eli5 How come testosterone will change a trans man’s voice, but estrogen won’t change a trans women’s?
In: Chemistry
Testosterone and oestrogen are both things called growth hormones. They signal to various kinds of cells that they should do something (typically just grow, but something other growth-related things). Growth hormones can’t usually make the body *reduce* something, unless it’s a thing that the body is constantly adjusting for the sake of energy conservation (muscle mass is the most relevant here, as the muscles shed anything they don’t need and use hormone levels as a cue for how much they need).
Voice is determined by structures in the throat. Once those get built, they can’t be un-built, and generally speaking the larger those structures are, the more masculine your voice will sound.
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