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This is frustrating.

I love the comparison, but I hate how they are comparing.

They are acting like she is using optics to give herself an advantage. But the device she is wearing is just for comfort and essentially does the same thing as closing one eye and squinting the other.

The little thing over the left eye is basically like an eye patch.

And the thing over her right eye is a mechanical iris, like in a camera lens, but it is NOT a lens.

Different lighting environments are going to be brighter or darker and you may have to squint more or less to let in the same amount of light into your eye. Squinting allows the shooter to get the sharpest possible vision in order to shoot a bullseye the size of a 12-point Times New Roman period.

But if you have to squint for hours for practice and in competition, this can strain your face muscles and become uncomfortable. So this iris basically squints for you.

It's more like wearing comfortable shoes so your feet do not hurt than a lens magnifying the target and giving an advantage.

Both athletes have access to these items. One felt more comfortable without them. The other didn't feel like getting a muscle cramp from squinting all day.

Either would have shot the same if they had or had not used these devices.

Just a funny difference in gear preference.

I should also add, the Turkish dad is the only one using lenses.

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I need a Christmas miracle!!🌠

Monday, December 23rd: Hello, everyone. I’m Gem, a bi, mentally ill, and disabled woman in desperate need of help, as I am struggling to pay my overdrawn balance!!

I apologize for asking for help again; as most of you know from my previous posts, I have been struggling quite a lot to make ends meet while on welfare benefits and due to my rent arrears and ever-increasing debt. And to be quite honest, these past few months have been absolute hell for me, and with no other income, I've been relying on the kindness of others to get by.

However, I desperately need that kindness again because Christmas is in a few days, and my account is overdrawn due to chargebacks and fees. I don't receive my welfare until New Year's Eve, and if I can't pay it off before then, my welfare will be taken and I won't be able to get through January!!

Again, I know this is a lot to ask, but if anyone could spare any amount to help me, even if it’s just £1/$1/€1, it would save my life, and sharing definitely helps just as much.

£0/£105!!!

✨️PayPal✨️

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To my trans homies out there that use flannel, may your enemies not see you coming as you approach in your camouflage.

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Eyonara, earth deity of Eyon

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Ayo, @itsapmseymour… I came downstairs only to find my Cyana plushie talking to this strange void rabbit creature talking to her on my coffee table? Y’know anything about this?

(Wanderer plushie has finally arrived, big fan of them, mate!)

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Reunion

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My boy Naraseth drawn by @lordmitsu204

The boy is stunning, thank you very very much 💜

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Samsara, a guandao design for @erisomega

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So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.

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req'd by @anonforlackofabettername

that's what it's there for

text: This is Mario Kart and I believe in violence.

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my thing with calling strangers eggs is like. if it's a dude saying "of course i'd rather be a girl, everyone wants to be a girl" okay yeah that's an egg. but if it's a dude wearing skirts and mascara and having hobbies like cross stitching and you're calling him an egg? you've wrapped back around to sexism. you've done a full pivot into "pink is for girls and blue is for boys" and you're actually the problem. cut it out. stop telling (gnc) people they're secretly trans because "a real woman would never like football!" come on.

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Happy Holidays, Tumblr! I present to ya a Mr. Macchiato dressed up for the season. Man belongs to PM Seymour’s Cosmic Wonders! I really like this character ngl, about time.

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“Trans men can be misogynistic because they’re MEN”

No, everyone can be misogynistic because misogyny is not stored in the gender.

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So it is! Make the most of it, y’all.

DAY 15

GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 15

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idk when we decided that explaining yourself shouldn't be part of an apology but like. if someone was a dick to me and apologizes but I still don't understand why they did it I'm not gonna feel any better

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Chibi commission of my boy Tvenoru from @lordmitsu204

Thank you so much, he's so cute and huggable looking 💜💜💜