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Welcome back! - let's get into it.

Some worry that researching alternative hormone regimens could societaly delegitimize being trans, invalidate their own path, regret through the 'possibility of alternatives', and more. Even in queer spaces, gender is often still treated as a binary. You can switch sides, but you can't exist outside them. That men are men, women are women, and while you can switch between them, you shouldn't, wouldn't, and couldn't be anything outside of that binary. Some hold this philosophically; others fear that expanding the binary will make society hate us more for complicating the conversation. Why fight the system when you can just work to redefine it from within? There are quite a few otherwise progressive people who will accept non-binary as a category, but it becomes clear in conversation that they see it as a subset of the primary dualities of 'femme|female|woman|girl' and 'masc|male|men|boy' . You can be nonbinary [masc.nb] or nonbinary [femme.nb] but "nonbinary" itself isn't a category you're allowed to be. The same people who notably and righteously reject gender hierarchies often still treat masc lesbians as closer to men than to women, or trans men as closer to women than men — even if they hold that trans women are women (or the inverse). They may argue that sapphic or gay spaces should only include femme and masc primary archetypes, and ignore anything that goes beyond those labels. But I digress....

There is also a strange, yet marginally understandable, bio-essentialist reframing of "You can't be both. Your body runs on one primary hormone, synthetic or not." It masquerades as natural fact but often traces back to just plain unexamined essentialist thinking. Now, part of the reason for the natural naturalistic fallacy argument is that non-binary transition paths are radically understudied, even by the scant standards of trans and gender research. We know the 'standard' approach works for transition, and we just build off that through replication of studies and more, but frontier science is nearly nonexistent. So we default to "your body has one primary hormone, don't fuck with nature, god mother nature knows all" and take it at face value.

Another view: any affirmative research into this could be weaponized by anti-trans evangelists to argue that "transition isn't worth it," because it breaks apart the coupled concepts of social transition and chemical transition—the idea that if you're perceived as masc or femme, your chemical makeup can't be at odds with that perception. If the social view doesn't have to match, and you can "solve" being trans chemically, then appearance doesn't matter. And that threatens preconceived notions of what is and isn't natural, biological, expected, or scientific.

You can hear echoes of the same argument from others in the community "You can't and shouldn't boymode, even if you genuinely enjoy it, because the real goal is to be yourself, inside and out. Anything else is just fear keeping you in your comfort zone." You should be free to be yourself. I won't argue against it. But some people would be understandably fine being perceived as a jacked masc dude while running on primarily estrogen.

Here's a hypothetical, and uncomfortable thought experiment: If a pill existed that eliminated dysphoria (you don't need dysphoria to be trans!), depression, and all of the mental and physical desires to transition, trans activists would call it "medical conversion therapy" and oppose it; while anti-trans evangelists would celebrate it as medical conversion therapy and demand it become mandatory. Both sides would find common ground, then eat each other's faces.

“We’re thinking about getting married next, Big Mama,” Clay said, throwing his arm around Lou’s shoulder as they got to the table.

“I believe Lou can do better a mite better than you,” Big Mama said, which was ridiculous. Clayton was her youngest child, and she loved him like he hung the moon. “Come here, girl, give me some sugar.”

Big Mama Goodnight was a big, big woman with a prominent beauty mark, big, big hair and breasts so large she always said she couldn’t wear enhancing brassieres due to the risk it posed to her windpipe. She pulled Lou into a completely engulfing hug, stooping down to kiss her wetly on each cheek.

“Howdy, Big Mama,” Lou said. She couldn’t wrap her arms around her. She wore a heavy dusting of scented powder, and Lou had to will herself not to sneeze. “Clayton’s just after some housewarming gifts, I reckon.”

“It’s so good to see you, puss,” Big Mama said, wiping the lipstick off Lou’s cheeks with her thumbs. “It’s been a long time. You’re looking lathy– of course, you’ve always been thin as a rail, ever since you was a girl, huh?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lou said. She sat down next to Clay. “I don’t know if Clay said, but I had a hitch in my giddyup a while there. I’m doing a bit better, though.”

“She was deathly ill, Big Mama,” Clay said, which was what Lou had told him. She hadn’t told anyone that she had died, not even him. Not even Venus. “They had her in the hospital for half a daggone year.”

“Only four months,” Lou said. “And not the hospital hospital, not for most of it. Just the sanitarium. To rest, mostly.”

Big Mama slapped her palms down on the table, her many rings and bracelets clacking. “Let me make you up a plate, honey,” she said. She did not tolerate any of Lou’s protests.