Nevo Zisin photographed in Sydney in March, 2017. Credit:Daniel Munoz Shortly after my 18th birthday, I'd be travelling to Israel with Jewish youth organisation Habo to engage in a year-long leadership program. I wanted to start testosterone right away. My family was against the idea. It would be the longest time I'd been away from them, and that, coupled with the potential of me physically transitioning, was too much. They were concerned that I would change while overseas and they would no longer recognise me. They were worried about how young I was and felt I wasn't self-aware enough to be certain that this was the right thing. They also wanted me to go through the journey with my family to support me, and were worried I wouldn't have enough support from the people I was travelling with. I once did a first-aid course where they taught us that when someone is unconscious and not breathing, they are in the worst situation they could possibly be in. Their airways are the priority. While conducting CPR, you can accidentally break a few ribs or injure another part of the person to save them – but it doesn't matter, because they couldn't possibly be worse off than they were at that point in time. The only important thing was to save them.

Zisin's autobiography: Finding Nevo, How I Confused Everyone. This is how I felt about taking testosterone. I didn't care if I would maybe one day in the future regret it, or if the effects were not what I anticipated. I didn't care if it made me a "real" man, or if some of my relationships would be affected along the way. I know that sounds incredibly selfish, but that's because it was. I needed to go on testosterone for my survival, and I'm not sure I would be here today had I not. So I made the most difficult decision of my life. I went against the opinion and decisions of the people I loved and trusted the most, and I decided to take testosterone as soon as I got to Israel. On January 29, 2014, cramped in a small bathroom in a hotel in Tel Aviv with two friends, I applied my testosterone gel for the first time.

I felt free to do what I'd known I needed to do for a long time. I walked out of that bathroom the same person that had gone in. The world hadn't ended and everything was going to be okay. I was sure I'd done the right thing. I wasn't going to experience any significant changes for a while, particularly on a half-dose, but there was something comforting in the thought that there was testosterone coursing through my veins. I felt peaceful, like I didn't need to fight my body any more. It was going to start doing what I wanted it to. I found that testosterone allowed me to focus on other things. Gender was no longer at the forefront of my mind because I had a new-found comfort in my body. Knowing that changes were happening slowly felt like a daily affirmation, and evidence I could be whoever I wanted to be.

And because changes were gradual, I wasn't as obsessed with monitoring them as I had anticipated. I thought I would scrutinise every minor change, make videos and comparison photos, but I was so busy and distracted that I wasn't overly conscious of how I looked, which I think was very positive. Had I transitioned while at home, I believe I would have paid far more attention to the little details. I'm glad that, for the most part, my mind was elsewhere. Changes were happening. I was grateful my period stopped earlier than expected. It wasn't necessarily something that caused me stress, but it was certainly a major inconvenience I was happy to be rid of. Plus, I would save plenty of money on sanitary items. My voice began to drop, hair grew in places it hadn't before like my stomach, toes and upper arms, veins popped out more, my appetite increased dramatically and I gained weight. This was scary because of my turbulent history with weight and exercise, but I was in such a safe environment that I was surprised to find it didn't bother me. Plus being exposed to lots of new and exciting and oily Middle Eastern food meant a lot of people were gaining weight alongside me.

Over time, I developed more acne, more pronounced muscles, a change in body odour, my face became fuller, my voice cracked more frequently and I had significant struggles with crying. It wasn't that I didn't want to cry; I absolutely love crying. I think testosterone halted my tear production and made it a lot more difficult to cry. That made me want to cry. My voice changed and it hurt my throat to sing too high. I became self-conscious about my voice and the loss of range I was experiencing, and I stopped singing completely for over a year. I had been away for around eight months when my mum came to Israel to visit me. We were in contact most days through the glorious modern technologies of WhatsApp, Skype, Viber and Facebook. I had kept her updated on my program, my journey and my feelings, and she had been watching my YouTube videos so she could follow the changes I was experiencing on testosterone.

I was eager for her arrival and looking forward to spending some time on holidays, getting away from a household of 16 people. It was amazing to be reunited, but even though Mum had been watching my videos, she wasn't quite prepared for how hairy I would be. I met up with her at the LGBTQIA+ Pride Parade in Jerusalem and the first thing she commented on when she saw me was my facial hair. Then I showed her my stomach and leg hair … The changes I experienced on testosterone were significant. With every month throughout my year in Israel, I knew I had made the right decision to be on testosterone. Yet I think the biggest change was less the physical attributes and more how the world treated me as a man, compared to as a woman.

People have argued with me against feminism. They have tried to convince me there are no differences between men and women in our society. While this may be the experience of some, that does not make it the truth. I can give tangible examples of how people's interactions with me have changed since my transition. When I identified as a woman, I was often called "sweetheart", "darling" and "honey". I never liked those labels. They created a power imbalance where the person calling me that was asserting some kind of dominance over me. I was no one's "sweetheart". I think this feeds the societal expectation that women should be polite, quiet and lovely – a sweetheart. I come from a long line of loud and not particularly polite women, and I'm proud of that.

Often men would speak over me, interrupt me and say things similar to if not the exact thing I had just said. I rarely walked home alone at night. Even during the day I felt scared passing strange men on the street. I made sure I was always accompanied, that someone always knew where I was, and I would have fake conversations on the phone while walking past people to seem less vulnerable. I had adjusted to being afraid of men. It was an expected reality. I felt a large shift in how I was treated when I was read as a man. I was suddenly referred to as "bro", "mate" and "dude", which made me feel accepted into some sort of covenant. Those words reflect a certain closeness and level of friendship that "sweetheart" and "honey" do not. I suppose I started to feel a brotherhood with men that I had never felt before. I felt taken more seriously by men.

If I said anything about feminism, I felt listened to, compared to being trivialised when I was presenting as a woman. People laughed at my jokes more and I was allowed greater space to speak. There was a new energy when walking home at night. I felt safer, and I realised that when I was walking behind women at night, they might perceive me as a threat. I had to be aware of what being read as a man would mean for women. I started crossing the road and avoiding situations that could make a woman feel unsafe. These were not privileges I had anticipated or ever wanted, but I had a new responsibility in recognising how a society that favours men would favour me when read as one of them. People stopped commenting on my weight and the clothing I wore. Comments became more focused on how strong I was rather than how skinny, or how nice my shirt was.

There was less pressure on my appearance because suddenly I was valued for the content of my personality, rather than my physical attributes. I could grow my body hair out without being stared at, wear the same outfit every day without anyone saying anything or even noticing. Loading After my transition, my mum even asserted that now I was the man of the house, I would have to do some heavy lifting. I went from one rigid gender box to another, but this one had more space. This is an edited extract from Finding Nevo by Nevo Zisin (Black Dog Books), out now.