I get that, and you have to make your own choices about that, but estrogen can be supportive without necessarily forcing you to socially transition, there are many people who take estrogen but are in the closet still. Depending on how you dress, speak, and interact, you probably can pass as a male for longer than you think.

It depends on a lot of things how soon you will start to appear as a woman to people. If you have short hair and not a lot of body fat I think it would be easier, since it’s hard to grow breasts without much fat. If you are heavier you are more likely get more breast growth and it might be harder to hide that without a binder, but even that can be managed. If you have facial hair or heavy beard shadow, that heavily skews perception towards male.

You might look back and think waiting for security in your life before starting estrogen was a mistake, especially if estrogen is necessary for your brain to work well like it is for me. Even without that reason, your body will undergo further androgenization, which for me increased significantly in my 20s.

Just worth thinking it through. If you have to keep it secret from family or people you live with, you could always do DIY route to avoid the paper trail that visiting a doctor causes.

Just don’t underestimate how important estrogen is.

CW: suicidal ideation

yeah, I socially transitioned three months before I started estrogen. That was because the same day I figured out I was trans I realized I just wouldn’t ever transition if I didn’t force myself out of the closet by being public.

Needless to say, social transition without any hormones was hell for me. Obviously I should have been on estrogen my whole life, I had awful biochemical dysphoria, and I honestly marvel how I survived and didn’t kill myself. There were previous attempts and lots of suicidal ideation from the time I was 13 years old. When I was 18 - 19 I made very concrete plans and took steps to make that plan happen, but I couldn’t pull the trigger.

During the three month wait for estrogen there was one night I woke up in the middle of the night in extreme distress and had to carefully manage extremely intense suicidal impulses. I just don’t think anyone should go through that, and even though at the time I downplayed how much I was suffering, I look back now and balk.

I suspect many other trans women without estrogen feel the way I did, and it’s incredible to me how much we as a community tolerate this harm. If the problem were diabetes, nobody would be wringing their hands about when or whether they should start insulin, it’s only because of transphobia that we all think it’s reasonable to not address a serious hormone condition. (Even though not every trans person requires HRT or has biochemical dysphoria, but since so many do and it’s such a low risk for those who don’t need it, I think it’s worth encouraging any trans person to start hormones ASAP as a kind of obvious harm reduction.)