#Fenway Health

[bosguy]

Making friends in Boston LGBTQ social groups

Looking to connect and make some new friends? Whether you're new to #Boston or been here for years, these groups are here to help you make friends and meet people.

With the influx  of so many new residents at the start of each academic year, I like to update and share this post. If you are new to the area or looking to meet more people outside of a bar setting, the groups listed below might be a good first step.  If you don’t see relevant or up-to-date information in the links shared below, contact me, and I can help find a contact for that group to learn…

[natureaker]

1st HRT Appointment

Hi folks, I promised that I'd make this post abt my first HRT appointment, so here that is. Most everything will be below the cutoff just so it doesn't clog up too much space :)

Background: 20 y/o, AFAB, trans guy, living in MA, going to Fenway Health at the Sidney Borum Jr. Health Center in Boston. Seeking testosterone HRT

I made this appointment last week, and got in today (2/17/23). Prior to my appointment, they had sent multiple reminder texts leading up to the appointment as well as a confirmation text about 7 days prior.

On the day of my appointment, I was sent a secure video link via text that I could easily access using the Chrome app on my phone, as they do not use Zoom to conduct telehealth appointments. I also got a text stating how much I owed prior to the appointment.

The nurse practitioner I saw asked a lot of basic questions regarding family medical history, past diagnoses, allergies, surgical history, etc. Since I use a different provider as a PCP, she asked if I wanted to switch my PCP over or if I was just there for gender affirming treatment. In my case, it was the latter, however, not all insurances will let you do that, so make sure to call up your insurance and ask. For reference, I use BCBS PPO.

Afterwards, I was asked about my experiences with gender, how long I've felt 'different', when I came out, how people reacted, support systems, dysphoria/euphoria, if I want biological kids, etc. I was also asked about what I want the most from testosterone.

When that was done, she had me sign up for their MyChart system, which, since my PCP uses the same system, I can easily transfer information over from one provider to the next. She then put in blood orders for various things that I can do either at their office at my next appointment or at a local lab. She also said that I'd be getting a call shortly after the appointment ended to schedule an in-person physical. She also sent me a link to a PDF regarding the benefits and risks of testosterone.

About 45 minutes after the call ended, I got a call to schedule the aforementioned appointment. Unfortunately, the only day that worked for me isn't for another 2 months, so that's where a different doctor will do a physical.

Overall, it was a very friendly experience and I really appreciated not being deadnamed on every single piece of paperwork. Seriously, they are fantastic about not using my (legal) deadname unless it's absolutely 100% legally necessary.

I'll probably also update y'all once I'm able to get to that 2nd appointment.

LMK if you have any Q's, maybe I can answer them, but I truly hope this was useful to somebody! If it is, I'm happy.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Leor Sapir, Joseph Figliolia

Published: Nov 8, 2023

Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, the largest provider of transgender medicine in New England and one of the leading institutions of its kind in the United States, was named a defendant in a lawsuit filed last month. The plaintiff, a gay man who goes by the alias Shape Shifter, argues that by approving him for hormones and surgeries, Fenway Health subjected him to “gay conversion” practices, in violation of his civil rights. Carlan v. Fenway Community Health Center is the first lawsuit in the United States to argue that “gender-affirming care” can be a form of anti-gay discrimination.

The case underscores an important clinical reality: gender dysphoria has multiple developmental pathways, and many who experience it will turn out to be gay. Even the Endocrine Society concedes that many of the youth who outgrow their dysphoria by adolescence later identify as gay or bisexual. Decades of research confirm as much. Gender clinicians in the U.K. used to have a “dark joke . . . that there would be no gay people left at the rate [the Gender Identity Development Service] was going,” former BBC journalist Hannah Barnes reported. Rather than help young gay people to accept their bodies and their sexuality, what if “gender-affirming” clinicians are putting them on a pathway to irreversible harm?

Due partly to Shape’s lifelong difficulty in accepting himself as gay, his lawyers are not taking the usual approach to detransition litigation. Rather than state a straightforward claim of medical malpractice or fraud, they allege that Fenway Health has violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in health care. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that “discrimination because of . . . sex” includes discrimination based on homosexuality. Citing this and other precedents, Shape’s lawyers argue that federal law affords distinct protections to gay men and lesbians—upon which clinics that operate with a transgender bias are trampling.

Shape grew up in a Muslim country in Eastern Europe that he describes in an interview as “very traditional” and “homophobic.” His parents disapproved of his effeminate demeanor and interests as a child. They wouldn’t let him play with dolls, and his mother, he says, made him do stretches so that he would grow taller and appear more masculine.

At 11, Shape had his first of several sexual encounters with older men. “I was definitely groomed,” he recounts. Shape proceeded to develop a pattern of risky sexual behavior, according to his legal complaint. He told his medical team at Fenway Health about his childhood sexual experiences, calling them “consensual.” The Fenway providers never challenged him on this interpretation, he alleges. They never suggested that he might have experienced sexual trauma or, say, explored how these events might have shaped his feelings of dissociation. (The irony is that Fenway Health describes its model of care as “trauma-informed.”)

As with the social environment they inhabited, Shape’s parents were “deeply homophobic,” he says. When Shape came out to his parents as gay at 15, they took him to a therapist, hoping that he would be “fixed.” But when he graduated high school at that same age, he moved to Bulgaria for college, and in 2007, at 17, he came to the United States for a summer program at the University of North Carolina. He later moved to Massachusetts to pursue an MBA at Clark University and immigrated to the U.S.

Though he had known about cross-dressers and transsexuals as a child (he had taken interest in Dana International, the famous Israeli transsexual who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1998), it was only at Clark that he was introduced to the idea that some people are transgender. Other students began asking him about his pronouns and telling him about “gender identity.” After getting to know a “non-binary” person and a transgender woman, Shape started to make sense of his life retrospectively. As a boy going through puberty, he had developed larger-than-average breasts and was curvier than the other boys. It was hard for him to be accepted in the gay community, he told me, because gay men tend to value masculinity. His discomfort with social expectations about how men are supposed to look and behave, his sexual attraction to other men, his ongoing psychological and emotional distress: these were all signs, he learned from online forums, that he must have been “born in the wrong body.”

Shape quickly developed self-hatred and a strong desire to escape his body. When he started cross-dressing and presenting socially as a woman, things changed. It had been hard for him to win acceptance as an effeminate gay man, but he encountered far less hostility presenting as a woman. A subtle but important shift in his thinking took place.

“People wouldn’t take me seriously when I was a man who presented socially as a woman,” he says. “I had to actually be a woman.” Shape became immersed in online transgender culture, which told him that sex is a social construct, and that hormones and surgeries can actually turn him into a woman. As a result, Shape developed highly unrealistic expectations about what hormones and surgeries could do for him. An example noted in his legal filing: he stopped using condoms because he wanted to get pregnant.

Julie Thompson, a physician assistant and Medical Director of the Trans Health Program at Fenway Health, made no effort to perform differential diagnosis on Shape, his legal filing alleges. Shape told Thompson about his childhood sexual encounters, his troubled history of risky sexual activity, and his struggles with social and familial rejection on account of his homosexuality. Allegedly, she wrote these difficulties off as byproducts of society not accepting him as a “trans woman”—an approach known as “transgender minority stress.” Shape’s ongoing mental-health problems, it was determined, were due to “internalized transphobia.”

As Shape’s filing puts it, the Fenway clinic operated with a strong “transgender bias.” Every problem or counter-indication that came up was explained away as part of the stress that transgender people experience in an unwelcoming society. The clinicians at Fenway Health apparently assumed that sexual orientation and gender identity are two distinct and independent phenomena.

Shape was put on estrogen at age 23. According to his filing, he was not given “any explanation of the numerous potential adverse side effects of estrogen or its potentially unknown effects.” As Shape kept taking estrogen, he became even more emotional, depressed, and unstable. Notably, he did not dislike his male genitals—a fact that should have attracted more scrutiny from his clinicians—but seemed more distressed over his high sex drive and desire for intercourse with men. Though he says he frequently told his providers that he hoped “sex reassignment surgery” would reduce his sex drive, this statement did not cause them to reconsider whether estrogen was appropriate.

As the Fenway team allegedly saw it, Shape’s deterioration was evidence that he hadn’t gone far enough in his transition. They recommended that he attend First Event, a Boston-based conference held annually since 1980, where transgender people can meet one another, share ideas, interact with vendors, and find medical providers who will agree to perform procedures on them. Marci Bowers, the genital surgeon who is president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, has attended the conference in the past. According to Shape, the point of going to First Event was to find a surgeon who would operate on him.

He did just that, and in 2014, at 24, Shape underwent facial feminization surgery and breast implantation. Less than a year later, a surgeon surgically castrated him and conducted what’s euphemistically called “bottom surgery.” It didn’t work. As a result, Shape had to undergo several additional surgeries, the last one borrowing tissue from his colon. Still, the problems persisted.

It took Shape a few years to realize that he had made a terrible mistake. The problem he had been trying to solve all his life was not “internalized transphobia” but failure to accept himself as an effeminate gay man. His legal filing states that he had what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders called, at the time he made contact with the clinic, “ego-dystonic homosexuality.” Because they failed to detect this and other mental-health problems, the Fenway team, argue Shape’s lawyers, “outrageously, knowingly, recklessly, and callously” led him to believe that he was really a heterosexual woman whose problems could be solved by de-sexing himself as male.

Shape was promised “gender euphoria.” Instead, he told me that he now sees himself as “mutilated.�� His treatments have left him with “osteoporosis and scoliosis” as well as “mental fog,” according to his legal filing. Shape is now “faced with the impossible choice of improving his cognitive state and suffering the psychological and physical effect of phantom penis, or taking estrogen and suffering mental fog and fatigue, but no phantom penis and low libido.” He has also endured fistulas as a complication of his genital surgery and “suffers from sexual dysfunction and is unable to enjoy sexual relations.” He experiences dangerous inflammation. And not getting the mental health therapy he needed very likely caused Shape’s mental health to deteriorate throughout the several years that he was a patient at Fenway Health.

Shape now wants to have his breast implants removed. But insurance does not cover the procedure because it is not technically “gender affirming.” And since he cannot afford the hefty price tag, Shape has no choice but to live with the implants.

Understandably, criticism of gender medicine has focused largely on its use in minors. Its use in adults, however, is not without controversy. In the past, when clinicians spoke of adult transgender medicine, they were referring mainly to adult men who sought to change their bodies in their forties. Many had already spent years in marriage and were fathers of children.

That is no longer the case. Though data are limited, the main patient demographic in adult transgender clinics today appear to be 18-24-year-olds. In Finland, for example, adult referrals rose approximately 750 percent between 2010 and 2018, with 70 percent of referrals being 18-22-year-olds.

Humans reach full cognitive maturity around age 25, which means that there is often little to distinguish a 20-year-old from a 17-year-old in terms of impulse control, emotional self-regulation, and the ability to set long-term goals and prioritize them over present desires. Citing “irrefutable evidence” that being under 25 means having “diminished capacity to comprehend the risk and consequences of [one’s] actions,” the progressive decarceration and racial-justice advocacy group The Sentencing Project argues that the idea that people are adults once they reach age 18 “is flawed.”

Shortly after its founding in 1971, Fenway Community Health Center was repurposed to support the unique needs of gay and lesbian residents of Boston. According to Katie Batza, a historian of the clinic, the hippies and antiwar activists who founded Fenway Health “quickly solidified its reputation as an important gay medical institution.” During the 1980s, the clinic helped tackle the AIDS epidemic. That it now maltreats gay men like Shape by converting them into trans women reflects a tectonic shift within the institution’s culture.

American medicine has always found itself balancing two competing tendencies: the paternalism of care by experts on one hand, and the relativism of nonjudgmental customer service on the other. What has happened over the course of Fenway Health’s five decades of existence is a gradual loss of that equilibrium. Fenway has long defined its mission in terms of responsiveness to the stated needs and desires of community members: the volunteers who ran the clinic and offered its services free of charge, Batza writes, “focused on providing care and building community among Fenway residents, caring less if a volunteer met outside standards of professional qualification, which were often set by the state or medical profession, that the clinic critiqued.”

In the 1990s, the clinic set up a dedicated transgender unit. At first, “things moved slowly,” recounts Marcy Gelman, a nurse practitioner who served as Fenway Health’s first dedicated provider for transgender patients, in a document published by the institute about the history of its program. She is now its associate director of clinical research. “Patients didn’t get hormones right away. We wanted to get to know them, and required them to see a therapist for several months . . . we wanted to be careful.” This process felt too restrictive for some patients, and “a few got really angry.” Fenway Health says its “commitment to ensure patient safety . . . led to some conflicts with patients and community members.”

In the 2000s, Fenway Health adopted a new model of care for its transgender-identified patients, which it called the “informed consent model.” This came in response to patients complaining about “needless gatekeeping” and concerns that the clinic’s “customer service training specific to transgender patients lagged behind the development of its clinical care.” Using funding from the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation, Fenway Health made a number of new hires and expanded its program. It drew inspiration from another community health clinic, the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, which was smaller than Fenway but served four times as many patients. “One key to [the Mazzoni Center’s] success,” the Fenway document explains, “was the elimination of any requirement for counseling before hormones were provided.” Ruben Hopwood, a physician who joined the Fenway team in 2005, developed this model for Fenway; soon thereafter, the institution’s three-month counseling requirement gave way to “a single hormone readiness assessment visit.”

In 2012, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health published the seventh version of its Standards of Care. In the chapter on hormone therapy, WPATH recommended eligibility criteria for estrogen or testosterone, including “persistent, and well-documented gender dysphoria” and having ongoing “medical or mental health concerns . . . reasonably well-controlled.” However, WPATH also noted a newly emerging “informed consent model” and cited Fenway Health as one of three clinics that developed and practiced it.

The difference between the models, WPATH explained, was that SOC-7 put “greater emphasis on the important role that mental health professionals can play in alleviating gender dysphoria and facilitating changes in gender role and psychosocial adjustment. This may include a comprehensive mental health assessment and psychotherapy, when indicated.” By contrast, Fenway Health’s model emphasizes “obtaining informed consent as the threshold for the initiation of hormone therapy in a multidisciplinary, harm-reduction environment. Less emphasis is placed on the provision of mental-health care until the patient requests it, unless significant mental health concerns are identified that would need to be addressed before hormone prescription.” Despite the obvious differences, WPATH insisted the two models were “consistent” with each other.

Currently, Fenway Health offers hormones on the informed-consent model. “Criteria for accessing hormone therapy,” it states, “are informed by the WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health) guidelines.” In other words, Fenway Health defers to WPATH, which adopted its recommendations from Fenway Health.

Shape and his lawyers deny that Fenway’s informed consent process is “a safe and effective replacement for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment provided by an appropriately trained and licensed healthcare professional.” Fenway’s model, they argue, “relies heavily on patients’ self-diagnosis, which may be a result of confusion or a misunderstanding of medically defined terms.” It does not take into account a patient’s expectations from medical treatment, which, as in Shape’s case, can be highly unrealistic. It “does not inform patients about the risk of iatrogenic effects of affirmation.” Nor does it take into account a patient’s “medical decision-making capacity,” which may be impaired in the presence of “significant emotional distress” and “undue influence from persons in position of authority and trust.”

A key charge in Shape’s lawsuit is that Fenway Health is driven by “market expansion goals and political demands of transgender activists.” Approval for hormones and surgery, the clinic’s staff wrote in 2015, should be a “routine part of primary care service delivery, not a psychological or psychiatric condition in need of treatment.” A leading advocate for the no-gatekeeping model, which rests on the assumption that mismatch between one’s actual and perceived sex is a normal human variation and not a pathological condition, argues that adults and adolescents should be free to turn their bodies into “gendered art pieces.”

From Shape’s story, we can infer that Fenway Health, which could not be reached for comment, has yielded to a barely constrained medical consumerism. In 1997, the institute had eight transgender customers. By 2015, it had over 1,700. “The rapid and sustained growth of Fenway Health’s transgender health care, research, education, training, and advocacy,” the institute’s doctors proudly declare, “might be succinctly summarized by the mantra from the movie Field of Dreams: If you build it, they will come.”

==

If you haven't met Shape Shifter, see the following interviews:

Literally "trans the gay away."

[thomasaskewus]

Fenway Health Pharmacy

Discover exceptional healthcare services at Fenway Health Pharmacy, located within The Fenway community. As your trusted health partner, we provide a wide range of pharmacy services tailored to meet your needs. From prescription medications to over-the-counter remedies, our knowledgeable pharmacists are here to offer personalized care and guidance. With a commitment to quality and convenience, Fenway Health Pharmacy ensures you have access to the medications and wellness products you need to thrive. Whether you're a resident of The Fenway or a visitor, our pharmacy is your go-to destination for all your health and wellness needs.

[tachypodion]

outing myself as having a tiny shred of loyalty to the region i've lived in for nearly a decade tonight apparently

[unfaeelie]

My doctor dug their heels in and stuck their heads in the sand when I was begging to change my HRT regimen after it became apparent that my T levels were not being suppressed. It took months and months and several appointments that I had to drive a couple hours each way for just for them to agree to start me on alternate HRT options (which also meant I had to go back to "starting dose" which is another whole load of shitkeeping, a dose which would not be raised for years to come). All of this pushback when we had agreed upon empirical proof that their treatment plan was not working. This was also a clinic that was highly regarded at the time among trans folks (mostly due to them being the only place to offer HRT with informed consent in an 8 hour drive radius but nevertheless). All of this bullshit was considered the gold standard! Medical transmisogyny is so pervasive, inescapable, and profound; the bar is truly somewhere around the 8th ring of hell currently.

On that note shout out to Planned Parenthood. I moved halfway across the country and now get my care through them and honestly? It's the first time I've felt like doctors have seen me as a fellow human, not like some dangerous pervert freak or a delusional man to cater to and shuffle out the door. For the first time in my life, my concerns actually mattered and were listened to and addressed. It was a breath of fresh air I didn't realize how desperately I needed, and to anyone with a location near them I cannot recommend their care strongly enough.

HEY UM. This is Transmisogynistic.

you can discuss the ways trans men are shit on and ignored without repeating verbatim terf talking points and regurgitating the absolute bullshit that is ‘amab privilege’ i get it okay. i’ve fallen down this rabbithole of thinking before but trans women are not your fucking enemy they are your sisters. love and cherish them. okay? okay. there’s so much here i can’t unpack it all but all this? everything they’re saying? deeply, deeply transmisogynistic.

[she-is-ovarit]

Detransitioner news

I have been thinking about detransitioners lately and wanted to compile articles I have been seeing. This will be a longer post and reblogged for part II as I hope to copy and paste brief portions of the articles under each headline.

Law firm for detransitioners opens in Dallas

In all of the controversy around gender transition, there is one group that is persistently marginalized by both the right and left. They are known as detransitioners — people who decide that they want to return to their birth gender, often after receiving years of interventional care, including surgery, to treat their gender dysphoria. Now, the nation’s first law firm focused solely on representing these patients — many of whom feel abused by a medical system that encouraged their treatment — has opened its doors in Dallas. It could forever change how hospitals and doctors approach what’s known as gender-affirming care.

Archive link

Fenway Community Health Center in Boston, the largest provider of transgender medicine in New England and one of the leading institutions of its kind in the United States, was named a defendant in a lawsuit filed last month. The plaintiff, a gay man who goes by the alias Shape Shifter, argues that by approving him for hormones and surgeries, Fenway Health subjected him to “gay conversion” practices, in violation of his civil rights. Carlan v. Fenway Community Health Center is the first lawsuit in the United States to argue that “gender-affirming care” can be a form of anti-gay discrimination. The case underscores an important clinical reality: gender dysphoria has multiple developmental pathways, and many who experience it will turn out to be gay. Even the Endocrine Society concedes that many of the youth who outgrow their dysphoria by adolescence later identify as gay or bisexual. Decades of research confirm as much. Gender clinicians in the U.K. used to have a “dark joke . . . that there would be no gay people left at the rate [the Gender Identity Development Service] was going,” former BBC journalist Hannah Barnes reported. Rather than help young gay people to accept their bodies and their sexuality, what if “gender-affirming” clinicians are putting them on a pathway to irreversible harm?

Due partly to Shape’s lifelong difficulty in accepting himself as gay, his lawyers are not taking the usual approach to detransition litigation. Rather than state a straightforward claim of medical malpractice or fraud, they allege that Fenway Health has violated Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which bans discrimination “on the basis of sex” in health care. In 2020, the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County that “discrimination because of . . . sex” includes discrimination based on homosexuality. Citing this and other precedents, Shape’s lawyers argue that federal law affords distinct protections to gay men and lesbians—upon which clinics that operate with a transgender bias are trampling. Shape grew up in a Muslim country in Eastern Europe that he describes in an interview as “very traditional” and “homophobic.” His parents disapproved of his effeminate demeanor and interests as a child. They wouldn’t let him play with dolls, and his mother, he says, made him do stretches so that he would grow taller and appear more masculine. At 11, Shape had his first of several sexual encounters with older men. “I was definitely groomed,” he recounts. Shape proceeded to develop a pattern of risky sexual behavior, according to his legal complaint. He told his medical team at Fenway Health about his childhood sexual experiences, calling them “consensual.” The Fenway providers never challenged him on this interpretation, he alleges. They never suggested that he might have experienced sexual trauma or, say, explored how these events might have shaped his feelings of dissociation. (The irony is that Fenway Health describes its model of care as “trauma-informed.”)

Archive link

Ontario detransitioner who had breasts and womb removed sues doctors

An Ontario detransitioning woman who had her breasts and womb removed to change her gender to male is suing medical and health practitioners for failing to consider other treatments during her mental health crisis before ushering her on an irreversible journey she regrets. Michelle Zacchigna, 34, of Orillia, Ont., north of Toronto, names eight health professionals, including doctors, psychologists, a psychotherapist and a counsellor in a lawsuit filed in Ottawa. None of the defendants, who work or worked at various clinics and institutions in southern Ontario, responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit prior to deadline. Four of the defendants have filed notices of intent to defend against the suit in Ontario Superior Court, but no statements of defense have been filed. None of the claims have been tested in court. Zacchigna said she faces an uphill battle in her lawsuit. “I’ve been under the impression that all medical malpractice suits are challenging. Doctors win the majority of cases in Canada,” she told National Post. “It’s very much a David vs. Goliath undertaking.” In her statement of claim filed in court in November, Zacchigna says she had difficulty forming relationships with classmates in elementary school and was often bullied. By the time she was 11, she engaged in self-harming behaviour, including cutting her arm with a knife. This continued into early adulthood. When she was 20, she tried to kill herself and she was referred by her family doctor for psychotherapy, where she was treated for social anxiety and clinical depression. She remained unhappy and depressed, and her mental health decline led to her dropping out of university, according to her claim. About a year into therapy, she engaged with an online community around gender nonconformity. “Michelle came to believe that her biological sex of female did not match her true gender identity of male,” her claim says. “She further came to believe that this mismatch between her biological sex and gender identity was causing her feelings of depression, self-harming behaviour and unease in her body, a mental health condition commonly known as gender dysphoria,” her claim states. This was the first time Zacchigna felt she was born in the wrong body, and she had not previously identified as male, her claim says. “However, as a result of what she read on the internet, she became convinced that she was a transgender man, and that once she embraced this new identity, her depression would subside.” Zacchigna started attending a support group in Toronto for people considering gender transition. A counsellor there told her of opportunities to proceed through a medical transition, her claim says. Zacchigna was invited to apply for medical intervention in 2010. The counsellor wrote a recommendation letter outlining a medical history that didn’t fully match her real past, the claim says. The counsellor didn’t recommend any alternatives, or seek confirmation of Zacchigna’s own diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Her regular therapist also wrote a recommendation for transition treatment, saying Zacchigna was an “ideal candidate for hormone therapy,” even though the therapist had no previous transgender clients, according to the claim.

Part II incoming.

[nonbinaryresource]

hmmmm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but I've been looking through the questioning tag and thought I could try just asking specifically. (Sorry it got quite long!)

I'm pretty sure watching too many trans tiktoks did not make me nonbinary, but it sure brought up questions. Mainly, what if relating to nonbinary/trans experiences in my case is just that, relating? I'm thinking I might be nonbinary or trans, all because I suck at almost everything considered my gender, from looks to skills and so my "disphoria" is me not liking how others see me, rather than it being my body. I don't want to be my body to people first and then my person, besides I get the feeling top surgery would make me look and feel aesthetically cooler lol but that's just me

Is that a thing or I'm just extremely in denial?

Not sure if you caught the study we were just reblogging on how dysphoria and transness is not caused by "social contagion" like tiktoks, but if not, it feels relevant to link.

Researchers from the Fenway Institute disproved the theory of "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (RODG) and determined that "social contagion" does not influence gender identity in the largest study of its kind, published earlier this month in Pediatrics journal.

"The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny and should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents," Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, the study's senior author and director of Fenway's National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center, and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, said in a statement.

But I'm gonna focus on the idea of "what if I just relate to trans experiences but aren't trans?"

Okay.

So.

What if you do?

What?

Then what?

You...find out more about yourself?

You...discover new things about your own feelings and comfort?

You...consider all of the options and come to decide on which label is best for you to adopt?

I'm not seeing a downside here. I'm not seeing anything to panic about. The transphobes have turned exploration and experimentation into the boogeyman. Life is about exploration and experimentation. Capitalism has absolutely ruined us. It's ridiculous to expect children who aren't even done psychologically developing yet to know and pick their life path and dedicate the rest of their life to it, including going thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree if necessary. It's ridiculous to expect people to not explore and experiment and have some damn fun in life, whether that's trying out 60 different jobs to find something that they want to do or discarding and picking up a new hobby each every single week to find what they actually find enjoyable or playing around with genders/sexualities/names/pronouns/clothes/etc. to figure out their feelings and better get to know who they are.

There is nothing - NOTHING - inherently wrong, bad, or immature about exploration and experimentation in life period.

So what if you relate to trans experiences but are actually cis? So what you identify as trans now for whatever length of time and change how you label later? So what?

I am so tired of the idea that anybody knows what they are doing ever. Nobody knows! We're all just making it up! The imposter syndrome we're putting everyone through for every aspect of their lives - from their jobs to their hobbies to their genders to their sexualities - is out of control. The society we have built is not meant for people. And that's incredibly, incredibly heartbreaking.

People should be allowed to play and explore and experiment!

People should be allowed to grow and change!

People should be allowed to be confused and unsure!

People should be allowed to not know!

People should be allowed to try on identities like we try on clothes at the store!

Fuck the self-gaslighting society is pressuring you to put yourself through.

I don't care what you know for sure. I don't care if you're going by a label you're unsure of. I don't care if you're going by a label you know is technically not the most accurate. I don't care if you stuck up a bunch of identity labels on a dart board, threw a dart, and decided to identify as that one. I'm here for you. The messy, confused, complex, hard to understand you. The real you.

Could it be a thing that you relate to trans experiences, don't really relate to cis experiences, and yet are cis? Sure. (Slightly tangential, but I think you might get some food for thought out of this piece of writing.)

But don't sit here thinking you have to identify as cis because you don't have "proof" of being trans. That's not a thing. It's just what the transphobes want you to think. You can identify as any damn thing you want (let's avoid cultural appropriation, though!), even if you're only 0.5% thinking you might be that thing.

If you think you might be nonbinary, practice not giving into the thoughts like "but I can't really be nonbinary because I'm only just now thinking about it". Practice letting yourself try out being nonbinary! For at least several months, unless it's just too terrible and you realize right away that it's not right for you. Don't debate on this or put yourself through a court of law or beat yourself down. Just let yourself be nonbinary. In a couple months, then come back to the questions of "is this right for me?".

And there is no "right" or "wrong" reason to identify with whatever identity. Some people identify as nonbinary because they have a very specific, pinpointable, non-binary gender. Others identify as nonbinary because they're not really sure but nonbinary makes them the most comfortable. Others identify as nonbinary because they want to be nonbinary. Others identify as nonbinary because they don't relate to or don't understand or don't want to identify with the binarily gendered structure of our society. Whatever your reasoning, it's both valid and nobody else's business (though ofc you can tell anybody why if it's what YOU want to do).

~Mod Pluto

P.S. If anything in this ask comes off as angry or frustrated, it is not with you. It is towards society and bigots who purport attitudes that harm people, even if in seemingly "little" ways like making them feel like they can't trust their own feelings.

[wttt-dirus-work]

Who's your most favourite state/province/territory and can I have a picture please? 🌅

I am so fucking sorry for how long it took me sun anon!

So, my favourite state/province/territory....

hm

I'll start with province i think.

So, i'm biased, but my favourite province is Québec without hesitation; I'm Québécoise, and my culture is a part of my identity. I'm currently in University to be a french teacher, and, well, i absolutely love my language despite how complicated it is (Also, from a bilingual, english doesnt make more sense). I love poutine, our slang, the variation of it everywhere, hate our politicians currently in power (health care could be more effective if rthey took the time to listen to the workers) and it's currently hell to find a house, but it's my home. Students have great advantages with the cost of uni compared to Ontario (my first trimester cost me around 2k CAD with the books, while in Ottawa it's 3k CAD for a ontarian and 5k CAD for a québécois). I love the people, even if they keep complaining about everything because thats how we are lmao.

So yeah, Québec is my favourite province (I'd love to go in New Brunswick and Alberta for the Stampede tho 👀)

For the territory, it'd say Yukon i think.

Again, i'm biased cause my cousin lives there and is a Federal cop, but honestly the rockies are a dream came to life for me. Mountains, higher than i have ever seen. Yeah, and it's cold during winter and they have amazing hunt territory and yeah, i want to go there.

Now, the state...

I went to DC, PA and MA. Loves boston, but Washington DC was my absolute favourite for how the city is formed, and all the Historical monuments... I loved it. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Now, states i want to visit, i'd say Maine (probably next year), Louisiana (wanna meet my Cajun cousins) and the west coast. The redwoods, the rockies, San Francisco seem so chill from what my urban geography told us last year...

And of course i'd love to visit Alaska too, yk. Meet with people who doest care when it's cold.

(I'd say Hawaii too, but i really don't wanna contribute to the problem with the tourist destroying life for the locals :/)

Now, uh for the pic, idk what you wanted, so imma add some of my travels i guess

The Fenway park in Boston, thats the green monster.

And paris

Also little bonus

[optimistredsox]

12 Aug, TEX @ BOS, 4-5, win, 10th inning

I am still struggling with the Jarren Duran thing. I'm glad he's suspended. As someone who has struggled with mental health issues I hope that the repercussions of his actions don't cause him to spiral down to that dark place again but that he learns that words hurt and playing on the stage he does requires him to not spout vitriol and bile. And learn not only is it not ok, but WHY it's not ok. And growing from there. He fucked up. I hope he learns more from it than "I shouldn't fuck up again". Because it's about more than that. Anyway. There was a baseball game on a Monday at Fenway and the Red Sox did the opposite of lose. Which means they won, which was a nice change of pace from the previous four games. Do I wish they'd done it more convincingly and without going to extras, only having to go to extras because they blew their lead? Kinda? Do I wish they hadn't struck out FIFTEEN TIMES (they did walk nine times... there were a LOT of walks in that game)? A little bit. But I'm not greedy, honest! Ok, maybe I'm a little greedy. Greedy or not, we won, and we needed the win, and it's great and there are, of course, bright sides.

Brayan Bello had a good start. Not just a quality start, but a good start. So good a start, he deserved the win. He gave up one run on four hits (and three walks) whilst striking out five over six innings. That is good. The bullpen needed a break and he did his best to give them one. Thanks Brayan.

Chris Martin (not the Colplay one) and Kenley Jansen were lights out when they needed to be. Bravo bullpen.

Mickey Gasper, New England native called up from the minors to replace the Suspended One, had a great at-bat and took a walk that led to the Sox winning the game. Welcome to the show, Mickey Gasper. Your moustache is almost as good as Romy Gonzalez's but not quite. Well. It's not really close tbh. Romy has the best 'tache.

Rob Refsnyder won the game, because that's the sort of thing he does, hitting a walk-off single to the wall to knock in the winning run in bottom of the 10th. He definitely earned his beer shower... Mmmmm... beer shower...

Raffy Devers didn't have a hit but he took a walk and scored a run... just sayin'.

Dom Smith, fresh off the mound from Sunday's nightmare, was 1-for-1 with a walk as well. Efficient, Dom. Thank you.

Sogard was 2-for-4 with a walk.

Ceddanne Rafaela had a hit and scored the winning run and didn't strike out. Scoring the winning run was pretty cool.

Enmanuel Valdez, back from the minors, pinch hit and knocked in the tying run (that was scored by expert moustachioed person, Romy Gonzalez).

That whole bottom the 10th was fucking wild. Go watch it.

We won!

If we win again, that would be awesome!

[hellforcertain]

my parents have thankfully gotten better about trans stuff, and now actually listen to me when i talk about it, but they're still, yknow, cis boomers. we were talking about all the anti-trans legislation the other week and my dad carefully said "but what people are worried about is... the children"

and i half-jokingly snapped "if they cared about the children they would've banned catholicism thirty years ago"

and after they finished laughing, i followed it up with, "there's a reason you see 'but the children!' in every moral panic and culture war: because it's hard to argue against without making yourself look bad, and they know this. if this was about the children, boston children's hospital wouldn't be getting bomb threats. if it was about the children, fenway health wouldn't have had to hide the front desk behind bulletproof barriers and a security officer. if it was about the children, trump and his ilk wouldn't be pushing for full bans on trans healthcare. this isn't about protecting children. this is an attempted genocide."

and they got it. i've been trying to make them understand trans issues since i was 16 and this was one of the more productive conversations we've had

so shoutout to that one tumblr post i saw a few weeks ago saying you should not just mock but also deconstruct these reactionaries' arguments like this, bcos it won't change their minds but it might for the onlookers on the fence

[natureaker]

HRT Appointment 2: Electric Boogaloo

Said that I was gonna update y'all on my 2nd Fenway Health appointment, so here's that:

Things went well in the office. Got there real early, and everything went smoothly. Met with my Dr, and he was really nice & listened to me when I had thoughts & concerns. Did a regular physical pretty much. Discussed dosages, which I'll be starting at 25mg of Androgel (1%) once I actually get my prescription. Also did some blood tests for liver function, iron levels, and red blood cell count. Only thing that came back abnormal were my iron levels, which my doctor recommended iron supplements, but I'm otherwise good to go for hormones.

My biggest battle atm is with my insurance company. I don’t have a lot of info the Fenway pharmacy needs to get my prescription out to me (they do mail delivery if u live in Massachusetts free of charge) and my insurance has been horrible at getting the info out to me (who I will be harassing as much as I can until they answer my questions.) Hopefully, it can be shipped out after all this gets sorted out.

Next appointment will be in a month (telehealth, once again) just to check in and make sure things are feeling alright.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

"Hi, my name is Shape. I started identifying as transgender at 22 while still in college. Before that, I was just a feminine gay man.

Being asked about my pronouns led me to research transgender ideology, and pretty quickly I got convinced that I was [a] transgender woman.

I was able to get hormones relatively easily through Fenway Health and was only on them for a year before receiving facial feminization and breast augmentation surgeries at 23.

Taking hormones actually worsened my mental health, but therapists thought that it was because I was stuck in the wrong body. They cleared me for sex-reassignment surgery by diagnosing me with Gender Identity Disorder.

Immediately after SRS, I was super-excited to start a new life. I was happy for a few months while recovering, however soon I realized that my new part wasn't what doctors promised me.

My neo vagina started constricting despite rigorous dilation, which resulted in me developing vaginal stenosis. This left me unable to have penetrative sex, which adversely impacted my mental health. I also lost my sex drive, my motivation to achieve anything, and became brain-fogged and lethargic.

I had multiple unsuccessful revisions attempting to get a few inches of neo vaginal tunnel. I even had colon vaginoplasty. The last revision was at the University of Miami by Dr. Christopher Sargara in 2018, and it left me with a colorectal fistula.

I've been all over the country trying to seek help but I have received none.

Earlier this year after hitting rock bottom with my depression, I reached out to a new therapist. The therapist helped me realize that I have Complex PTSD from a traumatic childhood, and also pointed out that I have body dysmorphia, OCD, borderline personality and bipolar disorders. I also realized I had internalized homophobia.

I realize now that medical transition was sold to me as a hardware fix for software issues.

A few months ago I started detransitioning by taking testosterone, however it is traumatic to be on testosterone without having functional genitals. Moreover, my back hurts every day due to osteoporosis and scoliosis that I developed post-SRS.

I'm now dependent on synthetic hormones for life. I traded my perfectly healthy genitals for an artificial 1-inch tunnel that is sexually non-functional.

I realize that I'm never getting back a functional penis, and full detransition is not really possible in my case. I feel stuck in a surgically created body.

I believe nobody under 18 should be allowed to medically transition. Sex-reassignment surgery should only be allowed in very rare cases after full psych evaluations. Patients should be made aware that what they're really getting is cosmetic surgery, and it's a genital approximation surgery that does not change biological sex.

Thank you."

==

What do you do when you're a detransitioner who can't detransition?

Meet Shape Shifter. His body has an open wound that it keeps trying to close over, because it's not supposed to be there.

This isn't "healthcare," it's cosmetic surgery. It's no more "healthcare" than getting a new haircut is a cure for depression.

[thomasaskewus]

Fenway Health Pharmacy

Fenway Health Pharmacy offers a compassionate, inclusive approach to pharmaceutical care in the heart of Boston's vibrant Fenway neighborhood. With a focus on LGBTQ+ health, they provide personalized medication services, hormone therapy, and HIV/AIDS treatment. Their knowledgeable staff ensures every patient receives respectful, expert care tailored to their unique needs. Fenway Health Pharmacy

[the-tzimisce]

i want to say that i believe the doctors at fenway health in 2012-13 were doing their best at a job that probably was stressful and didn't pay well (i have no idea but that's the standard profile for that kind of job) and also that their best fucked me over unbelievably

like my specific situation is outside the bounds of proximate causation for prescribing hormones ineffectually but also if they hadn't laughed at me when i asked about gel there's a decent chance i would have just been trans this entire time

[zinebuttrans]

Learn more about TRANS reproductive justice