#but also questions of hrt

[vamptoll]

Ok so the thing about trans spider Gwen is that she is textually trans. The poster saying protect trans kids on her wall is flat out textual evidence. The simplest and best explanation of that poster is that she's trans. But... The rest of the movie is built as if she's subtextualy trans instead, which makes the whole thing feel weird and bad. like some one rolling their eyes about the 'trans headcanon' is wrong and stupid, but also the movie wasn't actually built with the assumption that Gwen is trans, and a lot of elements don't really make sense because of it.

[transmascissues]

it's silly but the biggest reason why im not into t yet is bc im so afraid of losing my hair. do you have any solutions/tips for it?

first of all, i don’t think it’s silly — it’s natural to be worried when hair loss is talked about by so many people as like…one of the worst results of aging for men. listening to my dad talk about how much he hates balding definitely did not make me feel particularly good about the knowledge that i may very well be joining him someday. i’m not saying the fear is right, because i don’t think hair loss is something awful that we should avoid at all costs, but it’s an understandable fear given the beauty standards we’re working with, and it’s one that a lot of us (myself included) feel.

one thing that’s helped me is just…paying more attention to the guys that i interact with on a daily basis. i’ve learned two things from it: 1) hair loss is super fucking common. i’d say it’s much harder to find an adult man who isn’t balding at all than it is to find one who’s completely bald. and 2) if you forget everything you’ve been told about how bad hair loss is, you’ll realize that quite frankly, every single one of those guys looks totally fucking fine. it doesn’t ruin their appearance and make them ugly, it looks totally natural and isn’t really even something you’d notice if you weren’t looking for it. we put so much weight on it but it’s really just not that big of a deal. i’ll hear my parents talk shit about men in my family who are losing their hair when i didn’t even notice a difference last time i saw them. it’s one of those things (like so many other appearance-related things) that you really only notice at all because you’ve been taught that you’re supposed to care about it.

this isn’t something i’ve done personally, but if you really want to desensitize yourself to the idea of it, embrace the time-honored queer tradition of just shaving your whole damn head! find out what you’d look like without hair, find out how you feel about it and what you can do that makes you feel good about your appearance without hair, test the waters while it’s still a temporary change and not something permanent. that way, it won’t feel like this big scary unknown, and you’ll actually have a frame of reference for your feelings about how you look without hair rather than accepting the societal assumption that you’ll inevitably hate it. if you don’t want to actually shave your head, you could also just fuck around with bald filters or photoshop and see what happens.

oh, and if you’re attracted to men, keep an eye out for guys who are bald or balding and also hot as fuck. in my experience, there’s no insecurity or potential future insecurity that being gay for other men hasn’t helped me with. just off the top of my head, i can think of a couple actors who i think are absolutely fucking gorgeous who have helped me get over my fears about losing my hair. despite what our anti-aging-obsessed world might want you to think, there is no such thing as a physical feature that automatically makes someone less attractive, and while making attractiveness less of a priority in your life is good, it can’t hurt to also give yourself some proof that actually, you might lose your hair and look hot as hell doing it.

basically, entertain the possibility that it won’t be a bad thing at all! whether that’s just because it turns out to be a neutral thing for you or because you end up actually liking it, it’s not an inherently bad thing. i’ve ended up liking a lot of things that were “supposed to” be bad effects of t — i love the weight i’ve gained and the new shape it gives my body, i get a lot of gender euphoria from the fact that my acne is now on parts of my face that i saw a lot of guys in high school get it and i’m not complaining about the scars i get from it either because i’ve always liked the added texture that acne scars give my skin, and so on. i think there’s a lot of joy to be had in the changes we’re taught to fear, once we look past that conditioning and actually explore how we feel about it.

but if it’s something you really don’t want and you just want to improve your chances of not having to deal with it, it’s not like there’s nothing you can do! products like finasteride (oral) and minoxidil (usually topical but i think there might also be oral versions) are pretty commonly used among trans guys, for the purpose of avoiding hair loss and for other reasons, and there are plenty of other anti-hair loss products out there (though i don’t know how effective any one of them might be). if it’s a big enough deal for you, you can just decide that you’ll go off of t if/when you start noticing signs of it, since no longer having higher t levels would stop the process in its tracks. and if you don’t find prevention options that work for you so it ends up happening, you can always explore different hair styles (judging by the pattern of hair loss i see in my family, i suspect that keeping my hair long would make it less obvious if i started losing mine), find your preferred method of covering it when you don’t feel good about it (personally i love a good beanie generally and would probably wear them a lot more if i didn’t have hair to worry about because my main complaint is the way they press my hair onto my neck), or just shave it all off if you don’t like the look of the partial balding but don’t mind a shaved head. the point being — you have options!

at the end of the day, whether you go on t or not, you’re going to see your body change as you age in ways that aren’t always going to be attractive to others or aesthetically pleasing to you. that’s just the reality of having a body. even if you never went on t, you’d get older and you might see your hair thin out even if you don’t bald, you’ll see your skin start to wrinkle and sag in places that used to be smooth, your metabolism might slow or your body fat might start to gather in new places; hell, you might lose your hair for a totally different reason and end up in the same place but without the benefits of having been on t that whole time. life is full of bodily changes like that. transphobes will fearmonger about the permanent changes of testosterone all day long but the truth is, there is no escaping permanent bodily changes. whether or not you go on t, your body now isn’t the same as it will be in 1 or 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 years, just like it isn’t the same as it was at any point in your life before now. our bodies are never supposed to stop growing and aging and changing throughout our lives. there’s no guaranteeing that we’ll love every single change our bodies go through, but that’s okay! there are so many things in life that are more important than the way our bodies look. even if you go on t and lose your hair and don’t like how it looks, your life won’t be ruined; plenty of other things will bring you joy and more than make up for the insecurities.

just think about the gender euphoria and relief from dysphoria that t could give you. would losing your hair be bad enough to outweigh all of that? or is it just the pressure of a society that decided balding is bad that’s making you fear one single change despite how much joy you could have if you let that fear go? only you can decide if going on t is worth the potential downsides for you, but i suspect that for most of us, the benefits of going on t far outweigh the possibility of side effects like hair loss happening down the line.

[chrissy-kaos]

that person talking some dumb shit, you are gorgeous, hun

i am hugging you and kissing your cheek as long as you're okay with it

Thanks hun! I appreciate that more than you know!

Oh and I’ll take as many hugs and kisses I can get rn!

[sharkneto]

Hey, sorry if this is a bit of a personal question - and feel free to ignore it if it is - but how did you know you wanted to start hrt? I am someone who IDs as transmasc and knows in an ideal world, I would've loved to have been born a guy. But the idea of going on hormones is terrifying because I can't figure out if I really want it... I worry about regretting it, or it making me 'unappealing' physically, or my friends judging me for it. Did you ever struggle with similar worries?

I think every person thinking about and starting HRT goes through this. A rite of passage, if you will, and also not a bad thing to do. HRT is a big step, some of the changes (especially on T) are irreversible. It's good to think through if it's a choice that's right for you or not.

That said, it's also Just A Thing You Can Do. I first started really questioning my gender at the end of 2020 (thank you, Elliot Page, for coming out and making me go "oh shit, you can do that?"). I got a therapist to talk about gender... Mid 2022? And started hormones spring 2023, top surgery a year later.

Before getting the therapist, I spent over a year Just Thinking About It. And a lot of the thoughts were around the changes on T and if I'd like them or not or if I'd regret them. If I'd be ugly, after being conventionally attractive as a woman.

It hits a point, though, where eventually you have to pull the plug one way or another. I spent a lot of time thinking about how my body would change on T. A Lot. With longing. I caught myself putting things off Until I Knew For Sure and because I didn't want to do it while being perceived as a woman. I was sitting, treading water for a hypothetical Later that I could start moving towards at any time. I was scared for the Teenage Round 2 phase, and didn't want to spend months being "ugly and awkward", but then the months passed anyway and I was still in the same spot.

HRT isn't an all-or-nothing thing, you can ease into it on a low dose. My doctor started me on a low dose and we ramped up over months. Some T changes can start pretty quickly (voice dropping, bottom growth - this isn't true for everyone, but was true for me). If these changes excite you, make you feel good - great! Keep going! If they scare you, feel wrong - stop. Assess. Figure out what about it isn't right (a gender therapist for all of this process is a Huge Help). In early days if you stop T, the changes can revert, for the most part. But you can always stop at any time.

The bigger thing I actively worked to wrap my head around before starting HRT is - Who Cares If You're Wrong? What's right for you now might not be right for you later. The idea of detransitioning was scary to me, society has such a weird spotlight on it, the Right uses people who have detransitioned as props against transition. But it shouldn't matter. At the end of the day, if I do change my mind, I'll know myself better, and I don't think it's wrong to chase and find comfort in your own body.

A year+ on T, I've mostly made it through the ugly duck phase, I think. I was lucky, I didn't get bad acne or get too oily or anything (after having horrible acne in my first puberty). Most of what I dealt with was the chronic baby face, where I was getting read as male but a teenager - I'm almost 30 and a woman wanted to card me over a free T-shirt at a baseball game because it had beer logos on it. After some middle months of changes and going "oh my god what am I doing" and not feeling confident in how this was all going to turn out, I think of myself as relatively attractive and I think I'm just going to get more vain as my beard comes in. Some of that is physical, sure, but I think a significant amount of that is me feeling more confident in myself and liking the body I'm in more. I was never a selfie or picture person, now I am. I joke I'm like a budgie, always looking at myself if there's a reflective surface nearby. I'm more excited to exercise, I'm interested in lifting weights for the first time, I'm curious what my body on T can do and become. Keep your eyes on the pieces that are going well, the changes exciting you, and let the rest catch up.

My social circle helped a lot. I'm very lucky and blessed to have great friends and family, all of whom are supportive. If you don't have friends who are supportive of you, that are judging you for exploring yourself rather than lifting you up for it, it's a sign to expand the social circle and find ones that are. Family is harder, but that's a thing you have to navigate for yourself and find your own boundaries for.

So, there's no ~one moment~ where you're 100% certain that medical transition is right for you. It's a huge unknown and you're changing the body you've had your entire life. At some point, though, you just have to jump and see how it lands. Part of being alive is making mistakes and doing things you might regret.

That said, the regret rate for trans people is something like 3%. The regret rate for knee surgery is something like 20%. Trust yourself.

[beef-unknwn]

clawdeen got dat dawg in her y'know what I'm sayi-💥

[kraviolis]

im god's strongest soldier bcus i've been headcanoning luz as a trans girl since before we even knew she was canonically bi

[bugbuoyx]

I think people don't talk about this enough and it was, and still is, absolutely crucial to my transition.

Planned Parenthood offers Informed Consent HRT and virtual appointments.

What does this mean and why was it so crucial to your transition?

Informed consent means your provider does not require you to jump through any hoops, such as x amount of months of therapy, prior to receiving hormones. Instead, they inform you of the effects and have you sign a form that states that you are informed and understand the effects of hormone replacement therapy. This was so important to me because I live in a rural area where getting quality, non-queerphobic therapy is incredibly difficult. I was prescribed hormones on my very first visit.

Virtual visits means you can simply schedule an online video chat with a Planned Parenthood provider. Your first visit will have to be in person since you do have to sign the forms, but subsequent visits can be online. This is so important because not all Planned Parenthoods offer HRT (because they lack someone trained to do so) so folks who have to drive an hour (or more!) like me, no longer have to do so except for that first appointment. I don't even have a labcorp location near me, I have the lab request sent to my email and I bring it to my local doctors office and they fax the results to PP. Having to visit PP in-person isn't as bad after your first year since you don't need as many appointments. I'm to the point where my hormone levels and overall satisfaction with the effects means I have an appointment once a year and get my blood drawn every 6 months and I just send in refill requests when needed, but the amount of appointments you need and distance can put off alot of people who desire hormones.

I just wanted to make another (I believe I have made a post about this before) post about this because I know there are folks who aren't aware of this and it could help someone.

[reticent-fate]

part 10/26ish

"fuck you" //compresses your data into an increasingly dense humanoid packet//

from the beginning

[emotivehardcore]

The thing about those posts that are like “cis people can go on masculinizing/feminizing hrt” or “cis people can get trans surgeries” is that imo if you’re doing things that change your sex you kind of are trans. Even if you identify with the gender you were assigned, you are transing your sex and that’s a trans experience. Like you may not be transgender but you are transsexual which is still trans. I just don’t think it really makes sense to classify someone as cis when they have materially changed their sex, even if they identify as the gender they were assigned

[lionblaze03-2]

sometimes I think about writing and singing music not because I’m an incredible singer but because no one has my fucking voice, especially in popular music, and its disheartening to be born a girl, told you’ll only get girl roles or try to voice match other girls, or ‘sing with the girls’ and then only be able to match male voices because you’re a fuckin tenor and not anything higher. I can’t think of any girl Broadway roles I can hit all the notes on. Most songs I love I have to pitch down for myself or use falsetto for singing along to. It bothers me a lot less now because I’m an adult who’s more secure in myself but as a teen in kids musical theatre it FUCKED with me, BAD style. And I know for a fact that even now when I hear people with a voice like mine singing I get excited and immediately invested in their work because they’re like ME, finally, for once. A brother in this world of being afab and having the voice of a recently pubescent boy forever. Maybe I should be that brother too.

[radioactiveswampmonsters]

Florida trip went well! For the actual purposes, my mom’s birthday, yeah no it went really great, it was wonderful

For my whole anxiety leading up to all of it, it went better than expected! The people I was most worried about didn’t say or do anything, but more than that I was able to have some candid conversations with my mom about trans stuff which was really nice, and I told my aunt I started hrt! She was the first person (outside immediate family) I came out to forever ago (cause her daughter, my cousin, also came as trans before I did) so I knew it would be totally fine, but still her reaction and support was still so kind and nice ❤️

[theygender]

I've been on progestin (nexplanon) for my endometriosis for about 9 months now and I haven't had a period since shortly after I started on it, but I seem to be starting one again and I'm kinda concerned bc I'm not sure why it would suddenly come back after going so long without one

I just realized tho. My gf has been on E for about two months now and her body seems to be reacting to it quicker than expected, so she already had her first hormone cycle just recently where she got all the PMS effects and etc. I know menstrual cycles can sync up between afab people who are around each other a lot and that has happened to me in the past... Has my menstrual cycle synced up with my gf's hormone cycle?? Like to the point that it even overrode my lack of period?? Is that a thing???

[zapsoda]

when i called myself genderfluid i was very confused and struggled with the whole gender thing, it didnt make any sense to me the way anyone explained it and i was very very scared of being a guy i thought it was fucked up and statistically unlikely for me to be ftm, and i was scared that even considering the idea was like appropriation and/or "rapid onset gender dysphoria" in action

[egregiousderp]

14. What do you like about this WIP?

15. What about this WIP is pissing you off?

Dangerous question.

What do I like? I love worldbuilding. I come out of sci-fi, and chances are if you hand me a trope I’m going to sit down and be the guy going “okay but what would be the implications of this being common and known and how would that change this particular setting.”

I can’t help it. That and dialogue are usually the two things people actually read my shit for and enjoy.

Which goes in with the next question because

“What do I hate?”

Well, Senpai, I hate that my WIP is fucking Omegaverse.

[thelastlightningbug]

i like being in the fun zone of the raads-r where you could be weird neurotypical or slightly autistic and can unleash a torrent of information onto someone about a topic you're deeply invested in and when they go "have you talked to a therapist about this" you can go "nah i'm good actually, i love loud unpredictable noises”

[emlos]

Is Germanu better than Poland when it comes to trans healthcare and acceptance ?

100000% !!!

like even without the upcoming Selbstbestimmungsgesetz (a legislation which will allow ANYBODY to change their name and gender marker for a minor fee) german society as a whole is way more tolerant and accepting in my experience