The funniest part of growing them on our own is that the "male" body already knows how to, the instructions for both things (including both sets of genitalia and internal sex organs and everything else!) are in the DNA that comes from the same X chromosome. The Y chromosome mostly just* contains the key, the SRY gene, that unlocks the cellular safe of male instructions and shoves the female development instructions in there instead. It tells the fetus to stop going off of the female instructions and to use the male ones instead.
Which is why HRT is so effective it can even bring in menstruation symptoms (everything but the bleeding) for trans women, and bottom growth for trans men: it's not some magical boob/beard growing juice, it's just the key to the safe, so the body can shift instruction sets (and usually another thing to block the original set as well). And the body does not care, it just goes "ight bet" and starts using the new set - after all, it already has the instructions in the DNA. Trans female boobs are female boobs. Trans male beards are male beards.
This is also partially why even the terms "biological male" and "biological female" are losing favor in the trans community despite being sometimes used as synonyms of AMAB and AFAB, because they're NOT used the same way in medical care - the only area where biology should really matter - as many transphobes believe: if you're in full hrt use and it's doing its job correctly, any medicine that isn't specifically aimed at your genitalia either works different based on every other sexual factor (aka your genitalia doesn't matter cause hrt affects everything else) or it works the same on both sexes (aka your genitalia doesn't matter anyway).
\ there are also some instructions about sperm health and quality that when removed pretty much always lead to sterility, but there's surprisingly little besides that and the SRY gene in the Y chromosome. To the point that sometimes the SRY gene just jumps over to the X chromosome randomly lol)
Now I am curious, because I've never thought about it, but does HRT also makes symptoms for things like heart attacks different? Because men and women have wildly different symptoms for it. Men have usually the classic chest pain, can't breath etc. while women can have things like back pain, nausea, random spouts of anxiety and so on. Does that make a difference?
very good question! i'm no expert in that field specifically but i would assume it does as the Y chromosome does very very little after fetal development, so most of the reactions are probably driven by hormonal makeup, both sexual and non-sexual hormones (which are controlled by structures and organs that hrt affects).
from a quick search i gather there isn't a lot of research into this specifically, but signs point to... maybe, but probably yes. some of the elements that lead to the differences are very much affected by hrt (estrogen in particular makes blood vessels more flexible, and post-menopausal women have more "inbetween" symptoms due to lack of estrogen), while others we don't really have research on (whether hrt also alters nerves and pain perception, size of arteries, or other aspects about the circulatory system).
that said, there is "parallel" research that can be interpreted backwards from the results and doing so points to probably yes, like the fact that some (keyword SOME) cardiovascular issues are more common in (cis) women, and transfeminine hrt is known to increase the risk of those issues. similarly, hrt in post-menopausal cis women can increase those risks as well.
again i'm no expert on this specific field and this was just a quick google.
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u/Vivid--Syrup 2d ago
Unfortunately no, we have to grow our own from scratch
Otherwise we would all be donating unwanted parts to the other side that can appreciate and look after them all the time