Myth 1: Testosterone Turns Women into Dudes

Myth 1: Testosterone Turns Women into Dudes

While some of the decidedly masculine circa 1970 female Olympic athletes from East Germany and the U.S.S.R. played a part in the origin of this myth, it was competitive female bodybuilding that did the most damage.

I personally know women that once had voices like sweet, sweet nightingales who later, after taking stupid amounts of anabolic/androgenic steroids (which are all synthetic derivatives of testosterone), ended up sounding like the guys who do voiceovers for Coors Beer and Ford trucks; women who had to start shaving their faces every day except maybe for weekends when they didn’t have to go to work and could just putter around the garage.

So yeah, no wonder the medical establishment and their patients fear testosterone, but what they need to know is that all that scary stuff is dose dependent and that the doses used for T replacement in women actually “stimulate femininity” by increasing fertility and promoting ovulation. T was even used safely in the past to treat the nausea that often accompanies early pregnancy.

Still, side effects do sometimes occur, but Glaser and Dimitrakakis write that “true masculinization is not possible (with normal doses).” Even so, the benefits are often so great that some women often choose to treat the side effects rather than lower the dosage.

The authors also admit that, yes, pharmacologic and supra-pharmacologic doses of T are used to transform female-to-male transgender patients and that it may result in increased facial hair growth, hirsutism in general, and slight enlargement of the clitoris, but these effects are often largely reversible by simply lowering the dose.

Even so, an enlarged clitoris is not a medical problem, only a superficial cosmetic one that might invite embarrassment even though, in many cases, the additional length or girth can enhance sexual pleasure.

So no, when used in normal replacement doses, testosterone doesn’t masculinize women; it largely does the opposite.