Producing Transdermal Estrogen: A Do-It-Yourself Guide

This guide descri­bes how a small collec­tive produ­ced and distri­bu­ted trans­der­mal estro­gen using repro­du­ci­ble do-it-your­self methods.

What follows here is not medi­cal advice; it is a report on an expe­ri­ment in process, provi­ding proof of concept. Gene­rally spea­king, if you want to take estro­gen and you have the option to acquire it through the prevai­ling medi­cal insti­tu­ti­ons, we encou­rage you to consi­der taking that route. At the same time, it is alre­ady diffi­cult for some people who need estro­gen to access it that way, and those diffi­cul­ties may only incre­ase in the futu­re—so we beli­eve that infor­ma­tion like this should be distri­bu­ted widely. Taking a hands-on appro­ach to health­care can give you a more direct rela­ti­ons­hip to your agency, which can give you more control over your safety in the long run, provi­ded you learn about the risks and reflect properly on them.

Above all, we beli­eve in gender self-deter­mi­na­tion: the idea that everyone should be free to posi­tion them­sel­ves as they see fit within the matrix of gender. Neit­her govern­ments, reli­gi­ons, patri­ar­chal autho­ri­ties, nor anyone else should be able to confine us within their narrow visi­ons of who we should be or who we can become.

This guide was adap­ted from a zine by the Fairy Wings Collec­tive, avai­la­ble here along with rela­ted resour­ces.

Intro­duc­tion

We made our own trans­der­mal estro­gen and star­ted giving it out to people. Trans­der­mal means you just rub it on your skin and that’s it: no need­les, no adhe­si­ves, no eating it. When we tell other anar­chists about this, they’re usually like, “Oh yeah, I talked to some friends about that once, but we didn’t know how to do it.” We got toget­her with about four people and scroun­ged up a few thou­sand bucks and deci­ded to figure it out. This arti­cle descri­bes what we did, some of the risks invol­ved, and how you can do it your­self.

With access to trans­gen­der health care beco­ming incre­a­singly poli­ti­ci­zed and restric­ted, espe­ci­ally in certain parts of the country, being able to make our own hormo­nes is a neces­sary step towards ensu­ring that people in our commu­ni­ties have access to the care they need. Doing this project oursel­ves instead of relying on doctors, pres­crip­ti­ons, and the esta­blis­hed medi­cal supply chain offers more privacy, auto­nomy, and ease of access for indi­vi­du­als who might find it diffi­cult to access hormo­nes through tradi­ti­o­nal methods. Our primary audi­ence inclu­des young people, people who are tran­si­ent or without an esta­blis­hed address, people who are unin­su­red or unde­rin­su­red, and those living in rural or poli­ti­cally conser­va­tive areas. We don’t think we can reach all of those people via our little distri­bu­tion network—t­hat’s why we are propo­sing that anar­chists in other areas start making DIY estro­gen in a decen­tra­li­zed way. We encou­rage anyone who wants to parti­ci­pate in this project to read this guide and start produ­cing their own supply.

First, some good news: it works! Seve­ral indi­vi­du­als star­ted using the trans­der­mal estro­gen we made without taking any other exoge­nous hormo­nes. After seve­ral weeks, they had success­fully raised their estro­gen levels. They were able to adjust the dose by taking more or chan­ging the admi­nis­tra­tion site, as diffe­rent places on your body offer a higher or lower effi­cacy of absorp­tion. Below, we’ll offer a more detai­led report on their expe­ri­en­ces.

Estra­diol suppres­ses your body’s produc­tion of other sex hormo­nes through a nega­tive feed­back loop; an estra­diol level of 150 pg/ml is usually enough to suppress your body’s produc­tion of testos­te­rone into the female range. Howe­ver, current stan­dards of care and some indi­vi­du­als’ body chemistry may require an anti-andro­gen to achi­eve these levels. Since the dose is flexi­ble and site of admi­nis­tra­tion can be chan­ged to suit your needs, some of this depends on your body and the results you want.

For more infor­ma­tion, check out Trans­FemS­ci­ence.org—s­pe­ci­fi­cally this arti­cle.

The process of produ­cing a usable form of estra­diol is pretty straight­for­ward: buy ingre­di­ents, mix them toget­her in set ratios, apply. Based on our expe­ri­en­ces, the hardest parts were rese­ar­ching how exac­tly to turn estra­diol powder into somet­hing usable and attemp­ting to find a lab to analyze the estra­diol we bought. Now that we’ve done those things, you can copy our steps and end up with about the same result.

We encou­rage you to do your own rese­arch and learn as much as you can on this topic. None of us are experts and we would all bene­fit from lear­ning from each other. The way we chose to appro­ach this is not the only way. We could have bought a pill press and a binding agent and cran­ked out estra­diol pills. We could have produ­ced injec­ta­ble estra­diol. Howe­ver, based on our limi­ted know­ledge of chemistry and medi­cine and our clean­li­ness stan­dards (reaso­na­ble, but not a clean room and not sterile), we felt that produ­cing trans­der­mal estro­gen was the safest and easi­est appro­ach. Conta­mi­na­tion risk is very real and injec­ta­ble products must meet a much higher stan­dard to be safe for use.

You will need:

• Secure methods for commu­ni­ca­tion and online acti­vity: encryp­ted email (Proton­mail)¹ and messa­ging (Signal), encryp­ted docu­ment storage (Crypt­pad), Tails stick or Tor
• Addres­ses for recei­ving online orders
• Money: roughly $2000 to buy all supplies for 250 bott­les of about six months’ supply each
• A physi­cal loca­tion to make the product and store supplies -A distri­bu­tion loca­tion or plan
• Trus­ted friends to help with produc­tion, distri­bu­tion, and any other parts of the process

Rather than setting up a formal orga­ni­za­tion, we favor a more decen­tra­li­zed appro­ach. This is why we called our project Boobs not Bombs—an homage to Food not Bombs, a call to action for people in any commu­nity to feed their neigh­bors. Anyone with a small set of supplies can make enough do-it-your­self estro­gen to serve hundreds of people. We inten­ti­o­nally chose repro­du­ci­ble methods. Our goal is to equip others to make do-it-your­self hormo­nes as well. You know your commu­nity and its needs better than we do. Via direct action, we can secure the auto­nomy of queer and trans folks, even in the face of an incre­a­singly oppres­sive and survei­lled future.

If you are star­ting a Boobs Not Bombs, fairy­wingsmaproton­mail [ punto ] com (email us)!

Boobs Not Bombs!

Disclai­mer: Neit­her the vials we produ­ced nor this text are inten­ded to diag­nose, treat, prevent, or cure any medi­cal illness. None of these state­ments has been evalu­a­ted by the Food and Drug Admi­nis­tra­tion. They are NOT medi­cal advice.

Boobs Not Bombs is a refe­rence to Food Not Bombs, an anar­chist food distri­bu­tion project dating back deca­des. Boobs Not Bombs is our name for the idea of distri­bu­ting estro­gen cheaply or for free; Fairy Wings Mutual Aid is the name of our speci­fic chap­ter. This chap­ter was crea­ted as an expli­citly anar­chist project and we have sought to orga­nize it around anar­chist prin­ci­ples. If anyt­hing in here is unclear or confu­sing don’t hesi­tate to send us an email at fairy­wingsmaproton­mail [ punto ] com (fairy­wingsma[at]proton­mail[dot]com). We’d love to hear from you!

Appli­ca­tion

A stan­dard dose is 0.57 ml—a­bout a quar­ter of a drop­per—ap­plied to the scro­tum or neola­bia once per day. Based on the blood­work we have done so far, this should be enough to fully suppress testos­te­rone into the female range and induce femi­ni­za­tion.

For lower levels, switch to a less effi­ci­ent appli­ca­tion site or reduce the dosage. You can choose from the follo­wing appli­ca­tion sites, listed from least absor­bent to most absor­bent: the soles of the feet or palms, abdo­men, fore­arm, armpit, scro­tum/neola­bia.

If your levels aren’t high enough, you could incre­ase the dosage or apply a dose twice per day. It’s worth noting that once testos­te­rone has been suppres­sed, higher levels of estra­diol have not been shown to produce any bene­fit and carry addi­ti­o­nal risk.

Applying lotion after­wards at the site of appli­ca­tion will slightly incre­ase absorp­tion. Using suns­creen will decre­ase absorp­tion. For one hour after­wards, make sure not to make skin-to-skin contact between the site of appli­ca­tion and anyone who doesn’t want addi­ti­o­nal estro­gen in their body.

Risks

As in many do-it-your­self projects (and most acti­vi­ties), there are risks to making or using this product.

Some risks have to do with the supply chain. For exam­ple, we tested the estra­diol we bought as raw powder and found it to be 97.2% estra­diol. The test also showed that it contai­ned no heavy metals. That being said, we weren’t able to figure out what the remai­ning 3% was. Is there somet­hing dange­rous in that 3%? We don’t know.

The same is probably true for grocery store supple­ments as well. If a company is accu­sed of putting dange­rous chemi­cals in its supple­ments, it might be inves­ti­ga­ted, but other­wise, supple­ments are not regu­la­ted by the Food and Drug Admi­nis­tra­tion. In our opinion, this estro­gen is probably about as dange­rous as a stan­dard over-the-coun­ter supple­ment. If you are able to get estra­diol pres­cri­bed by a doctor and you can afford it, it will undoub­tedly be higher quality, and we recom­mend you do so.

Never­the­less, that isn’t possi­ble for many people. That’s where this guide comes in.

There are inhe­rent risks to taking estra­diol, as well. The follo­wing is writ­ten for AMAB (Assig­ned Male at Birth) people. For AFAB people, the risks are grea­ter and the rewards are very diffe­rent.

For all people, estra­diol is asso­ci­a­ted with blood coagu­la­tion. This can lead to a number of adverse events inclu­ding heart attacks, stro­kes, and blood clots, also known as throm­bo­sis. Of parti­cu­lar concern are venous throm­bo­em­bo­lisms, or VTE events—­blood clots in veins moving blood towards the heart. For AMAB people that take estra­diol, the incre­a­sed risk depends on the dose and the means of admi­nis­tra­tion. The risks are grea­ter with higher levels; some ways of taking estra­diol are more asso­ci­a­ted with VTE events than others. The exact risks are not preci­sely known, as rese­arch on trans people is poorly funded. Howe­ver, based on the avai­la­ble data, it seems that trans­der­mal estra­diol levels within 100–200 pg/ml (and perhaps as high as 300 pg/ml) produce little or no addi­ti­o­nal risk of clot­ting events. For a fuller over­view of the rese­arch, read this.

Anot­her risk to consi­der is breast cancer. Like blood clots, there seems to be a causal link between expo­sure to estro­gens and breast cancer. This also seems to be dose depen­dent, so higher doses of estra­diol will result in an incre­a­sed risk of breast cancer. As with blood clots, the exact degree of risk isn’t preci­sely known; for AMAB people taking estra­diol, the risk level is likely to be somew­here between the risk levels for cis men and cis women.

Lastly, the primary effects of estra­diol itself—­fe­mi­ni­za­tion and suppres­sion of your body’s repro­duc­tive proces­ses—­could be consi­de­red risks, depen­ding on your pers­pec­tive. For better or worse, the vast majo­rity of effects from estra­diol, like smoot­her skin and fat distri­bu­tion, are rever­si­ble. Howe­ver, some effects are perma­nent, inclu­ding breast deve­lop­ment and, possibly, infer­ti­lity. Anyone who might use this product should be made aware of the risks so they can make an infor­med deci­sion.

Estro­gen is not a sche­du­led subs­tance. It is legal to import it. The other ingre­di­ents you need are all legal to purchase. As long as an item is not labe­lled for medi­ci­nal use, it is legal to sell or give away even if it contains poten­ti­ally bioac­tive ingre­di­ents—t­hink of herbal medi­ci­nes sold in stores. In many places, you can buy estro­gen over the coun­ter to alle­vi­ate symp­toms of meno­pause. All in all, we think that the present legal risk is very low.

Howe­ver, this could change at any time: seve­ral states have passed laws against mailing or impor­ting miso­pros­tol and some have intro­du­ced new laws restric­ting access to gender-affir­ming medi­cal care for youth or even adults. It’s probably better to stay a bit below the radar in case this beco­mes ille­gal later. Currently, our chief secu­rity concern is publi­city from hostile far-right groups: we’re more concer­ned about showing up on Fox News than FBI raids.

Unlike estro­gen, testos­te­rone is a sche­du­led drug—it is gene­rally ille­gal to access it without a pres­crip­tion. Produ­cing and distri­bu­ting testos­te­rone would involve a diffe­rent set of legal risks.

As there is insuf­fi­ci­ent rese­arch on trans health, the long-term health conse­quen­ces of star­ting and stop­ping hormone treat­ment are unknown. Hormo­nes affect many body systems in ways Western medi­cine still doesn’t unders­tand, and there is little data avai­la­ble on the long-term effects of inter­mit­tent hormone use.

Results

So far, the Fairy Wings chap­ter of Boobs not Bombs has distri­bu­ted appro­xi­ma­tely 200 bott­les of trans­der­mal estro­gen. Early on, we invi­ted seve­ral volun­te­ers to switch to Boobs not Bombs estro­gen and to test their estro­gen and testos­te­rone levels. As more bott­les were distri­bu­ted, people who were star­ting hormo­nes for the first time also provi­ded lab results. We asked volun­te­ers to wait until they had been taking Boobs not Bombs estro­gen for three to four weeks before they tested, in order to avoid linge­ring effects from other prepa­ra­ti­ons of estra­diol they may have been on previ­ously. The results we collec­ted do not meet the rigo­rous stan­dards of a scien­ti­fic study, espe­ci­ally consi­de­ring the wide vari­ety of possi­ble admi­nis­tra­tion sites, dosing, and indi­vi­dual vari­a­bles inclu­ding other medi­cal condi­ti­ons, concur­rent medi­ca­ti­ons (hormone-rela­ted and other­wise), lifestyle, and the like. Howe­ver, we can provide the infor­ma­tion we recei­ved from volun­te­ers.

Since the begin­ning of the project, five people have taken or swit­ched to Boobs not Bombs estro­gen and provi­ded nume­ri­cal lab results. While we asked a stan­dard set of ques­ti­ons of each person, some people were unable to have their testos­te­rone levels chec­ked and some provi­ded incom­plete infor­ma­tion. At least one indi­vi­dual never took any lab tests, but did expe­ri­ence breast deve­lop­ment and sensory chan­ges.

One person repor­ted applying a quar­ter of a drop­per daily to the scro­tum/neola­bia, which resul­ted in estro­gen levels of 250 pg/ml and testos­te­rone 200 ng/dl. Two people applied the estro­gen to their fore­arms: one used a half drop­per per day and measu­red estro­gen 94 pg/ml, while the other used one full drop­per daily for estro­gen levels of 125 pg/ml. The two people who admi­nis­te­red this estro­gen to their armpits were also both taking anti-andro­gens. Both applied a half drop­per per day; one had estro­gen levels of 200 pg/ml and the other 842 pg/ml (and testos­te­rone of 33.3 ng/dl).

Accor­ding to trans­fems­ci­ence,

Commonly recom­men­ded ranges for trans­fe­mi­nine people in the lite­ra­ture are 100 to 200 pg/mL (367–734 pmol/L) for estra­diol levels and less than 50 ng/dL (1.7 nmol/L) for testos­te­rone levels (Table). Howe­ver, higher estra­diol levels of more than 200 pg/mL (734 pmol/L) can be useful in trans­fe­mi­nine hormone therapy to help suppress testos­te­rone levels. Lower estra­diol levels (≤50–60 pg/mL [≤180–220 pmol/L]) are recom­men­ded and more appro­pri­ate for puber­tal and adoles­cent trans­fe­mi­nine indi­vi­du­als.

If you want to share your own results, email us and tell us how long you’ve been taking this estro­gen, any other hormone-rela­ted medi­ca­ti­ons, your dose, admi­nis­tra­tion site, and lab results (estro­gen and testos­te­rone levels).

Why?

For some people, there can be risks asso­ci­a­ted with not taking hormo­nes, as well, and these can also be life-thre­a­te­ning. Those who want to restrict access to hormo­nes often speak about the “irre­ver­si­ble chan­ges” that are asso­ci­a­ted with taking hormo­nes. In fact, our bodies are always chan­ging in irre­ver­si­ble ways. Taking exoge­nous hormo­nes can be a way of inten­ti­o­nally parti­ci­pa­ting in that change in order to move it in a direc­tion that feels more alig­ned with how you want to be.

While there are nume­rous barri­ers that prevent people (espe­ci­ally trans people) from acces­sing hormo­nes like estra­diol, there are compa­ra­ti­vely few mecha­nisms to ensure that everyone who wants hormo­nes has access to them. Further­more, even when the medi­cal esta­blish­ment is able to meet our needs, this only occurs on the terms of insu­rance corpo­ra­ti­ons, medi­cal review boards, the state, the family, and other insti­tu­ti­ons that have histo­ri­cally served to oppress, exploit, and exclude people. These insti­tu­ti­ons restrict access to hormo­nes and other resour­ces in order to rein­force cis-hete­ro­nor­ma­ti­vity (the idea that being cis and straight is the only “correct” or “natu­ral” way to be). They aim to rein­force these ideas and gate-keeping struc­tu­res in order to dimi­nish our bodily auto­nomy because that helps them to main­tain control of all the other aspects of our lives. Rather than trying to work within and vali­date the exis­tence of those insti­tu­ti­ons, we can deli­be­ra­tely choose to work outside of them. We beli­eve everyone should be free of the coer­cive power of the state and should have access to the tools they need to shape their bodies howe­ver they want.

Some people beli­eve that only massive insti­tu­ti­ons can meet people’s needs and that those insti­tu­ti­ons have to adopt repres­sive prac­ti­ces in order to do so. By making estra­diol widely and easily avai­la­ble at little or no cost, we can help people access a grea­ter degree of bodily auto­nomy and give people cause to ques­tion the neces­sity of centra­li­za­tion and control.

How?

The follo­wing instruc­ti­ons have been calcu­la­ted for a batch that starts with 100 grams of estra­diol. This number was chosen because it’s rela­ti­vely affor­da­ble and makes the math a little bit easier.

The formula that we used is based on a patent (tech­ni­cally two patents) we found for a trans­der­mal birth control product. The patent descri­bes a product that is 0.24% active ingre­di­ent, which is split between a proges­tin (0.18%) and estra­diol (0.06%). We modi­fied this recipe to include only estra­diol at 0.24%. We recom­mend that you look over these patents to get an idea of what we’re doing and to make sure we’re not missing anyt­hing. Copies of these patents, the spre­ads­he­ets we used to calcu­late the amounts of each ingre­di­ent, and other help­ful infor­ma­tion are avai­la­ble here.

Before Getting Star­ted

Before embar­king on your own Boobs Not Bombs adven­ture, think care­fully about the risks invol­ved and whet­her you’re willing to take them. Because Estra­diol is not a contro­lled subs­tance, what we are doing is legal—as far as we can tell—­gi­ven that what we are offe­ring is not inten­ded to diag­nose, treat, prevent, or cure any medi­cal illness. Never­the­less, the fact that somet­hing is legal has never stop­ped the state from haras­sing people. This is espe­ci­ally true because trans people have unfor­tu­na­tely become a target for many conser­va­tive poli­ti­ci­ans. The pros­pect of people handing out estro­gen on the street is ripe to get blown out of propor­tion by the right-wing media and poli­ti­ci­ans looking to score points by attac­king trans people. If you aren’t comfor­ta­ble with these risks, consi­der helping exis­ting BnB efforts by dona­ting to or contac­ting fairy­wingsmaproton­mail [ punto ] com (the authors of this text).

If you decide you are willing to take these risks, watch this video discus­sing why you should never speak to the police. You can also read this text about secu­rity culture.

As a rule, don’t discuss your invol­ve­ment in this project with people that you don’t trust. Only tell people what they need to know. If you need to discuss the project with others via elec­tro­nic means, always use open-source encryp­ted soft­ware like Signal, Proton­Mail, and Crypt­pad. Of course, every appro­ach has limi­ta­ti­ons and there is nothing you can do to guaran­tee that you haven’t left a trace. The guide­li­nes we have set out here should be regar­ded as a solid base­line to add to, rather than a secu­rity guaran­tee. For more infor­ma­tion about digi­tal secu­rity, read this.

Project Infras­truc­ture

The first step in this project is to get toget­her with your friends and comra­des and see who would like to help make it a reality. If you don’t have a network of trus­ted friends who are inter­es­ted in helping, try going to the closest anar­chist commu­nity center or mutual aid project and see what you can help out with. Hope­fully, you will deve­lop friends­hips with people in the course of working toget­her. If all goes well, even­tu­ally Boobs Not Bombs can be one of the projects you can add to your shared reper­toire!

If you are going to work on this project on your compu­ter, we recom­mend that you get a Tails stick. This is a USB flash drive with the Tails opera­ting system insta­lled on it. Tails is a secure opera­ting system that only connects to the inter­net via the Tor network and saves abso­lu­tely nothing to your hard disk. To obtain a copy of Tails, have a friend that alre­ady has a Tails stick clone it. If you don’t know anyone with Tails, you can down­load it and read a full set of instruc­ti­ons here. If this process seems overw­hel­ming, find a compu­ter-savvy friend to help you.

Next, start your compu­ter running Tails and create an email account with which to contact vendors. It is strongly recom­men­ded that you only sign in to this email from within Tails. Remem­ber, Tails and Tor are not magic. If you sign in to your perso­nal email account at the same time as you sign in to the email you are using for this project, you will have asso­ci­a­ted the two. Only work on one project at a time when using Tails.

To prepare for orde­ring and recei­ving ship­ments, get toget­her with your friends and figure out how to receive the packa­ges anony­mously. The easi­est way is to get a friend who isn’t directly invol­ved in the project to receive the package for you. Ship it to them under their own name and then pick it up from them. Recei­ving packa­ges is a good way people can aid the project while limi­ting their invol­ve­ment. Other possi­bi­li­ties include getting packa­ges ship­ped to a friendly commu­nity center or an aban­do­ned house, or divi­ding up the ingre­di­ents and ship­ping them spora­di­cally to your own houses. For exam­ple, one person could order and receive the propy­lene glycol, anot­her the diethy­lene glycol mono­ethyl ether, a third person the alco­hol. Doing it in this way redu­ces the chan­ces that an inves­ti­ga­tion could deter­mine the pattern of purcha­ses and deli­ve­ries.

If some­one is recei­ving a package, it’s usually best that they pay for the package them­sel­ves using their own payment methods and then you reim­burse them in cash. You can probably send multi­ple packa­ges to some people if the things they’re recei­ving are not sket­chy, such as scales and glass jars. At the same time, you should seek to mini­mize your online purcha­ses. Where­ver possi­ble, buy things in person with cash. Do you need to buy glass over­flow jars online, or can you get them from a thrift store?

You will need a certain amount of resour­ces to get star­ted. If need be, raise funds discre­etly among your friends. You should be able to fund the entire project with about $2000. If you can, set aside more than this to allow for unex­pec­ted problems. Store these funds as cash in a secure loca­tion. Keep track of how much money comes in and how much has been spent on each item so you can see how much money you have left and iden­tify ways to reduce expen­ses.

Your opera­tion will need a physi­cal loca­tion. An empty bedroom is big enough, though we don’t recom­mend a bedroom that anyone lives in, as it would be diffi­cult to store everyt­hing you need in a room along with some­o­ne’s perso­nal posses­si­ons. You should also think about secu­rity here. You could find a friendly commu­nity space that is willing to rent a room to a member of the project, come up with a persu­a­sive cover story, and rent it as a perso­nal room. Draft a lease that stipu­la­tes that the room is not to be ente­red without your permis­sion and put a lock on the door. This both protects you and those you are renting from: in the event of trou­ble, they will have a lease to provide legal cover, confir­ming that as land­lords, they are not respon­si­ble for what their tenants do.

You could use crypt­pad to create a spre­ads­heet to keep track of your finan­ces. This inclu­des mana­ging your money and keeping track of prepaid cards—w­here they are, how much is on them, what they’ve been used for so far, and the billing infor­ma­tion atta­ched to them. For exam­ple, if a website requi­res you to put in a billing address for the card, make sure you note which billing address has been used for which cards. This way, you won’t have the card get rejec­ted due to using contra­dic­tory infor­ma­tion.

First steps

1. Purchase and Test Estra­diol

Cost: $800 ($300 for estra­diol, $500 for the test)

Raw estra­diol can be purcha­sed directly from manu­fac­tu­rers listed on the Estra­diol PubChem page. The prices they quote are prohi­bi­ti­vely expen­sive, and many manu­fac­tu­rers will only ship to busi­nes­ses or rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons. That may not be an insur­moun­ta­ble hurd­le—it might suffice to find a friend with a .edu email address and an address to receive packa­ges.

Alter­na­ti­vely, you can message gray market vendors from China, such as Hanz­hong Han Trace­a­bi­lity Biolo­gi­cal Tech­no­logy Co. Ltd. To find more vendors, try sear­ching “estra­diol suppli­ers china” on duck­duckgo. They usually sell bulk amounts of estra­diol; howe­ver, the quality may be lower as a result. When commu­ni­ca­ting with a vendor, only email them from your secure email account. See if you can pay via money order. If you can, purchase a money order with cash and mail it to them. If that is not an option, use cash to purchase a pre-paid debit card from Walmart or anot­her big box store. You might be able to pay with bitcoin, but make sure that the bitcoin itself was purcha­sed in a manner that can’t be traced (e.g., with cash).

Purchase 100 grams of pure estra­diol, CAS number 50–28–2. Have it ship­ped to you using one of the methods outli­ned above. If you used a prepaid debit card, make note of it in your spre­ads­heet.

If you bought your estra­diol from a gray market supplier, you will need to test it when it arri­ves. Go to toxas­so­ci­a­tes.com. Order a compre­hen­sive drug analy­sis: tell them you want a quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis of estra­diol and a test for heavy metals. Pay for the test with a money order purcha­sed with cash and await your results. If the test doesn’t come back clean (e.g., they sold you a bunch of baking soda), go back and start over.

If you can go in on this step with other groups like yours, you could save a lot of money. Assu­ming multi­ple chap­ters place an order of estra­diol toget­her, you’ll only need a single test for everyone.

You’re looking for the results to say >99% estra­diol and no heavy metals or anyt­hing else detec­ted. Ours was 97%. We would love to know what the other 3% is—but after exten­sive rese­arch, it appe­a­red that we’d need thou­sands of dollars and corpo­rate or acade­mic creden­ti­als to find out. If you know of anot­her way to iden­tify impu­ri­ties in a sample, please fairy­wingsmaproton­mail [ punto ] com (contact us)!

Purchase the Mate­ri­als

1. Purchase 6 gallons of 95% alco­hol.

Cost: $650

You can buy alco­hol in bulk online from Laba­lley.com and orga­ni­cal­co­hol.com. Laba­lley often offers good sales. Depen­ding on the vendor, alco­hol may be refer­red to as etha­nol. Etha­nol is the name for the kind of alco­hol that you can drink. You could also use isopropyl alco­hol, which is much chea­per—­but not for inter­nal consump­tion, as it causes organ damage and blind­ness. We went with etha­nol because we wanted to stick as close to the patent as possi­ble. The patent menti­ons that you can use isopropyl alco­hol, but they imply that etha­nol is prefer­red.

If you order from Laba­lley, bear in mind that they will auto­ma­ti­cally cancel any order that has a diffe­rent ship­ping and billing address. To get around this, have a friend buy alco­hol from them legi­ti­ma­tely, paying with their own card and ship­ping it to their legal name. You will need to have alco­hol ship­ped to some­one older than 21 and they must sign for the package when it arri­ves.

You could also get around this step by buying Ever­clear from liquor stores. This has the advan­tage of being faster and avai­la­ble in return for cash, but it is also much more expen­si­ve—we calcu­la­ted that it would be roughly three times more expen­sive to use Ever­clear.

Alco­hol is extre­mely flam­ma­ble. Six gallons of it should be consi­de­red a major hazard. Do not open the container it comes in until you’re ready to make a batch. Store the alco­hol far away from any fire hazards. Never smoke while working with alco­hol; make sure there are no open flames anyw­here nearby.

2. Purchase two gallons of propy­lene glycol USP.

Cost: $150

Propy­lene glycol is a very common chemi­cal. You can obtain it via a number of websi­tes, inclu­ding the afore­men­ti­o­ned Laba­lley. Where­ver you get it, make sure that it’s pure propy­lene glycol, not propy­lene glycol mixed with somet­hing else.

USP (United States Phar­ma­co­po­eia) refers to a stan­dard of purity for chemi­cals. All chemi­cals should be sold to you as USP. If you can afford it, you should send all of your reagents off for testing in addi­tion to the estra­diol.

3. Purchase two liters of diethy­lene glycol mono­ethyl ether USP.

Cost: $200

Follow the same steps as for propy­lene glycol to obtain diethy­lene glycol mono­ethyl ether. We could not find other vendors for diethy­lene glycol mono­ethyl ether besi­des Laba­lley.com.

4. Purchase a large wide mouth glass container for mixing.

Cost: $30

Throug­hout the manu­fac­tu­ring process, we use glass because it’s nonre­ac­tive.

Realis­ti­cally, it’s hard to find wide-mouth glass contain­ers larger than two or two and a half gallons. You can find five-gallon glass carboys (the kind of bott­les used in water coolers), but it is diffi­cult to mix liquids in them owing to their narrow mouths. You might be able to find a worka­round invol­ving a long, narrow stir­ring stick, a magne­tic stir­rer, or somet­hing else.

We used a wide-mouth glass container of appro­xi­ma­tely two-gallon capa­city. Gene­rally bigger is better, provi­ded that you can find a way to stir it.

You might be able to find a large enough glass container at a store. If you can, use cash to buy it. If you can’t find one in a store, there are plenty of opti­ons on Amazon.com.

5. Purchase an even larger glass container for storing the finis­hed product.

Cost: $60

The size of this container doesn’t matter so long as it is bigger than the mixing container and it is made of glass. It’s unli­kely you’ll be able to purchase this item in person at a store. You can get a five-gallon glass carboy for $60 on Amazon.com.

6. Purchase seven wide-mouth glass contain­ers of medium size.

Cost: $100

The size of these contain­ers doesn’t matter as much. Perhaps half a gallon. These should abso­lu­tely be purcha­sed with cash at a store. Walmart and ACE Hard­ware offer six-packs of half gallon mason jars for somet­hing like $20. You can likely spend far less than $100 for all of these if you go to a thrift shop.

7. Purchase scales.

Cost: $75

One scale will need to be a higher capa­city kitchen scale accu­rate to within .1 g. The other must be accu­rate down to 0.01 g. Make sure that the higher capa­city scale can handle the weight of the mixing jar and water or alco­hol. For the batch size we’re talking about here, the scale should have a capa­city of at least 15 pounds, prefe­rably 20.

8. Purchase bott­les and tinc­ture drop­pers.

Cost: $600

There are seve­ral websi­tes where you can buy bott­les and drop­pers in bulk, inclu­ding thebott­les­tore.com and contain­e­rand­pac­ka­ging.com.

Buy at least 350 four-ounce amber Boston round bott­les and an equal number of 1 ml tinc­ture drop­pers. Make sure that the bott­les and drop­pers have matching neck sizes. In our case, we used the neck finish 24–400.

9. Purchase misce­lla­ne­ous lab equip­ment.

Cost: $100

For this step, we’re mostly thin­king about gloves, goggles, a table if you need one, and any other small items.

10. Buy water.

Cost: $20

Buy four gallons of disti­lled water from any grocery store. It must be disti­lled water, not spring water, “puri­fied” water, or anyt­hing else.

Make a batch

Over­view

The basics of making trans­der­mal estro­gen are as follows: measure out all of the raw mate­ri­als by mass, add them to a mixing container, mix vigo­rously, pour into a larger container, and bottle it from there. To bottle it, just pour the mixture out of the large carboy into a smaller wide-mouth container, then scoop it out and pour it into bott­les. The point of using the carboy is to enable one team to conti­nue to make two-gallon batches while anot­her team bott­les. Based on our expe­ri­ence, the bott­le­neck in this process, ironi­cally, is bott­ling. Because we bott­led by hand, that part took much longer than prepa­ring the batch itself. Using the carboy is a way to speed up the process. Other­wise, the team making each batch will have to stop and wait until all of the trans­der­mal estro­gen has been bott­led before they can start making the next batch.

You’ll be making about five batches of two gallons each. The process is actu­ally pretty straight­for­ward—it just takes a while to bottle. You should set aside about four hours for the whole process. Keep in mind that this will likely be messy, invol­ving alco­hol spilling over your work envi­ron­ment. You should pick a place where that won’t be an issue and clean up as you go. Don’t work by open windows where passersby can see what you’re doing—t­hey might think you’re making drugs.

1. Label all of your contain­ers.

Once you’re ready to get star­ted, clean your work surface, lay out all of the mate­ri­als, and label your contain­ers. You should have a weig­hing container and an over­flow container for every ingre­di­ent except estra­diol. You should also have a two-gallon mixing container, a five-gallon (or more) glass carboy, and a bott­ling jar.

If you orde­red more than one bottle of somet­hing, keep only one out on your work surface. This will help keep the space less clut­te­red. You can also have the bott­ling station set up sepa­ra­tely to keep things orga­ni­zed.

2. Put on PPE

This means long slee­ves, gloves, and goggles. If you have long hair, put it up before begin­ning.

3. Add 16.4 grams of estra­diol in the two-gallon mixing container.

Place your estra­diol weig­hing container on the scale and tare it. Then add 16.4 grams of estra­diol using a spoon. If you add too much, scoop some back into the container that the estra­diol came in. Then pour the estra­diol into the two-gallon glass jar. Some estra­diol will likely remain in the cup. We will deal with that in a second.

4. Measure out 2872.9 grams of alco­hol to the mixing container and mix vigo­rously.

Place the alco­hol weig­hing container on the larger scale and tare it. Then add 2872.9 grams of alco­hol. If you add too much, pour some out into the alco­hol over­flow jar until you’ve got the number right. When you are weig­hing out alco­hol for the next batch, add this over­flow into the alco­hol weig­hing container first. As you pour alco­hol into the mixing container, have some­one hold the estra­diol weig­hing container in the mixing jar and pour in the alco­hol such that it washes it out. Once the alco­hol has been poured in, mix vigo­rously it for one minute using a glass stir­ring rod. If you don’t have one, use a large metal serving spoon.

5. Add 2585.7 grams of disti­lled water to the mixing container and stir.

Use the large scale to measure out 2585.7 grams of disti­lled water. Use the water over­flow jar to pour out any over­flow. When you’ve got the amount right, add it to the mixing container and mix it vigo­rously for one minute.

6. Add 1026.6 grams of propy­lene glycol and stir.

Follow these steps for propy­lene glycol (PG). PG over­flow goes into the PG over­flow jar; add it to the next batch. If you want to be espe­ci­ally precise, make sure to weigh the weig­hing container after you’ve poured the propy­lene glycol into the mixing container, so you can tell exac­tly how much remains in the container. Write this amount down and add slightly more than that amount to the PG weig­hing container. Add this to the mixing jar, then check the weight to see how much actu­ally ended up in the mixing jar. Repeat until you’re satis­fied that you’re close enough. Once you are done adding PG, mix vigo­rously for one minute.

7. Add 342.2 grams of diethy­lene glycol mono­ethyl ether and stir.

Follow this same proce­dure for diethy­lene glycol mono­ethyl ether and mix vigo­rously for one minute.

8. Pour the mixing container into the carboy; begin bott­ling; start the next batch.

When you have finis­hed steps 1–7, you have comple­ted a two-gallon batch. Using a large clean funnel, pour all of the contents of the mixing container into the glass carboy. The bott­ling team can then pour the trans­der­mal estro­gen out of the carboy and into anot­her wide-mouth container. From there, they can scoop out the trans­der­mal estro­gen using a ½ or ¾ measu­ring cup and a funnel to pour it into bott­les. Leave a little room at the top when you fill the bott­les—ot­her­wise, when you add the drop­per lid, it will over­flow. After filling a bottle, dry it with a towel and then add a label. Store the bottle in whate­ver box or container you’re keeping the trans­der­mal estro­gen in before distri­bu­ting it.

While one group of people is bott­ling, anot­her group should repeat steps 1–7. Conti­nue to do so until you no longer have enough raw mate­ri­als to make anot­her batch. At that point, you can either stop and help with bott­ling or measure out the last of whate­ver ingre­di­ent you don’t have enough of, and then calcu­late new amounts for all the other ingre­di­ents using the ratios provi­ded. For exam­ple, if you only have 1500 grams of alco­hol, you can’t make a full batch. But since you know that alco­hol is 42% of the batch by weight, you can work out what the total weight of the last (smaller) batch should be and make one more batch before you reor­der supplies.

9. Clean up your works­pace.

When you’re done, clean up your work area. Tear off all of the labels of the packa­ges you recei­ved and burn them (somew­here far away from the alco­hol). This is to prevent you from putting a bunch of incri­mi­na­ting evidence into the same dumps­ter. Once all of the labels are dispo­sed of, you can discard the boxes as regu­lar recy­cling. If you peel the labels off the chemi­cals you bought (the propy­lene glycol and diethy­lene glycol mono­ethyl ether), you can also dispose of them as normal recy­cling. If not, dispose of each one in a sepa­rate dumps­ter that cannot be connec­ted to you.

Empty any remai­ning over­flow contain­ers back into their origi­nal bott­les. Wash all non-dispo­sa­ble lab equip­ment thoroughly. Return all of your supplies to storage. You should have about 300 bott­les filled, though you might have less, depen­ding on whet­her you worked until you ran out of an ingre­di­ent or just stop­ped when you didn’t have enough for a full batch.

10. Print zines

We made a zine explai­ning our process and goals to distri­bute along with the trans­der­mal estro­gen. We desig­ned it from scratch because we didn’t have a model to work from. You’re welcome to take the one we made, change out the contact infor­ma­tion and any other details, and print your own edition. Make sure to change the title of the zine to “Boobs Not Bombs—[Your chap­ter’s name]” or somet­hing other than the title of our zine, so as to not confuse people. If you’d like an elec­tro­nic copy of our zine for editing, fairy­wingsmaproton­mail [ punto ] com (email us).

Giving the length of this zine, prin­ting will be expen­sive. We recom­mend finding some­one with a prin­ting hook up.

Distri­bute

1. Create a distri­bu­tion network.

For a clan­des­tine arran­ge­ment, keep the bott­les your­self and distri­bute them through word of mouth only. If you’re comfor­ta­ble with a more public arran­ge­ment, you could adver­tise online and mail the bott­les out. If you want to go this route, you could contact hrt.cafe and see if your small opera­tion can be listed on the website. You could also set up a BnB station somew­here presen­ting the bott­les and zines along­side a dona­tion jar. Peri­o­di­cally check the sites to keep them stoc­ked.

You could also offer your wares at Really Really Free Markets, Food Not Bombs servings, drag shows, art spaces, and any other loca­tion frequen­ted by people who might like to have access to estro­gen. Of parti­cu­lar inter­est are places (such as Repu­bli­can-contro­lled states) that are making it incre­a­singly diffi­cult to access hormo­nes.

The more decen­tra­li­zed the network that is produ­cing estro­gen, the more diffi­cult it will be to suppress it.

2. Distri­bute bott­les.

Once you know where to take the bott­les/zines, physi­cally trans­port them to all of the vari­ous loca­ti­ons. You could mail them, but that would be expen­sive, as the bott­les are heavy. If you ship bott­les, package them so they don’t shat­ter in tran­sit.

If you’re distri­bu­ting at physi­cal loca­ti­ons, you could set up a station with bott­les, zines, and a dona­tion jar. This might neces­si­tate a folding table or rack for each loca­tion. For a dona­tion jar, you could cut an opening in the lid of an old coffee container and write “dona­ti­ons” in large visi­ble letters on it.

Once you have run out of bott­les and zines, collect a final round of dona­ti­ons, conduct any addi­ti­o­nal fundrai­sing neces­sary, and then repeat the process from the begin­ning.

Further Resour­ces

• The zine, patents, and spre­ads­he­ets that this arti­cle is deri­ved from
• trans­fems­ci­ence.org—We recom­mend this website for your rese­arch needs. The site is run by trans­femme people for trans­femme people and inter­es­ted medi­cal prac­ti­ti­o­ners. We recom­mend spen­ding a consi­de­ra­ble amount of time lear­ning about femi­ni­zing hormone therapy.
• trans­diy.reddit.com
• estro­gel.reddit.com
• hrt.cafe—This site is great for sour­cing everyt­hing you’d need for femi­ni­zing hormone therapy, inclu­ding anti­an­dro­gens. The down­side is that the site only inclu­des items that must be purcha­sed online.