#not to fearmonger but you never know what having any identifying info out there can lead to

[vimbry]

people just post their full coordinates on the flightradar24 sub huh

[rivetgoth]

Please be very cautious about upping your dosage! If you up it too soon and too much it will actually have less effect on your body because it can get converted back.

Anon I’m sure you mean well but this hasn’t been the best day with this sort of thing and I just would like to very very very heavily emphasize to not just you but anyone who does this sort of thing to maybe stop trying to be helpful to trans people in the process of transitioning by giving relatively useless information that boils down to very little except fearmongering hidden behind good intentions. Even if you mean well I really encourage you and anyone who does this sort of thing to think very conciously about how they think this is going to help a dysphoric trans person. (Also, as a side note since I know I’m gonna talk about dysphoria a lot here, idc how people without dysphoria identify I think as long as you aren’t hurting people then idc you know yourself best and all and I know gender is complex. Anyway.)

Things to have kept in mind before you sent this would have been:

1. You don’t know what dosage I’m on now, what dosage I’m moving up to, or anything about what I’m actually doing. From the beginning the doctor and I agreed on starting at the lowest possible dosage for personal reasons and to move up after a short period of time. Everyone transitions differently and this was laid out with a doctor since day 1.

2. I very clearly said in that post that I spoke to my doctor about this, who’s a specialist who’s been doing this for years. I contacted her and very clearly laid out how much I want to move up and when and told her I won’t until I’ve heard back with her explicit consent that it would be safe. Why in the world would you read that I talked to my doctor about this and still presume I needed a warning that this may somehow go badly.

3. You’re on anon, I don’t know ANYTHING about you. I certainly have no reason to believe you know more than my doctor. I don’t know if you’re speaking from personal experience, from something you read online (and if it was from online I don’t know where you got that information because transphobia is absolutely bursting from the seams on the internet), if you’re actually some weird transphobe who thinks I just shouldn’t transition at all, etc. Not that what you said is untrue, but what the intent of it being said was... You know nothing about me and I know nothing about you or your intention or your experience here. But I do know my doctor has been working with trans patients for years and has prescribed HRT to countless trans people and we’ve talked about this since day 1 and after a conversation with her she gave me explicit permission to move up to a higher dosage. I shouldn’t have to transcribe my exact conversation with my doctor in order to be not threatened with “the risks” by anonymous strangers on the internet. (This actually speaks to a larger issue I have with people anonymously arm chair diagnosing and speaking with authority on medical things and acting as medical professionals on anon to people they don’t even know and how dangerous that can be, but that’s another topic for another day)

I’m sorry to be a dick about this and I don’t mean to attack you. I don’t wanna sound aggressive and I really don’t want you to feel bad if you had good intentions cuz I truly don’t think this reflects badly of you as a person, if you had good intentions I appreciate your concern and I don’t want you to feel bad, I really just want to highlight an issue I have with something that’s much more prevalent than just this ask. This was actually an EXACT topic I was literally just talking to another trans friend TODAY about, and this is kind of the perfect example for me to voice the complaint. There’s a very very subtle form of very dangerous transphobic rhetoric present in “woke” spaces online that frankly encourages people to talk down to dysphoric trans folk, especially those transitioning. I unfollow people who post things about how dangerous and unsafe binding is at this point because I absolutely never see posts about that - unless it’s made by other dysphoric trans people - that don’t horrifically talk down to trans folk, speak to them like they’re stupid freaks or children that are going to horrifically damage their body forever, with no consideration that if someone needs to bind it’s due likely to a severe mental disorder that can and often does lead to suicide. It’s fearmongering without thought of alternatives, of safe suggestions, of any fucking compassion for those suffering with dysphoria so severe that they quite literally need to get countless surgeries and take medicine for the rest of their lives to even begin to feel comfortable in their own skin. People really get off thinking the most woke thing in the world is constantly reminding people who are suffering that “there are risks!!!!!” and it really starts to sound like conservatives who tell trans people that hormones will ruin their bodies and pull up biased “studies” trying to prove that transitioning is actually just going to cause “more harm than good,” which is a mindset that leads directly to suicide. I don’t know if people truly grasp the severity of dysphoria. It’s not a little discomfort, or not feeling very good or being kind of depressed, it’s life threatening in its intensity and there is something very disturbing to me about the amount of posts that exist purely meant to “warn” dysphoric trans people of how severe the potential side effects of transitioning is. I’ve even seen this escalated to the point that for awhile a straight up conservative anti-trans propaganda piece was spread around with straight up UNTRUE information about HRT causing higher death rates as a “omg signal boost for my trans followers uwuwuwu” thing.

If you see a trans person who says “I talked to my doctor and I’m upping my T dosage!” and your first thought is to immediately send a warning of the dangers, of the risk of things getting worse or not working, I really really really suggest you introspect on why that had to be your immediate response. I believe that you had wholly good intentions but I really think it speaks to a larger problem in how dysphoric trans people are talked down to by even strangers/anons even in “safe spaces” online. The way they’re talked down to, the way the very first thing to come out of peoples’ mouths has to be warnings, threats, and risks. I know there are genuine health risks associated with these things. Binding is always gonna be a little risky and providing helpful information and resources on how to do that as safely as possible is good! Making posts about things to keep in mind with HRT, with surgery recovery, all of that, those aren’t bad. But how would you guys feel if, say, you had to see a post every other day about HOW DANGEROUS your life saving medications were? What if once a week you saw a post that just laid out the most basic “side effects may include” info on the side of the bottle for your painkillers that help you live a normal life? What if you made a post saying you were prescribed medicine to help with a disorder that had impacted you your entire life and the first thing you were told was a warning about how it might actually go wrong and not actually help?? Dysphoria and transitioning aren’t different, but there’s this extremely prevalent mindset still that the best thing you can possibly do to help a dysphoric trans person in the process of transitioning is... tell them about how risky it is. I really really beg everyone to introspect a bit on this.