liver and also convert back to E if there’s too much* floating around in your blood at once. E is much more chemically stable than T, so it doesn’t take a lot of variance outside the correct ranges* to throw your hormones into whack. The only way to know for sure when you’re starting is to get the bloodwork done regularly (like every 1-3 months at first), and after a year or two of stability it’s fine to switch to yearly testing.
But yeah, I’ve see dudes who accidentally did like 4x their dosage at once and as long as it’s not a long term thing you do every week for months to years there’s not a lot of danger.
* as determined by your personal chemistry, some people need a high dose and some need a low dose
Your body can produce too much of either of those substances. My point stands. It's as dangerous as going through puberty is in the first place. Caution is advisable, but to act like it is an extreme danger is ridiculous. Many things can be dangerous. In an ideal world we would have free blood tests and doctors. We dont live in that ideal world. DIY is far less dangerous than denying a trans person healthcare. The way we treat it like an extreme risk helps no one. It is also much more expensive and difficult to access by nature. If someone is seriously weighing it, then they must have weighed the risks against them as much higher. If someone has to pick between DIY and increased risk of suicide, they should pick DIY.
Healthcare isnt sacred because it comes from an approved distributor. If the knowledge can be given on how to self administer hormones, then it should be given. Everything in life bears an inherent risk. The inherent risk in DIY is miniscule compared with getting into a car. So if someone is considering it I think its pointless to try and convince them otherwise. The risk they may harm themselves may outweigh all other risks in their mind. They dont need to be reminded over and over again of the inherent risk of getting into a car. They've heard it before, and will hear it many times again before a vial of anything is in their hand.
my body produced 1/5th of the average hormones for my assigned gender at birth. It ABSOLUTELY fucked me up mentally, I can confirm this. On the bright side though now that I started HRT my body is like speed running transition
1 vial of E in and I already have boobs bigger than some cis women I know lmao
I suspect the "unsafe" part of DIY is more the fact that unless you're buying pharmaceuticals, some DIY vials are compounded in an unregulated facility sometimes without typical lab equipment and safety best practices in place, for example you are probably aware of the debates among homebrewers about sterilization requirements and when or whether to use syringe filters, etc. - a lot of DIY vials are probably safe more because of the preservatives used than the safe sterilization and filtration practices that are kept.
Regardless, there is a question of the alternative - if no Rx is possible and the alternative is to go without HRT, the risks of DIY are probably justified by the clinical benefits of being on HRT, and the reality is that many, many trans people use DIY HRT without incident, and DIY vials are occasionally tested for safety, so the community has some informal "self-regulation" happening as well.
content warning: suicide
What I find so disturbing is how often the fears from cis folks about DIY don't translate to demands for increased access to HRT, but instead usually become moral judgements on the trans person for taking risks by using DIY, as if that were categorically unreasonable and as if it were better to just suffer from the wrong sex hormones in your body.
This just exposes the common bias and ignorance about what it's like to have the wrong sex hormones in your body, and the way being trans is seen as a matter of "self expression" and about "living authentically" rather than as a serious medical condition that they themselves would be unlikely to cope with or survive if they were put under the same circumstances (like David Reimer, or like Alan Turing, both of whom killed themselves when forced to live on cross-sex hormones - hardly surprising then to hear 40% of trans folks have attempted suicide before).
white queers with BE GAY DO CRIME in their bios when they see a homeless person doing drugs:
Nothing like being offended by a homeless person minding their own business lmao
How dare they cope with the hell that is their day-to-day life however they can manage? /s
is DIY illegal though, I don't think it is 🤔
diy testosterone is definitely illegal
best regards, recovering gymbro
oof, transfem bias exposed 🙈
yes, testosterone is a controlled substance in the U.S.
I was primarily thinking about DIY estrogen
I would say that with oestrogen it's pawbably not necessarily legal but likely decriminalised. At least in Australia anyway.
I think the illegal part in the U.S. is when someone is selling the estradiol, there are laws about not practicing medicine and distributing medicines you normally can only get through Rx probably violates some laws, though they aren't commonly enforced for drugs that aren't controlled.
Once someone has bought the estradiol, though, possession and use is not illegal AFAIK since estradiol is not a controlled substance.
I don't know Australian law at all, tbh so I can't speak to that 😅
This is the case in most countries. Having and using E is fine and legal, but distributing it is different.
I have heard this as a reason for DIY HRT distributors to take on the extra risk of compounding and distributing T as well, so trans men aren't left behind and because risk already exists distributing anyway. Seems a bit like a fallacy, but I appreciate people are taking seriously providing DIY access to trans men. It's tragic their sex hormones are criminalized ...
People don’t like to hear this, but Biden played no small part in this. This was back in the 90s when people started making doping in sports a political issue, so wham bam Man Juice^TM^ is illegal except through a doctor.
we are so past needing to protect Biden's image to hold together tenuous alliances to win elections for harm reduction reasons
but yeah, Biden was an old timey Drug Warrior, his legacy has aged like milk - yet it was his administration that finally managed to lower the scheduling of cannabis, so again the Democrats manage to hold onto the claim of Lesser Evil (even while full throatedly defending genocide)
It really makes no sense to me that it is regulated strongly in the first place. Why should T be illegal because of a few body builders? Just have steroid use be illegal in sports the way it already is. It being "dangerous" when misused is hardly a good reason, when we allow so many other more dangerous substances and won't even question their availability.
US drug laws are extremely irrational, and it's not really surprising given they were designed to punish and criminalize undesirable elements in society, like racial minorities and political enemies. Medical and scientifically justified concerns about safety were never really a motivation for the laws.
Homebrew T is as illegal as growing marijuana is in a state where it's not legal. It's controlled, but it's hardly fentanyl.
I lived in the South most of my life, where growing, selling, or possessing cannabis was treated like opiates (in fact federal drug laws require judges during sentencing to use a table that converts amount of cannabis into equivalent amounts of heroin!) - I personally know people who have served jail time just for having a joint on a table when cops were called during a noise complaint because people were practicing their musical instruments. So it depends on the state you are in, but some of them don't overlook cannabis.