This is gender affirming care.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: we already asked you once to stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait, and your account has unfortunately continued to do this. We end up having to ban such accounts because this is not what this site is for and destroys what it is for. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review the guidelines and stick to them, we'd appreciate it.
It's in no way a controversial or baity observation.
I get that it's a new concept for you, but your assumption was misplaced.
I think there are 4 groups of people who take hormones.
1. Those who take them for competitive advantage in sports
2. Those who take them because a doctor has told them that their body is producing less than it should be
3. Those who take them because they want the physical attributes that goes along with it because of how they identify
4. Biohackers
All of those reasons are valid
Re prior flamebait comments, I was thinking of (at least) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36546191 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36541462.
Testosterone is beneficial for everyone. If a man or woman wants to do TRT, it is not illegal to do so. But if they cite some kind of gender dysphoria, it is suddenly extremely taboo.
It's a bit humorous living in a society where roided out podcasters complain about people not accepting their natural identities or hormones
A chiseled look not enough to land someone on its own, but it absolutely will get you a conversation from women who otherwise would not have even talked to you.
> What women say they are attracted to, and what they respond positively to IRL, are not the same.
There are different women with different preferences. This comment, on its face, doesn't sound like you're talking about a singular woman, but lamenting the fact that one woman is not upfront about the preferences of...another woman she's never met.
- after I started lifting, I started getting attention and conversations I did not get before
- young men are not complete idiots, and can observe that this is true
I had women attracted to me both times, but the type of woman was very different. I also got groped and felt up far more and other far more overt displays of interest by women when muscled.
> The heavily muscled male look is more of a male fantasy than female.
Visit your local bookstore (if there still is one!) and tell me what the men on the covers of those romance novels look like.
I think the broader point being made was that there's a lot of modern-day backlash from certain groups against a specific type of "gender affirming care" - and that it's worth remembering that such care is already relatively commonplace even if you may not think of it that way currently.
> Plus it's not necessarily the case that people use these steroids to become more attractive to a prospective partner
The word "necessary" is one you uttered.
> while I don't take anything like this I do work out, play sports and run - and this is more for my person health and satisfaction than to make myself attractive to anyone else.
What relevance does that have? Roids are a different set of tradeoffs from that of working out and playing sports.
> I think the broader point being made was that there's a lot of modern-day backlash from certain groups against a specific type of "gender affirming care" - and that it's worth remembering that such care is already relatively commonplace even if you may not think of it that way currently.
The backlash is not founded on the novelty of gender affirming care; it usually hinges on whether the form of gender affirming care that most people think of when they hear that term is medically sound in many cases and the push to normalize something that would otherwise be classified as a mental disorder. Some people are pushing back against the very concept of gender affirming care, yes, but the debate is way more complex than that.
> and that it's worth remembering that such care is already relatively commonplace even if you may not think of it that way currently.
Not everyone agrees that every form of "gender affirming care" is equivalent, or whether it needs to be overly intellectualized in such a manner. A modern westerner might be convinced that use of Rogaine should be classified as "gender affirming care" when, in reality, the proximal motivation for the vast majority of men using Rogaine is because they want to keep their hair.
> the push to normalize something that would otherwise be classified as a mental disorder
This is the kind of thing people said about being gay, bi or lesbian back in the day, and only the most hateful and bigoted say that now. In ten years time you'll either look back at comments like this and cringe with embarrassment, or you'll be one of those miserable, hate-filled bigots. I hope for your sake it's the former.
It's all this pesky society that won't take your word for anything.
EDIT: forgot the link to the study in question https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3934340/
(By the time it was closed down the queues at the Tavistock were on the order of years, so lots of UK trans people have had to go private at some point)