#stronger than pcos

[transmasclaius]

Dying rn. Immortalise me in a period cramp moodboard TT

[yanderemommabean]

🤣🤣🤣 listen alphas if we want me to eventually get pregnant so I need to take my birth control. (PCOS haver)

They have to suck it up! You can make them feel better by head pats and saying they’re oh so strong, even stronger than the neighbor, it’ll get them happy in no time.

-Mommabean

[dogd0m-charlie]

so I'm not very tall at all (I'm actually pretty short, like 5'3 maybe) but I'm fat and walk around a lot and love picking up and carrying things pretty often. plus i have pcos which means higher testosterone levels. so, given all that, I'm relatively pretty strong.

and god, let me tell you, it has always been sooo fucking fun for me to wrestle my cis guy friends and pick them up and run around with them all the time. it made me feel so strong and euphoric to just throw them around like that. and something i noticed about it is that they could never win against me whenever i wrestled them. and they couldn't pick me up or move me around or try to restrain me for very long either, i was too much bigger and heavier and i could easily get out of it if they tried to.

i just can't stop thinking about taking that a step further, you know... grabbing a guy who's much taller but wayyy skinnier and lankier than me and just manhandling him, showing him that his extra height means nothing around a guy who's so much stronger than him. throwing him down wherever i want and positioning him however i please, because i don't even need ropes or chains or leashes or anything like that when i can easily just keep him pinned with my body weight, because i just weigh so much more than he does. showing him that i can do absolutely whatever i want to him.

because it doesn't matter how tall you are when you're pinned to the ground or forced to stay on your knees.

[radmista]

you fuckin idiot, there are more hermaphroditic members of snails, coral reefs, bugs, and even lions from the savannah, can trans their gender.

Lions cannot "trans their gender" because lions do not have the human concept of gender nor transition.

I know exactly what you're referring to and it's the FEMALE lions that have grown manes despite being female. This is explicitly a FEMALE lion with a hormonal imbalance, likely naturally increased testosterone, that has caused the abnormal growth of a mane.

"Molecular testing aimed at examining chromosomes – the genetic material which determines sex – has revealed that Mmamoriri is genetically a female, despite her masculine features."

(Mmamoriri hunting with her pride, using her extra strength to secure kills.)

Whatever reasons there are behind these lionesses growing manes and having larger builds, whether it's a genetic cause, an exposure to androgens in utero, etc, it doesn't make them anything other than female. They are not "nonbinary" or "transmasc" lions. They are female lions who have grown manes and occasionally have bigger builds. It's similar to women who are naturally bigger or naturally have more body/facial hair (or even women who have PCOS). Having these variations does not change that they are female. If anything, the closest approximation these lionesses have to something in our culture would be butch lesbians (Mmamoriri and others like her have been seen humping other female lionesses). Not a direct 1:1, but if you want to compare these lionesses to something it would be butch or gnc women.

Once again you guys show how fucking regressive and sexist you are by claiming that a masculine female lion is somehow a "trans" lion. Seeing a stronger bigger female and saying that she has "trans vibes" bc she isnt "womanly" enough is conservative level sexism. Both of you love gender roles and gender presentation and can't function without it. You just differ in what boxes you try to shove gnc people in.

I won't touch on the stupidity of you bringing up snails, coral fucking reefs (seriously), and bugs because they aren't fucking mammals. And other people have already talked about such comparisons (clown fish, etc) at length in other posts. When I find them I will edit and link back.

Edit, found it: Sex Binary and Intersex Masterpost by @woman-for-women

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[lilcowzia]

ramble

its a weird time to be a brown woman with high testosterone lol ppl are saying the most vile shit online and im like, scrolling past hundreds of comments abt the olympics seeing ppl foaming at the mouth to yap abt how "real" women are XYZ. my testosterone was literally higher than a male friend at one point. like. its not rare, pcos is rlly common. and it certainly hasn't made me any stronger, ive been weak as a kitten all my life. i dunno. im just like... woman is feeling more like a category of arbitrary rules than anything else. i was worried abt looking masculine a lot of my life, bc im not white, or white looking, my hair is textured. i think when i was striving to be thin it was a part of that too. and its not something i rlly talked abt with ppl bc the obvious reply would be that its silly. of course i'm a woman, of course i look feminine. but i think that's a cop out, not wanting to acknowledge the reality of what it's like to be someone who isn't "the beauty standard". no matter how pretty i know i am, it still feels like being a woman is only granted to me on terms and condition by other people. and they can take it away, and they're eager to. bleh, anyway its just been on my mind

[mimikyuno]

i was just talking with my wife about this over breakfast but i rly hope this whole transvestigation paranoia becomes a breaking point because it’s insane? like i hope it snaps some people out of their transmisogynystic daze bc what are you saying? where is the limit?? are you demanding any woman who looks vaguely “masculine” take a chromosome test?!

like first their credo was that “a woman must have a vagina and uterus” but that’s not enough anymore for them, now u need to be born a woman “the right way” or you’re a man. never mind that a huge argument they have used against trans women is that they were “socialized as men” (ridiculous take btw, let’s not even get there) and as such can never understand womanhood and really be a woman okay then why are u saying that even if imane was afab and raised a girl she’s still not enough of a woman?! they’re always like “misogyny is sex-based” and it doesnt matter how a woman presents bc it’s her Biology that primes her for abuse (real takes i have seen!!!) but then say that a cis woman who was assigned female at birth is not Actually a woman bc some corrupt organisation that was accused of malpractice Maybe said she might have XY chromosomes. HELLO?! like do YOU know your chromosomes? do YOU know your testosterone levels? it’s so absurd it feels like im in the twilight zone.

also can we talk about how antifeminist it is to argue that someone is just too good at a sport to be a woman. what is wrong with you. hmm i wonder why men tend to be stronger overall? is it really just their “biology”? bc actually studies have shown that parents underestimate their daughters’ strength and do stuff for them and overall dont let them play rough while little boys are expected to be stronger and tumble. which child do you think will grow up with more muscle mass. which will grow up stronger and faster. i saw some altright men and terfs argue that it is Biologically True that men are Stronger and Faster and Better than women bc “look at the football league, the men are better”. like i wonder why?? could it be that the women’s league overall gets less funding, less intense trainings, and overall there’s less athletes to choose the best from bc on average more men pursue sports than women (for social reasons) etc.????

like how are terfs out there thinking they’re feminists. when they posts a picture of a woman of color and call her too ugly to be a “real woman”. do you see how racist that is?! i also saw them transvestigate the butch-looking polish contestant (for judo iirc) like?! “her hair is short and her face looks masculine” have u ever seen a butch woman irl. you stupid ass. and what if they’re trans btw?? ultimately it does not MATTER. olympic athletes are freaks of nature. usually they’re the best at a sport because they’re literally BUILT for it. they often have a natural advantage as well as years or practice. like what even is your argument anymore?! it’s a stupid sport competition to see who’s the best at certain sports how are u gonna determine which physical/biological advantages are okay and which arent?! y’all are one step away from requesting muscle fibers exam for black people to see if they have more type 2 fibers bc that makes them more likely to be fast. put a height limit for basketball players bc being too tall is rare and therefore unfair to shorter basketball players. banning women with PCOS from competing bc they have elevated testosterone. LIKE PLEASE TELL ME WHERE THE LIMIT FOR BIOLOGICAL ADVANTAGES IS. IM WAITING.

i think the insanity of the current situation truly is the culmination of all these phrenology-adjacent trends (like mewing and the rest of the “rate me” 4chan standards, look it up), white supremacy being allowed on mainstream platforms and transphobic panic all converging into this mass hysteria. it’s genuinely fascinating from a sociological perspective but jesus christ. the fact that if imane really was trans they could have gotten her jailed or worse. WAKE UP.

terfs love to call themselves feminists yet are using racist phrenology-like standards to determine who’s a “real” woman. being hairy? big nose? strong jaw? short hair? not a real woman :). please STOP. y’all are literally one step away from saying only white women are “real women” LMAO. trans women have been saying for years that transmisogyny IS misogyny (on steroids) and it WOULD bite cis women in the ass too but y’all didnt believe them till it Actually started affecting cis women.

i am hoping this is the peak of transphobia (specifically transmisogyny) and it’s downhill from here and society progresses 🙏🏻 like let’s move ON. enough is enough

[sillyandquiteawkward]

ive had a small head start with t due to pcos, it ramped up the beginning of this year, right before i started t, so i already had facial hair growing, and thin hair. for two months i did one pump gel, and for one month ive been doing two pumps of gel. but with those in mind:

More facial hair. mustache is getting darker, but not any longer. new, darker chin hair, all for the most part under my chin. im starting to shave it short every week.

my voice is different, kinda raspy-er. but my friends havent pointed a strong difference out. my voice is cracking at certain points, and shouting in my usual register causes a crack. its getting hard to project. singing hurts my voice a bit more than usual.

instant muscle gainz. im notably stronger, i recover faster, and my muscles have been growing.

tmi, but over just a few days about a month ago, bottom growth just Happened. online resources say its just gonna keep doing its thing lol

horny levels and mood swings are the same as theyve always been. no real change in any strong emotion, anger or patience.

i cant tell if its bc its hot but i sweat a LOT more and i smell a little different. not bad, just different.

hair line remains unchanged, my hair is as thin as its been. body hair is about the same, in some places its a bit darker, but not longer or thicker.

IM HAPPYYYYYYY i smile and laugh and i feel so nice and happy

edit: i forgot bc i dont have periods very often due to my pcos, but i pretty much stopped having a period, altho i feel like my horniess is still on track with what usually would be my period. in 3 months ive had 1.5 periods, all of which happened in the first month.

[headpainmigraine]

I threw up so hard last night that I hurt something in my jaw and gave myself earache.

Didn't even feel better after

I have pretty bad emetophobia, I won't puke if I can help it, even if it's be better for me if I did.

I hate everything about it, I have to close my eyes when I throw up because I can't see or I just end up in round after round of dry heaves.

The taste is the same

I used to have a stronger stomach, but now I'm a sympathy puker. Even my cat throwing a hairball makes me gag.

So I throw up and I'm sitting there crying a bit, not from exertion, because I hate throwing up.

Then wake up this morning and my throat hurts, my voice is scratchy, all my joints hurt, my rib???? And I still feel nauseous.

Could have been how bad my dysautonomia has been lately, or the migraine with aura I had the day before, but I think it was my body trying to give me a break-through period even though I'm on the pill.

Freaking PCOS.

I ALWAYS get nausea when I'm on, worse than my usual nausea. Just want a hysterectomy, then. PCOS makes everything worse.

Tldr, wahhh, I hate throwing up and now I'm sore and still pukey

[himbos-hotline]

Sometimes I hate being chronically ill. I hate that my nan doesn't understand that hospitals won't help me. That there's nothing an ER or A&E can do for me. That every referral I've had has gone to shit because there's nothing they can do. I keep trying to explain things to them but neither her or my grandpa listen. I don't need to go to hospital because they're just gonna turn us away after spending 8 hours in a waiting room. I won't get pain meds for my EDS because I can't take shit like codine or anything stronger than OTC medications. They can't send me home with morphine or fentynal because they're addicted substance. I won't magically get better from my PCOS or my POTS because the hospitals don't know how to treat it, all they can give me is a bag of fluids and send me on my way. The only way I'll get treated is WHEN something serious happens. When I do collapse and crack my skull open or my EDS causes me to have to have soke kinda bone surgery. But my nan and grandad are getting so angry at me. So mad at me. Guilt tripping me and saying they don't care when something bad happens because I don't wanna go to hospital. I just want them to listen. I just want them to understand that no this isn't NORMAL but it is what IM DEALING WITH.

[aroseofonesown]

On the impossibility of being feminine

Possible trigger warnings for body dysmorphia Like many a way-too-online Millennial, I enjoy some Instagram scrolling. I like seeing other similar mid-size women being fashionable and being healthy. Recently I had to unfollow most of these accounts because I was finding they were triggering body dysmorphia in me to a dangerous level. To be very clear I was not following young, thin, super hot fashion and gym girlies. I was following pudgy women in their 30s and 40s who jog, or lift weights, or wear sexy dresses. Women I identified with and/or was inspired by. What I found was that so much of their content was them responding to the horrific comments they were being left every day. Just them posting and responding to those comments was sending me into horrible anxiety spirals. I am not policing these women. They should not have to take that shit silently. I think they are way stronger than me for being able to keep posting despite the harassment they get, and I know a lot of women enjoy mocking the trash that post those kinds of comments. For me though, seeing these comments drove home to me the impossibility of being feminine. What follows is the crystallization of my interpretation of this behavior and why I think it happens. This is in no way an academic analysis but is based solely on how I feel about what is going on. I believe that feminine bodies are judged in 3 categories by our patriarchal and predatory culture. In all three of these categories, the female body is an object, because as Simone de Beauvoir famously stated, “Man is defined as a human being and woman is defined as a female."

I want to be clear, this 3 object mindset exists because of our patriarchal society but it not perpetuated only by men, and it hurts so many more people than just women. The 3 objects feminine bodies are categorized into into are: 1) Sexual objects: Feminine bodies that are seen as sexually desirable are given privileges above all other women in our society but are very often subjected to unwanted advances, comments, and sexual violence. The sexual object's role is to be pretty, and complaint. If not compliant her compliance will be enforced with violence. 2) The invisible object: Femine bodies that are not seen as traditionally sexually desirable, make no effort to be so and present as sexless. They do not challenge the culture categorization but instead, accept it. They blend into the crowd and tend not to be subjected to verbal or physical violence because of their appearance. 2) Sexually repulsive object: Femine bodies that are not seen as traditionally sexually desirable, but refuse to be invisible. That does not mean they won't be sexualized, far from it. Many fetishized feminine bodies fall into this category. Fat women who declare they are sexy/healthy, trans women just existing, sexually "promiscuous women", and minority and disabled women all often find themselves in this category. The sexually repulsive object is often pushed into this "repulsive" category because she will not or can not mold herself into a pleasing "sexual object" and refuses to become an "invisible object" People who fall into this category frequently experience intense harassment and are subjected to very violent enforcement to push them in the other two categories. It was an existential mind fuck to really understand how my choices came down to being "invisible" or being "repulsive". I am almost 40, have a kid, have very intense insulin-resistant PCOS. I will never be traditionally sexy. I am ok with that. What guts me though, is that I love fashion. I want to be dressed head to toe in standout outfits. I want gloves, and hats, and big ball gown skirts. I want my existence to be loud. If I choose that I will be subjected to violence in an attempt to make me invisible. Deep Breath This is a universal experience for feminine bodies. If we choose to be our authentic selves, we make ourselves targets. I wish I could say I am just going to get angry and be stunning anyway. I honestly don't know right now how loud I will allow myself to be, but I also know it is deeply important for me to understand why I am scared of embracing my authentic self. Why I found it so existentially threatening to watch women who looked like me be insulted for doing pushups or wearing a tight dress. I want to embrace my femininity, but I also don't want to be yelled at and called horrible things and fear for my safety. I also know that as an only mildly disabled cis middle-class white woman, I don't have it nearly as bad as many others. Is it important allyship to stand up against this vitriol? Sure, but am I emotionally strong enough to do it? I don't have an answer yet, but I hope by writing this out it helps me find my way. ETA: not everyone thinks this way of course but this is just my personal theory about why some people get so much more harassment than others.

[mirukutchi]

Attempt 2 at writing this lol bc the first one got deleted by accident

I wanted to add my experience to that last post I rbed, bc it resonated with me, particularly the first part where men will call eachother 'girl' or 'feminine' as an insult(this is the only part im commenting on as i am not a transwoman so i have no input on that part of the post. )

I have pcos. I always have. I have a very strong masculine face/jawline. I always have. Ive always had a deep voice, as someone who was born a girl and identifies(at least in part) as a girl. I want this to be known bc its context lol

Guys are not the only ones who misgender as an insult, or to dehumanize others. Girls do it too.

When i was in elementary school i didnt have female friends bc all of them would laugh at me and say they didn't want to be friends with an 'ugly boy'

When i would go to the bathroom in-between classes, other girls would push me out, or yank me out physically and say that 'ugly boys' are not allowed in the girls bathroom.

My mom always made me have short hair, and she always made me wear jeans(and boy shirts bc they are more durable than girl clothes. This part was. Okay. I guess. I liked pokemon and ben 10 so my little brain didnt understand.) I was not allowed to have long hair and i was not allowed to wear dresses or skirts(ever since i was little ive wanted to wear only dresses but i was not allowed to...)

I talked like a baby(high pitched voice) for a good part of my childhood bc i knew that my voice was ugly and deep. When i started to go to speech therapy, i started speaking ""normally"" and my voice got so deep... i remember one of the last times i used my baby voice it was with a teacher and another student, and the student said "hey teacher, listen to (deadname?)'s REAL voice, she sounds just like a boy!"

That was a defining moment in my life.

In middle school, when i still wasnt allowed to have long hair and dresses, girls in my health class would look at me and laugh and whisper about how im actually a boy, and that i shouldnt be there. My face started changing too, my jaw got stronger... my voice got deeper.

I think in highschool people were too focused on other things to really bother me too much, plus people *generally* by that time knew me as a sweet and quiet person, not to mention i was the 'art kid' so that gained me some friends lol, also by highschool i was allowed to grow my hair out, down to my butt almost! And i was allowed to wear dresses and skirts and leggings(mostly leggings at that time bc i was still super skinny lol)

After highschool i had a crisis and shaved my head and tried out being a guy(ftm) but it was, personally, an identity crisis. I didnt know who i was, i had been abused, emotionally and sexually, all through high school by a guy i thought was my friend(i wish i had left sooner...) so i was struggling with what was 'me' plus i thought to myself 'everyone calls me a guy anyway so fuck it' but it gave me advanced dysphoria to be a guy :/

My hair is long now. Past my butt, i can sit on it. I only, exclusively, wear skirts and dresses. I wear a skirt to work bc i begged them to let me(i have autism and pants are a sensory nightmare but also i hate the way i look in them also i will look more like a guy)

Do you know how often i get misgendered? Admittedly not often, but it still happens. Usually its kids, but sometimes i get people calling me 'sir'. I want to scoff and be like 'how can they mistake someone with long braided pigtails and a dress for being a man' and then i remember my childhood.

Also im not writing this to detract from trans experiences, im writing my own experience as a woman-thing with pcos(if you dont know, it basically means that the cysts on my reproductive organs cause me to produce extra testosterone and not enough estrogen) who has frequently been misgendered by other girls

I want to clarify that im also only responding to the first part of the post, im not trying to say my experiences are in some way comparative to trans experiences!

Terfs do NOT touch this post ill shoot you on sight!!!!! Pew pew!!!

[sparklefangs]

I am so lucky I was playing field hockey before the TERFs decided to make everything terrible.

I was a varsity goalkeep in high school during the early '00s, before people talked about being trans in school, certainly before I knew that what I was feeling about myself was that I'm nonbinary.

I'm built like a truck, was almost 6 feet tall before I started losing height due to spine compression, did weight training with the football team, and ran with the sprinters so that I was faster in full keeper pads than most of the rest of my team. The hockey coach recognized that because I was built bigger and stronger than was typical, it should be taken advantage of. Our win rate was ... not good. I had a shot/save ratio that, so far as I'm aware, still hasn't been bested in the tri-county area. We lost most of our games, but it would have been much, much worse if my team didn't have a refrigerator with rocket boots as their keeper.

I was (1) very tall, (2) very strong, (3) very fast, and (4) very good at hockey. I was born female. I have high androgens because I have PCOS but so does over 10% of the global female population. If I were playing now rather than 20 years ago, my life would have been made absolute fucking hell because TERFs have decided that people born female can't be tall, strong, fast, or good at sports.

Fuck TERFs. Y'all pretend you want to "defend women's sport" but decided that anyone who is good MUST be a man unless they have a very specific body type. And y'all can't even get that right because if someone is built like a swimmer tends to be, she doesn't belong there either. Fuck you. You poison everything you touch and you insult the capability of female athletes.

Also, trans women belong in women's sports. But that's beside the point, because you are hurting butch cis women and cis women who otherwise spend a lot of time and effort building their bodies to be good at what they do. You don't know anything.

[mrsackermannx]

Omg I saw ur old post saying u have pcos? How'd u deal with that? I also have pcos :( I lose a lot of hair nothing helps..

omg hello my angel!! my heart goes out to you because i know how hard it is, all of it. i used minoxidil for a year or so but god i grew hair all over my face it was horrific 😭😭 i had to laser it for months to get it gone, so i honestly do not recommend that (personally). plus you do lose most of the hair you grow!!

but every time i wash my hair i oil and massage my scalp first!! using rosemary oil and sometimes with drops of castor oil, amla and peppermint! this stops me from losing a lot of my hair honestly. as well as experimenting with different partings and genuinely being more gentle with my hair, as well as, eating a lot more protein, eating less sugary things that aren’t fruit, managing stress, PUMPKIN SEEDS!!! a handful a day helps hormones!! a b vitamin complex can help hair fall too! 2 brasil nuts a day work a treat too if you’re not allergic to nuts !

a big thing i will say as well is that as a curly haired person i had this idea that washing my hair once a week was best, but the sebum is full of the chemical (DHT) that essentially smothers our hair follicles and suffocates them until they’re destroyed (if you suffer with androgenic hair loss) so now i wash my hair every 3-4 days!! if you don’t already do this this is a huge game changer!! a clean scalp is a happy scalp! please let me know if you have any other questions I am more than happy to answer and offer any advice! i know how much pcos drains you, i have cried about it so much until now im at a point where I’ve accepted it!! also if you can maybe try metformin or inositol because often time hair fall itself comes from insulin related issues because of the way the hormones are affected by it!! <333 sending love and strength! you are beautiful!!! i know pcos is hard af but it only makes us stronger my angel, but ik it sucks <3 also check if you’re needing iron! vitamin d!!

[outerspacekenz]

Trans Women in Sports

 I am using this blog post to talk about my opinion on the trans women in sports debate, as well as include information that has been studied to back up my reasons why trans women should be able to be on women’s sport teams. I will say sports is not one of my favorite things but I can still understand that there is inequality in sports. 

 What started this was chapter 2 of  “Gendered Voices, Feminist Visions” (Susan M. Shaw, Janet Lee) the topic of institutions came up. Institutions are “social organizations that involve established patterns of behavior organized around particular purposes, that are based on social norms”. There came the topic of institutions in sports. Many people know that sports are primarily a male dominated industry and women’s sports are grossly underrepresented. Another thing they addressed was transgender women in sports, stating “Trans girls and women are prevented from participating in some sports at some levels and have to demonstrate minimum testosterone levels”. While there have been laws passed to prevent or let trans women play on women’s teams, there is still much discourse on the subject. 

While reading “Gendered Voices, Feminist Visions” (Susan M. Shaw, Janet Lee) I questioned a few things, like what about athletes that use steroids? Or what about cisgender (relating to a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex registered for them at birth)? Women can have high testosterone and a common cause is usually PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). They are not expected to have their testosterone levels tested. So I decided to do a bit more research since it is so unfair transgender women would not be able to be on a women’s sports team.

The first thing I decided to research was seeing what testosterone does, in regards to athletic ability. In reading the article “Circulating Testosterone as the Hormonal Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance” by authors; David J Handelsman, Angelica L Hirschberg, and Stephane Bermon. How they explained what testosterone does and how it helps in athletic ability, “The striking male postpubertal increase in circulating testosterone provides a major, ongoing, cumulative, and durable physical advantage in sporting contests by creating larger and stronger bones, greater muscle mass and strength, and higher circulating hemoglobin as well as possible psychological (behavioral) differences”. Overall a man's strength and muscle which does help with their abilities in sports (they produce about 30 times more testosterone than women), which is why sports are split between men and women. 

So even though a trans woman could have more testosterone in their bodies than a cisgender woman they should still be able to be on women’s teams. I have two reasons to talk about that I think would help enforce this opinion. Firstly, I would like to talk about how cisgender women can also have high testosterone. The most common reason for this is having PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), there are also other conditions that can affect a woman's thyroid. These women are not kicked out of sports because of this and they are not forced to control or minimize their testosterone levels, like how transwomen are expected to. They only test those with XY disorders and chromosomes.Secondly, many transgender people start on hormone replacement therapy, either to enhance the male or female hormones depending on the person. In this case we are talking about feminizing hormone therapy, this adds female hormones to one's body making them present more as a woman. The article “Feminizing hormone therapy” from the mayo clinic website states “Feminizing hormone therapy involves taking medicine to block the action of the hormone testosterone. It also includes taking the hormone estrogen. Estrogen lowers the amount of testosterone the body makes”. Which means that a trans woman's testosterone levels would go down and they would have more estrogen making their hormones fit cisgendered count. There is always a possibility it could still be higher than an average cisgendered woman but as we know even they can have higher levels of testosterone. That doesn't stop them from playing in women’s sports. So if a woman is transgender that should not affect their ability to play on the women's team. 

Finally, to answer my first question, what about athletes that use steroids? Well steroids basically just act as testosterone, by building muscle tone and body mass.  Steroids do not directly improve an athletes ability, in this article “Anabolic Steroids and Sports: Winning at any Cost” by the New York state department of health they stated how “Many factors determine athletic ability, including genetics, body size, age, sex, diet and how hard the athlete trains”, so really sports is more about what an athlete does to effect their skills and abilities. Sports are for everyone and if someone does not connect to the gender they were assigned at birth, that should not stop them from being on the sports team of the gender they present as. 

Sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6391653/#:~:text=The%20striking%20male%20postpubertal%20increase,well%20as%20possible%20psychological%20(behavioral)

https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/feminizing-hormone-therapy/about/pac-20385096#:~:text=It%20blocks%20male%20sex%20hormone,of%20testosterone%20the%20body%20makes

https://www.health.ny.gov/publications/1210/#:~:text=Anabolic%20steroids%20help%20build%20muscle,how%20hard%20the%20athlete%20trains.

"Gendered Voices, Feminist Visions” (Susan M. Shaw, Janet Lee)

[amanwithpcos]

August 5th 2023 - First Entry,

Hi. I've been on T since June 29th.

Time flies when you're spacing out, huh??

I've decided today, a little over 5 weeks later, to start documenting my transition publicly.

At first I was unsure. I still wanted to retain femininity and identify as nonbinary, maybe even as a demiboy. But as of last week, I decided to go all in.

I was nervous to start HRT. Between the outright hate for trans people in my country and the uncertainty of going on T with my PCOS, I was unsure how it would turn out.

So far, it's better than I imagined it would be.

I started on one pump of T gel daily, applied to my upper arms and shoulders. Last week my dosage was upped to two pumps.

So far, I haven't noticed much.

I have hair growth on my face, but I've always had that with my PCOS and have noticed little to no change in the rate at which it grows. Hair has also started growing between my breasts, but it's not dark yet (just longer than usual).

I've noticed a significant uptick in oil. I used to struggle with dry skin and only shower every two days or so, but now I find myself having to shower at least once a day if not twice to try and keep my skin clean. Included in the oily skin is increased body odor (had to get stronger deodorant) and the dreaded return of breakouts and pimples.

But I can live with it.

My libido has gone from practically non-existent to very high levels lately (within the last few weeks) to where I experience certain feelings and urges about twice a day.

I was informed that my period should stop completely in about 2 months or so. And--maybe due to my PCOS gifting me the misfortune of irregular flow and the inability to schedule my time of the month--have been (expectedly) graced with no periods since I started treatment.

My weight unfortunately has remained hovering around 250 lbs and no other changes have been noticed at this time.

I will try to update when I get the chance to/when I have changes to report. And if anyone has any particular questions they want me to answer, please don't hesitate to ask me.