#so i think starting hrt wouldn't be too difficult

[messrsrobyn]

idk if this is an okay place to ask but i have a trans question?

does the feeling of missing out ever go away? i turn 17 in a week and i came out at 15 and it feels like i missed so much time and spent so long being wrong that i wont get back

you dont have to answer it but i know youve spoken about hormones before and idk. did they help? does anything?

OFC THIS IS OKAY TO ASK !! i'm v open about my transition in general and always happy to answer questions 🫶🏻🫶🏻

obviously this will differ person to person but for me, yes !!

i no longer think of my time pre-coming out as something i missed out on ??? i still existed. at my core i'm still me. i developed incredible connections, made incredible memories and *lived* (even through all the tough shit) that i won't ever regret not figuring it out sooner. i also don't think there's a timeline for anything in life but esp this. esp not for figuring yourself out. we do it everyday. There Will Always Be Time. also 15/17 is young !! i'm only 19 and we have sooo much time ahead of us. so much time to exist as us in the best way we can !! so much time to Exist. i'd even go as far as to say i don't wish that i was born differently.

and that's where hrt comes into it i think?? since starting hrt i'm a lot more comfortable with expressing my gender in any form, but esp makeup. that's something i've always loved - just the ritual of doing it and how i feel in it - and i lost that right coming out. it felt like i was doing it wrong. that i wasn't trans enough. but hrt helped !! made me more comfortable *inside* and that reflects *outside* now. hrt made me so much more comfortable and with that i've been more okay with my past?? hrt just reminded me that "oh, this was always who i am, i can just breathe easier now."

no, i didn't have all the answers and i still don't. probably never will. BUT:

my time existing before coming out was not wasted, because she hasn't gone anywhere.

i carry a bit of her with me everyday because she's *me*.

and it's difficult trying to feel comfortable and wondering if it would all have been different if we figured it out sooner or were born differently, but there's so much joy to be found in focusing more on the time i get now, than the time i've had. and i wouldn't be having this time right now if i didn't come out. no matter at what point, it is never too late to start living instead of surviving. we never miss out on too much. there's always More.

[sleepiestember]

one of my friends asked me last night if HRT changes your sexuality, and i wasn't sure how to give a straightforward answer to that.

my sexuality definitely has changed. i used to staunchly identify as aroace (see: my post history) before i started T-blockers. but now, over a year later? i'm proudly bisexual, and i wouldn't identify any other way. i think part of this was due to my transition, but another part of it was purely about understanding myself and accepting myself for who i am-- and it's likely that that part would have happened either way. i think both sides of the story are important, which is why i think it would be unfair to say that HRT turned me bisexual.

part of what changed is that i look like a girl now, and i am treated by others as a girl. and for me, it feels a *lot* better to be someone's girlfriend than to be someone's boyfriend. i'm dating an amazing person right now, but i can't imagine ever being her boyfriend. i simply can't fulfill that role.

and even ignoring the social effects of transition: the comfort and self-confidence that HRT has given me has made me much more capable of being in a healthy relationship than i ever was before i transitioned. not to mention the effects estrogen has had on the way my sex drive feels, or the way sex itself feels.

but a part of me feels that i would have eventually figured out that i was bisexual even if i didn't transition.

as i said before, i used to identify as aroace. in fact, i started identifying that way well before i started questioning my gender. i started realizing that i was ace when my best friend at the time wore an ace pin while we were hanging out. when i started doing research into asexuality to try and be supportive, i realized that a lot of what i was reading felt familiar. *too* familiar to be a coincidence.

after that, i started immersing myself in the a-spec community and the broader lgbt community. i followed blogs, i joined clubs, i added myself to discord servers. slowly, i started making friends with more and more queer people. and as i started to correct the internalized homophobia and transphobia of my grade school years, i became more and more accepting of my attraction to men-- the attraction that was always there, to some extent, but that i was afraid to explore. i started feeling less ashamed of wanting intimacy, of wanting sex.

(it would be flawed of me to pretend that these two sides of the story aren't linked. becoming more aware of queer experiences helped me accept that i was trans, and being trans helped me be more comfortable with my attraction. it's difficult to fully separate these two halves.)

so, i guess this is my answer to my friend: yes, HRT can undeniably affect a person's sexuality. but for me, at least, there was an equally important process of accepting myself and embracing my queerness that had to happen before i was able to admit to myself that i wasn't exclusively attracted to women.

[doilyboily]

So in case some of you don't know, I'm a trans 16yr old in Western Australia, AKA the worst Aus state to live in for trans minors.

I'm serious.

This state is behind on LGBT+ rights by at LEAST 5 years compared to the other states of Aus, our government has been promising to outlaw conversion therapy for the past year (give or take) and still hasn't made it into law. Despite what people believe, conversion therapy is still LEGAL, sure it's difficult to find but it is still fucking legal.

Out of the entire state of WA there is only one clinic that can offer gender affirming care to under 18s, besides the one that offers it to 17-25yr olds, and that is the Gender Diversity Service at Perth Children's Hospital. WA is a huge state, so if you lived in Albany you would need to drive over five hours to get to Perth, it is a ten hour drive there and back.

Sure they offer Telehealth appointments but what about when you need to get your HRT script, or your height and weight recorded? Sure you can do it via Telehealth and give them that info through email but they prefer to meet face to face.

The GDS doesn't have enough staff to meet the demand, and the waitlist for an actual appointment with your care team after the initial assessment is three years. I was on the waitlist from 11-13 1/2 (eleven to thirteen and a half), by the time I had my first real appointment I couldn't even be prescribed puberty blockers because I had already finished puberty. And because of the lack of info regarding minors transitioning in WA, and minors transitioning in Australia in general, my parents were unaware puberty blockers were even a thing, and I ended up thinking that I could start T at 14 with parental consent and after being deemed Gillick Competent.

nope

You can only start HRT here after you turn 16, unless you want to get a telehealth appointment over East and in which case, good luck, because most Drs over there that prescribe to minors are completely booked out. And to make things worse for my mental health, the psychiatrist on my care team said that if I didn't start attending school regularly that I wouldn't be deemed Gillick Competent and therefore, wouldn't be able to start T until I was 18.

That caused me to start having panic attacks almost daily, both while I was getting ready for school and at school drop-off. I was a complete mess, because this psychiatrist held the power to deny me medical care over something that had nothing to do with my ability to comprehend or consent to HRT. I wanted to file a complaint so badly, but my dad wouldn't let me, he said that he didn't have an opinion on it because he wasn't a medical professional and therefore didn't know the standards. So I bit my tongue, because if I did file a complaint she would know who did it, and even if she didn't she would still be kicked off my care team, and then I would have to wait months for a new psychiatrist which wasn't an option, so I clenched my teeth and let her words cause me a depressive episode.

There is so little information regarding transition for minors in WA, that even when I specified what state I was in, I still got info for the other states. So many doctors are still ignorant when it comes to the LGBT+ and trans people, that my own paediatrician tried saying that if gender roles didn't exist, or if a trans person lived on an island isolated from society, that gender dysphoria wouldn't even be a thing. Which is completely untrue, and I was in too much shock from hearing such utter bullshit that I didn't even respond.

I wanted to file a complaint, but my dad argued that he was just being "supportive" in his own way, and that because he was also both my brothers paediatricians, he couldn't possibly have some bias against me, because he's known our family for over twenty years. Mind you, that doctor is known for being dismissive towards girls/females/AFABS with autism and he is very "old fashioned" (cough, ignorant, cough), so why the fuck wouldn't he be ignorant towards the actual science around gender dysphoria?

And then a member of a political party in my state recently proposed that if she was voted into Parliament, that she would ban HRT, Puberty Blockers, and gender affirming surgery, for under 16s.

Which is quite... funny, because HRT is already illegal here for under 16s and you have to have a psych eval that takes years, surgery is only done in cases where gender dysphoria has been documented from a young age and only after multiple very long, very tedious psychological evaluations and even then there still aren't any surgeons in the entire state that would do affirming surgery on minors.

And then banning puberty blockers for under 16s is just fucking horeshit, because how the fuck do you expect puberty blockers to work on someone over 16?? There is nothing to block! Most teens have gone through Tanner stages 1,2 and 3 by age 16 so there are no more significant changes to be prevented, except maybe height but even then its not a guarantee.

She only announced this after it was confirmed that the gender reassignment board would be abolished, therefore making it so that trans people no longer have to have genital surgery to have their sex markers changed in our state, y'know, something that most of the other states have already done.

I'll probably continue this post after i get the rest of my thoughts in order, so I'll tell you all (glances at 50 followers, most of whom are bots) more about how shitty this state is for trans minors maybe in a few days.

[auroramosaic]

im gonna start documenting my experience on testosterone so far! nothing hugely in depth just a lil overview for me to check back later. And bc I'd appreciate having seen some of this, esp the complications, before starting t

SO. I was kind of in a rush to start testosterone as soon as I could. Anxiety about laws and trying to be convinced out of it by family really pushed that faster than was probably smart

And I am multiply disabled - several of the conditions have symptoms that have been worsened to an unmanageable degree by testosterone (namely POTS - i overheat so easily and so extremely now)

Most people don't have to worry too much about side effects or worsening comorbid symptoms when starting HRT, and I'm really Really not tryna start any fearmongering. I just wasn't as fully aware of all the different ways it would affect me (despite the handouts and my own research and everything. Unfortunately my drs weren't super helpful - they asked me for tips and info on testosterone lmfao. Like I know a lotta patients do their own research but please doctors do your own too)

so! changes since starting t: i quickly started gaining a lot of weight, more than the extra food I was eating would've put on me before. I expected this to a degree but it was a lot very fast and surprised me. Also being really greasy all the time means taking more showers (which is physically difficult) or being overstimulated. Voice changes have been nice! I haven't been able to keep any of my upper register which I was curious about but it's opened up a lower vocal range which is really nice. Now I just gotta get used to how my voice fits in there :) body and facial hair are really not as fast as I expected. Those have been slow goes. Facial hair is barely there and body hair isn't too different from first puberty (but then again that's a whole discussion on intersex topics of its own tbh). I was really hit with that first wave of pain and exhaustion that some disabled people talk about with taking testosterone - a wave of fatigue that you push through first before you see any returns on testosterone being energizing. I haven't gotten to the energizing part get and it's been like 10, 11 months?

All of this said, I also have a hormonal IUD in at recommendation of the planned parenthood dr. I've had that for longer than I've been on T and they said it wouldn't be a problem bc that IUD is supposed to just be locally effective? But I still think it's worth knowing. I felt different after I first got that put in and I think it might affect more than was suggested.

anyways. So all that's been goin on and has been making me really sit on why I'm on HRT. Because I want to be, I want changes, but I'm not seeing return on many changes I was looking for, and I am getting a hell of a lot of surprise health issues. This is obvs a conversation to have w my dr when i see her next but I just wanted to document it too. Hormones are really complicated drugs and there can be a myriad of surprise effects! It was definitely worth it for me to start, but now I gotta reconsider what dosage is safe and that's ok. Shit happens like this sometimes. Wish I could tell myself a year ago about all this - not so he'd avoid HRT, but just so we didn't have surprise against us on top of the other stuff lol

[asdfjklqwert]

So hi. It's your friendly neighbourhood trans-support anon. I get that it's a lot right now. But you have to remember; you have plenty of time to come to terms with who you are and how the process of transitioning might look for you. Breathe, you're going to be okay. I'm not going to say it's going to be easy, or smooth, because we both know that's a lie. What is going to help is getting yourself a good support group- people you trust to vent to or just reassure you or whatever you need- 1/?

(continued + response below readmore)

Because that's always the hardest part. Not feeling alone. Making sure you've got people to fall back on when it does get hard. But you'll be alright, I think. You're a pretty neat person, by all accounts. So try not to be too hard on yourself. Maybe do a little research on some LGBT+ friendly resources in your area- be it gathering spots for post-virus, doctors who'll help you out, that kind of thing. Also. Just a tip. Arda Wigs is good for longer hair in the short term.> If that's something you're down for. And make up is fun to dip into to feel feminine- and can start pretty cheap. 

In any case, I wish you the best of luck with this- yell into the void if you need anything. I'll be around to help however I can. And the most important advice I can give you is this- don't feel you have to change your interests, or your fashion sense, or anything in light of this. The happiest you will be the one in which you embrace all of your likes and dislikes. <3

well thankfully i’ve been rolling with long hair for uh... 7~8 years(?) at this point, so. that’s cool. it’s not _especially _voluminous unfortunately... but at least it’s always had some good natural curls. wigs would be kinda nice for exploring unnatural hair colors though and getting hair closer to what i’d want (kinda wanted blue hair even when i was a teenager...)

actually, hair is... kind of one of the bigger worries honestly. not head hair though. talkin’ body hair. facial hair. all that stuff. there’s so much. too much. hell, my dad is a little jealous of how thick a beard i can grow. even when i start HRT that’ll still be there. seriously, there’s so much and it’s all over my chest, my stomach, my back, my... literally every part of my body. i know removal is an option, but i just, i guess, worry about it not being viable, whether it’s financially or due to the time investment it’d require, or anything else.

i think that leads into the other big fear. going out in public. which is a thing i don’t really do except when i need to go to a store for whatever reason (this was the case even before the pandemic). i don’t think i’d generally have to worry about being like... assaulted or anything, but i hate feeling like people are staring at me or really doing anything but ignoring me. being obviously-transitioning-and-definitely-not-passing would just magnify that and i’m... not looking forward to it at all.

don’t really forsee any issues telling friends, just sort of not sure when to do it or if i should wait until i actually start transitioning physically. like being referred to as a guy never bothered me, it was just never... something that excited me either? if that makes sense? so i don’t really feel much pressure to tell anyone other than the people i already have, for right now at least...

at least interest-wise i don’t really feel a need to change anything there besides, like, whatever stuff comes to me naturally. i ain’t gonna stop being a dumb fucking nerd with a huge RPG backlog. just, a dumb fucking nerd with a lot more cute skirts and dresses. and tiddies.

[vegancas]

realised yesterday while i was at work that i'd been infected by corporate greed when i wouldn't give a customer their preferred substitute of 5kg of flour for the 1kg pizza flour they originally ordered, i was like 'the 5kg costs more than double the 1kg, that's a loss for the department' (coz the department will like cover the difference in price when we sub so customers don't end up with higher bills), so i didn't give them the sub !! but i work for a massive grocery store chain! they can afford the loss! they can probably afford the whole store being stolen! the moral of the story is i will now be intentionally costing my department money whenever i have to make a substitute lol

[thegodwhocums]

sooooooooo tomorrow I'm getting minor surgery, which wouldn't generally fall under "gender affirming," but for me it is

I came with a uterus factory-installed and used to get just hellacious debilitating periods, extremely heavy bleeding + pain + nausea + occasional vomiting + bloodstaining everything in my fucking life, worsened by them being irregular so I couldn't predict or plan for them (extra difficult to manage while working in construction, on rooftops, in the woods...)

they stopped when I got my HRT dose figured out, and I've been period-free since late 2017 or early 2018, thank every relevant fucking god

I am genderqueer/nonbinary and prior to HRT I felt pretty androgynous - I was unhappy with my voice and my chest, primarily, though some of the other effects of medical transition have also been good and helpful (unexpectedly I'm much happier with my junk hormonally reconfigured?? who knew) but many parts of my presentation were satisfactory

now that I've stabilized on some of those permanent changes (and had top surgery!), I would like to stop HRT and see how I feel, whether I need that hormonal basis to feel right in my skin or if taking my endocrine system off manual and running it on automatic is ok

(reasons include Getting Read Too Confidently As A Dude, frequent institutional fuckups while trying to get my hormones, aggressive familial baldness genes, and so on)

HOWEVER I would NOT like to resume the Unpredictable Frequent Menstrual Ordeal From Hell - and I wanted to avoid the invasiveness of a hysterectomy. SO!

the procedure I'm getting is called an endometrial ablation - it's pretty common for cis women with "abnormal" menstrual situations. they basically zap the uterine lining, the bit that builds up tissue over the month that then gets shed during the menstrual period. the device uses RF energy like a microwave and just cooks that lining. it scars over, and once it's healed, no more bleeding.

interestingly, this obgyn surgeon has done many hystos for trans dudes, and MANY ablations for cis women, but never an ablation on a trans body before. I've never heard of it in a trans healthcare setting. he didn't even think to offer it to me as an option - I told him I came across it in my research, and he sat back in his chair, looking surprised, and said, "yeah, that would work."

the catch is that it's not 100% guaranteed to stop 100% of your period. you might get a little light bleeding still. but I'm not dysphoric about it - I just can't deal with the heavy painful terrible bleeding. so it's a fine intervention for me. if it proves to be insufficient, the next step would be a hysto, but that's already the step most folks in my situation take. I wouldn't be worse off than I started.

so anyway! that's tomorrow! actually it's like eight hours from now! aaaaaaaaaaaaa!

self actualization is a continuous process. onto weirder and less comprehensible genders!