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Estrogen: A Trip Report


Posted on 15 June 2025 by Cube Flipper I have gender dysphoria. I find labels overly reifying; I feel reluctant to call myself transgender, per se: when prompted to state my gender identity or preferred pronouns, I fold my hands into the dhyana mudra and state that I practice emptiness on the concept of gender.

Not long after, I had jumped through the relevant bureaucratic hoops, and subsequently found myself cycling home from the pharmacy with a paper bag filled with repurposed menopause medication – a starter pack of 100 µg/24 hr estradiol patches, to be applied twice a week. Around the time I transitioned was also the period when I was exploring some quite extreme ketamine-assisted myofascial release techniques in order to shake off a lifetime’s worth of accumulated tension from things like bad ergonomics and social anxiety. In particular, the way in which estrogen alters attentional modulation also seems responsible for an increase in amodal perception, which in turn makes the visual field feel less hollow – though I don’t necessarily regard this as desirable or undesirable.

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Trip Report

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Estrogen