walk in the room like I am the problem
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I’ve been reading about the bird flu virus (H5N1) that’s progressing, and this particular quote from a December 2024 article stood out to me:
“If you want to keep this from becoming a human pandemic, you focus on protecting farmworkers,—”
Article link: Scientific American
UnMasked Thoughts: 8 - Medium, face masks and paint markers.
• January 2025, Ave •
Image description in keep reading and alt text
Image description of a black KN95 against an off-white background with words written in white paint marker that reads: “Don’t ignore the bird flu like you did Covid.” The artist social media handle @afroflowerr is at the bottom of the mask. END ID
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After all the experiences I've had, I'm really pissed off that doctors stop looking for answers once someone has a diagnosis, even if that diagnosis doesn't explain anything.
I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia years ago. Fibromyalgia just means "muscle pain," and it's not a diagnosis that actually explains the *cause* of the pain. It turns out that my pain has likely actually been caused by a serious illness that can be fatal. I feel like my doctors were dangerously negligent in not considering this as a possibility.
I was also diagnosed with vulvodynia, which just means "vulvar pain." And, you guessed it, this doesn't explain what causes the pain. Because of this diagnosis, my gynecologists ignored me when I said I had severe vaginal pain that was getting worse. They prescribed me anxiety meds, as if I was being hysterical. Then it turns out that I have some kind of tumor or cyst that could be cancerous.
If any of y'all are going into the medical field, please keep looking for answers even after your patients have been diagnosed. Diagnoses can be wrong, and patients can have more than one illness at a time.
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I'm suddenly extremely manic. I'm not at the point of proclaiming myself to be a goddess like I was when I was at my most manic, but I am definitely not okay either. My mood has been stable since October or November, so this came out of nowhere.
I'm never prepared for it when it happens. I need to make some kind of "mental health change preparation bag" like I have a bag ready if I need to go to the emergency room.
I don't have anything to say in this post. I just wanted to gripe somewhere about being bipolar.
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I know I've stopped talking about my cancer scare since the MRI didn't find anything. But the surgeon told me that there still is a small chance it's cancer.
If it's cancer, it's cancer that was allowed to fester for far too long, because I'm 2spirit. The gynecologist who I saw for a decade said NOTHING when I kept coming into her office with clear symptoms of cancer, like bleeding heavily 24/7. I saw other gynecologists who viewed me as a trans man and were visibly disgusted.
I did see one gynecologist after I'd detransitioned (I'm 2spirit, but I see myself as more cis than trans now) who took care to address me as a man and to treat me like he'd treat anyone else. But I saw *so many* gynecologists. Just one out of many treating me like a human being is not enough.
I still could die from this brutal combination of transphobia, enbyphobia, and transandrophobia. And I guess that's okay, because I don't want to live in a world that treats people like this.
#transandrophobia#enbyphobia#sorry for being melodramatic but i am just very aware that this is a serious medical issue that nobody took seriously
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![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/9468008d8ed97f356ea0cfdca51b0c17/2831d4107ad842a1-d8/s540x810/66ada057b8560985421b7cee4f6e2460650340db.jpg)
"Rather than fight back, we chose to sacrifice trans children."
Absolutely damning statement. Quisling behavior. Vinchy France behavior.
That's what we are to all these organizations (NCMEC, hospitals, The Democratic Party)
An acceptable sacrifice. I'm so tired of it. Trans people are real. We're living, breathing people with hopes and dreams and wants and needs, not a sacrificial lamb to offer up to appease MAGA.
Especially because the MAGA beast won't be satiated after it consumes us
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![Tumblr media](https://64.media.tumblr.com/763a89eb98b7246f6d35675a1146cf35/3f5279d772cea26e-81/s540x810/5c3393860ece36ad476dd5e02c9699b706c4f998.jpg)
Slaves who escaped were breaking the law. Literally. Outright.
Jewish people who escaped the Nazis were breaking the law. Literally. Outright.
The law is a horrible judge of morality.
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With this latest round of discourse being "trans men shouldn't complain about being kicked out of women's spaces", I felt the urge to write up a relatively long post regarding the topic, as I feel it is a long tangled mess and involves a significant amount of people simply talking past each other.
To begin, what is a woman's space? I ask this, because "women's spaces" often fall under one of three categories: medical services, social services, and social gatherings. Of the three, trans men need access to nearly everything if not everything included within "medical services" and "social services". These things often need to be considered co-ed anyway, but are still considered "for women" and often are labeled things like "women's health" or "women's defense". Social gatherings- things such as book clubs, concerts, festivals, and other similar outings- can have a nuanced and complicated history when it comes to the inclusion, or exclusion, of trans men.
As an example- I am a binary, gay trans man who has not yet been sterilized. If I become pregnant and need to seek out social services, I must do so via my provider's "Women and Babies" department. I am neither of those things, and yet regardless of whether I am completing or terminating the pregnancy, I must label myself a woman in order to receive care. If I wish to have a pap smear, receive birth control, or investigate my chances of ovarian and cervical cancer, I must do so via the "Women's Health Clinic". I am not a woman, but I must label myself as one in order to discuss sterilization options. Many trans men who have had their gender markers changed prior to sterilization have reported difficulty even booking an appointment, as well as difficulty convincing their insurance to pay for this appointment due to a discrepancy with gender markers vs gendered care. Many have discussed the realities of being a pregnant man, whether they remained pregnant until their child was born, or whether they terminated said pregnancy with an abortion.
It should come as no surprise that the statistics for trans men receiving quality gynecological care are abysmal. It should be equally unsurprising to hear how many trans men have died from botched abortions, untreated miscarriages, infections and cancers of the uterus and cervix and ovaries, and complications during pregnancy or birth. We belong in this space, despite it being labeled "for women", and the only thing pushing us out has done is quite literally what's been killing us.
This is, of course, not even taking into account the numbers of trans men who have been forced to become pregnant via their husbands or families as a means to detransition them, and those who have become pregnant as a result of corrective rape. There is a saying among trans men of my age- it isn't "we all know a guy this has happened to", it's "which of us haven't experienced this? who among us doesn't fear this? who will it happen to next?"
Which brings me to my next point: women's social services. As with women's medical care, nearly everything labeled "for women" as a social service must be inclusive to trans men. Shelters for domestic violence survivors, rape crisis centers, self defense classes, family planning, these are all things that honestly should already be co-ed. But, many times, they are exclusively targeted towards women. I understand why, I do. But with trans men being statistically more likely than cis women to experience the need for these services, it seems a cruelty to close their doors to a vulnerable demographic reaching out for help.
Where should trans men in crisis go? Shutting the door to us without addressing the reason we need to access these resources gives us a single ultimatum: detransition, or die. Go back to being a woman, or die knowing the likelihood that a woman's name will adorn your headstone, and "daughter, wife, mother" will be said in your obituary. Much like the medical services, this incomplete answer has lead many trans men to their deaths. Whether by their own hands, or by their attackers'.
But there are other social services out there that perhaps are not as dire. Women's scholarships, colleges, all girls schools. Girl Scouts, women's sport leagues, gym memberships. Trans men don't need access to these, right?
Well... is the trans man in question out? Has he been living as a man, or is he still closeted? Is it safe for him to come out? Does he pass, or has he just bought his first binder and given himself his first buzz cut? Is he living under the control of his parents, or is he able to freely decide for himself the type of person he'd like to be and the type of life he'd like to live?
You see, I was a Girl Scout once. And, if we are to believe to our core that trans men are men even before they know the words "transgender", this means I was a boy in a girl's space. I didn't know that being transgender was an option for me at the point where my troop disbanded, and another leader to replace the first within my local area was not found until after I had aged out.
But also... I was in 7th grade when my troop disbanded. Two years later, I would learn the word "transgender", and suddenly everything would make sense. Two years later, I would come out to my parents and my sisters. To put this into perspective, I graduated high school in 2010. The Boy Scouts officially allowed cisgender girls and transgender people of all genders to join all programs in 2019.
I was not expelled from my Girl Scout troop. My leader simply stopped showing up to meetings, and my troop disbanded to go our separate ways when leadership could not find someone quickly enough to replace her. But... if this had not happened, I would have been a recently out transgender boy in a girl's social service, still wearing push up bras and frilly shirts because that's all my parents would buy me until I became an adult and moved out and had a job with my own money to re-purchase myself a wardrobe. Indistinguishable from any of the others, outside of what went on inside my own mind.
I would not have been accepted into the Boy Scouts, if Girl Scouts had been taken from me as abruptly as it was from a different transgender boy in the same state I was born and raised. Which would have left me with... nothing. Neither. And the only reason I even joined the Girl Scouts was because I had wanted to join the Boy Scouts and the local troop had refused to allow me, because they had labeled me a girl.
I don't believe I'm the one that coined Schrodinger's Gender, but I do reference it often. In this situation, one is both a boy when it hurts, and a girl when it hurts. Even if that gender label changes by the second, the point is to use your gender and your assigned sex to hurt you.
But then, why do these services even have to be gendered to begin with? After all, Boy Scouts just updated to be The Scouts, and has removed (on paper) the insistence on gendering.
Well... I certainly agree that the majority of gendering these services is at this point a concept that needs to be reformed, but I'm unconvinced that we will be able to completely integrate without addressing the reason they were segregated by gender in the first place.
Women's gym memberships are gender segregated for two reasons. Women and girls- and anyone labeled as women and girls, regardless of true identity- are frequently not afforded the same access to resources as cisgender men and boys. Women and girls- and anyone labeled such- are frequently at high risk of predatory sexual behavior and physical violence. Both of these problems are symptoms of a larger system of misogyny at play, and both of these problems directly affect trans men especially those who have not transitioned in a way that makes them pass for cis men.
Regardless of the truth of my identity, the reality is that I was seen as and treated as a girl when it came to physical fitness, and thus barred from the same activities freely offered to the boys. Regardless of the truth of my identity, I have experienced predatory sexual behavior from cis men as young as 8 or 9 years old, continuing past when I came out and began to transition socially.
If the problem is not addressed, cis women cannot re-integrate with cis men. But, additionally, if the problem is not addressed, the choice still remains clear for trans men. Detransition, stay closeted, or go without.
A common complaint of trans men is the invisibility and erasure our demographic faces. It should be easy to see why this happens. The problem of a misogynistic society is one that continues to this day, and without addressing the problem we cannot hope for success in creating a more inclusive space. At the same time, trans men are being pushed out and isolated as they realize they must make a choice.
As for social gatherings, such as a woman's retreat or a woman's music festival? Of course, it may sound odd to say that a trans man should feel welcome there. But the truth of the matter is the majority of the trans men asking for the ability to stay are trans men who have been within that space for years already, prior to coming out, prior to realizing some things about their genders, prior to taking their first steps as men.
I'm pretty good friends with an older butch who told me that I am the first person they ever told that they were a nonbinary man. This person is in their 50s. They're married. But the wife doesn't like it, and they love their wife too much to cause friction in the relationship, so they keep it to themselves, and they keep quiet, and they don't say anything about being transgender, but in their head they aren't a woman. This person is not a woman, by their own insistence. Should this person be forcibly ejected from their local lesbian community, which they and the wife helped form decades ago? Should they divorce their wife, since that would make her not a lesbian anymore?
What harm is it, truly, to allow this person to stay? Social isolation kills people. The trans man suicide statistics are just as abysmal as any of the others I've mentioned here. Forcing someone to burn 20, 30, 40 years of their lives and their friends and their achievements because they are finally living as themselves is a deeply hurtful and isolating experience.
The majority of trans men asking to be included in these spaces are not trans men like me- who never really jived with the idea of womanhood and distanced ourselves as much as possible the moment we saw the opportunity. They are men like my friend, often existing outside of the binary, often with a deep love and appreciation for womanhood despite realizing that perhaps the label does not fit them as well as they once thought. They often have many years of connection, entire lives spent intwined in these spaces.
What good does it do to chase them out? What harm does it to do let them stay?
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"I support the death penalty" so, what has the government done to make you trust them to decide who deserves to die?
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to trans men: you don't have to and can stop apologizing for being a man. it'll save you. you don't have to hate yourself for the approval of transphobic assholes like that. trans manhood is quite literally nothing to be ashamed of.
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“LGB Without The T”
personal art. it seems like the tide of lgb folks turning to viciously attack trans folks has seen a sharp uptick recently, at a time when we, the trans community, need all the support and protection and community we can get. it was trans women who fought for your rights, it was trans women who were on the front lines, it was trans women who lead us into revolution. trans people have always existed and the community was built on their sacrifice, their blood and sweat and tears and corpses. how dare you reap what we sowed and then shun us from our own crops.
artist’s pronouns are they/them. artist is a nonbinary lesbian.
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*becomes everything I dreamed of when I was little and almost doesn’t notice*
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ignore your responsibilites and fantasize about older women
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#i think i know how to make myself look hot#but when i am naked and without makeup or anything i am unfathomably ugly
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If level of surprise varied between multiple family members, select whichever option applies to the majority.
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We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.
#my mom was very surprised#my dad knew because he is the person who explained to me how to clear my internet history
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