Short and squeaky-voiced man reveals how he was repeatedly mistaken for a woman until his 20s

A man has revealed how he was repeatedly mistaken for a woman prior to his 20s – until he finally developed  beard and grew five inches thanks to testosterone shots. 

Ashley Hemming, 22, from Worcester, claimed he always felt behind his classmates at school when they started to go through puberty and shoot past him in height.

As his friends’ voices began to break in their early teens, he was left ‘sounding like a girl’ with a high-pitched voice and was mercilessly mocked because of it.

While working in a cafe aged 19, Ashley says customers often used to mistake him for a girl and would call him ‘miss’, ‘she’ or ‘love’.

Ashley said he first noticed his ‘differences’ aged 13 and always felt there was something wrong with him, but was too embarrassed to go to the doctors.

It was only when he finally plucked up the courage to book a GP appointment in August 2020 with encouragement from his family that he was diagnosed with hormonal condition male hypogonadism and started to receive help.

According to the Mayo Clinic, male hypogonadism is a condition in which the body doesn’t produce enough testosterone, which plays a vital role in masculine growth and development during puberty.

A man can either be born with the disorder or it can develop later in life often caused by injury or infection.

Ashley, now deep-voiced, bearded and standing tall at 6ft 3in, shared his experience on TikTok to raise awareness of his condition and encourage other blokes to seek help.

Ashley said: ‘I was about 13 when my school friends’ voices started to deepen and grow taller than me and grow facial hair and I wasn’t. I was still a small kid with a high voice.

‘At first I just thought I was behind in puberty and just thought I’d give myself some time but as I got older, I felt embarrassed to speak out about.

‘It made me feel really down and there was nothing anyone could do. I thought I was just going to be like this my whole life.

‘There were a few people that liked to make fun of my voice. It was just really high and I sounded like a girl.

‘I was embarrassed to go to the doctors and I didn’t feel like I could speak out about it.

‘During Covid I lost my job so I spent a lot of my time lying in bed and just thinking about my life and how it would be different if I had spoken out [about how I was feeling].

‘I never had the confidence to ask a girl out as I struggled with how I looked and my voice.

‘I grew my hair out during Covid and I got a new job in a cafe and when I used to serve people they would say ‘thank you miss’ or ‘thank you love’.

‘This made me feel really down because I am a male and people looked at me as if I was a female. I was really down and I just didn’t feel happy.

‘I went to the GP and he booked me in for blood tests and this showed that I had low testosterone hormone levels.

‘I also had an MRI scan, which showed that the signal in my brain that usually releases these hormones wasn’t working.’ 

Following his initial doctor’s appointment, Ashley met with a hormone specialist and was prescribed fortnightly hormone injections to increase his testosterone levels.

Ashley says after two months of taking the hormone boosters in 2021, his voice began to drop and nine months later he began to develop facial hair.

He also claims he grew a whopping five inches, from 5ft 10in to 6ft 3in, and has become more confident in himself as he continues to take the hormone injections.

Ashley is now advocating other men to seek professional help if they feel their hormones are imbalanced and say he wishes he had visited a doctor years before he finally did.

Ashley said: ‘It was a relief to find out that something was wrong and I wasn’t just thinking all of this in my head.

‘I would say to other people, if you are feeling something is wrong you need to go to the doctors because I wish I had done it four years before I did.

‘My confidence is a bit better but I’m still not at the stage where I feel ready to go on a date. I’m never mistaken for a woman anymore. It feels good to be called ‘sir’ or ‘mr’ now.

‘The reason I didn’t go to the doctors is because I felt embarrassed and like I was making it up [how I was feeling].

‘Also, because I was a man, I thought I shouldn’t be feeling this way. Loads of men go through this and they don’t speak out about it.

‘Too many men suffer without saying how they feel and they need to speak out and go to the doctor.

‘Before I was diagnosed with this, I had never heard of it before but recently I have heard of more people that have gone through this.’