#anyway hrt changes a lot of things in the body and needs to be taken into account

[robotblues]

heavy sigh at the medical website i just saw explaining the terms "amab" and "afab" instead of just saying men and women, but clearly using those terms to categorize hormone levels and thereby excluding trans people on hrt (and anyone else with hormone levels atypical for their assigned sex). either be progressive or don't, you can't just find-and-replace the old terms with no thought and pretend you're being inclusive.

[genderqueerdykes]

is it bad to be scared to start hrt?

i feel a little ashamed that i am. i try my hardest to be positive about all the things that make men & mascs masculine. i try to appreciate the parts that arent valued by society, like male pattern baldness, being fat, hairiness (love that part especially lol), etc.

but im 15, and i go back and fourth over whether or not i want to start testosterone. i had terrible cystic acne before i started acne medication, i have male pattern baldness on my dads side etc. im not a binary trans guy, so i kinda doubt ill be on it forever anyway if i DO wind up doing it, but its really scary to be told all the stuff that WILL make me a man when im… just a boy. that feels infantalizing but i suppose its true. im scared to be a man admittedly, im angry i never got to have a “true” boyhood because in currently at that age, and im scared of being thrust into it after not getting to be one. theres so much stuff about becoming “ugly” after starting testosterone. i know thats not true, logically, but ive faced so much bullying for not being pretty enough as an afab that i guess i still have that vanity embedded within me.

i feel ashamed for it, do you have any advice?

no, absolutely not- i think it's super reasonable to be scared to start HRT. it's a huge change, it affects your body and mentality in many different ways. it's a lot to take on at once especially considering there are permanent effects if taken for long enough at a high enough dose

i get why you'd be worried at that age. i didn't start HRT until i was in my early 20s. i think its okay to give yourself some time, especially considering you have some concerns about it potentially affecting your health. it would be ideal to find a way to get your blood tested for a few things- liver enzymes, red blood cell count, estrogen and testosterone levels, and so on. if you can't do that, it's understandable. i know it's not easy for someone your age to get a ride to a place like that discretely

is it possible to contact your dermatologist about your acne and see if they would be able to weigh in on that? baldness is a tricky thing. some people do bald but really late in life. some people don't. a lot of transmascs have their hairline recede by a few inches and then it usually stops. the nice thing about hair loss is there are medications that work very well that can help mitigate that. gender affirming care specialists or other doctors who prescribe testosterone are usually aware of the effects on scalp hair, and usually they'll help you test for high blood pressure, any issues like that

honestly i get where you're coming from here. i've seen this way too many times. people get pissed off about someone being a type of trans they don't like so they just bully the person until they consider detransitioning or never start transition at all, and then continue to mock and harass them anyway. i see this all the damn time and it bugs me like why would you do that to someone. who cares

people think it's ok to bully trans men & mascs right now because of all of the transandrophobia and antimasculism in general. testosterone doesn't make anyone "ugly", people are projecting their hatred of men and mascs on to a hormone that almost everyone produces naturally. it's just hateful senseless bullying. people think the younger the trans man/boy/masc is, the more valid they are to bully them.

it's okay to identify as a boy for as long as you need. you actually never have any obligation to adopt the label man if it doesn't fit you. many people identify as boys instead of men. some people are guys and not men. it's okay some people find they have to take their time to transition from boy to man. you're only 15 you are still a child, you don't have to worry about being a man for quite a while

it's definitely okay to feel conflicted and confused here. if you're able to, take time to yourself where you shut all that noise from other people out. if you're able to just ask yourself a few questions like why do i identify as a boy, what about it makes me happy, what kinds of things do i want to do in transition. just try to get a feel for what's going on so it makes it hard for people to get in your head

remember that when people attack you like this they're projecting something they deeply hate about themselves on to you. my therapist told me that last week and i thought i would just relay that. it's alright to be affected by it, but they really are just being assholes. it's good to be a trans man/boy/masc. transmasculinity is good. testosterone is good. testosterone saved my life. i'm glad to get up in the morning every day because i at least look and sound like myself. i love my body. i love the way i look. i'm stronger. i stand taller. my face is the right shape. my voice sounds right.

life is good

i hope you found any of this helpful. good luck, it's okay to feel guilt or shame for a bit. i did NOT want to come out as FtM for a VERY long time it was hard. i get it. take care of yourself, let me know if you have any more questions

[scrubbinn]

Mimic HRT: month 21 “Mended patience”

“Mx, are you alright? Is there something I could get you, water, earmuffs? You can ask if there's anything you need.”

“Huh? Oh, no water please. And I'm fine. It's just…”

“It's scary, right? Dealing with doctors I mean. I'd imagine being here is scary enough. Don't worry, everything will be ok. Now let's see… You're Jasmine, right? Jasmine Elwood? You use Gard/Graden neo pronouns, yes?

“Y-yes, that’s right.”

“It's a lovely name. You're a bit early, but I'll page Erian to check if he can see you now. You can take a seat if you like, and be sure to ask if you need assistance with anything.” 

“um, are you a therian? I'm in the right clinic, yeah? it's just, I thought there would be others working here.”

“I'm an otherkin. A mimic. Almost two years in at this point. I just like using my human form when I work. It's tough to maintain but it's harder to work a computer otherwise. I'm currently an assistant to Dr. Erian, and also the receptionist for the next few months after the last one suddenly quit. I swear the more I work here the more I wonder how this place managed to stay afloat for so long. Sorry, I don't mean to make this place sound bad or cheap. It's helped me quite a lot with becoming who I was meant to be. I'm sure you'll find exactly what you're looking for here.”

“...Thanks.”

“Oh, looks like the doctor will see you now. But one last thing before you go in. You can choose if you would like to meet Dr. Erian alone, or if you wish for an assistant such as myself to sit in with you to make sure everything is more comfortable-

“Yes. that. Please. Uh, if that's ok.”

“Sure thing! Please follow me.”

* * * 

“Hello. I'm Dr. Erian, and you would be Ms. Elwood, correct? Is that your actual family name? You'll need to use your real name or else there could be legal trouble. Eitherway, I’ve taken the time to read through most of the files that were transferred from your old provider. It seems you just entered your first year on a normal HRT which is good, we wouldn’t be able to give you this treatment otherwise. Now then, let’s take a look at the documentation you filled out for me. You should be grateful that we’ve now moved to an informed consent model due to certain clientele. Ahem, anyways, it says here you’re looking to become a golem? Odd, with your name I assumed you-

“Doctor. Please focus on the client, and don’t make assumptions.”

“Right. Well, switching from a carbon based lifeform to silicon is tricky and involves crossing not just a species threshold but also a biological one. Not to mention there could be a lot of damage to your body if anything goes wrong. Perhaps you could explain why you think you're a golem?”

  “I, um, I- I’m sorry. I’m just a little nervous right now. I have trouble speaking sometimes.”

“Speak up Ms, I couldn't make out what you were- ow. Mayday! May I remind you that-

“Sorry about that Jasmine. You can ignore him for now. Focus on me and let’s take some deep breaths together. In and out ok? In and out, there you go! Do you think you could tell me what being a golem is like?”

“Um, it’s just, it’s just who and what I am. I can’t really describe it. It’s the only thing I can see myself as. There's some days where I just lie outside completely still and let nature move around me. It's peaceful.”

“Ok! Did you get that doc?”

“Sigh, alright fine. At least it sounds like you've been living as your preferred species for a while now. I suppose we can move on to other topics. It will take some time to formulate the proper medication for something like this, but through modern magic and medicine, it can be done. Now, we'll need to go over some paperwork, mostly an acknowledgement of potential risk. You could no longer be considered human depending on legal changes. I'll give you time to look it over.”

“Um, do… Do you know what I might look like if I took this medication? I know what I am but I'm a bit scared something is going to happen.”

“I could show you if you want, I have an idea of what you might want based on what you've told me…

…Well, what do you think? Oh! Please don't touch, I'm not actually made of rocks and you might poke a tooth.”

“Sorry it's just. You look like me. The real me.”

“Well doc? Think we can make something like this?”

“I suppose so, it won't have the specific details, but the general shape is possible. Let's continue the discussion on your treatment first, and if you agree, then we can have a prescription ready in a month.”

* * *

“You performed Adequately Ms. Mulberry. Perhaps you'll actually make a decent assistant, and it seems Ms. Elwood will have a bright future thanks to this clinic. There aren't any other client meetings today, so I'll have you handling prescriptions to send out to pharmacies. Before that though, how has the progress gone on documenting your species?”

“If you mean my mimicry in general, it's going well. I'll have my findings on your desk next month. If you mean learning about the other voice I've been hearing. No luck there. It doesn't show up unless I'm feeling some kind of extreme emotion. Looking back it feels like it wasn't just one voice, but several. It's hard to figure out, some of the others in the THEMS group have some ideas as to what it could be.

“Being influenced by the thoughts of a third party with no medical experience isn't going to solve anything. Please look into it further on your own. I can't move forward with patenting this medication without knowing if this is a potential side effect, or if it's just something in your head..”

“That certainly didn't stop you with me. Look, I'm still going to work with the support group if they can help. Plus when I start my therapy sessions it's going to be something that'll have to come up at some point. Someone else is going to be involved in this. What you should be focusing on right now is Jasmine's treatment.”

“Yes I really should start working on her tre-

“You mean garden treatment. And stop saying Ms. It's Mx. Gard listed garden gender as a non-binary option.”

“Yes, whatever. I have a lot of things to keep track of. Can't keep up with every little detail about a patient. That's your job now, and don't go forgetting who's in charge here! Your little blackmail attempt amounted to nothing. So don't go cutting me off again! Not now, and especially not during client meetings! I have the power to fire you if I see a single slip up. Remember which of us is the doctor and which of us is the assistant. Now then, I expect a report of your mimic status by next week and you should hurry along to fulfill your duties to our clients.”

“What do you mean it amounted to nothing?”

“Excuse me? What are you saying?”

“I'm saying that I'm here right now aren't I? I don't mean that you gave me this job, I mean you gave me legal access to all those files I wanted. It's kind of crazy you didn't realize. I guess I hit the nail on the head when I assumed you'd see me as an opportunity to show other therians that you're on our side. But now, I have complete access to everything and I can legally be a whistleblower to the public here. If you ever hurt me again, I'll send out everything. And I won't even be affected. After all, I'm just an innocent assistant concerned for the safety of the general public. I'm sure with your reputation completely sunk, it wouldn't be hard to replace you. There's a number of other doctors that would kill to have your position. You wouldn't survive.”

“You're implying I still have a reputation to lose. I felt pity for you when you fought for the last spark of hope in your life, to see you squandering it on threats like this… Are you truly so vain that you feel the need to pretend your bluff had weight.”

“Erian, I'm saying this for your own benefit. If people knew what kinds of things you did in this clinic. I don't mean you'd lose your medical license or be run out of town. I'm pretty sure they'd come after your life. This isn't a threat, this is a warning. We're equals here now, whether you like it or not. I could be much worse, but I've decided to play nice.”

“...I see. Sigh, I'll die of stress from you at this point. Why even work here if you hate it and myself so much?”

“Mayday, the actual Mayday, wanted to work here before she forgot everything. She wanted to learn how to help people. I feel like I owe her that much. I don’t care if I have to step over you or any other bigot to reach that goal.”

“Of course you’d say something hokey like that. Always painting your actions as the only noble ones around you. You really are a monster the media made you out to be.”

“You're the one who made me like this. I had to relearn everything about playing human. Besides, you should have known something like this would happen eventually. If not me then someone would have found enough dirt on you. You're kind of sloppy when you hide evidence… Huh, I thought this kind of conversation would make me more angry, but this has been oddly calming. I suppose it's me no longer recognizing you as a threat. Congrats, now we know others mimics won't inherently hate you. At least not always. Now I just see you as potential food.”

“Food? Tell me then Ms. Mulberry, Did a part of you enjoy the taste of flesh?”

“Don't push it. How about you get back to work, I have patients to care for.”

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[coelii]

Kori’s Slut Season Finale has aired and we’re now moving on to the next era. I know a lot of you really resonated with the fact that I’ve kind of ass blasted my whole face, body, and personality onto this blog over the past year and a half, but truth be told I’ve been doing that thing a lot of trans girls do and just navigating myself through all these changes and struggling with my sense of self. I’ve had quite a few personas over the time and if I’m being honest a lot of what I’ve done has been incredibly selfish and inconsiderate of my wife and the love we have for each other. She’s my everything and my only and she deserves the whole world.

I think after so long in the closet and finally feeling free to be “myself” presented the whole new challenge of “wait who the fuck am I?” I’ve done this whole thing before, I’ve taken the “crossdressing” photos and posted them on 4chan and Tumblr and Reddit at different times over the years. Clearly I enjoy the exhibition and having so many physical changes with HRT this time gave me a newfound pride in my body that I had never had before. Getting addicted to everyone’s compliments (both sweet AND horny) was a slippery slope I knew was there and yet I went down it anyway.

Every selfie I’ve posted I’ve enjoyed, but not every selfie I’ve enjoyed needed to be posted. At the end of the day there are parts of my body that, while I don’t feel shame in showing, I do regret somewhat cheapening myself by sharing them. I’ve never been a slut shamer (some of my favorite people are sluts in fact!) but ultimately I don’t think it’s for me.

So rejoice ye who couldn’t care less about my vanity but enjoyed my humor or advice or silliness. I’ll still post selfies but I don’t think we’re going to be as racy as we were around here before. I’ll still be kind and friendly and do my best to make everyone happy, but I’m not going to be flirty or horny or the other things better left kept in the Id.

I’m still finding my “sense of self” but I think at least for now I’ve got one thing pretty well figured out. Now I just need to work on how to love myself, that’s the real frightmare.

[maybekatherine]

I’m changing my username and blog description. And I’m making this post about why because it feels important to me to explain it and say what I have to say.

I’m detransitioning. Or I’m going to, anyway. Real life is very complicated, and detransitioning is a lot harder than transitioning. Because being transgender is, for lack of a better way to put it, a set of known facts. Even to transphobic people, being transgender is still a set of known facts, it’s just that some of the facts they know are different. You can tell someone, “I am transgender,” and they have a set of known facts in their head that they then apply to their knowledge of you.

Detransitioning is not a set of known facts. It’s, “Be quiet, don’t say anything, or you’ll hurt our fight for our rights," (the 'you don’t matter' is silent). It’s, “Detransitioning is a myth,” or, “People detransition because of transphobia and if there was no transphobia no one would ever detransition.” On the other side, it’s being a pawn. A, “See? This one single person detransitioned so clearly they’re all faking,” and it’s, “We need to drastically limit transgender healthcare because this one single person regrets the effect transitioning had on their body.”

And I don’t know how to navigate that right now. I don’t want to be the person that makes people think, “If they're like this, then what about the other ones?” I hear the imagined transphobic people in my head saying those things and I don't want that. I don’t know how to straddle the line between ‘detransitioning is a harmful myth’ and ‘detransitioning proves that we need even stricter laws against transgender people’ and just say this is me, this is who I am, and it doesn’t mean anything about anyone else.

Because I know gender dysphoria exists. I have it now. Transgender people are real. But people can also be given transgender healthcare when they shouldn’t be. That mental health does play a role, and it does need to be taken into consideration.

I want to make it very clear: me being prescribed hormones was medical malpractice. My primary care provider, psychologist, and therapist all agree that given what I said in my initial appointment for HRT, I should not have been given hormones. I told the provider that I didn’t feel physical dysphoria, but I liked it when people treated me like or mistook me for a man. That I have trouble noticing when I’m uncomfortable and sometimes don’t realize it until after the thing that was making me uncomfortable went away, so maybe I did have dysphoria and didn't realize it. That all the changes I actually wanted were things testosterone wouldn't effect, and I was ambivalent about the things it would, but I felt like I had to go on HRT in order to be taken seriously. That if I wanted to be seen as a man, going on testosterone was something I HAD to do, that it was my only option. And that the thing that finally pushed me that last little bit was seeing a Tumblr post about how cis people also have things they hate about the way puberty changes their bodies.

What was really going on: the childhood trauma of watching my brother get everything he needed and wanted while I got nothing. Knowing that it wasn’t just me and that that was how society worked, and all that plus some compulsory femininity body issues getting twisted up in my head and causing the subconscious sense that maybe if I was a boy I would get everything I needed and wanted too. A subconscious sense that manifested itself in the consciousness as feeling transgender and wanting to transition.

...Yeah. A walking, talking radfem stereotype. A false TERF claim made real. So you can see why I feel trapped. Just because I’m me doesn’t mean they’re not them, but I don’t know how to make people realize that. You can't just say, "I'm not actually transgender, it was sexism-related childhood trauma and compulsory femininity, and being given HRT was medical malpractice," and expect it to have no effect, not in this political environment. I don’t know how to not look like the perfect pawn.

I'm NOT going to fall down the radfem rabbit hole. There have been very brief moments where that had to be an active decision, but it's still an active decision that I chose to make and will continue to choose to make.

I don't know how I feel about informed consent anymore. It has its place certainly, especially when someone's options are limited. But informed consent shouldn't mean just giving hormones to everyone who asks without question. Providers still need to judge what patients are saying, and still need to be prepared to say no. I all but said, "I don't want these changes." How can someone hear a patient say that and treat them anyway? She should have said no. I should have been told to see a therapist for a bit first, or at least wait a while and spend a long time thinking about what I was really after.

When I lay awake at night and whispered Katherine, it felt right. But then the day came and Katherine became an ugly, ill-fitting skin. But when I became Cody she stuck around, this imaginary version of another me who was who I was ‘supposed’ to be, in the sense that that was the person everyone had expected me to be but then I wasn’t. I started to wish I was her. I wished I was her more and more as time went on, and I thought that it was because it would be so easy, so much easier than being Cody.

I was right about it being easier. I was wrong about why. Because the longer I’m Cody, the less real he feels. He’s something worse than an ill-fitting skin. Katherine is the real me. She's who I am inside. Not the Katherine I was before, she also wasn't real, though she was more real than Cody is. The real Katherine is the one I saw when I whispered it into the dark, the not-so-imaginary version of another me that never went away.

I've had this post in my drafts for several days, going back to it and reading it over again and again, changing wording and adding things and taking things out. To be as clear as I can, in every single word. Because by making it I feel like I'm stepping into a minefield. I'm tossing an apple and saying it's for the fairest, but instead of going after the apple they're going to go after me.

But like I said at the beginning: it is important for me to say this. It's important to me. Because only talking about the good things hurts more than it helps. Pretending that the bad things don't exist just means that someone else can take it and twist it, bend it into the shape of a weapon that they can use against trans people. Maybe it would be a weapon either way. But you can't defend against a weapon without acknowledging that it exists. I don't want to be a weapon. I just want to be myself. And in the end, isn't that what we all want?

[uncle-fruity]

my much younger friend took T for a smaller period of time and de-transitioned when it didn't help her mental health, it did harm her singing voice permanently. she lost her upper range but didn't take it long enough to gain on the alto/tenor front, she cannot sing some of her own songs anymore. please don't dismiss what she went through, I hate that I was so casual in encouraging her to try this while knowing that she was a professional vocalist.

So, the thing about this is that T is not something that should be taken lightly. It should be something that the person taking it has thoroughly considered, understands, and has come to terms with.

And, I mean, I get it. Sometimes you don't know what you want until you try it and realize it isn't for you. Deciding that you don't vibe with the trans identity and de-transitioning is extremely valid, and it's okay to be disappointed with the results of taking hormones; it's okay to regret it. I would never claim that hormones are for everyone, or that hormones will give you your most ideal body, or that taking hormones makes you a better, more valid trans person. So, before you start taking hormones, it's extremely important to check in with yourself and figure out what your transition goals are, what the hormone could do to your body that you aren't fond of, and come to terms with the fact that, yes, taking hormones will permanently change you in many ways. Are you prepared for that? If things go sideways, will you resent yourself for trying anyway? If you aren't sure, you shouldn't rush into it no matter what the people around you are telling you to do.

HRT is a deeply personal decision, and I personally think it should be prefaced with a LOT of self reflection and self awareness. Under no circumstances should it be taken as a quick fix to underlying mental health issues, because that stuff doesn't just disappear because your body changes. Even dysphoria can persist through hormone therapy. And though hormones can be majorly beneficial & ease a lot of discomfort/distress if you're dysphoric about your gender presentation, HRT should not be the only treatment a dysphoric person should seek out. Mental health needs to be addressed, when possible, with a professional, with a healthy support system, and with a lot of hard personal internal work. Or as many of those things as the individual can manage. I'm sorry it has to be like this.

Also, is your friend's voice permanently harmed or permanently changed? Because there's a big difference there. Will she never be able to sing anything again? Has a professional told her that? Has a doctor looked at the state of her vocal chords? How long has it been since she stopped taking T? Has she tried training with her new voice to see if she can find a range that works for her? Can she sing nothing, or can she just not sing stuff she used to sing? Can she not make new songs of her own to sing with her new range? How young is she? AFAB voices don't finish changing until well into their mid/late-20s, maybe even later. So depending on how young your much younger friend is, her voice may have even more changes to go through, more richness to develop with time. Is her voice truly, honest to god harmed or does she feel that way because she's in the middle of processing grief & loss? The whole framing of this feels a little bad faith to me, tbh.

And like... not to be rude, but is it possible that you're feeling guilty about the encouragement you gave her and have projected dismissal of how serious a decision HRT is onto my post because you feel like you were dismissive at the time? A post which was largely meant for transmascs already pretty sure they want to go on T & need to hear about positive experiences -- and not a post that was written under the assumption that those transmascs will become one of the small percentage of people who choose to de-transition (which, again, super valid! but not what I was talking about, not who I was centering in that post). A post that can be summed up as, "There's nothing inherently bad about taking T, vocal drop is change not irreparable damage and singing skills can be rebuilt. Don't let TERF rhetoric scare you if you're under the impression that T will make you incapable of singing, just be prepared to say good bye to your current voice." I even included a whole paragraph expressing how it's okay & normal to have strong feelings about the changes, and how it's healthier and more responsible to seek out therapy or supportive peers.

So idk anon. I'm sorry your friend is (assumedly) having difficult emotions around her HRT experience. Maybe it would be good to seek out de-transition positivity posts to show her that she's not alone in her experiences and that it's okay that she went through a big change and came out different on the other side. That doesn't make her less worthy of expressing herself with her voice. That doesn't make her smaller or stupid or ruined or damaged. It just means that things are different. And maybe she just needs to know that there's a place for her, that even if everything you said is true about her voice being permanently harmed (again, I'm SO dubious of that claim, especially coming from a random anon) -- even if that was true, and that door was closed to her, there will be so much time for her to find new doors to open in her life, new ways to fit into the world, new passions or skills that she might not have thought possible before. Maybe she needs to hear that she isn't broken, and she didn't destroy her future. Maybe she needs to hear that it's okay if her expectations fall short, because honestly that happens a lot in life, and no one is fully in control of their future. Maybe she needs to know that it's okay that she is who she is, no matter what changes she went through or will go through.

Cheers anon

[tg-headcanons]

Do you have any headcanons for how trans male ghouls choose new names for themselves? Like why they use the kanji that they do for their names and the adjusting period that comes with a new name? :) <3

YES YES I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS ABOUT TRANS GHOULS AND YOURE GONNA HAVE TO HEAR ALL OF THEM

Ghouls in general are very accepting of queer people. Really bigotry is a human thing because humans have laws to protect those assholes, but ghouls don’t and if they talk shit they get fucking murdered, so by now they’ve long since left that stuff behind because literally all it did was get people killed over nothing. Socially at least, being trans among ghouls is easier than being trans among humans

Ghouls often need to change their names, whether it’s because the CCG found them or they need to find a better hunting territory, identities are edited a lot. In most cases they identify more with their mask identity than their name since the mask stays constant but the name doesn’t, and it’s the basis for how one identifies. Many ghouls find out someone is trans through hearsay about their ghoul persona. Like when Koma started identifying as a man, there was a whole lot of “The devil ape took over the entire sixth ward, he- yeah his name is enji now, anyway-“

Many ghouls can’t read, many don’t have access to books and computers, and many just straight up don’t care much. So when it comes to picking names it’s a case by case basis. Some just choose whatever sounds nice, others make up words or use random nouns, and others spends days combing through meanings and symbols until they find the one that’s perfect. As for kanji and spellings, well, only the ones that can read can do that. Even the literate ones may not have actually learned all the meanings of kanji, so when they write up their names with what they could Google it tends to seem a little off

There’s some issues that come up with ghouls that don’t for humans, such as how they can’t change the gender they’re theorized to be at the CCG and they can’t get HRT through regular doctors. There’s also some advantages, like how you can’t have a birth certificate with a gender that doesn’t match if you don’t have a birth certificate! And how the respiration of their kagune makes it easier to fight and maneuver while binding

There are ghoul-specific ways of changing gender presentations. Female ghouls tend to have fleshier kagune while males tend to have sharper whippy kagune, and transitioning ghouls may practice shaping their kagune until it naturally takes a skinnier or fleshier shape. Theres also different social norms, male ghouls tend to be more docile while female ghouls tend to be more territorial, so many practice the mannerisms. There’s also smells, so an ftm ghoul may borrow blood from a male ghoul or an mft would borrow blood from a female ghoul to apply like perfume. It wouldn’t completely cover up their scent but it would tinge it enough that other ghouls would recognize a vague masculine or feminine air

It’s very difficult for ghouls to medically transition since going to a doctor can be a death sentence, they of all humans would figure out what they are and turn them in. Because of that, there’s an assumed “whatever’s going on with their body is just how it is, they know what they’re about and if I challenge that they’re in the right to throw hands” policy. Luckily ghouls are so chill about gender that if they see their bro changing or something and notice different parts than they expected, it’s about as big a deal as seeing a birth mark. Just a “hey that’s a thing your body has, cool” and not much more. They all have medical stuff pop up that they can’t get taken care of so no one judges trans people who are pre-transition any more than they judge someone with a chipped tooth who can’t afford to get it fixed

That said, when they can transition, they take well to it. Many brands of hormones don’t work on them so there’s only a handful that they can use, but it tends to go well. Their bodies will fight against it at first, but once the doses are in their system long enough, the body pretty much says “well this must be some part of the genetic code we skipped my bad fam i’ll go do that” and gets ingrained in everything. There’s the obvious changes that any human would have, as well as More Ghoul Stuff. Ftm kagune getting thinner and mtf getting thicker, scents changing to reflect their gender, even slight changes to the bone structure as the regenerative ability gets used to the treatment. Over time their homeostasis becomes nearly indistinguishable from a cis person of the same gender. If they’re one of the very lucky few who has access to ghoul surgeons, top/bottom surgeries are even easier. As long as the surgery happens when they’re just hungry enough to be able to scar, by the time they recover their body will be set to regenerate in the way they want it to. Plus since they have the regenerative ability, it allows them to have better control over proportions since they can be supplied with meat during the surgery to grow as little or as much tissue as they need. Anyway congrats to Kanae on the 8 inch d-

Medical stuff aside, ghoul society is very accepting to trans people regardless of how they came about their identity, if they medically transitioned (or want to), or who they are. Human sounding names mean much less than the ghoul persona, so all anyone needs to do is rethink how they think of someone. “She’s terrifying! Oh Is the devil ape a man now? Okay than he’s terrifying!” It’s not something they give much thought to, because it doesn’t matter what their name or gender is, only one thing matters: how likely are they to fucking kill you? No one’s gonna be disrespecting pronouns when they’re running for their lives, and that’s made ghouls an accepting bunch

[beelspillowpet]

If your requests are open and your willing to, would you be able to do the brothers reacting to a trans MC? 👉🏻👈🏻 preferably female to male, but either way is fine! Sorry if your not comfy with this type of request >~<

Anon, just because you were afraid that I would turn down your request, I am going to PROVE to you how much it doesn’t bother me I'm going to do the 7 brothers AND the side characters. Because you BETTER BELEIVE we have a cast of supportive people!! Yessir!!!

I myself am the twin sister of my late twin brother, who was also FtM! I’ll be using his memory as inspiration, if you do not mind? Thank you for requesting this!

~

Lucifer

At first he presumed you were just not girly. He didn't really mind your behavior or way of dressing, so long as you got your tasks done on time and were on your best behavior.

When you cut your hair and stopped wearing that nail polish (despite Asmo’s pleading) he still thought nothing of it. You wore pants, and started trying your best to drop hints, and thankfully, Lucifer isn’t an idiot.

So what you’re telling me is that we’ve made you uncomfortable when referring to you as a woman? If that is the case, MC, then we would be more than happy to refer to you as anything you request. You only need to say the word.

He is dedicated to making sure you’re happy and comfortable here. He and his brothers may be demons, but they aren’t heartless. They were once angels too. He goes through the process with you, if you were shaky or unsure of what to do in the past. If you want HRT, surgery, need a new wardrobe, he and his brothers will be the first to provide. Whatever to keep you happy in your skin.

Mammon

Oh. Honestly speaking, he’ll still love you regardless of what form your body takes. He liked the way you looked, but secretly he can’t wait to see how you’ll look after you transition.

Before we even get to that point though, it takes a lot of hint dropping for him to get it. And even then, he has to go and ask the others what you’re trying to tell him. Of course he gets picked on a little bit for it, but once he figures it out he’s really happy you were comfortable enough to tell him.

Hell, he might get a job just so he can help you be able to afford all the things you’ll need to properly transition. Some of the details make him blush quite a bit, and if you’re uncomfortable with touches or any signs of affection during your process of transitioning, he will politely refrain from making his human uncomfortable.

He’s taking you to Majolish and you are going to get your ENTIRE wardrobe redone. Courtesy of The GREAT Mammon! You should feel grateful that he’s working this hard to make you happy. I mean c’mon, he LOVES you! He can’t wait to love you more after you’ve become the man you always were deep down inside.

Leviathan

He does notice that you act different from other women. Not that he minds it, not at all. His Henry is still the same old Henry. Just a little bit different. He’s a little bit different too, there’s nothing wrong with that. Right?!

It’s when you start preferring to be called Henry as opposed to your birth name, do the cogs start churning in his brain. He would have suspected at first that maybe you just were very good friends with him and loved TSL almost as much as him.

He’s seen a few heart-warming anime about it. Specifically one about a girl becoming a boy, and the struggles he went through while attending school. The title wasn’t too important to him, but now that he had a reference for what you were dealing with, he was a bit happy. He just wanted to wait until the moment was right to bring it up to you. Perhaps his Henry was really a Henry after all!

When the moment comes, he’s proud to say the least. He throws his arms around you happily, and promises to be there by your side every step of the way. He’s not exactly rolling in money, but an Otaku finds a way. The Lord of Shadows is your best friend ever, and he can’t wait to see the before and after pictures of your full transition!

Satan

It started with a book you read with him. He didn’t fully comprehend your situation, but he knew you didn’t act like normal girls. It reminded him of a character in a book he read a few weeks ago. The guy didn’t really act like a girl.

While sweet and thoughtful, this character didn’t hit the nail on the head in some ways. When talking over the book with you, you explained just as much to him. The energy was there, but it was backwards for you. He picked up on it immediately.

So what you’re telling me is, you understand this characters struggle with themselves, and can relate to it. But something about it is backwards? A little smile appears on his face as it fully dawns on him. MC, I think I’ll be able to assist you in any way you need.

With Satan’s wonderful connections across the entire Devildom, it wasn’t long before you were getting some of the best treatment possible. The prices seemed a bit scary, but he assured you everything was being taken care of behind the scenes. If you needed to worry about anything, it would be the tiring, long process to come with transitioning. He’ll be sure it goes relatively smoothly for you, though!

Asmodeus

Oh he gets it immediately. Darling why didn’t you just say so in the first place?

He’s dragging you back to your room, rambling the entire time about how he can’t wait to take you out and go shopping. He puts together a devious little page to gather up donations and the like to support your transitioning. His fans would be HONORED to pitch in, right?

In the mean time, he stops pampering you with makeup and his other routines that you used to tolerate for the sake of being cordial. He still pushes for the nail polish, since gender is simply a social concept and he’s ready to crush it into dust any chance he can get. But it’s not about him, it’s about you.

Soon your room is painted a new color, your dresses and skirts and frilly outfits are tossed out for more appropriate attire for your sex, and he’s taking photos for his Devilgram page to show everyone how beautiful you are, even while going through the long process!

Beelzebub

You and Beel got along fabulously. He seemed astonished that a female was interested in all these manly habits he indulged in. He heard from some of the guys on his team that you were interested in playing Fangol. As evidenced by how you always showed up to his practices and games, no matter if they were home or away.

He figured you were just a really big fan of sports. But then you even started working out with him, and giving him suggestions and tips on how to get even more out of his workouts at the gym. You were really passionate about this.

Let’s not kid ourselves, he probably does not pick up on any of the signs. You have tot ell him, and you have to tell him firmly. You are a man, just like him. When you do tell him, however, he’s eager to help you transition. Imagine having another guy in the house who loves Fangol as much as you do!?

He isn’t much aside from emotional support through the transitions, and he coddles you when you have those bad days. If you want to eat something, he’ll rush to the kitchen and cook you a full meal before you move an inch. You’re allowed to lay in bed today. Let him handle the heavy load of work for you.

Belphegor

Oh wow, look at that. He picked it up almost immediately.

I mean, there’s no way a girl would act the way you do, right? Dress the way you do. Be the way you are. He doesn’t care though, and just wants you to be happy. If that means you transition into a man, then hell, he’s on board with you.

He may be a lazy bastard, but he knows when it’s time to get up and work hard to get something. That was what he was like as an angel, anyways. Working at Hell’s Kitchen is the worst, and you hear him complain about as much, but he smiles and assures you that it’s all for a good reason.

His final gift to you to apologize about the Incident, is money. Now at first glance it seems like something Mammon would do. Probably. In reality though, this is the money that will be going towards your HRT. He doesn’t know if you want to fully transition or not, but if you want that top surgery, he can help pay for that too. He’ll do anything to make sure you’re happy and healthy in your own body.

Diavolo

It really is a house of men, isn’t it?

He’s glad though, truly, that you were comfortable coming to him about it. Don’t bother ever opening your wallet to pay for any therapy, medication, or surgery. As the Prince of the Devildom, he would be more than happy to get you doctors of all sorts to help you. No questions asked!

It might be a bit overwhelming at first, but the news is exciting. If the Prince accepts you so readily, it gives you hope that other demons will as well. Pretty soon you’re going through your processes, and Diavolo couldn’t be happier to see it happening.

You really is a wonderful guy, and he’s glad he’s getting to experience the changes you take in your life. 

Barbatos

To say he didn’t suspect this would be an understatement.

Ever silent and respectful though, he never spoke a word of it. You are probably uncomfortable with people assuming it, even though it’s true. An insecurity that humans seem to deal with, although unfortunate.

However, when the news is broken during a meeting between you, Lucifer, he, and the Prince himself, a smile creeps on his face.

He’s happy to hear that you are so comfortable speaking about this sort of thing. He knows it must be tough, having hidden your true feelings for so long. He prepares a delicious tea with small treats, to celebrate your coming out, and transitioning.

Simeon (and Luke)

Oh dear. God loves you, still. Don’t worry about this. He doesn’t see you as an imperfection.

They assures you constantly that you have their full support, and that will never change. You are not broken, you are not unwanted, and you are not strange. You are a regular trans man in their eyes, and they will defend you on that.

Simeon almost takes on a fatherly role to you, wanting to make sure everything goes as smooth as possible. He probably has done a bit of research in preparations for your transition, and all the nasty little side effects that come with it are worrying him.

However, once it’s all over, Luke and Simeon are glad you came out on top. And my, what a handsome man you make!

Solomon

He figured, but didn’t want to assume. I mean, who the hell is he?

He’s got a few spells for this though, make it quick and painless. One wave of a wand and POOF! Woman no more!

Oh but that’s probably dangerous. The shifty bastard. You would much rather do it the regular way; and not have your insides and outsides shifted around by some crazy sorcerer.

He doesn’t protest much, but that does suck. Hehe. Oh well. You can count on him to support you through it all!

[dolly-decadatia]

Intention of the day-

This is so hard to pick out on days without a pressing need. Also, let’s take a minute to focus on the fact that I don’t have a pressing need. I’ve been in constant crisis mode for 3 decades. I was starting to calm down at the end of 2020 and then my health tanked and I went back into crisis mode. I had 1 single therapy appt recently. It was mostly a waste of time but the one relevant theory she had was that because I’d been in such unsafe situations my whole life, the possible reason I got sick recently was because my body finally “felt safe” to do so. Who knows? But yeah, being in crisis mode I always needed something so it would have been easier to set intentions then. I’m sitting here drawing a blank.

Fuck it. I’m going to set an intention based on my reading yesterday. I’m going to be kind to myself.

Incense: cedar (for confidence) however, I only have one brazier. I’ve got mandarin currant wax melting in the living room and I’m about to light frankincense on the actual order in a little while before I do my daily divination. Les Vampires like frankincense.

Candle: pink would be best, especially with sigil carved into the side and anointed with rose oil. (I don’t have any of that.)

Crystals: I have rhodochrosite and rose quartz (nurturing) and tigers eye (self esteem)

Perfume: rose oil

Flowers: roses and lavender

Color: pink

Food: almonds and chocolate are both good for self esteem and by coincidence they were both in my breakfast.

Affirmations: I love the person I becoming

Daily Divination :

Will I ever be beautiful

Underneath: transgression

Flaws, contradictions, mistakes

It’s all about self forgiveness. “Live better, do better, but let the self punishment go. ... Go now and make amends, then give thanks for self forgiveness.”

“Make amends. Take stock, asses, and redirect, and come back into harmony with the voice of your soul.”

This doesn’t appear to answer my question. Maybe all 3 will make sense together, or Les Vampires think this is what I should be worried about instead of my looks.

Heart: creator (inverted)

“...now you call them scientists and they merge cells, transform bodies, change peoples shapes, repair great injury, change destiny. sometimes, it is wonderful, and sometimes, it is most destructive.”

Is this about my weigh loss and plastic surgery obsession?

“Each day with your thoughts, actions, and decisions you create anew the form your natural energies and soul will take... you can recreate yourself”

This part seems like an answer. I’m recreating myself and I need to make sure I nurture this new being with nutritious thoughts and tend it with actions that will help them grow beautiful.

“You are the vessel through which new life and ideas are born... When we create a new one, they struggle and are often confused and in pain.”

Cursed: (because it was inverted) terrifying paragraph that kicked me straight in the tokophobia. May I learn today’s lesson quickly so I never have to read this terrifying bit again. I believe they’re saying raising this new version of me will require sacrifice and inconvenience and be frustrating and joyless at times but they used a triggering cis breeder metaphor to convey their point that I really could have lived without. Point taken. I will undertake this labor. I had already often thought that my transition was very much me suffering through an unknown amount of years and then “delivering” this beautiful peaceful man and happily dying. That man I was supposed to be was still born. Top surgery botched, looks decimated, sick from hrt which is massively unfair seeing as its safe for 99% of other trans people. He’s dead. I must stop mourning him and put all my loving attention on this next baby I’m nurturing. They are nonbinary and long for peace and beauty and community. How I nurture them now colors who they will be when they’re “born.”

Promise: primal

Connecting deep within, sacred dance, instinct

This is very gendered. Second very gendered card of the reading. I’m unsure if I want to continue to work with Les Vampires. We will see how tomorrow’s reading goes.

Anyway it talks about dancing. The thing that I love to do and am grieving not being able to do right now because of pain and illness. It calls dancing “feminine” which is absolutely ridiculous. This cis obsession with gendering inanimate objects and actions is juvenile and stupid. Makes it hard to suspend disbelief that I’m working with immortal wise vampires. Maybe the author put her own spin on what they told her. Still annoying to read.

My action to work with this card to to dance.

And that’s my future.

Dance.

On a question about “will I be beautiful.”

So how do these go together? I do carry a lot of guilt in my past that I beat myself up for. Is this why I’m not currently attractive? All the self abuse. It’s all taken a physical and mental toll? I don’t take care of myself so I’m physically ugly and I’m too busy ruminating on all my failings that my energy is also ugly? The card does make a bit more sense in context with the other 2.

So in the present, I need to let all that self loathing stay in the past and not feed that poison to my “baby”.

So what’s the future? I do what I need to do to be a responsible Sire and then fledgling me is healthy enough to dance and therefore the answer is “yes I will be beautiful”

Or

I leave the self hatred behind, nurture my fledgling and then fledgling me’s “beauty” is the beauty of dancing meaning “no, you won’t achieve physical beauty, but you will achieve a beautiful art form to offer the world.”

I feel uncomfortable. Today more than yesterday I feel the human author behind the guide deck. This is why I’m an atheist. Once holes appear I rip them bigger and look into them. This was why I couldn’t be Wiccan. I had the same problem pretending to talk to a Goddess as I did the Abrahamic God. I was much happier when I was a pop culture pagan because I could just do the LaVey school of “this is theatre because humans need ritual” with characters I was more attached to than deities. If they are all made up anyway, why do pick my faves? I may end up back in Pop Culture Paganism at the end of this journey. It’s too early to tell.

As an ex PCP I can say, ok maybe this is just a book but my belief makes Les Vampires real. Of course I’m spotting an undercurrent of bullshit. It runs through everything.

But still I’m shaken. I had found so much comfort in the concept of loving vampire guides yesterday and now doubt is setting in and my good mood is tanking. It’s going to take a lot of work to resuspend disbelief and try and feel that love again.

In the meantime I accept my task of forgiving myself and nurturing my fledgling .

Later on a thought occurred to me. Maybe all the gross prego talk was because Les Vampires are trying to dumb down the beautiful Sire/ fledgling relationship into terms a human would understand. The bulk of the target audience won’t understand them the way I do. Now I feel bad for having sulky, bratty energy in front of them. I’m going to make amends by forgiving myself like my Underneath card said and nurturing my fledgling like my Heart card said.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

This isn't to be rude, I'm just legitimately curious. What's the point in being transgender if you don't have dysphoria? Is it just because of the disconnect between the brain and the body? So, being trans helps you to feel more connected and at home in your body? There just isn't any distress? And if you don't have physical/body dysphoria, you shouldn't medically transition, right? I've heard doing so can cause you to develop body dysphoria. So, you should just socially transition?

Lee says:

“What’s the point in being transgender”? People are transgender because we are- it isn’t like there’s a point, it’s just the way some people are. That’s true for all trans folks, regardless of their experience with dysphoria.

Not having any distress from dysphoria doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t experience distress from being trans at all though- being trans in a transphobic world means that you’re going to be coming up against some transphobic people and uncomfortable and unsafe situations and all that because if you’re trans then transphobes aren’t going to ask you “hey, do you have gender dysphoria?” before they discriminate against you or shout at you in the locker room or something. So I think that trans people do share a common experience of minority stress from being marginalized even if you don’t have distress from gender dysphoria.

Yeah, I’d say that it seems like a lot of trans people who don’t identify as having gender dysphoria do tend to experience gender euphoria, and accepting that you’re trans if you’re trans is usually the first step towards helping you to feel more connected and at home in your body and more comfortable with how you move in the world. The Being trans without dysphoria post gets into that a bit more.

Gender dysphoria is defined in the DSM-V as “the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender” (DSM-V, page 451). So some folks may have that incongruence but it isn’t necessarily causing them that distress. But if you don’t fully identify as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% of the time, you can call yourself trans. That’s it, there’s no other criteria you need to meet to be trans. 

As for medically transitioning, I think that’s something each individual needs to figure out for themself. You have to decide whether the changes on HRT you want are worth the other changes you aren’t as excited for. You can do low-dose HRT and have the changes happen slower so you can stop when you’ve had enough, but some changes are permanent so it’s important to only start HRT if you’re reasonably sure that you’re okay with the permanent changes that you’d get. You don’t want to start HRT to find that it only makes you more uncomfortable. 

There are some people who may find that medically transitioning creates some features they’re dysphoric with, and there are other folks who may feel that they felt neutral about their bodies beforehand and not necessarily distressed by them, but felt even more comfortable and happy after transitioning- a shift from neutral in either direction is possible.

For example, you might be…

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then dysphoric post-HRT/surgery

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then happier and euphoric/more positive post-HRT/surgery

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then still neutral, no particular emotional change post-HRT/surgery

Some non-dysphoric people may feel neutral about their bodies as they are so they don’t necessarily feel like they need HRT to be comfortable in their body, but they may want other people to recognize what their gender is and so they may find it easier to pass if they start hormones or get surgery and passing is often associated with safety in certain situations so that’s a valid reason to transition- if they think they’re okay with the HRT changes. 

In fact, I wouldn’t even say that someone shouldn’t start HRT if one of the changes from HRT would make them dysphoric about something they’re not currently dysphoric about. It’s up to them to decide if that changes is worth everything else they’d be getting. Sometimes a little bad is worth a lot of good- it depends on the person and how they feel about it! And it isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly, but it also isn’t something that should be policed by random strangers on the internet.

I personally do have dysphoria and I’m on T and had top surgery, a hysterectomy, and I’m getting phallo, but that doesn’t mean that I am/was uncomfortable with every single aspect about my pre-HRT and pre-surgery body. Before I started testosterone, for example, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about getting facial hair. It wasn’t one of the changes that I was really looking forward to. Now I’m about 2 years on T, and I’ve found that so far I don’t have very much facial hair anyway but I just shave now and then, as plenty of folks do, and if I have literally 0 regrets about being on T and it was definitely the right decision for me. In my case, the change I didn’t particularly want (facial hair) was totally worth everything else. 

I know that some non-binary people feel that they wouldn’t be fully comfortable with either all the changes from estrogen or testosterone. These folks may decide that either way they’d still have dysphoria about certain things, so starting hormones might create new areas of dysphoria but alleviate other areas, and they have to decide which things would be harder to cope with- the things they had before, or the things they don’t want about HRT changes. So for example, if a non-binary person really doesn’t want say increased body hair growth on T but they really want a lower voice, they may decide that getting dysphoria about their body hair is worth getting rid of the voice dysphoria because they can manage the body hair easier by shaving and the voice changes will be more noticeable in how they interact with strangers or something. 

It’s all very complicated and it isn’t an easy decision so saying big general categories of folks shouldn’t medically transition and but people should often oversimplifies all the different variables that trans people are grappling with- and there are almost always a few exceptions to every rule. So making broad generalizations might exclude and marginalize some people who legitimately need to transition while including folks who might not want to. Some folks with dysphoria may choose not to medically transition and some folks without dysphoria might choose to medically transition, and there are often really good reasons why they’re making those decisions and that should be respected. Nobody should feel pressured into medically transitioning if they don’t want to do it, even if they have dysphoria, and the reverse.

So I really don’t feel comfortable dictating categories of folks who should or shouldn’t medically transition because life is more complicated than that. Each person who is interested in medically transitioning needs to spend some time thinking about it, and it can help to create like a concrete pro/con list of how they think they’d feel about each change. If they think that surgery and/or hormones is right for them after careful consideration, that should be respected. Not everyone decides to medically transition which is valid, and I couldn’t say whether medically transition is even a particularly common choice for non-dysphoric people to make, but we should respect other people’s bodily autonomy and trust that they can make choices for themself.

Followers say:

guiltyidealist said: Being trans isn’t “a disconnect between the brain and the body” because not all trans people feel like they’re “”“"born in the wrong body,”“”“ and sex =/= gender

Lee says:

Yes, exactly! I didn’t fully address that statement- some trans people may feel that there’s a disconnect between their brain and their body, but that isn’t true for every single trans person, as the follower above wrote. 

You can’t be “wrong” about the way that you feel about your body- although it is transphobic to say “All men have X parts or want X parts” because that isn’t true. For example, one trans guy may say “My body is male because I am male and this is my body,” and another trans guy may say “I want to medically transition in every way that’s available to me because I don’t see my body as being fully reflective of my identity” and both of those feelings are valid. 

I know this is all a lot to unpack and unravel, especially when different folks are using different definitions for the same words, but again, in the end it comes back to bodily autonomy and the right for folks to make their own decisions about their own bodies.

If you don’t fully identify as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% of the time, you can call yourself trans. That’s it, there’s no other criteria you need to meet to be trans. If you want to medically transition, then that’s your decision.

[crabnby]

i'm angry abt transmedicalism again so just a few reminders:

there is NO proof that dysphoria is required to be trans

""brain sex"" doesn't count, especially because scientists themselves are still researching it and have yet to come to a mutual consensus on the results

maybe your brain did develop different than the rest of your body in utero. we don't actually fucking know though because science doesn't have a solid consensus on that yet. what we DO know though is that brains change and adapt over time and are, unsurprisingly, heavily affected by their environment. whether ""brain sex"" exists or not, it is not the only reason that people are trans.

by the way, trying to say that research — with articles that explicitly state "more research needs to be done until we can fully understand this/make solid conclusions about the results" — is """scientific fact""" is so fucking misleading, knock it off

(the only things that can be considered "fact" in the scientific community anyways are consistent results and scientific theory, so jot that down)

medicalizing transgender identities is more harmful than good in the long run. i know you all think that it'll give you better insurance coverage on hrt and surgeries, but insurance companies are not on your side. you would think that i'd get my medicine and hospital visits for my chronic migraine disorder pretty well taken care of under insurance, but i don't because it's considered a "pre-existing condition" which means i have to pay for a lot of shit out of pocket. what really needs to happen is a complete revamp of our healthcare system, so eat the rich

related, we should not and i personally will not adapt to cis people. they should adapt to us. using cis definitions and ideals of gender is way fucking backwards imo

also, making transgender identities a "medical condition" just seems,,, regressive from how far the lgbt community has come? maybe that's just me? but i think trying to say it's "medical" gives transphobes more ammo rather than less. it just feels invalidating to reduce complex identities and a complex community into a "medical condition", at least to me.

p.s. remember when homosexuality was considered a "medical condition"? yeah let's not go back to that.

edit: changed wording on point 4 to make more sense

[selfish-thunder]

+ I've considered transitioning before, but I always let the thoughts of 'oh, what will ____ think of this?' get to me but now, my urge is growing stronger and I'm tired of looking in the mirror and seeing a girl. / So, I guess my question is, how does one fully decide to start T? And although I'm uncomfortable with how I am now, should I just wait post-graduation to begin identifying and begin transitioning, as doing so now will be denied and cause more problems than I already have?

Hi!!! Oh goodness, I feel honored you feel safe reaching out to me. I assume the other anon was from you, too, but I’ll put my reply to this one.

I hope I do good by you, and I'm sorry it's taken me a while to answer. I'll reblog this a few times in hopes you see it. 

First of all, I want you to know that I completely support and love you. And yes, will support and love you no matter what you decide for yourself. You can completely be whatever gender you ARE without any physical transitioning whatsoever, point blank. For whatever reason. Transitioning and identifying as something aren't mutually exclusive. I'm sorry you aren't in a position where you can just go ahead and do what will make you the most comfortable, and your concerns are valid. They directly affect your quality of life, so it is definitely a big decision.

So, I guess my advice is...

First of all, people may surprise you. (You can also be a little sneaky in how you come out to people, even though it's probably cheating lol. When I came out to my mother, I opened with "You told me you love me unconditionally. Is that still true", basically letting her know I was about to put that claim to the test. At the end of the day, she doesn't understand, is confused, but will stand by me.) 

And I totally understand how thinking "what will x think" can hold you back.So, I'll tell you something a friend told me once that was extremely helpful for me. Don't think of it as "coming out", but rather you inviting someone into your story. Being trans is especially difficult if you decide to transition because there is a period of time where you don't have the option of "being out" because one look, and people can guess. And that time is from starting hormones until about a year or two later, so again, your concerns are valid. Regardless, just because people might make assumptions based on appearance, that doesn't mean you have to let them into your story. You don't have to tell anyone anything if you aren't comfortable with it.

My next bit of advice would be, find an adult (I'm assuming you’re a teenager, so my apologies if you meant school as in university) or a teacher who you trust. It may not be someone you've interacted with a lot, maybe just had for one class, but if you feel like this person is reasonably open-minded and accepting, you can go ahead and let them know there's something on there. Not the full story if you don’t want, but something. 

I did that with my boss and a few of my coworkers so when going to HR, I already had support. If you decide to transition, you can then approach the school and offer a willingness to work with them, and you can show on the record that you were agreeable and reasonable (COYA, in case they're a bunch of dicks). 

There's also a ton of resources. 

For example, where I live, there's a thing called the "TransBuddy" program that is a bunch of volunteers willing to help, such as going to doctor's with you, helping with legal name changes and gender markers, schedule appointments and be an active voice explicitly to support you. Go incognito and see what's around your area. From my experience, a lot of people are willing to come to you if they're in a different town. Just please, please, please be safe. Ask for references.

If you do not feel comfortable or safe doing your own research for whatever reason, I am happy to try to help. (I’ll try to already put together something of national support and things anyway, maybe a lot of people can use it...)

As far as what to expect during your first few months...

For the first few months, expect your body to sweat a lot more (your scent will change too, and the sweatiness last a long time, tbh), you'll start to grow hair (EVERYWHERE I swear), your face will probably bloat some, and your voice will start to change a little (ie, start cracking when you talk, etc). You may find yourself happier and less anxious because you're finally starting HRT and finally getting to be the person you want, but t can effect emotion too, such as finding yourself more easily irritated or what have you. So if you notice a change in emotion reaction, just keep that in mind. And you'll grow your own Adam's apple (I don't know why people actually think they're implants?????)

After about six months, your emotions should even out. Your voice will continue to drop, most likely, and growing facial hair will be easier. Your face will also start to harden then (probably might bloat so more), becoming more masculine. After about a year, your Adam's apple will probably be prominent, facial hair common (even if it's not thick yet), and then is usually around the time people begin surgeries if that's what you want.

Keep in mind, your doctors will start you off on low dosage, and you'll work your way up. Also please keep in mind that, though you can stop hormones at any time, so effects will not reverse, such as growing facial hair and your voice. 

Even if you stop t, those will remain how they are when you stop. Just something to keep in mind.

So yeah, it's a big decision, but I don't have to tell you that. I would look for an LGBT clinic, or at least an LGBT-friendly clinic, and get all the info from a licensed doctor before officially ruling one way or another. 

Please, please, please note: If the doctor is making you uncomfortable, feel like they aren't listening to you, or obviously tries to sway you against it because of their own personal ideals or opinions, find a different doctor. Politely thank them for their opinion, and feel free to discard it. A doctor should put your health and your mental health first, and dysphoria is a real, legit, big, and sometimes dangerous thing.

Which brings me to my last bit. 

There are lots you can do to feel more comfortable in your body other than transition or doing HRT. Binders and packers (my packer is awesome, I love it so f’ing much) help me as well as just wearing men's clothes. Having a support group helps tremendously too. Also, having a gender-neutral presentation may help too. For me personally, I shrugged off the expected feminine appearance years ago. I unintentionally got people used to seeing me without makeup, wearing big boots and flannel. Them finding out that I'm now on t caused most of them to be like, "Huh, yeah. I can see that."

So, if you only a little bit longer to go before you are able to graduate, move to a more supportive place, and politely start to break away from those who would deny you or make you feel unwelcome just because you dare to be who you are, then that could be a game plan of sorts. It was for me, at least, at work.

I mean, this is your LIFE. This is who YOU are. Be honest with yourself, yes, but there's nothing saying you can't be clever about it. Right now, it's the summer, so you can some time to play with your appearance and how you present yourself before you have to go back, if that’s something you want to do.

The most important thing is you do what is best for you, for your health, both physical and mental, and when it comes down to it, you don't have to invite anyone into your story. I can't advise you as to what decision you should make because that's yours to make. Again, though, whatever you decide, you have my complete and utter support.

And for what it's worth, to this blog, you are a man with he/him pronouns for however long you want. I have yet to meet a trans person who at any point thought their journey was going to be easy, but it definitely doesn't have to be lonely or unnecessarily hard. You are allowed to ask for what you need, to ask for help, and to tell any adult - any person - that they make you feel unsafe and you request to deal with someone else. Please be safe, make sure you map your exits, but don't be afraid to stand up for you.

If you need anything, feel free to reach out. You can DM me, too, and I promise to keep anything we talk about confidential and offer you a safe, nonjudgmental space.

[trans-i-am]

Interview with Jake -

Interview with a trans man who had taken hormone blockers

Warning: There may be anatomical terms used that some readers may be uncomfortable with. I did not edit any answers I received.

There is often a lot of discussion surrounding hormone blockers and what they do for those who take them. They are controversial, but often debates about them lack personal accounts and firsthand experiences. We can research and analyze information online to form our opinions, but we can often learn more from a conversation with someone who has taken them. I recently had the opportunity to speak with an individual about their experience with taking blockers before beginning Testosterone. His name is Jake. I wanted to get a look into the firsthand experience he had being on blockers and how he was affected by them.

Q: When did you realize you were trans?

Jake: I realized I was trans in middle school. I came out to as many people as possible almost as soon as I realized. I wanted to start making changes to my identity asap haha.

Q: How did your parents respond?

Jake: My parents were wonderfully accepting. They have supported me through everything and have always raised me with an accepting love. I'm very grateful for it.

Q: When and why did you make the decision to take blockers?

Jake: I learned about hrt in the early stages of my transition, but it was against my insurance company's policy (kaiser) until I was 16. They told me the policy was pretty standard everywhere in Colorado. This was in 2010 and things have definitely changed which I'm very glad about. It felt so awful to have to wait that long as a young adolescent.

Q: Was it easy to find a doctor to prescribe them?

Jake: The endocrinologist I visited suggested I take blockers until I was old enough for testosterone. I definitely agreed because he said it would stop my period and breast development and any further puberty advancements. I was already pretty far into puberty at that point. I started my period when I was 11.

Q: What did you take and how often?

Jake: My endocrinologist, who I was referred to through my insurance, prescribed me Lupron. I don't remember the exact numbers but it was a shot in my lower back every month or so. My mom is a nurse and she administered the shot to me every time. It wasn't a very painful shot. The worst part was that it came in a syringe that you had to mix up. And that created some bubbles or something that felt a little strange going into my body haha. It was a very mild pain that went away the next day. Less soreness after than a flu shot. They were great.

Q: Did you feel any differently on them (positive or negative)?

Jake: I don't think there were any side effects. Everything that happened to me seemed like an intended effect. I belive sometimes Dr's prescribe blockers before starting T anyway because it takes a while to get the T built up in your system enough for your body to stop producing estrogen. The blockers make that transition a little smoother Id imagine. They didn't affect my mental health in any negative way.

Q: Would you recommend it to others?

Jake: I would recommend it 🙂.

I had asked if any of my followers if they had any additional questions, here are a few I had received:

“I’m 14 is it too late for puberty blockers? Or should I try to get hormones?”

Jake: Not at all. From my experience, puberty lasts well into your 20s. The rapid development that has the most changes with any hormones coming into your system happens early on. It could possibly affect you later on starting T because you would be going through voice cracks and emotional swings at the beginning of hrt no matter what age you start at. So if you want to keep at a similar pace with peers of your age, you may want to just start T if you can. But who cares about that? There's no one right way to do it, and you should start T at any point in your life that you want. It all smooths out as you age.

“I’ve heard that mtf kids will have problems later getting bottom surgery because they don’t get the size growth. Is that anything like being ftm? Like will I lose length starting blockers or will I get more length? ( if you don’t wanna answer that’s ok!)”

Jake: I don't know much, if anything about bottom surgery. I'd say the blockers didn't affect anything. The T made my clit grow 🙂 it's about an inch now maybe.

“Will people that get hormones always avoid needing top surgery? Or at least only need keyhole?”

Jake: I imagine if you start hormones before any breast develop then I guess so? But blockers don't deteriorate that tissue. It just doesn't grow much. I got top surgery when I was 18 and it wasn't a keyhole procedure. I wore binders for years.

Stigma often surrounds the decision to take hormone blockers as puberty is often viewed as a very vulnerable time in a child’s life where small decisions can have major consequences, but often we fail to remind ourselves and each other that these are still people who are capable of making informed decisions about their lives and these decisions are not made on a whim. Perhaps we can take a step back to remember that there are many circumstances in life and we often create stereotypes about people that can be very counterproductive. Many people have an idea about what it looks like to be a person that takes hormone blockers, what kind of person takes them, and what circumstances lead to a person taking them. We can often find ourselves looking at outliers as a common occurrence. Many assume that hormone blockers are taken the moment that a child enters puberty, that these decisions are made without individualizations for the client, and are made solely by the parents without education of the child in question. The goal of my interview is to remind our community that we are talking about real people and not just theoretical children. They deserve our respect, support, and understanding.

I want to thank Jake for allowing me to interview him about his experience. If you’d like to get ahold of him about his experience, his Twitter is:

https://twitter.com/KittyFeles

[silver-and-ivory]

explain pls

Okay!

For context: I posted pictures and quotes from a Washington Times article about transgender people and (hyperbolically) claimed that it was all wrong. I suggested that anyone who wanted me to explains should send me an anon, and someone has taken me up on that offer! (hi!)

This is a long post, containing information a lot of my mutuals probably already know. It’s more like an Introduction to Transgender Issues than a more in-depth exploration of anything — which is good! I like doing Introduction to Transgender Issues —but it might not be very valuable if you already know this kind of thing. I also elide over some things.

So: let’s take it from the top. First of all, the lead-in sucks:

Is Caitlyn Jenner a woman? A growing body of research from scientists, philosophers and feminists says no.

I understand that they want a catchy hook but this an asshole move. They shouldn’t specifically call someone out as Not Really a Woman, nor should they use an unflattering picture of her to head their article. If they’re really so concerned about transgender children and the harm done by transgender activists, why are they misgendering Caitlyn Jenner? What did she ever do to harm transgender children? Is harming transgender children an offense that means people get to misgender you?

Would they treat a cisgender pro-trans activist the same way?

Anyway, let’s continue.

The latest contribution to the debate is “When Harry Became Sally,” a just-released book by Heritage Foundation senior research fellow Ryan T. Anderson, who critiques the transgender movement on the grounds of metaphysics, medicine and public policy.

Contrary to the transgender movement’s central claim — that “gender identity” determines whether someone is a man, a woman or something else — Mr. Anderson said the only rationale for determining an organism’s sex is “by that organism’s organization with respect to sexual reproduction.”

“Apart from that, all you have are sex stereotypes,” Mr. Anderson said Wednesday at a Heritage Foundation gathering. “There’s no other objective standard for identifying the sex of an individual.”

Human beings are a “sexually dimorphic species,” with complementary reproductive systems that are either male or female, Mr. Anderson said. One’s sex is evident in DNA, can be tracked in the womb and manifests itself “in many of our bodily systems and organs all the way down to the molecular level.”

Apart from the fact that I’m not entirely sure what “metaphysics” is supposed to mean (the transgender movement has metaphysics?!), this is really disingenuous.

The characterization of the central claim of the trans movement leaves off a lot of important information and serves as something of a strawman. It’s given less than one sentence of explanation in an article that devotes paragraphs and paragraphs to explaining the anti-trans-movement perspective.

I would characterize the “central claim of the trans movement” as the idea that gender and sex are separate. It believes that sex is composed of the physical attributes commonly linked to gender, such as the x and y chromosomes and the sex organs; and that gender is the social construct that has grown up around these sexually dimorphic traits.

Even as stated, his opposition to the central claim of the trans movement is poor. “Humans are sexually dimorphic” is a bad counter to the claim “people sometimes identify as a gender that doesn’t correspond to the sex of their bodies”. It’s just not very applicable. It elides the entire point and instead assumes that of course sex determines gender.

The statement that humans have “complementary reproductive systems that are either female or male” is not entirely true. Things that our society thinks of as “a male sex”, such as having a penis, xy chromosomes, facial hair growth, a testosterone-dominant hormone system, and so on, don’t all come in one package. Some people who were born with vulvas and vaginas have xy chromosomes; other people who were born with vulvas and vaginas also have penises.

It makes sense and is useful to have a concept of “male sex” and “female sex”, because a lot of people fit fairly well into these categories. But as you increase the amount of female sex traits a male person has, or the amount of male traits a female person has, you end up being very arbitrary about how you define sex. Is a person with a vulva and a vagina but with xy chromosomes a female? What if they’re infertile? What if they weren’t born with a vulva and vagina but these were surgically constructed? (These questions are rhetorical. Instead of trying to answer them, the astute reader should ponder what they imply about the arbitrariness and subjectiveness of constructions of sex.)

In my understanding, sex is best understand as aggregates of traits, rather than a simple “everyone is either female or male; better pick one!”. And even this understanding isn’t objective; it’s made up by people for particular purposes, not Determined By True Categories of Sex.

As a counter to the trans movement, I think the statement that sex determines gender is also lacking. It misses that many trans people change their sex, including their genitals. The article somehow misses that, according to this definition of sex and gender, lots of trans people are in fact their identified gender/sex, because these trans people have changed their sexed attributes.

(Attempts to redefine what qualifies one as a particular sex are goalpost-moving, and the astute reader should again notice the arbitrariness and subjectiveness of sex.)

However, even if the article believed that trans people who had changed their sexes were truly their identified sexes, this wouldn’t be fully trans-positive or in line with what much of the trans movement believes. A lot of trans people don’t change their sexes, and they’re not less legitimate than the trans people who do. But this error is... striking.

We now come to Anderson’s claim that, after we ignore sex characteristics, all we have is gender stereotypes. This is a shocking claim! I’m sure that everyone at the Heritage Foundation will be happy to know that there are exactly zero differences between men and women’s brains and behavior and- oh, no? You’re telling me that it would be kind of weird if, given all the sex dimorphism, there were exactly zero differences between men’s brains and women’s brains? That, even if there are no biological differences between men and women, given all of the socialization our society does around gender, it would be weird if this resulted in no differences between men and women’s brains, other than stereotypes?

I’m not entirely sure what gender is. There’s a lot of room for good and valuable debate, though so far I think the consensus among trans-positive people is “?? who the fuck knows”. But Anderson isn’t doing the work to make a persuasive argument, and the author of this article isn’t thinking carefully enough about the implications of his argument.

He took pains to direct his critiques not at transgender people themselves, but at the activists who promote the ideology.

Too bad the author of this article didn’t appear to get the memo.

People with gender dysphoria are suffering, Mr. Anderson said, and as many as 41 percent of those who identify as transgender will try to commit suicide at some point in their lives.

“It’s important that our response to them be one of compassion and respect for their struggle,” he said. “But we also need to beware of the harm that activists are doing by promoting their ideology.”

Yeah, you know, those nasty activists! The high functioning Vocal Minority Bad Trans Activists who don’t have the best interests of Our low functioning Children in mind. We shouldn’t bother wasting any of our compassion on these bomb-throwing diehard radicals. Diehard radicals, you know, like Caitlyn Jenner?

The greatest harm perpetrated by the transgender movement is on children, Mr. Anderson said.

He identified a four-part standard of care that transgender activists recommend to bring both body and society into alignment with a child’s identity after gender dysphoria is diagnosed.

First, children should be encouraged to transition socially if they express a “consistent, insistent and persistent” identification with the opposite sex. Among other things, the social transition consists of a new name, a new gender pronoun, a new wardrobe and access to the bathrooms and locker rooms of the opposite sex.

Second, as the children approach puberty, they should be placed on drugs that prevent them from “going through puberty in the wrong body.”

Third, as the children enter adolescence, they should be given the “opposite sex’s sex hormones — estrogen for the boy and testosterone for the girl — to mimic puberty in the right body.”

The final stage of transition comes at or around age 18, when they become eligible for surgical procedures that replace external genitalia and secondary sex characteristics with those mimicking the opposite sex.

wow what an expose, look at this Sinister Plan made up by transgender activists to force children into transitioning—

But actually the trans activists I’ve met are in favor of carefully considering one’s options, making one’s own decisions, and not doing things that you don’t want to do. I can’t speak for all trans activists, and I definitely can’t speak for the medical establishment, but the things listed here are options, not requirements. I would be really sad if a trans kid who didn’t want a new wardrobe ended up having to get a new wardrobe! I don’t think people should have to get surgery done on them! No one should be forced to get HRT, just as no one should be forced to go through the puberty of their birth sex!

I think the way this list of possible options is presented is highly disingenuous. It implies that trans activists in general want every trans child to do every one of these, without consulting people they trust, without thinking about what they themselves want, without taking a break and at a breakneck speed. That’s a severe mischaracterization of what trans activists want, and it’s disappointing to see it presented in this way.

Another way this is inaccurate is that it characterizes these options as things trans activists have come up with, on their own, in their capacity as cultish manipulators. This is not true. These options are recognized as part of mainstream standards of care for transgender children.

It is true that transgender children and trans people in general are often pushed into doing surgeries they don’t want, or dressing in ways they didn’t want, due to gender stereotypes or standards for what a true woman/man/nb is. But the causes of this aren’t, generally, transgender activists as a whole. Rather, it’s more often the medical establishment and society in general which cause trans people to feel pressured to have particular surgeries or to dress in a certain way. While I don’t have immediate evidence concerning pressure from doctors to get particular surgeries, the general atmosphere of the way doctors treat trans people makes it highly likely.

I do have more immediate information about pressure from doctors and society in general on trans people, trans women in particular, to fit gender stereotypes. For example, Lisa Millbank writes-

Another notorious component of gatekeeping is the RLE, or Real Life Experience. In the UK, transsexual women are often expected to complete two years of RLE before they will be considered for treatment. This sometimes refers to surgical treatment, but the RLE requirement can be enforced before even hormones are offered. RLE consists of living ‘full time as a woman’ for typically two years. This means using a ‘female’ name, female pronouns and wearing ‘female’ clothes.

There are some women who immediately are ‘read’ as women by mainstream society the moment they adopt feminine gender markers in their dress and behaviour. They are in the relative minority. For most transsexual women, going straight into RLE is not an experience of womanhood but an experience of public freakhood, composed of constant stares, transphobic harassment and potentially violence, without access to much of the (intensely double-edged) training given to cissexual women on how to survive this.

(I don’t agree with Millbank about many things and she is wrong about a lot of things. The rest of her blog is not endorsed by me and read it at your own risk.)

Furthermore, gender nonconforming (that is, butch or not-very-femme) trans women are punished for not meeting stereotypes of women/trans women:

Media depictions of trans women, whether they take the form of fictional characters or actual people, usually fall under one of two main archetypes: the “deceptive” transsexual or the “pathetic” transsexual. While characters of both models have an interest in achieving an ultrafeminine appearance, they differ in their abilities to pull it off. Because the “deceivers” successfully pass as women, they generally act as unexpected plot twists, or play the role of sexual predators who fool innocent straight guys into falling for “men.”…

In contrast to the “deceivers”, who wield their feminine wiles with success, the “pathetic” transsexual characters aren’t deluding anyone. Despite her masculine mannerisms and five o’clock shadow, the “pathetic” transsexual will inevitably insist that she is a woman trapped inside a man’s body. The intense contradiction between the “pathetic” character’s gender identity and her physical appearance is often played for laughs—as in the transition of musician Mark Shubb (played as a bearded baritone by Harry Shearer) at the conclusion of 2003’s A Mighty Wind.Unlike the “deceivers”, whose ability to pass is a serious threat to our ideas about gender and sexuality, “pathetic” transsexuals—who barely resemble women at all—are generally considered harmless…

While a character like Henrietta, who exhibits a combination of extreme masculinity and femininity, has the potential to confront our assumptions about gender, it is fairly obvious that the filmmakers were not trying to do so. On the contrary, Henrietta’s masculine voice and mannerisms are meant to demonstrate that, despite her desire to be female, she cannot change the fact that she is really and truly a man. 

While we are supposed to admire their courage—which presumably comes from the difficulty of living as women who do not appear very female—we are not meant to identify with them or to be sexually attracted to them, as we are to “deceivers” like Dil.Interestingly, while the obvious outward masculinity of “pathetic” transsexual characters is always played up, so too is their lack of male genitalia (or their desire to part with them). In fact, some of the most memorable lines in these movies occur when the “pathetic” transsexual character makes light of her own castration. 

Ultimately, both “deceptive” and “pathetic” transsexual characters are designed to validate the popular assumption that trans women are “truly” men. “Pathetic” transsexuals may want to be female, but their masculine appearance and mannerisms always gives them away. And while the “deceiver” is initially perceived to be a “real” female, she is eventually revealed to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing—an illusion that is the product of lies and modern medical technology—and she is usually is punished accordingly.

There is a lot more information on this sort of thing than I am going to go into. If you want to read more about the way gender/sex stereotypes have harmed transgender people through the gatekeeping of medical care, I highly recommend reading Julia Serano’s discussion of theories concerning transness here and Andrea James’s here.

(Important note of nuance: there are trans people who advocate for these harmful conceptions of womanhood and trans-womanhood, such as the HBS separatists. However, I don’t think they represent the state of trans activism as a whole. (Also, don’t ask me about the truscum. I don’t want to get into truscum discourse.))

Concerned parents are convinced that this is “the only way to prevent their child from committing suicide,” Mr. Anderson said, although “somewhere between 80 to 95 percent of children who express a discordant gender identity will naturally grow out of it and come to identify with their bodily sex if development is allowed to proceed.”

This is kind of true and kind of not.

If your child says they feel suicidal about not transitioning, you should definitely be worried that letting them transition is the only way to prevent their suicide.

If your child doesn’t say they feel suicidal about not transitioning, then you should not worry about that (unless you have reason to suspect that your children is not telling you important things like this).

The statistic about 80 to 90% of trans children who grow out of it is, if I remember correctly, about children before puberty, not after. I can’t find where I got this information, so this shouldn’t be taken as a strong argument against it.

Most importantly, this information doesn’t tell us what we should do about gender dysphoric children. The article assumes that if this is the case, then you should not allow your child to transition. That’s not necessarily the best decision, and the article should have addressed this in a more nuanced manner. Ozy discusses this issue in more detail here.

Mr. Anderson said the transgender movement’s emphasis on surgical and cosmetic procedures is inconsistent with the notion that “gender exists primarily between our ears.” If gender is a mental phenomenon, “why do we then have to radically transform people’s bodies?”

Surgical and cosmetic procedures should be conducted if someone wants them to be conducted. “Sometimes people’s minds don’t match up with their bodies” is a common, if simplified, explanation of this, and I’m surprised that Anderson, masterful sleuth that he is, hasn’t encountered it.

He also said the concept of social transition, “in which girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks,” relies on “rigid sex stereotypes” that progressives would normally reject as relics of a misogynistic era.

This is not an accurate characterization of social transition according to trans activists. It is an accurate characterization of how trans people were and are pressured by doctors into conforming to gender stereotypes in order to access medical transition, as explained above.

(I’m also surprised that the Times suddenly objects to rigid sex stereotypes. It’s terribly progressive of them.)

Oh look, it’s the section about terfs.

Miss McGowan had said being a transgender woman is not “growing [up] as a woman, that’s not living as a woman, and a lot of the stuff I hear trans [women] complaining about — yeah, welcome to the world.” She also said Caitlyn Jenner has “male privilege” and “doesn’t understand” what it’s like to be a woman.

(The Times has started taking its cues from feminists, I see. I’m sure McGowan would be pleased to know she was addressed as “Miss”.)

McGowan doesn’t get to arbitrarily define what a woman is.

Also, many transgender women live as women and are treated as women. (The trans women who don’t live as women or who are not treated as women are, however, still real women. This is because gender is a complicated thing that, for a lot of people, doesn’t solely derive from how other people treat you.)

Most fatally for McGowan’s theory, there is no universal woman experience that all cis woman have and that no trans women have. (Not all cis women can have children. Not all cis women have periods. Not all cis women have encountered sexism. And so on.)

One of the authorities frequently cited in Mr. Anderson’s book is Dr. Paul R. McHugh, university distinguished professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

In his capacity as psychiatrist in chief at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, a position he held for 26 years, Dr. McHugh pioneered sex change surgery as a way to treat gender dysphoria. After studying the results, however, he concluded that the procedures brought no benefit to his patients and stopped offering the treatment in the 1970s.

Paul McHugh- not him again? Surely they can dig up at least one other psychiatrist like him.

Well, if they’re reusing old material, so will I:

“It is important to remember that the opinions of Dr McHugh fly in the face of currently accepted medical practice and the positions of many major medical associations. The American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Psychiatric Society, the American Public Health Association, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health have all adopted positions supporting the medical necessity of transition-related care, including hormonal and surgical interventions, as well as expressing support for insurance coverage of these interventions. Despite his authoritative sounding title at a respected medical institution, Dr McHugh’s opinions do not represent the views of the mainstream medical establishment, rather they are the erroneous, bigoted beliefs of a scientist who appears far too invested in his own antiquated, disproven theories and his anti-LGBT political position than the current state of medical affairs”.

Psychiatrist and WPATH Board Member, Dr. Dan Karasic, responded quickly to the WSJ, and his letter was one of a few selected for publication. We are including the full text of Dr. Karasic’s response below, though it is important to note that the WSJ editors chose to omit his clarification of Dr. Dhejne’s research. WPATH members should be aware of the facts concerning these debates.

Dr. Paul McHugh (“Transgender surgery isn’t the solution”) writes about the study at Johns Hopkins in the 1970’s showing poor outcomes from transgender surgeries, leading to McHugh shutting down Johns Hopkins’ transgender program in 1979, and the US Department of Health and Human Services declaring transgender surgery experimental, and therefore not covered. Two weeks ago, HHS reversed its 1981 decision, and removed transgender health exclusions from Medicare. McHugh seems unaware of the work in transgender health in these last 30 years that led to this reversal by HHS.

McHugh does cite one study from 2011, by Cecilia Dhejne, MD and colleagues at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. However, he misunderstands Dr. Dhejne’s work. In the paper, Dr. Dhejne states that the study was not designed to draw conclusions on the efficacy of transgender surgeries, yet McHugh does exactly that. A closer reading of the paper shows that the increased mortality is in those who had surgery before 1989, and that mortality in trans people after 1989 is not statistically different from the general population. A recently published paper by Dr. Dhejne and colleagues shows that the regret rate for those having surgery from 2001-2010 is only 0.3%. Dr. Dhejne’s work shows that outcomes for transgender surgery have improved tremendously in the past 30 years, which supports the HHS decision to remove trans exclusions.

McHugh also mischaracterizes the treatment of gender nonconforming children. As McHugh states, most gender nonconforming children do not identify as transgender in adulthood. However, those who receive puberty blocking drugs do not do so until puberty, when trans identity is likely to persist. These drugs allow adolescents and their parents to work with doctors to achieve the best outcome. This approach was demonstrated to be successful in research in the Netherlands before being adopted widely in the U.S.

The American Psychiatric Association and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health no longer view transgender identity as inherently pathological. Dr. McHugh’s views are stuck in the past.

Back to the article:

Despite its modest political gains, the transgender movement has rapidly institutionalized its ideology at major medical institutions and research universities, Mr. Anderson said. He pointed to Boston Children’s Hospital, which became, according to its website, the “first major program in the United States to focus on transgender children and adolescents” in 2007.

“Today, a decade later, more than 45 pediatric gender clinics have opened their doors to our nation’s children,” Mr. Anderson said.

Even the Johns Hopkins Hospital resumed gender reassignment surgeries last year.

Wow, the transgenders have “rapidly” “institutionalized” their “ideology” at major medical institutions. It’s almost like Paul McHugh and Anderson are a bunch of hacks who are out of step with mainstream medical opinion! Imagine that.

“At this critical time,” Ms. Kao said, “the freedom to debate the best treatments for gender dysphoria must be protected.”

I support the freedom to debate, on your own time, the best treatments for gender dysphoria. I also support the freedom to debate whether or not the Earth is flat.

[babblingfishes]

Hey so, posting this ‘cause I had to have this conversation with my roommate last night

One thing that bothers me a lot on this site is when people say things like “your doctor shouldn’t need to know your sex because there’s actually no important biological differences between men and women. People can have XX chromosomes and still have a dick anyway, so like, they shouldn’t be making these assumptions in the first place.” And some of this is true! And a lot of it isn’t.

Firstly, gender and sex are different. Gender is a social construct. Sex is a set of physical characteristics (which we unfortunately fixate on, group together mercilessly, and then use to assign gender). If you’re transgender and you’re taking hormones, you’re not changing your gender; you’re changing your sex to match your gender.

Estrogen and testosterone determine most of your sexual characteristics. That’s why people do HRT in the first place. Because the body will orient itself differently depending on whether it thinks you should be able to get pregnant. People with higher estrogen levels end up with boobs so they can feed hypothetical babies. Fat is handled and stored differently because pregnancy requires ridiculous amounts of energy.

These physical differences are real. They aren’t arbitrary. They can be messy and nonstandard just like any physical feature, because humans are messy and standards are just an approximation of the average. But they’re important because if, for example, you’re taking a medication that messes with fat cells, things are going to be completely different depending on how your body is handling that fat. You’re probably not going to develop prostate issues if you haven’t developed a prostate. Heart attacks present themselves differently.

So “M/F” should not be the first thing on a doctor’s notes, but they do need to know these things. It could be labelled T/E, and located down by blood type and medical history. A better option might be if we actually measured estrogen and testosterone levels in the first place. Or even better, checking all these characteristics individually.

Humans are messy. Please be honest with doctors. Let them know what you were assigned at birth even if you hate it (i sure know i do!) and tell them if you’re taking hormones or if you have taken hormones in the past.

EDIT:

In case I didn’t make this clear: Yes! Sex is not a binary! And it’s fluid! Intersex people exist, people who take HRT exist, mutation happens, and even the group of characteristics we call “sex” don’t always look the same. I’m an example! (And you probably are too.)

But my point is, hormones are the trigger for most if not all of these characteristics, and that is a very distinctive point that isn’t “just made up” and isn’t “just a construct.” It’s a scientifically proven tendency. It’s why people who take HRT have physical changes in the first place.

And yes, not every doctor needs to know these things in every circumstance. But they don’t always need to know your blood type or history of asthma, either, and it actually comes up more frequently than you’d think. I’m taking meds that have nothing to do with my sex, that aren’t working well because they conflict with estrogen, and the medical community is just figuring this out because they only really ever tested it on dyadic men.

The moral of the story, as I stated earlier, is please be honest with your doctor. Don’t just mark “M” on your medical forms and pretend to be a cis guy. Because I’ve seen people on this hellsite recommend exactly that, and it’s not a good idea.

[redphonebooth3]

Wonder Woman: The (almost) sex scene we deserve

Hiya, so first of all I just watched Wonder Woman again and I have so many feels. Particularly Diana and Steve feels, and even more in particular trans!steve feels. 

So, I wanted to write a little bit about their sex scene and Steve having to explain his situation because there is a serious lack of trans!steve fics. And also a little bit after. No actual smut tho, I don’t really feel like it. (I am not a trans guy myself, nor am I on HRT or anything, but I will do my best to make this as realistic as possible and of course make it as non- offensive as possible. I hope this is okay!)

Implied smut, non-explicit talk about (trans) genitals, FtM Steve, Bi Diana, non-explicit mentions of period-typical bigotry, trans steve coming out

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It started with a kiss. It always started with a kiss, Steve knew that much. And though he wanted to just give in, he also knew there would be questions. Even if Diana had already seen him naked on the island, and even if she claimed to have read all twelve volumes of Cleo’s treatises on body and pleasure, Steve wasn’t sure if /his/ situation would be understandable to her. 

His racing mind was rapidly slowing and melting into mush with every press of their lips. This needed to stop before he was completely made vulnerable. Especially since this moment felt so different from the curious, but more distant atmosphere that had hung around them after his bath on Themyscira.  He had to tread carefully here, for his own well-being too. 

So Steve put his hands on her shoulders and softly pushed her away as he whispered: “Diana” in between what little space existed between their mouths.

“What is it? Am I doing something wrong?” Diana asked. Steve could feel her hesitation and curiosity she seemed to show in regards to the habits of the average westerner. 

“No! no, it’s not that. It’s just...” He sighed, trying to find the words to explain. He knew coming out in his circle was a careful and measured process so as not to be seen as a freak. Or worse. He had no idea how her people treated people like him, if this was frowned upon like most of his people would, if it was perfectly normal, or if she simply had never even heard of this.

“Look,” He started. “Do you remember when you asked me if I was considered a typical representation of my sex? And I said I’m above average?” She nodded. “Well, we might not have been on the same page there.”

“I don’t understand.” Diana shook her head lightly.

Steve took a deep breath. “I was born female.” It came out all at once, like ripping off a band-aid.

“Yes, I know.” Diana looked at him like this was the most obvious thing she had ever come across.

It was Steve’s turn to be confused now. “And you don’t think it’s weird? That-- That I’m weird?”

“Why would I think that’s weird? I only asked that question because I was indeed curious about your genitals since they looked similar to mine, yet they weren’t the same. I hadn’t learned or read about anything like that happening.” Diana explained. “I still don’t fully understand it, but I guessed it had something to do with you saying you are a man.”

Steve breathed out a relieved laugh. “Yeah, yeah it does indeed. I managed to get some stuff that help me appear to be more male even if I wasn’t born that way. It’s a strange feeling to be trapped in a body that isn’t yours. I was mucky to have found people who could help me from a pretty young age. In hindsight it was even pretty dangerous since the medication I take is very experimental, but I knew I couldn’t keep living like I was. But anyways, yeah, the stuff I get it changed my body, and well, some things started growing I guess.”

“Which is what you meant when you said you were above average.” Diana finished for him, now fully comprehending Steve’s story. A few things fell in place like how he asked if he didn’t look like a man on the beach.

“Exactly.”

She frowned then, a thought suddenly appearing in her mind. “Why did you think I would find you strange? Is this another one of those things you normal humans do like marriage that doesn’t make sense?”

“I guess so.” Steve chuckled at her ignorance of his world. “People don’t understand why I wouldn’t want to be the person I was born as. It’s complicated and it does indeed not make sense. But it’s the way it is. So, I live my life on the down low. My friend hooks me up with what I need to keep my body the way I like it and that’s that.”

“That’s that indeed.” It was quiet for a moment. Diana cleared her throat then and rocked on her feet. “So, if it’s okay, could we go back to what we were doing before? I was rather enjoying that.”

“OH! Right yeah sure!” Steven swooped back into action and grabbed Diana by the waist to kiss her again. A kiss which he quickly deepened as he led them both over to the bed to lay down. 

The atmosphere grew hotter around them as they kissed and shed clothes. (That wasn’t always easy it turned out. “How did you even get this armour on? Diana stop laughing and help me get it off!”) Diana was determined and adamant between the sheets as she was anywhere else, Steve found out. She took the lead and he didn’t mind. Not. One. Bit. 

It was well into the morning by the time they dropped spent and sweaty onto the mattress next to each other. Once Steve’s mind had come back to him enough to string a sentence together, he couldn’t stop himself from saying: “That was amazing.”

“Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed that.”

“Just- it’s one thing to study this stuff, but I cannot believe you got so good at this by reading. Even if there were a lot of sources available.”

“It wasn’t uncommon back on my island to have sex with the other amazones. I even had a proper girlfriend for a while. It didn’t last though.” Diana said, pulling the sheets higher up.

Steve was taken aback. He hoped she didn’t mean it the way he thought she did. “Wait, so you like women?” He asked defensively and confused.

“Sure.” She shrugged. “Is this another thing that is frowned upon with your people?” 

“Yeah, but that’s not why I’m asking.”

She turned to look at him and seemed to pick up on what he was saying. “Are you worried I like you because of your genitals? Steve,” She turned on her side to face him, “I like men too. I did not just have sex with you because of your genitals. They’re just a small part of a bigger picture that I like a lot better. I had sex with you because I see a man with a passion and fire in his eyes. A man that just wants to do his part to make the world better. You keep me grounded Steve Trevor.”

That eased him so much, she could almost literally see him deflate as the tension that had built up melted away. “Oh, okay. That’s good. I’m- me too. I like you too.”

He looked up, right into those deep dark eyes and couldn’t stop himself from leaning forward to kiss her softly. They stayed that way, smiling slightly with their foreheads pressed together as they drifted off to sleep.