#there is so much research done that supports the fact that medical transition helps a shit ton of trans people

[uncloseted]

I have a dream of studying abroad and I'm in my 20s but my mom is paranoid that something bad will happen to me no matter how safe the country is. She's definitely not thinking rationally but I don't wanna let go of my dreams. How can I fix this and convince her everything's gonna be fine? She even threatened to cut contact with me, she's usually supportive with every thing else

I think what she'll respond to really depends on what she's worried about, but in general, the best way to assuage her fears is to have a really good plan in case the worst happens. For example, if she's worried that you'll get sick while you're abroad, you could lay out the insurance plan you're planning on getting, find all of the hospitals near the university you'll be studying at, and research the process of seeking medical help (including learning key phrases in another language, if necessary). If she's worried about safety, you could show her crime statistics for the area compared to your home town/city, let her track your location on your phone while you're away, buy an alarm that you can carry with you at all times and a doorstop alarm for your hotel/dorm, take a self defense class, put all of the local emergency numbers in your phone, find the local police departments and embassy, and learn to ask for help in the local language (if necessary). If she's worried about how it will fit in with your classes or how the credits will transfer, you can show her which credits will transfer back to your school and how you'll still be able to graduate on time. If she's worried about the financial burden, you can lay out a plan for how you plan to afford it or show her the scholarship options that are available. It may even help to put her in touch with the study abroad program directly or with a student who has done the program before so she can talk through all of her concerns.

But - and this is the harder part - I'm not so sure anything that you say will help her view this situation rationally. I'm a total stranger so I don't know your situation and I don't want to overstep, and I'm sorry if I do. But I wonder how much of this is about a concern for your safety, and how much of this is a desire to control you and your choices. The fact that she threatened to cut off contact with you if you did a study abroad program - despite the fact that you're in your 20s and have the capacity to make decisions for yourself - suggests to me that she's less worried about keeping you safe and more worried about keeping you as an extension of herself. If this is the case, as hard as it is, it seems like you may want to consider family counseling or taking some space from one another. As an adult, you have the right to make your own choices, even if they're not the ones that your mom would make, and being able to make those decisions for yourself is an important part of transitioning into adulthood.

[writing-with-olive]

Hi! I want to have a trans man in my comic (i'm not trans, so maybe you could help clear some of my ideas). He is not the protagonist, though.

I would have two ideas about how to take him in the story: he would do many things, be important in the story (so he isn't just a "brownie points" character) and i've already thought about his friend dying and how that would affect him and make him grow.

I would also have two ideas on how to say he's trans. In the first, he gets treated like a man by everyone (as he should), then showing him having "surgery" during the story. But i have a problem with that: my story is in a magical setting. Maybe it would be resolved by being it done with a spell by a powerful witch.

In the second, he already did it, and i would have to give hints about it (maybe him casually talking about chest binding) or bluntly him saying "i'm trans" but i think the latter would be a bit clumsy and forced.

In the third, he just doesn't get his feminine features removed.

Again, i'm not trans, and i don't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, so i'd like some help with judging what is appropriate and what is not.

Hey anon!

First off, you seem like you've done your research, which makes me very happy :D

Definitely have him be treated as a man. Ideally (though there are ways to get around it while still having decent representation), he's got some kind of support system that validates his transness, even if he hasn't transitioned, and sees him as a man regardless of how his body looks.

(more details below the cut)

The idea of transitioning with a spell is also super cool - with that, you have two options: either it's something that closer resembles the results of modern medicine (most visibly that he'd end up with chest scars), or it could be more like gender-bending (so he'd look cis male, though he'd still be trans). Both of them are great as far as I'm concerned, though possible criticisms to both could be that the modern-medicine option is more realistic than needed in a fantasy world and that the point of transitioning for many is to pass as much as possible which scars/more feminine proportions could hinder - aka it has less escapism, whereas the gender-bending option could appear to erase the physical aspects of his transition which could make him "basically cis" (in parentheses because I don't believe trans people can be basically cis, because trans is more about a life experience than it is your outward expression). The fact that there are potential criticisms on both sides are a result that there's no single "right way" to write a trans person, and so long as he doesn't just transition and then boom his transness is forgotten, either option is perfectly acceptable.

Also, the option for him to just..... not transition - like you said - is fine too. There are a lot of people who don't transition for a range of reasons: can't socially, don't have the money for it, can't medically, just straight up don't want to, and others, and it's all valid. Again, being trans is not about your outward expression, and thus, you don't have to transition or want to transition in order to be trans.

Specifically regarding the aspect of directly saying it, I feel ya. If you have an in-universe word that means the same thing as trans and introduce it as such, that could be really neat. Or just describe what it means for your character specifically to be trans. I'll be making a post sometime in the near-ish future on trans-umbrella representation for when you can't use specific labels, so you can also be on the lookout for that.

Happy writing!

[ebthecelebrity]

I’m building a church ya’ll....

I recently read online that building a church can take from one to four years. The process consists of solidifying a committee, setting a budget, choosing a piece of land, hiring a designer or building company, and understanding building and zoning codes. Once these five steps are accomplished, it’s time to move in and start your praise and worship. These past few weeks, I have been feeling very different; like I am transitioning. I have silenced the distractions to listen to God and today he told me to build my church.  Yes, build my church…. well not literally.

Today I was off work and as much personal errands I have to run; I sit down and watch a church sermon on YouTube.  If you need a church home, please check out Transformation Church. This church is steadily transforming my life, since I started faithfully watching during the pandemic.  It starts off casually, with me eating some ice cream and watching Pastor Michael Todd.  Then within a few minutes in, the Holy Ghost hit me in my living room.   I break out in a praise and the tears just start rolling down my cheeks. It is a much-needed loud cry. Feels like it’s from deep within my soul of whatever pain I have been holding onto.  God will do you like that!  He truly catches you slipping and before you know it, you’re running and screaming in your home like the Exorcist.  I stand up and raise my hands because God was deserving of the praise. Everything that I had been silently enduring, God tells me “It’s over. Start building your church.”  Being obedient, I start researching how to build a church and this analogy came to mind.

The first step in the construction of your church is solidifying a building committee. This is the group of people who will help your vision come to life. They assist you with decision making, and the budget. Also, let’s face it...building a church can be stressful, this congregation helps you with your mental health.  When you think about your tribe, your circle, your true family…. this is them!  Who are the people in your life at this very moment, that will be a part of your building committee? Who is dependable, good spirited, honest, and loyal? I have so many ��friends” but not all of them fit this description. I am so loyal that if I know a person from the 2nd grade, I’m still referring them as my “friend.” Not everyone deserves this title. It’s important to know that if you follow God’s purpose, not every soul he has placed in your life deserves to go with you while you are in construction mode. This distinction will save you future heartbreak, confusion, and time. I’ve started assessing who I follow on social media, phone numbers I am keeping, and calls I am answering. Your building committee must hold you accountable and also support you for the rest of your life. Who is your congregation?

The next step is to set your budget. What are some of your short-term goals? Do you have the cash readily available to make it happen now? If you don’t have it, how are you going to get it? Budgeting is key. When I sit back and think about the goals I have in place for the next year, I want to be able to set myself up for success and be ready.  Setting a short-term goal is just as important, if not more, than a long term one. There is so much emphasis on long term planning, but what we really are ignoring is the fact that tomorrow is not even promised. I start to think about the Amazon, Door Dash, and alcohol I’ve purchased this pandemic and none of that contributes to my short-term goals. If you budget your church construction today, you won’t come across any hiccups when it’s time to start building. Write down 5 short term goals and work towards them NOW. Whether these goals will cost you $200 or $20,000, time is of the essence.  Stop wasting time, get your church off the ground.  

Choosing your land is a very important piece of a church construction project.  The land represents your temple. How is your health? When I ask myself this, I get a little emotional.  I am not unhealthy, but I have definitely neglected my body for a long time. I can feel it after a late-night alcohol binge.  I can see it when I look at the mirror.  Your land will dictate the design for your church. When you start building, you want your land to be in perfect shape to be able to hold a stable structure.  When you allow others to use your temple casually, your land is less desirable. The way society praises casual sex and junk food has really disrupted the mindset of how important it is to keep your land beautiful. Getting adequate exercise, practicing good health habits, eating a balanced diet, self-care for mental health and having a healthy sexual relationship are all a part of what can affect the value of your lot and your ability to BUILD. How is your lot right now? What is your value?

The blueprint of your church is the outline of your life. It’s your plan that will eventually lead you to your purpose. I had been struggling with my purpose for years and I finally realized it during the pandemic at the age of 37.  When the world closed down, it allowed me the opportunity to get still and focus on what God called me to do here on this earthly journey. Carefully designing your church takes prayer, concentration, and also the help of your congregation. You hire yourself as the designer and building company because ultimately, YOU are in control of YOUR life. Have you ever rode by a beautiful and breathtaking church and thought to yourself, “Wow! I would love to see how it looks inside”? That is the same effect that your God driven purpose is to have on others around you.  Design your church to be attractive, where every person you encounter leaves inspired and motivated.  Let your presence be felt beyond your years, leaving a legacy.  You know when the Pastor of a church passes away and the ministry continues? Well, that happens the same way when you design your church in the way that God made fit.  Do you have your blueprint ready?

Last but certainly not least, understanding the building and zoning codes are a must! The tedious paperwork has to be done in life in order to do right by your congregation. Navigating through life takes adulting and this is where your t’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted.  Do you have life insurance? Do you have a will in place? If you have a child(ren), there is no excuse for you not to have these in place. Let’s face it, we all have an appointment with our maker, so please have your church in order when it’s your time. Understanding that with leveling up, there comes responsibility.  I recently drafted my will last year with an attorney and it was such a relief to get that out of the way. I put everything down from my medical demands to my funeral arrangements. There is no confusion.  Just like your church home, navigating the laws and paperwork is crucial.  Make it a necessity to have these things in order, as times a wasting.

So, I’m building a church right now. If I am unavailable, distant, or short with you please don’t take it personal.  As I mentioned this process may take one to four years to complete. I suggest that you start building yours too. For church is not for the perfect human being, it’s for the imperfect one who needs structure and guidance every day.

[oleanderblume]

A Not Very Easy Thing to Talk About.

☆Detransitioners☆

("Trans" is in reference to ALL trans people, as well as intersection people, not just binary trans folk)

It seems, in the trans community, we really REALLY don't talk about detransitioners. And I can completely understand WHY.

The prospect of detransitioners is scary, because I'm sure every trans person has wondered at one point "am I just..wrong?" And that is understandable. It is so understandable that I'm sure when you think about- if you think too hard about it, you can so easily convince yourself to not to come out or move forward into getting HRT.

Not only that but every time someone detransitions, that adds fuel to the fire for terfs and transphobes. They use detransitioners stories to vilify and undermine trans peoples experiences, to pass laws that restrict our access to Healthcare, public spaces, and strip us of our bodily autonomy.

Because "this cis girl/boy was so convinced by the big bad tr*nnies to transition and now they will never EVER be the same!!! *gasp*"

That is terrifying.

Except its not.

People who transitioned or were on HRT and later learned that it wasn't the right move are not BAD, they aren't our enemies and they deserve to be HEARD and listened to.

Their stories and experiences are twisted up to make trans people look bad, but they are also the ones being affected by this.

I understand how easily these peoples experiences can be used against us, used against THEM.

But I also understand that as a trans person I SHOULD listen to their stories. Because it is both enlightening and validating.

Gender identity is a messy MESSY thing, and with increased access to Healthcare for trans folks, while that is absolutely FANTASTIC, that increases the risk of transitioning when that isn't the best option for you. Not everyone has access to gender therapy, or medical care, or the information that is so incredibly pertinent to know and have in your arsenal before even attempting to move into HRT.

People have the internet now, and trans people are more visible and gender identity is very often treated as an extreme. Like transitioning is the ONLY way you can feel better if you have an inkling of gnc traits.

Most often this is by ill informed people who genuinely mean the best, because no trans person is going to force someone to transition when they are questioning. No medical professional is going to push you to transition if they don't think you are 100% down with it.

But the fact that ill informed people who mean the best and poorly explained experiences from trans folks on top of detransitioners being completely swept under the rug when they are undoubtedly a part of the trans community serves absolutely no one.

It means that questioning people or gnc folks don't get a well rounded idea of their options, or they may inadvertently be lead to believe that they have to transition or start HRT to feel better.

I'm not saying that you "have to have dysphoria to be trans"- no, I'm saying that people who may have other underlying issues are under the impression that those issues are from being trans when they might very well not be. And that is alright.

Hrt doesn't fix all your problems, if you have issues with mental health, or the way you are perceived by society- internalized misogyny or misunderstood or literally anything that can be easily mistaken for internalized transphobia and/or gender dysphoria it can really make it even more confusing.

And there are people out there who have experienced that, and decided to transition and then realized that their gender wasn't the problem. And I cannot explain to you how important it is to listen to those experiences and apply that to yourself. To Guage whether or not transitioning in any form is the best call for you.

The reason I say that is because there ARE people who reinforce your questioning by being adamant with what you are experiencing- regardless of whether or not their take is correct.

It is your responsibility to do as much research and gather as much knowledge about the pros and cons and the experiences that ALL of the trans community has, including detransitioners.

And we as trans people shouldn't be so skeptical and ignorant of detransitioners when they tell their stories.

People detransition for a plethora of reasons, albeit majority of detransitioners end up moving along with transition again because of support and being out of dangerous situations, there are folks who detransition simply because it wasn't the move they needed to make for themselves.

That being said, detransitioners who actively denounce the trans community and blame the Healthcare system for "pushing them into transition" is also..not chill. It is still your decision to start hrt.

You are still jumping through every single hoop to transition and deflecting the responsibility you take when you utilize your bodily autonomy and informed consent to go through with transition isn't going to help you OR the trans community.

It is so so SO important to research and learn different perspectives before you commit to anything.

Okay. So I know that last bit was kind of harsh, and I know this post is kind of if not already controversial and there is no easy way to fix all the issues surrounding trans people, within the community and without.

That being said, I think one of the things we, as a community can do to truly help eachother, is to make sure that we aren't inadvertently pushing people into making a very drastic decision.

As a community, all of us should be informed about ALL ASPECTS of being trans, or cis and detransitioning. And we should be encouraging questioning people to gather all the information they can before going through with a decision.

And offer the different perspectives, lifting up voices of those who have experiences that are not the ideal, cause I hate to break it to you but being trans is beginning to get romanticized and that only bodes poorly for all of us.

This has been a thought on my mind for a while...and I know I didn't articulate it perfectly, I'm doing my best, I just simply don't believe that detransitioners and detransitioning should be so flagrantly ignored- for the sake of future trans generations, for the sake of our rights and our humanity.

We should talk about it. And take the ownership of the conversation AWAY from terfs and transphobes. Because it doesn't belong to them. Okay. I'm done now.

[physicistdyke]

Transed his own Gender

Dr. Harold P. Coomer is trans, he's worked his whole academic career to make his body just how he wanted it. Now, at age 46, he finally has an opportunity with his work at Black Mesa to get bottom surgery. But his colleague and friend Dr Bubby, who doesn’t know anything about gender besides the strict hetero-normative and patriarchal culture of STEM, objects to the new and risky procedure while questioning Coomers desires to put his own safety at risk all for a silly gen-dar.

rb >> likes!

Link to ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25611880

or read under cut 

It was both viciously empowering and crumbled him to the core. He had a power over his own body, rare for the here and now in this space and time. Harold had felt this way many times before, an advantage that should be a right. He could relieve his own suffering, but at what cost? The lingering thoughts would stick with him, latching on like a parasite, a cancer. A hand on his shoulder brought him back into his body, a body he’s worked so hard for. He turned back to see his colleague, stoic in expression. Dr Bubby was not good at expressing emotions in a conventional manner, but other characteristics helped to convey what his face could not. Right now the pressure he was applying with his hand on Coomer’s shoulder mixed with how he avoided eye contact told Coomer that Bubby was afraid. Bubby was afraid for Coomer. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?” Bubby started. Coomer was about to reply, but Bubby’s own racing mind cut him off. “It’s a very experimental procedure you know, I was reading over the cybernetics reports-“ “Please Bubby,” Coomer turned and looked up at him straight on, he saw worry in his friend’s eyes, “I am fully aware of what I’m doing, I have done just as much research as you.” He said these words with confidence. He didn’t want to hurt his friends feelings more, but sometimes Bubby’s ego got the best of him. Bubby took a step back from the other man, as if the eye contact burned him. Harold was one of the few people Bubby could look in the eyes without that feeling, but now it felt like the island of experience between them was distant. He averted his gaze back to a corner of the room, reconsidering his own words and constructing a sentence most logical for the situation. “I just don’t understand your desire to keep going forward with this, you’re already well respected enough.” *** ____________________________________

This would be Coomer’s first procedure since he had met Bubby. The most recent before that was the operation on his chest, he had snagged that opportunity while working on his post doctorate. That was an experimental procedure at the time too, but Coomer’s endless tap of kindness and intelligence had been able to convince his friends in the medical department and their higher ups that this was an ethically sound decision. Even though Coomer himself never wished to study human anatomy, much preferring engineering and physics to biology, the circumstances of his life pushed him to learn more then he wanted to know. This study began the second he got to college, an unaware and afraid young man, he used his own body as test subject. Mixing concoctions that transformed his body and mind. By the time he was applying for his masters, he was a new man. All the insecurity and anxiousness of his younger years behind him, he now shone like the star he was. From there he made incremental and bolder steps in the process of his transition; first with the top surgery as mentioned before, and now, at the age of 46, he was arranging what would hopefully be his final procedure. Black Mesa did a lot of things, and apparently mechanical prosthetics was now one of them. The new cybernetics department had already made wondrous strides in terms of arms and legs, restoring ability to those in their ranks that needed it. These semi-mechanical, semi-flesh prosthetics fascinated Dr. Coomer to no end. About 8 months ago he had started wandering into the department more often. Finding himself asking passing questions to colleagues, asking questions from a genuine place in the heart. Dr. Coomer was open to talk about his experiences as a trans man, but a majority of his peers were always too uncomfortable to ask. They saw it as an oddity within a good man, he saw it as something that helped make him the good man he was today. The gap in that understanding stung Coomer sometimes, and the feeling of isolation sometimes crept up on him. But his smile and the passion for his studies often helped to bring him away from that space. It was about 2 months ago when he picked out a particular team within the cybernetics department, and started to have more serious conversations with them. From a scientific perspective, everyone involved was enthralled by the prospect. Combine that with Coomer's consistent fascination, confidence, and consent, they were fast approaching a place where action could be taken. _____________________________________

Bubby had noticed his friend's increased absence from their own department. Missing from collaboration meetings, not in his office or nearest break room for their usual chit chat. Coomer was an unlikely but much appreciated friend to Bubby. They had met about 10 years prior, when Bubby was nearly done the process of being titled 'a successful prototype'. Coomer was an unexpected ray of sunshine in Bubby's life. Showing him a kindness and understanding Bubby never had the luxury to live with. Being regarded as a test subject and experiment your whole life does that to you. ____________________________________

Bubby didn't know what being trans meant when Coomer first brought it up with him. Bubby, in reality, didn't even know what gender meant. He had a vague grasp on the fact that gender existed. The knowledge tubes his creators attached to him all those years ago mostly skipped out on all topics of liberal arts, humanity, sociology, etc, except for the most minimum required for him to be a somewhat functioning social life form. But what Dr Bubby lacked in those nuanced interactions and social rules, he well made up for in his ability to observe and form logical conclusions (according to his own account). He was aware of the fact that some people were referred to differently. Out of Black Mesas staff, a small minority were referred to as ‘she’. This group had a tendency to dress different from the rest of the staff, occasionally donning skirts and dresses, and varying from person to person on pigment applied to the face. Bubby viewed these people as his equal (or more so equally below him as the rest of his male co-workers, as he was still an egotistical jerk), but he couldn’t help but notice the trends surrounding this group. Bubby heard the back handed remarks, the passing jokes, the tone of superiority made by some of his male colleagues about the fairer sex. He saw the anxiety in his female colleagues when this attitude approached them. He noted the equal distribution of men to women in the ranks of visiting grad students and post docs, yet the stark lack of women in actual professional roles at Black Mesa. He saw the complacency in nearly all of his male colleagues regarding the generally accepted treatment words the ‘fairer sex’. Nearly all his male colleagues. Coomer and Bubby had been working together for a few years, and a friendship (or the closest thing to that someone could get to with Bubby) had started to really solidify. They were on lunch together, discussing the published panels from a recent convention on nuclear physics. Bubby was particularly fascinated in some newly publish findings on strange Beta decay experiments. He excitedly postulated the possibilities the results could mean for the future of the strong nuclear force. Dr Coomer was as supportive and thoughtful towards his friend as ever, but something else seemed to be occupying his thoughts. “Did you read over the notes from the panel on gender issues in STEM?” Dr. Coomer eventually interrupted when his lingering thoughts became too present. This caught Bubby off guard, but he quickly caught up with his colleagues present state of mind, “I didn’t because I saw it as trivial. I mean, it was a convention on nuclear physics, why waste time with trivial matters of progressing social etiquette?” Coomer furrowed his brow and Bubby realized he had perhaps chosen the wrong words, “Well Professor, if you had spent the time to read, you’d realize it was barely focusing on Progressing social etiquette at all. The man they chose to lead the panel was as backwards thinking about women’s role in science as the Pythagoreans were about irrational numbers.” Bubby shuffled in his chair with slight discomfort, he was never put up to the task of discussing matters like this, “Ah, yes. Well that is a shame. Pretty fucked up too… But I’m sure women will find a way to still contribute valuable findings.” “It’s difficult enough already, I’m sick of this two steps forwards one step back mentality.” Coomer was submerged in his own thoughts, barely acknowledging Bubby’s weak response. “Things have barely changed since my undergrad days. I’m lucky I managed to survive the few years I did in academia being perceived as a woman.” Bubby processed this as neatly and quickly as he could. Gender could be changed. ____________________________________

***“What do you mean by respect, Professor?” Dr. Coomer asked, cooling his own emotions. “You know what I mean, you’re already perceived as a man! You’re no longer are seen as a woman and you’re no longer discriminated against. I admire that you’ve figured out a way to jump the backwards system but-“ he was cut off by Coomer. “Bubby,” Coomer looked at his friend, trying to fathom what the hell had gone wrong in that ‘perfect’ brain of his. He finally gathered his thoughts, “I’m not, trans- because I wanted to be respected. I’m trans because I just am.” Bubby ruminated on his colleagues response, “Well fine, if not for the respect then it’s simply conformity! It makes complete sense Harold, science can be a real dog eat dog world. Anything that makes you separate from the norm is just a weight to be lifted.” “What the actual hell are you talking about professor” a tone of anger and disappointment filled Coomer’s voice, “This is some really problematic thinking you know.” Bubby gave a huff and deepened his gaze to the corner of the room, he mulled over his thoughts and tried to choose his words carefully. As much as he hated to admit it, he really knew very little about gender, but his drive to maintain the upper hand kept him from admitting that. He decided drawing from personal experience was the most logical argument to make, “I mean, that’s why I’m a man. I guess I just always assumed it was the same for you.” Coomer’s look of annoyance turned to one of intrigue, it was rare for Bubby to share his more personal thoughts and feelings. Coomer took this opportunity to prod his colleague, “Is that so Dr Bubby?”, he knew how to get Bubby in a more comfortable mindset, “Then tell me, do you feel like a man?”. “What the fuck is that suppose to mean?” Bubby sneered, “I don’t feel like a man, I just present like one. What the hell does feeling have to do with gender?” Coomer chuckled a little, realizing his friend wasn’t a complete bigot, just an idiot. “I say Dr. Bubby, it looks like your creators really didn’t connect any gender tubes to that brain of yours. Did they tell you the you were a man?” Bubby was feeling increasingly exposed and embarrassed but kept his composure. “Those bastards didn’t tell me anything! At least not directly. I popped out of the tube and they just started calling me ‘he’ and I just rolled with it. I thought that happened to everyone! Until I met you,” Bubby finally returned his gaze to Coomer. Slight tones of confusion, fear, and anger made up his expression, “I could tell that it sucked to be a woman, regardless of their extra freedom of expression with clothes and things like that. So it made sense to me that you changed your presentation to avoid the ridicule.” Coomer enjoyed pressing Bubby’s ‘think deeply about something other than science’ button, but refrained and decided to give some explanation. “Bubby, that really isn’t how gender works in the slightest! I mean for some people they’re content with what ever gender they were assigned at birth, but even then they have some sort of emotional attachment or sense of that gender. And for others, like me, they feel a stronger connection to some other gender and they make what ever adjustments feels right for them. With everyone it can be pretty fluid throughout their lifetimes, but it’s all very personal. What gender do you feel Bubby?” “I don’t feel like any fucking gender! I feel like a scientist, can’t I just be that?” Bubby tapped his foot and rolled the hem of his lab coat between his fingers. He was glad he was talking about this with Harold, but it still felt awkward as hell. “Of course you can Dr. Bubby!” Coomer beamed at his colleagues honesty, “Though I don’t think you could be considered trans though, you were assigned Scientist at Birth™.” Cooper laughed at his own joke, which in turn made Bubby relax and smile a bit himself. Coomer placed a hand on Bubby’s sholder, “Ah, but in all seriousness. It’s completely valid to not be a man or a woman. There are plenty of people like that! And it’s also ok to not have any gender at all! You can feel and express yourself however you want to Bubby, and at least I’ll be here to fully support you. I hope you’re willing to do the same for me.” Bubby looked to the side in a sheepish but calmer way, “Well, of course Harold. I guess I didn’t fully understand how much this meant to you. I’m, um, sorry for speaking over you about this.” A sorry from Bubby was a rare commodity. “It’s alright. You were worried about my well being and I’m grateful for that! You were miss informed and kind of stupid, but I’m glad you were willing to open up and have an honest conversation with me.” Bubby smiled and his gaze was finally able to align with Coomer’s again, the feeling of safety retuned and his anxieties took a back seat. “Well, if it’s alright with you, I’d love to help you and the cybernetics department in your research and development. Learn more about the cutting edge of gender confirming surgery and whatnot.” Coomer beamed at the support, “Ah! I’d be happy to include you in Project Black Mesa Super Shlong 3000! I can grab some of the blueprints we’ve been working on right now!” Coomer left Bubby’s office in an excited hurry and would return shortly. In that time Bubby reflected on the conversation. Not needing to be a man or a woman? Not needing any gender at all? That sounded really nice to Bubby. He still had a lot to learn about life outside of Black Mesa and the apparently fluid rules of gender, but he was glad he Coomer there to fill in the gaps.

[uncloseted]

I hope to be better one day. I believe in only two genders because I believe science doesn’t care about your feelings and I feel trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people. I was born female and I’m not always included in everything and I don’t turn around and call people sexist and transphobic, sometimes u get left out cos that’s called life. I’ve tried changing I cant. I just keep my opinion to myself and just agree publicly with what others say. I know I am not a bad person but just wonder what it is that I don’t get it, I honestly think this is just me.

Against my better judgement, I'm going to answer this ask. I'm not entirely convinced it's a question that's in good faith, and the fact that this ask is in my inbox at all suggests to me that you didn't really engage with the nearly 4,000 words I've already dedicated to this subject, so I don't know how much I'll be able to add to your thinking here. But I know a lot of people do genuinely have these questions or questions like these, and so I think it's important to take them seriously for anyone else who might read this answer. If you really hope to "be better" or to change your views, anon, maybe you'll get something from this, too.

Science Doesn't Care About Your Feelings

So, you start by saying that you "believe in only two genders because [you] believe science doesn’t care about your feelings". What exactly do you mean by this? Maybe science doesn't care about your feelings, but science also doesn't support the assertion that there are only two genders. The scientific community is in agreement that trans people exist. The scientific community created the term "gender dysphoria", and it appears as a medical diagnosis both in the DSM-5 and ICD-10 (and will appear in the ICD-11). The scientific community supports the use of medical and social transition to alleviate the stress and discomfort that trans people experience. The scientific community views social and medical transition as an important tool to reduce the number of trans people who will die by suicide. None of those positions are based on "feelings". They're based on scientific fact- on findings that are testable, observable, repeatable, universal, and measurable. If you want to dig into the scientific research that has been done on trans identities we can, but I have a feeling that's not really where you were going when you said "science doesn't care about your feelings."

Are you talking about "gender essentialism", where your gender is defined only by the sexual characteristics you have? In your previous ask, you yourself seemed to me to be unconvinced by biological essentialism. Are we just arguing over the proper use of the words, "sex" and "gender"? Science views sex and gender are fundamentally separate concepts that are often linked. For example, the World Health Organization, an international, scientific agency of the United Nations, says that, '[g]ender' refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women" and that "'masculine' and 'feminine' are gender categories." The FDA, a federal, scientific agency of the US government, uses "sex" as a biological classification and defines "gender" as, "a person's self representation as male or female, or how that person is responded to by social institutions based on the individual's gender presentation."

But even if you were to take gender essentialism to be fact (and to be clear, I don't think we should), the idea that there are "two genders" is still incorrect. As many as 1.7% of people have at least one intersex trait, and there are many more who don't have all the sex characteristics we associate with being "a boy" or "a girl". As I mentioned in my previous post, some girls don’t have a menstrual cycle (due to menopause, hormonal birth control, low body weight, PCOS, etc), but they’re still "biological girls". Some girls don’t have a uterus (for example, if they’ve had a hysterectomy), but they’re still "biological girls". Some girls never develop breasts, but they’re still "biological girls". If you take gender essentialism to be fact, what is your definition of "a biological girl" or "a biological boy"? Could trans people who have transitioned be considered, perhaps, "a biological girl" or "a biological boy"? Why not? And where do intersex people fit into that paradigm? Would they, perhaps, be a third gender, if we take gender essentialism to be fact? And if not, why do intersex people get to be "a biological girl" or "a biological boy", but post-medical transition trans people don't?

Finally, there are very much times where science cares about your feelings. The entire scientific field of psychology is dedicated to caring about people's feelings and understanding what they mean. So is cognitive science, and psychiatry, and frequently, neuroscience. Behavioral economics and linguistics care about your feelings. Even the field of artificial intelligence and human/computer interaction cares about feelings. Feelings aren't a bad thing. They can help us to understand ourselves and others, and to create systems that work better for everyone. Feelings prompt us to ask the right questions so that science can answer them with facts. In this case, the feelings of gender dysphoria that trans people feel and a feeling of curiosity on the part of scientists led to scientific research about gender dysphoria and the development of scientifically supported treatments to alleviate that gender dysphoria.

Trans People Are Really Attention Seeking

"Trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people" feels like a strawman argument to me. It's just something that can't really be proven or disproven. It's a feeling that you have, but not a scientific fact.

I think it's also an example of a "relevant logical fallacy", or what's more colloquially known as a "toupee fallacy." The toupee fallacy is a type of selection bias where a negative trait is obvious but neutral traits are not. Its nickname comes from the phrase, "all toupées look fake; I've never seen one that I couldn't tell was fake," which is an example of this fallacy. You've never seen a toupee that you can't tell was fake because you assume the ones that look real are just natural hair. The same applies to trans people. If a trans person passes, you may not know (or notice) that they're trans at all. Or if a trans person "acts normal", you may not notice because you're only looking for "toupees"- trans people who are, in your view, "acting inappropriately".

Which brings me to my second point, that this is also an example of the Baader-Meinhof (or "frequency" phenomenon. This is a phenomenon where, after you notice something for the first time, there's a tendency to notice it more often, especially if it's something that makes you react emotionally. Maybe it's not true that all "trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people." Maybe it's that you're noticing it more frequently because it bothers you when this occurs, but you're not noticing all of the trans people who are just quietly living their lives.

Finally, I suspect that if we were more inclusive as a society, trans people would have to talk about their transness less frequently. If people are consistently calling trans people by their deadname or using incorrect pronouns for them, of course they're going to always be reminding people that they're trans. If people are consistently excluding them, of course they're going to be seeking inclusion. This is anecdotal, but one of my best friends is trans, and she never really talks about it unless it's directly relevant. And I think she can do that because she's always respected, included, and just generally treated like "one of the girls" (because she is just one of the girls). I said this in my last post, but I think it bears repeating- the people who are most insistent on their identity being respected tend to be the people who have been the most hurt by people not respecting who they are. Being insistent about who they are is the only way they feel they can be recognized or seen. They're operating from a place of pain. And isn't that sad more than it is annoying? It certainly is to me.

But even if we accept the (incorrect) premise that "trans people are really attention seeking and always seeking validation always need to be included always need to be reminding people".... so what? Does being attention seeking and validation seeking mean that a person's rights should be taken away from them? Because if it does, a whole lot of Instagram influencers are about to lose their rights. Does wanting to be included mean you should be ostracized from society? I think we all want to be included in one way or another. We all want to be part of a community that's bigger than we are. Does always reminding people of you are warrant people rejecting your identity? If you believe that, you should never correct that one person you know who always gets your name wrong and just accept that that's your new name now. You don't have to like people who you find annoying, but you can't just take away their rights or deny them rights because of it.

I Was Born Female and I'm Not Always Included

"I was born female and I’m not always included in everything and I don’t turn around and call people sexist and transphobic, sometimes u get left out cos that’s called life." Isn't that a bad thing, though? Don't you want to be included in spaces that you're excluded from right now? Don't you want people to be less sexist towards you? Don't you want the same rights that men have? I certainly do, and I think it's important to fight for those rights. It sucks to be left out, but more importantly, it's damaging to be left out. Being excluded from spaces has very tangible financial impacts on people, even if you don't care about the very real emotional impact it has. I don't want that exclusion to happen to me, and I don't want that to happen to the next generation of girls. Whatever I can do to make sure that stops, I'm going to do it. And yes, that includes calling people out on sexist behavior. It sucks to have to do that work, but if we don't advocate for ourselves, nobody will advocate for us. And I'm lucky that I'm in a position where I can try to be an ally to the trans community and use some of the privilege I have as a cis person to fight for them so they don't have to do it all themselves. I know how much I would love for men to use their privilege to advocate for women in spaces where we can't, and I hope I can do that for trans people in spaces where they can't advocate for themselves.

Final Thoughts

So once again, this brings me to my final thoughts, and a few questions I would encourage you to think about. What are you really worried about here? Are you worried that including trans women in women's spaces will make it more difficult to talk about issues that people with female sex characteristics face? Are you worried that trans people will center themselves in those discussions? Are you worried that cis men will masquerade as trans women to infiltrate women's spaces with nefarious intent? Are you worried that you'll say something wrong or offend someone? Are you worried that including trans women in women's issues will set women back in terms of the progress we've made? Is it a general discomfort with societal change?

Once you understand where your emotions are stemming from, then you'll be able to address them in a meaningful way. I don't think that "this is just [you]" or that you "can't change". But I do think it will be hard to change your view until you know the reasoning- might we even say... the feeling? - behind your views. You're not coming at this from a rational, emotionless, scientific perspective, and that's okay. But that means that, despite my best efforts, I probably won't be able to debate you into changing those feelings. Only you know where those feelings are coming from, and only you can choose to change them. I think you can "be better one day", but you have to choose that for yourself.

Extra Credit

If you're interested in digging further into this topic (or if you're looking for a fun and educational way to spend thirty minutes), I recommend the ContraPoints video "Pronouns":

It absolutely will not dissuade you of the notion that trans people are attention seeking, because Natalie is, at her core, a fabulous performer who uses elaborate aesthetics and sarcasm to illustrate her points and to make her philosophy lectures more fun. But it does directly argue against Ben "facts don't care about your feelings" Shapiro in a rational, logical way. It delves into a lot of the topics I was talking about the other day and also a lot of the topics you bring up in this ask. Natalie even talks herself about how the polite, easy thing to do is call someone by their preferred pronouns, but that she wants to truly understand why people use the preferred pronouns they do instead of defaulting to them because it's "dogmatically the woke thing to do". In my opinion, it's a good video, but even if you don't end up agreeing, it's not that long, so try it out anyway.

[terfslying]

I got about 8 asks from one anon who was very thoughtful, and I want to reply to them but not clutter the dashboard, so they’re below the cut. For reference, anon stated they are a trans woman radfem who prefers radfem communities to trans communities on tumblr.

Sorry about the dot points, it helps me keep my thoughts organised.

I understand that those examples you are mentioning are super not ok (e.g. telling people they deserve rape/abuse + dehumanising them), but it seems incredibly naive to think that black/white us/them thinking is more specific to 'transblr' than 'radbler'. I've seen plenty from both sides, having been around both sides over the years. In terms of online behaviour, neither is really any better than the other. The difference comes in with real world actions.

It's fair to say that radfems are silenced within the irl and online LGBT communities when they make themselves known. But I think the silencing is entirely justified. I can see why it would drive rad-aligned people to feel persecuted, but the reality is that LGBT people have a right to protect themselves from the real-world damage that TERFs regularly do and have done in the past.

Examples include physically attacking trans women lesbians at events those women organised, set back legal rights for trans people and especially trans women, set back medical support for trans women in the USA especially, openly assault and dox trans women even within lesbian and radfem communities... I know that it isn't a thing that you necessarily support or encourage, but the fact is the anti-"TRA" radfem group is thoroughly hateful and has done a LOT of real world harm.

It's also fair to say that there can be issues with acknowledging trans men's issues in some trans-feminine oriented spaces... but I don't think that blanket applies to all pro-trans communities. I rarely if ever see it through my participation in this site, and for a good period of time I did consider myself transmasculine during that.

There is hypocrisy on every side in every issue, but I definitely feel that the hypocrisy on the radfem side is a lot more damaging than trans hypocrisy.

There's no reliable (modern + peer reviewed) evidence that radfem activism prevents harm to women. Radfem groups specifically agree to take money that cannot be used for pro-choice activism, purely so they can hate on trans women more. That's the highest level of betrayal of your own ideology, as far as I'm concerned as a radfem. Obviously, again, this isn't necessarily something you're involved with, but your safe radfem space for yourself does not exist in a vacuum unfortunately.

The whole "you only get through to people with kindness + not dehumanising them" is very true. But it's important to remember that trans people are the minority and the oppressed group here, not radfems. It is not trans people's responsibility to be unfailingly kind and patient to every single person on the internet who feels the need to post about how they'd like to take legal rights away from them. However, I do agree with you that it takes kindness to break the cycle of hate. That's kind of why I try and do this - although I'm more privileged than a trans woman being targeted by TERFs, that also means I am safer (from doxxing, threats, Sui bait, etc.) doing this than a lot of trans women might be.

I've probably made it clear by now, but I STRONGLY disagree that “GC” radical feminism is "the lesser of two evils". Both communities can be toxic, but one rallies behind activists improving the lives of trans people, and trans-exclusionary radical feminism rallies behind fear-based, non-factual anti-trans 'academic studies’ which have long since been disproven. One does actual harm, and has harmed an estimated hundreds of thousands of trans people in the US alone through applying political pressure to remove coverage of transition treatment from insurance in the early 80′s. The other basically has only done harm through being associated with weirdos/creeps who may be trans (e.g. Yaniv) or may not be (e.g. the 250 bullshit crimes list from the link above). Compared to all other medical and psychological treatments, transition has a high rate of helping people and a low rate of regret and harming people (and that rate is growing lower as transphobia decreases over time, according to many studies on the topic).

Don't worry about sending so much or feeling passionate about this topic. I disagree with you about the balance of harm-vs-benefits in the groups, but you're not being rude or horrible at all.

I'm hesitant to accept "real liberal feminist support abusive / incestuous relationships" as just a statement of fact. "Liberal feminism" isn't something I have ever seen someone claim as their viewpoint. It sounds like you encountered a real whack job, but I don't think they represent this idea of "liberal feminism" which is popular in radfem spaces.

The asks seemed to swerve off into SWERF territory and I'm not sure entirely what you're saying here so I'm going to go ahead and say that my view is that criminalisation doesn't work to protect anyone no matter how they were financially pushed into sex work. The strongest predictor we have that women in sex work will be safe is if they are working legally, because that gives them "greater negotiating power with clients and better access to justice" according to research.

[muslims-and-exmuslims]

Ex-Muslim Letters: 26 year old woman from Saudi Arabia

Image courtesy: Anna Remarchuk

Anonymous asked:  

Hello, this is a 26 year old woman from Saudi Arabia. I renounced religion in 2015 and I have been living in fear since then. I spoke out and shared some of what I think with my family. I lived in isolation since then in the fear I might get in trouble again. I travelled abroad for my studies for two years and came back when I couldn't get a financial support. Now I am back to the same kind of "life" and isolation. I can't even secure a job. I need your advice.

Reply (from @rayhana): 

Greetings from the UK. Thank you for your message. I am very sorry to hear that you are going through such a hardship in an unsafe environment as you described. I hope you find strength in these difficult times. You are not alone. We are with you.

Let’s break down your situation into two core problems, for simplicity: 

Problem 1: You have renounced your faith in 2015. You are effectively an Ex-Musilm in a country where leaving Islam is punishable by death. You have shared some of your views with your family which means this may have or will cause you trouble - potentially, putting your life in danger. 

Problem 2: You are unable to secure a job that can guarantee you with enough money to afford your own safe accommodation in a community you can trust. Without a job, you probably don’t have a steady flow of income for future savings which can help you leave a country where you are at risk of being killed. 

Problem 1, the fact that you are an Ex-Muslim and have expressed some of your views about leaving the faith with your family, puts your life in danger anyway whether or not you have a job. And if you are under male guardianship prevented from leaving the house and getting help, it doesn’t matter whether or not you get a job. 

So let’s tackle Problem 1 in this reply. 

Action Plan to tackle #1: Getting you to safety

How long might it take? You know it better. Perhaps a minimum 6 months from contacting organisations who can help you to finally moving to a safe country, let's say Denmark? So if you start on your plan today (24th December 2020), then, when you re-read this reply again in July 2020, you might be in Denmark, rebuilding a new life. Let’s see how we can get you there. 

Step 1: What do you need? Ideally, research a route to seek asylum in a country under the Geneva Convention that protects your human rights, particularly, freedom from religion. (Get it done by: 3 weeks max, mid-Jan)

I can’t recommend which country you should get a direct flight to (Yes, direct flight. NO TRANSIT IN NON-EU COUNTRIES BECAUSE SAUDI GOVT/PARENTS USE LOCAL GOVERNMENT TO KIDNAP THEIR DAUGHTERS). But I can, based on reports, say which countries to avoid. By all means, avoid Turkey, Philippines, India, any country in the Middle East, Bangladesh, Pakistan. Actually, following is a map of the countries you should avoid. Avoid all the countries whose maps are black or dark pink. This map is a good proxy because whether you are an Ex-Muslim, a liberal Muslim or an LGBT+ person, the risks you face is the same. 

Be aware of human trafficking gangs when you leave the country: You should also avoid these countries because, since you are a young woman, you are a target of international sex trafficking gangs who look for women like you and promise you with a “job” and “new life” and end up taking your passport and selling you to prostitution. 

Be aware of kidnapping gangs when you leave the country: You should also be selective about who you tell and stay in touch with when you leave Saudi Arabia and travel to your destination country. This is because, Saudi Arabia and much of the Middle East is heavily guarded by Islamist spies and moneymaker who will help your ‘kidnappers’ to find you by leaking your address, contact number, social media profiles in exchange of good sum of money. Once your Saudi guardians know where you are escaping to, they may contact your airline flight or the destination government to arrest you. This is why you need to avoid these following countries with black map:

Step 2: Is asylum the right decision for you? If Yes, START PREPARING. (Get it done by: 4-8 weeks, 29 Feb 2020)

Head over to the website of UNHCR's Refugee Agency: https://help.unhcr.org/#_ga=2.36710247.670686335.1577196824-2037898764.1577196824

Allocate 1-2 days max to familiarise with the UNHCR's guides on seeking asylum. Make a list of the agencies who can help.

Allocate 2-4 days to familiarise with these organisations who help Muslim and Ex-Muslim dissents.

Humanists UK

Pen English

Pen International  

Centre for Inquiry

Human Rights Watch

Red Cross

Once you are confident about their remit, send an email to them asking if they have any advice or a social worker who can help you.

Step 3: Get a trusted journalist to bring light to your story. (Get it done by: 4-6 weeks max, mid-Feb)

We suggest you contact the CPJ or the ICIJ and ask to speak to a journalist. 

A journalist is a safer contact than people without professional capacity  who may introduce themselves to you as a “secular Muslim” or an “Ex-Muslim”. This is because journalists act within their professional capacity (there is an audit trail) so they will not cheat you or leak your information to your kidnappers.

And in the event that you are kidnapped, or killed, your journalist can spread the word across to help and rescue you.

Step 4: Gather evidence - ALL OF IT. (Get it done by: past evidence, 2 weeks max, mid-Jan, new evidence: as it happens)

If you have received new threatening messages, it means your life may be in immediate danger. In that case, since the Saudi police might be counterproductive because you are an Ex-Muslim, try contacting this and this and ask for help. We can’t guarantee they will save you but they are probably your best bet.

Go back to your old Facebook, email account, WhatsApp messages etc. dating back to 2014 or 2015. If you have received death threats or threats of violence or abusive messages from your family or anyone within Saudi Arabia for leaving Islam, save their screenshot. And save their backup copies in a cloud server, such as Google Drive. 

Step 5: Get a lawyer (get it done by: 8-12 weeks, by early April 2020)

You need a trusted lawyer to support your asylum application once you decide where to rebuild your new life. We cannot recommend any lawyer without a safety check. Perhaps start with Lawyers Without Borders? Also, perhaps CPJ and ICIJ can help you find a good lawyer. 

Step 6: Write your statement (Get it done by: 4 weeks, by April 2020 - update as you gather new evidence on events etc.)

It is worth starting from now, to draft your full situation in a document, to build a full picture of what is going on with your life, why your life is in danger and explain the evidence to support it. 

Make sure you have a chronological detailed list of events, and match it with evidence. 

Sadly, this is an anti-refugee, populist and polarised era. Without evidence, you will not get any help from the West because many westerners are afraid of Islamists and don’t want to help Ex-Muslims because they think it is “Islamophobic” to leave Islam. So make sure you hold on to your evidence. 

Step 7: Do you have the money to buy plane tickets? Buy food? Rent a safe house in a completely new country? GET YOUR FINANCES IN ORDER. (Get it done by: start NOW, track progress mid April 2020)

Hold onto your savings in your bank, as well your assets. Make sure no one except you have access to them. 

If you don’t have the funds to afford asylum or travel to a safe country, consider crowdfunding. 

Make sure you have some cash with you as an emergency fund in case you lose access to your online bank. 

Step 8: Have the fund, journalist, and legal support you need? Get ready for asylum. (Start by May/June - start early because bureaucracy will slow you down).

This is the main and most difficult bit. 

Discuss with your legal representative, UNHRC, journalist on what is the best option for you to leave the country. Can you obtain a visitor visa to an EU country? 

Set the date of your travel. Don’t tell anyone you are seeking asylum except for an accredited journalist, trusted lawyer as mentioned earlier. If you are escaping to Denmark, tell your friends and family you are going to Australia. 

Pack up the essentials: 

Your passport

Your medical and academic certificates

Your valuable assets: gold (protect them from thieves - you can later convert them to cash if you run out of money)

Get a new phone and a new laptop. Leave your old IT equipment in Saudi Arabia so that you cannot be traced by Saudi police. A fresh start means a fresh start.

     5. Plan your travel. And be viligant when you do so.

Get a direct flight. For example, direct flight from Riyadh to Copenhagen. No transit, No changes. 

Before you arrive at your destination airport, either ask a representative from your lawyer, or your journalist to arrange to collect you from the airport. Before your plane lands, you should know the name and face of who you are meeting first, the taxi (number) where you will be traveling to, the address where you are going and potentially that country’s police and emergency number, e.g, 911, 999 or 111. Also, make a note of that country’s counter extremism hotline. In the worst case, call them. 

Once you have landed in your new country, make sure you are meeting the people you verified earlier through your legal, journalist reps. Waste no time before going straight through the asylum process and meanwhile make sure you have a safe accommodation. 

If you want to change how your life is today, it will not be an easy task. But you are not alone. Help is out there. You are looking at 6 to 12 months of struggle, if you want to change your life starting from today. Next year on this day you might be living a new life, breathing fresh air in Denmark, or Switzerland or Canada; or still stuck in Saudi Arabia in a life that feels like a prison cell. Or 30 years from now on this day when you are 56, you are still living the same life in Saudi Arabia, regretting that today as you read this, you did not gather some extra courage to change your life. I hope you find that extra courage. I know, from your letter, that you are already full of courage. When is the right time to turn that courage into action? You decide that. The world is ready when you are ready.

And if you do choose to put your courage to action starting from today, I hope I hear from you again - perhaps in January  when you have progressed with gathering evidence, finding some trusted journalists and lawyers to help you? 

I can’t wait to see you happier, and braver. 

Look forward to hearing from you again.

Lots of love. Merry Christmas and have an excellent start of the year.

Rayhana Committee to Protect Muslims and Ex-Muslims 

[missmentelle]

i want to write a character who just left a toxic relationship, but the character depends on the toxic partner, because they are having trouble finding a job. when character leaves the toxic relationship, they are left with basically nothing and are kicked out of the only home they had. however i have never experienced something like this(fortunately) and im not sure what would and could happen. could you help me? (fyi later on the character does actually get help, in the end everything is ok)

Unfortunately, I do have a lot of experience with this kind of situation. I have never personally had to go through something like this, but in working with the homeless and in intimate partner violence crisis centers, I have met many, many people who’ve been in this exact situation. These stories are very individual and complex, but typically, if you have left a toxic relationship and lost your home because of it, there are a couple of places you end up from there:

If you have family and friends nearby, that’s probably the first place you’re going to land. You might end up sleeping on a couch, in a guestroom, or back in your old childhood bedroom after leaving an abusive relationship. That’s not an easy or comfortable situation to be in, however - it can be very, very difficult to admit to your loved ones that you’re in this situation and need their help, even if they have never been anything but loving and supportive towards you. Most people have some degree of pride in being able to take care of themselves, and having to admit to your friend that you were abused for years and you need to crash on their couch can be absolutely humiliating. Abusers also tend to isolate their victims and actively try to sabotage their social connections, so turning to friends and family after escaping often involves that you break months or years of silence to reach out to someone that you are no longer certain you can count on, and then immediately confessing some of your darkest secrets and asking for help. If your abuser has moved you far away from family and friends, and cut you off financially (another common tactic), you’ll also probably need to ask someone to send you some money for a bus/train/plane ticket home. The shame of having to reach out to family and friends can be so overpowering that many survivors will allow themselves to become homeless rather than reaching out - the greater the perceived obstacles in place (distance from family, closeness of relationship, time since last contact, whether or not the family already suspect abuse, how much of a burden they think they will be on their family), in my experience, the less likely they are to actually reach out. 

If you don’t have friends or family to turn to (or if you are not emotionally able to reach out, or if your friends/family are not in a position to help you), you can also end up in a domestic violence shelter. These vary wildly from shelter to shelter, but typically you will go in, speak to an intake worker, and be assigned to a shared room with several other women (these shelters are almost exclusively female-only, or female-and-child-only). The shelter will also typically provide the bare-bones basics that you need if you had to flee with nothing - they’ll give you basic toiletries, clean underwear, socks, etc. Your time at a domestic violence shelter is typically limited; they are somewhere to land while you get back on your feet, but they are not intended to be a long-term solution. Many shelters here in NYC do not have maximum stay limits, simply because this is such a difficult place to get housing, but I have worked with shelters in other cities that had 60-120 day limits, with some ability to get an extension if you needed in. In that time, though, you’ll generally be working with counsellors at the shelter to try to get your life together - they’ll try to help you with your resume, look into going back to school if you need to, help you look for work, help you look for employment, assist you with any court case you may be dealing with, etc. Again, though, this can take an enormous emotional toll. You’ve just been through a horrific experience, and instead of taking time to recover, you are now being rushed into achieving a level of independence that you might never have experienced before, with the knowledge that there is a ticking clock over your head and you don’t know what will happen when it runs out. You’re also trying to deal with the loss of privacy that comes from sharing your living space, and from having to tell your story to shelter staff before you’re totally ready to do so. Domestic violence shelters do amazing work, but being there is not easy. 

Many domestic violence survivors end up homeless. Many people who leave abusive relationships do not immediately have the life, job or emotional skills necessary to immediately transition to independent living. Abusers like to make their victims dependent on them, to discourage them from leaving - many people living in abusive relationships are prevented from completing their educations, furthering their careers, managing money, properly treating mental health or medical conditions, or fostering a strong social support network. As a result, many people struggle immensely after leaving a relationship, and may experience short-term or long-term homelessness as a result. This kind of thing doesn’t discriminate - in my career, I’ve met women with multiple graduate degrees who ended up in long-term homeless shelters after leaving abusive relationships. It’s hard. There is a strong, documented link between domestic violence and homelessness, and we don’t yet have the kinds of resources we need to break this connection. 

You’re almost definitely going to end up in an ugly legal battle. In many jurisdictions, it’s not really legal to kick your spouse out of the house and make them homeless and destitute - but the battle to get alimony or marital assets from your ex-spouse can be long and ugly. Abusers typically lash out when their victim escapes them, and one of the ways that they can try to do that is by attempting to make the divorce as messy, vicious and drawn-out as they possibly can. A woman who has left an abuser she is legally married to will face a long battle to divorce her spouse and get any kind of financial recourse. Abusers can generally afford much nicer lawyers than their victims can, and can afford to let the case drag on and rack up legal fees. There are pro-bono or low-cost legal resources out there for survivors, but the court case can take an enormous emotional toll all the same. 

Returning to the job market is incredibly difficult for most survivors. Again, abusers like their victims to be dependent on them - they will go out of their way to discourage you from fostering your independence. That often means that they will discourage or prevent you from finishing school, having a serious career, hanging on to your own money, or developing professional contacts. That can take many forms - they might move you away from a city where you have a career, tell you that you can’t afford school, ensure that you are constantly pregnant/parenting, constantly accuse you of cheating with coworkers, whine about you “neglecting” them until you agree to quit your job, etc. And all of this can be very hard to overcome. Having a large gap in your work history because your partner made you stay home for several years can make it hard to find work, and disclosing that this gap is due to domestic violence can hurt your chances of landing the job. Plus, many survivors come out of these relationships with their confidence absolutely shattered, which makes it difficult to think that you’re even worthy of applying on jobs that you are qualified for. 

Domestic violence (and life after domestic violence) is definitely a topic that could stand to get more coverage in fiction and the arts. When you are basing a story around domestic violence, though, I think there are three things that you really need to keep in mind:

What is my purpose in telling this story? What message am I trying to convey? Writing about domestic violence should not be done simply because it’s a shocking topic, or because it’s an instant tear-jerker - there should be some purpose for basing a story around it. What are you trying to say about the topic? What are readers supposed to take away from the story?

Talk to real survivors about their experiences, or at least do some research by looking at narratives from people who have personally experienced this. There is no end to the memoirs/stories/films/shows written about this topic by people who have actually been there. See what they have to say about it. What do different people’s stories have in common? What things set them apart? Ideally, you should try to have someone with personal experience read over your story when it’s finished, to see if anything comes across as hollow or unrealistic. And if you are basing your research heavily on a survivor creator’s work, try to buy their book/kick in a few dollars to their ko-fi or Patreon if you can. 

Consider what a “happy ending” looks like in this situation. The hard reality of the situation is that very few people get to have that victorious ending where they become more powerful and successful than their ex and get to destroy their abuser and laugh in their face. For many people, a “happy ending” is a quiet, humble life where they are no longer actively haunted by the abuse, and where they are at peace with the fact that their abuser faced no real consequences for their actions - and even this happy ending can take years to achieve. Having someone bounce back from this kind of situation quickly in a story can come across as flippant, and as glossing over the hard realities of the situation. 

Best of luck to you!Miss Mentelle

[destroyyourbinder]

two articles on psychiatric medication

I'm planning on writing a bigger psychiatry-critical piece soon about how the overwhelming majority of both leftists and trans people that I know believe themselves to be necessarily reliant on either psychiatric medication or therapy or both, and permit themselves (rather, semi-deliberately evacuate themselves of agency in identification with those harming them, I do not wish to victim blame) to be extensively abused by the psychological-psychiatric medical system in a fruitless search of validation for their malaise in some horrible cycle of iatrogenic dependence.

In particular, I know at least two transgender people personally (one male, one female) who are so heavily medicated that I have few compunctions about calling what is being done to them a kind of chemical lobotomy. They have both been left minimally functional and dramatically changed in personality by their "treatments", but both still seek out psychiatry to endorse their transgender interpretation of themselves, despite the fact their doctors are brutally and with little humanity "re-adjusting" them out of inconvenient behavior through repeated hospitalization, high and probably inappropriate doses of lithium alongside multiple other medications, and of course their whole gender treatment paradigm.

So I am continually startled by not only the distinct lack of modern leftist criticism of psychiatric medical institutions but outright collaboration with these institutions. Many people in the broader community-- whether radical queers or lesbian feminists-- purport to value self-reliance and peer support networks, distrusting well-funded and politically undermining officially-sanctioned institutions, but I am not sure I know a single gay person in my everyday life who is not regularly attending counseling sessions of some variety or another or who is not taking psychiatric medications-- prescribed by a psychiatrist that they see monthly or sooner-- that they believe they cannot live without.

One of the reasons I am so critical is that I was once one of these people: I have been on at least fourteen different psychiatric medications in various combinations throughout my life, and both I and many of my doctors believed that I was so critically ill that I could not live a meaningful or even minimally functional life without them. I, or my depression-- we were coextensive, inseparable, my personhood was inconvenient to assessment, I suppose-- was considered so deeply treatment resistant that I had multiple psychiatrists tell me to my face that it might not be possible to help me (of course, while still holding the prescription pad). I was lucky to never have been on lithium or Lamictal, nor subjected to electroshock, but all were floated as an unfortunate but potentially necessary part of my treatment plan. I was indeed considered such a hopeless case that I was actually approved for disability payments for mental illness, without appeal, an extreme rarity in the United States, especially at such a young age (23). I do not know for sure or not whether I could have set the grounds to get my shit together without the intervention of psychiatry-- I did survive long enough to leave an abusive home, after all-- but I do not consider it a coincidence that I did not get my shit together until I stopped having a therapist whispering in my ear and stopped having these substances in my body.

I don't think you can understand the modern transgender movement-- whether the push to identify various gender-distressed people as having a disorder or just niche lifestyle in need of medicalized affirmation, or the ideology that demands we believe that gender identity is an essential characteristic of human beings-- without understanding the history of psychiatry as a coercive practice attempting to normalize the socially abnormal, often in service to extremely oppressive interests, and the history of therapy as inherently individualizing and anti-political, an authority-laden substitute for discernment and appropriate and healthy social feedback.

In any case, I want to keep it short today, and it's with this context I want to share with you two articles, one from the New Yorker and the other from NPR.

The first article, by the amazing writer Rachel Aviv, who has previously covered dense and thorny ethical issues regarding psychiatric treatment and the construction of mental illness, is a critical article about how many modern psychiatric patients come to take consecutive strings of multiple psychiatric medications, coming to have and then losing faith in their doctors and medications to fix their ills. It follows a woman who decided to withdraw from her medications and the people she meets as she must build her own support network during her process of withdrawal, given her unhealthy dependence on the psychiatric network treating her and the psychiatric industry's public denial that medication discontinuation symptoms even occur, nonetheless can have severe and life-disrupting effects. Aviv gives a contextual history and science of the use of several classes of modern psychiatric medications, including their incredible limitations given psychiatry's practice and value system; in a description that will read eerily familiar to any detransitioned woman, she states that "there are almost no studies on how or when to go off psychiatric medications, a situation that has created what he [Allen Frances, chair of the DSM-4 committee] calls a 'national public-health experiment.'"

An important excerpt relevant to both general psychiatry and the practice of transgender medicine and health care:

A decade after the invention of antidepressants, randomized clinical studies emerged as the most trusted form of medical knowledge, supplanting the authority of individual case studies. By necessity, clinical studies cannot capture fluctuations in mood that may be meaningful to the patient but do not fit into the study’s categories. This methodology has led to a far more reliable body of evidence, but it also subtly changed our conception of mental health, which has become synonymous with the absence of symptoms, rather than with a return to a patient’s baseline of functioning, her mood or personality before and between episodes of illness. “Once you abandon the idea of the personal baseline, it becomes possible to think of emotional suffering as relapse—instead of something to be expected from an individual’s way of being in the world,” Deshauer told me. For adolescents who go on medications when they are still trying to define themselves, they may never know if they have a baseline, or what it is. “It’s not so much a question of Does the technology deliver?” Deshauer said. “It’s a question of What are we asking of it?”

The second article, which also contains a longer-form audio interview with the author, is about a new book by Harvard historian of science Anne Harrington called Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search for the Biology of Mental Illness. What I found particularly striking about her interview is Harrington's assertions about the state of psychiatry and psychiatric pharmaceutical research now-- she claims that the psychiatric medication market has stalled because of research finding that many common antidepressant medications work no better than placebo versions, and that pharmaceutical companies therefore are de-investing from psychiatric medication research and development because they can no longer use their previous strategy of slightly tweaking the chemical components of previously monetizeable drugs. She states there have been very few innovations in finding new classes of antidepressant medications in particular (the most easily marketed psychiatric drugs, for whom the target population can easily be expanded).

I think her points here are crucial to understanding exactly why pharmaceutical companies and psychiatry have become increasingly invested in transgender health care and in expanding the market for hormones and transgender-related surgeries through promoting interventions like HRT and "top surgery" as elective procedures suggested as ways to "affirm a patient's identity" rather than "treat a disorder". The gender critical blogger Brie Jontry, a mother of a formerly trans-identified female teen, calls this practice and ideology "identity medicine", a term I find useful to describe the unholy conglomeration that is the individualized medicalization of gender-related distress and the advertising of medical treatments (particularly those provided by cosmetic surgeons) as ways to facilitate self-expression and authenticity. Given increasing attempts by gender doctors to create patients permanently dependent on exogenous hormones (those children left with non-functional gonads after treatment with GnRH agonists like Lupron and cross-sex hormones, or those transgender people who have had theirs removed) or to convince patients that gender dysphoria is a life-long, inescapable condition that they had already failed in not treating/affirming earlier (because you Always Were A Boy), I have to note parallels with psychiatric medicine's anti-recovery, anti-patient-autonomy assertions about other recently marketed drugs such as atypical antipsychotics, on which patients are also purportedly permanently dependent, or antidepressants (as above) where withdrawal symptoms purportedly prove that a patient is doomed to relapse should she cease psychiatric treatment. "Informed consent" and the formation of transgender resources outside a "gatekeeping" paradigm, where patients need not seek insurance approval nor the opinions of several doctors of different specialties for transgender medical interventions, nor wait a set period of time prior to transitioning, is often lauded as progressive and anti-institution by radical transgender activists, who can rightly see issue with a psychiatry put in charge of policing the intimate personal beliefs, coping mechanisms for misogyny or homophobia, and individual gender expression of its patients. However, I can't but see this as part of a new and terrifying medical strategy regarding transgenderism, where a loss of patient agency is replaced with the false sense of consumer choice; we have seen this in other realms of psychiatry, where forms of psychiatric incarceration were rebranded as the choice to take a break or "finally" seek help after self-negatingly denying it for so long, where tranquilizing drugs were rebranded as assistive devices for women struggling to have it all, and where high-risk, heavily sedating antipsychotic medications were rebranded as ways to give other psychiatric medications a "boost" should you still experience unhelpful emotions after complying with psychiatric treatment. "Gender dysphoria" is increasingly nebulous, something you might have had all along if you experienced various forms of generic malaise or failed to have your suffering sufficiently validated and thereby dissipated by psychiatry; funny that we've seen this before with other conditions and their treatments, and psychiatry somehow always comes up with a money-making solution for its own problems.

[omgprisonreform-blog]

Reducing Recidivism through Rehabilitation in Portland

COURSE: LEADING TO SOCIAL CHANGE By: Amanda Esquivel, Cait Fellows, Dilla Hanifah, Cole McArthur

Image Link

Problem summary:

Within Multnomah county the three year rate of recidivism from drug possession crimes is currently 55.8%. To compare, the rate of recidivism in Multnomah for any crime is 35%. The state of Oregon defines recidivism as a new felony or misdemeanor conviction within three years of being released from prison. Recidivism is important because it reflects the failings of our justice system. Clearly, if an individual goes through the criminal system and ends up back where they began, then the system isn’t working. Instead of repeating the cycle of incarceration and treating drug abuse as a crime, drug offenses should be treated as “a mental health issue, which cannot be treated through punishment alone” (Pratt). The goal is to increase the efficacy of the justice system by lowering recidivism rates. 

The scope of recidivism that will be covered is focused on rehabilitation in reference to drug use and convictions.  It is reported through the Department of Corrections that 74.5% of all inmates reported drug dependency or some substance abuse.

Recidivism has an enormous financial toll on society. This money and additional resources end up being wasted. Rehabilitation can make the criminal system more efficient with resources because offenders won’t be as likely to re-offend in the future. As expressed through a new report from the Oregon Department of Corrections, it costs $108.26 to house an adult in custody compared to a $11.68 cost of keeping an adult on supervision.

Beyond the cost of recidivism to the state, there is the social toll it enacts. Reincarceration of community members directly affects Portland by placing a financial burden on the community and removing parental figures from a family dynamic. Reincarceration fails to provide adequate rehabilitation to convicts, so the root cause of their offense isn’t addressed. 

Recidivism is detrimental to the whole community, reduces individuals’ quality of life, and wreaks havoc on family dynamics. For example it has negative effects on the family, makes it harder to get an education, and costs more money for the family making their economic struggle harder. Children of incarcerated parents are twice as likely to be convicted of a criminal offense as an adult. A parent committing a crime can create a cycle of incarceration for the family. 

The children of parents who are incarcerated are much more likely to suffer from mental and physical health issues than children of parents who are not incarcerated. For example, 7% of kids without a parent incarcerated have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) or ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) compared to 18% of kids with a parent incarcerated. A similar trend occurs with many health issues such as depression, anxiety, obesity, and epilepsy. Kids with a parent incarcerated also suffer from chronic absence from school and behavior problems at a higher rate. This has many negative effects on the family and society in general. All these physical and mental health issues make it harder for these kids to complete highschool, and it’s been shown that an increased level of education decreases crime. In addition, these families that are usually single income now have to deal with the extra medical bills from these issues, straining their already limited funds even more. This lack of education and money just pushes these kids and their families back towards crime due to lack of other options.

Environment and Context:

To take an honest look at recidivism in Portland, we must look back on the history of incarceration within the United States.  Since before the American Revolution, colonies used to use forms of physical public humiliation to punish people for their sins and crimes. This was done to deter from reoffending. By the 19th Century, because of the Quaker Reform, the country began to see a change in the prison system with a focus of solitary time being implemented to provide prisoners with the chance to repent for their sins. Over time this form of confinement leads to what we are familiar with today, where crimes are met with corresponding lengths of time inside the prison system (James 2019). It was not until the 1930’s through the 1950’s that we began to see heightened interest and focus on rehabilitation and cause of criminal activity. This was the time period that recidivism became an important part of records and growing concern for the Department of Corrections.

In very recent years many programs, ballots, and action plans have been created to attempt to reduce the percentage of recidivism in Oregon and across the United States. Some of these programs that have directly affected Portland are Measure 11, Drug Court Program, Oregon Prison Parenting Program, Mercy Corp Northwest, and Inside Out Classes. Measure 11 is a highly controversial ballot that focuses on harsh mandatory minimum sentencing to reduce the likelihood of violent crime and reoffending. The mandatory minimum sentencing would include both adult and juvenile offenders and remove the ability to enter into rehabilitation programs and try youth as adults. It would also remove the possibility of reduction in prison time due to good behavior. These harsh sentences have shown to have little effect on the reduction of recidivism and in juveniles has shown to “increase recidivism and reduce public safety.” (Oregon Council on Civil Rights 2018)

Other programs have proven much more effective, such as the Drug Court Program and Mercy Corp Northwest, that lean toward more prosocial recovery. Prosocial activities such as Parenting Inside Out Classes, which allows mothers to create bonds with their children, rebuild relationships, and have consistent monthly visits while incarcerated, has had massive reductions in recidivism with participating candidates. Research has shown that, “graduates were 91% less likely than non-graduates to report having engaged in criminal behavior one year after release; they were also 66% less likely to report substance abuse during the same period.” (Wilson 2016)Portland’s STOP Program was the second Drug Court in the nation. Drug Court is a program that provides intensive treatment to those with substance disorders. They lead individuals through a 4-phase program that provides tools to begin a productive way of life and is an alternative to incarceration. Besides lowering the amount of recidivism in the area, Drug Court saves Portland money. By opting into this program Oregon spends $5,927.80 per participant rather than spending over $39,000 per year to incarcerate (Carey 2004).

This video shows how the STOP program has helped those in Multnomah County. Link: https://www.facebook.com/MultCo/videos/1521926071240851/

Mercy Corp Northwest is an organization that helps with successful re-entry of adults in custody to their local community in Portland, Oregon.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mercy Corps Northwest (@mercycorpsnw) on Apr 3, 2018 at 4:15pm PDT

They help connect people to substance abuse programs, and provide job assistance. They start providing assistance within the walls of institutions and continue to follow offenders when they are released. Once released Mercy Corp provides emotional support as well as assistance in housing, medical care, and mental health. Mercy Corp Northwest states that their, “ LIFE prison reentry program reduces recidivism up to 50%; building resilience and establishing self-sufficiency and economic stability for incarcerated individuals and their families.”

APA Citations:

Carey, S., Finigan, M. (January 2004) A Detailed Cost Analysis in a Mature Drug Court Setting: A Cost-Benefit Evaluation of the Multnomah County Drug Court. Retrieved from https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/203558.pdf

CJC Research Department Statistical Analysis Center (2019) Recidivism Dashboard. Retrieved from https://www.oregon.gov/CJC/SAC/Pages/Recidivism-dashboard.aspx

McAlister, S., Officer, K., Sanchagrin, K. (November 2019) Oregon Recidivism Analysis. Retrieved from https://www.oregon.gov/cjc/CJC%20Document%20Library/November2019RecidivismReport.pdf

Mercy Corps Northwest (2019) Lifelong Information for Entrepreneurs (LIFE). Retrieved from https://www.mercycorpsnw.org/reentry-transition-center/life

Oregon Department of Corrections (September 2018) Issue Brief. Quick Facts. Retrieved from https://www.oregon.gov/doc/Documents/agency-quick-facts.pdf

Oregon Council on Civil Rights (February 2018) Youth and Measure 11 in Oregon Impacts of Mandatory Minimums. Retrieved from https://media.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/other/Youth%20and%20Measure%2011%20in%20Oregon%20Final%202.pdf

[transmedicalism-for-beginne-blog]

Transmedicism Rant:

Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders- Fifth Addition, or the DSM-5 States that "GENDER is used to denote the public (and usually legally recognized) lived role as a boy or girl, man or woman, but, in contrast to certain social contructionist theories biological factors are seen as contributing, in interaction with social & psychological factors, to gender development."

--

Couple things to note here.

1) Biology influences Gender.

2) Look at that nice little fuck you to the social sciences in their sentence.

3) "boy or girl" "man or woman" There's only two genders, who would have guessed.

"But wait, what about "Gender Identity" ?"

Well the DSM-5 states; "GENDER IDENTITY is a category of social identity & refers to an individual's identification as male, female, or some other category other than male or female."

There you go Tucutes a nice label for y'all to use. "Gender Identity is a Social construct while Gender is a mix." (Sarcasm)

So, why the fuck is this important?

This distinction is a real issue Now because, Tucutes & MOGAI are trying to pressure the American Psychiatric Association, or the APA to remove the Mental Illness label from Gender Dysphoria, and this isn't because the condition doesn't fit the definition of mental illness it's because, of Tucutes/MOGAI putting their feelings before facts. Just in case anyone is confused. Mental Illness =/= (Doesn't mean/equal) it's made up, or pyschological. People suffer from cronic depression because, of a chemical imbalance in their brain, So despite the counter intuitive name, it doesn't mean it’s made up.

So, the problem is by attempting to cement this idea that Gender is entirely social into the minds of the masses, they're implying that anything under the label Transgender, Is Social. Except it's NOT.

Gender Dysphoria is Biological.

Transgender doesn't only mean "people that want to transition" i.e. ftm men & mtf women. Transgender is an incredibly broad label, that everyone has a somewhat different definition for.

The APA, the people who write the DSM & all of its additions, State;

"TRANSGENDER - the broad spectrum of individuals who transiently or permanetly identify with a gender different from their natal gender."

So that includes people:

- With Gender Dysphoria

- Who are Gender Non-Conforming

- Who are "Genderq^eer"

- and all that other bs ( the MOGAI "genders")

AND THAT'S THE PROBLEM.

We have evidence that Gender Dysphoria is a biological & neurological condition, but

we don't yet have evidence that any of the MOGAI "genders" has any sort of biological basis.

In fact the Tucute/MOGAI community completely miss that point completely by CREATING their own distinction between Sex & Gender. So, that they don't n e e d a biological basis.

My purpose in saying all this is that Gender Dysphoria should NOT be in the same category as MOGAI “genders” Gender Dysphoria has biological evidence. MOGAI “genders” do not. Gender Dysphoria is a mental disorder. MOGAI "genders" are not. Not a medical mental disorder at least. (lol.)

Having a biological & medical disorder lumped in with all that other stuff is creating too much fucking confusion.

And, Yes I said disorder. Because, if you were born with a condition, that you have no control over, that makes you 'feel like you were born in the wrong body, or the wrong sex/gender' & this feeling is so debilitating it causes you untold ammounts of stress, discomfort, and most the time depression, that's a disorder. Mechanically that's obviously not supposed to be the way the brain works, because if it was, humans would've never made it past prehistoric times.

"But, Alec, why is it so important that it retains the Mental Illness label? That just makes people feel bad?!?"

It's important because it changes how the Medical Community treats the issue. As Blarie White once said, " Why can't we do both, though. That's like saying, that um, you can simultaneously fight for people to be kind to Autistic people and also look for a cure. How about we do both. That'd be great. Because, actually insisting on this accepting people, and to just don't worry about it because, “everything's normal, everything's fine”; It actually leads to political correctness, which leads to no research being put into a cure. Which exacerbates all the suffering." (Her response to, "We can't support trans people and a cure at the same time.)

I don't agree that just because we don't currently have such a miracle pill, or maybe even something close to that, that doesn't mean we as a society should deny the Medical Reality and not continue research in that area. You're arguing Secondary reasons when agreeing with this, Not Primary reasons. You're arguing against the Medical illness label not necessarily because, on its face it shouldn't be labled as such but, because of a precieved secondary effect of; Some people can justify being biggoted or can make individuals feel real bad. Which I understand, I get the dog whistle concern here. However, that's not going to help medical treatment in the long run.

"But, Alec. There's people who want to transition but, don't have dysphoria!@?!!"

AND THAT IS WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT TO SEPARATE GENDER DYSPHORIA FROM MOGAI "GENDERS"

Because, all the research on Transsexuals, (and for the record I'm going to start using the term Transsexual to refer to individuals who were born with Gender Dysphoria (a biolgical condition.) to distant it from the MOGAI "genders". ) All the research we have are of people with Gender Dysphoria, Because the idea that there are even people who believe they were born the wrong sex/gender BUT, don't have dysphoria is relatively NEW.

So, it hasn't been studied. We don't even know if it's a biological condition or a pyschological one.

Unfortunately, We don't yet have a biolgical/medical test to determine whether someone has gender dysphoria. We don't yet have a biological way of measuring what someones innate Gender or “Gender Identity” is, or what ever the fuck MOGAI & Tucutes are calling it.

We do have evidence that it is indeed innate BUT, not a clear "let's scan your Brain to see if you have Gender Dysphoria. That is, Biological Gender Dysphoria. NOT a pyschological issue that makes you think you're transgender.

Another reason why the distiction needs to be made so clear.

People who have purely pyschological reasons for wanting to be the opposite gender ( or MOGAI "genders") should NOT being using biological hormones & physical surgery. Those options should only be for people that have a biological & neurological condition. People who use feelings towards their gender do not have the ability to be transient ( to change )

"But, Alec. It sounds like you're talking about Trans-Regret. That's a tiny number of cases and a dog whistle for Transphobia!!?"

SHUT YOUR FUC--

Supposedly Trans-Regret is not common. I say supposedly because, I haven't done research into that yet. Cause' it's not a direct correlation to what I am talking about now. Regret could be very low now but, as Blaire White once said, " This is a very new phenomenon. There are no long term studies that show a person 30/40 years old, that had transitioned at 12/13 & how their life ended up. It's just never happened, it's all still very new."

Because, until recently the stigma against transsexual people was so high that it would be very uncommon for someone who only has a pyschological complex to go through the transitioning process.

However, Because we are living in F U T U R E W O R L D O F 2019 society has become far more accepting of Transsexual people. Which is good and the way it should be, BUT it does also mean that it would be more likely for people who are only psychologically "trans" or Gender Non-Conforming, to be confused with people who have a biological & neurological condition.

The DSM and all it's addtions are supposed to be a guide book to help doctors make a distinction between someone who actually has gender dysphoria someone who does not. Biological VS Physiological.

" But, Alec. I just read the DSM's criteria of Gender Dysphoria, and there is nothing specifically in it about making this distinction between biological VS pyschological???"

Yes, and that's because psychiatry (APA) looks at stuff through primarily a biological lens. So, they are operating under assumption of if you don't have a biological reason for something, then you don't have it. Combine that with the fact that this current societal focus on understanding Transgender issues, is NEW, and the DSM-5 was written before that & this creates a problem. Since we don't yet know how to create a definitive biological test, We can only rely on Self-Reporting & Observable behaviors. Which is why it is so problematic. Doctors have to somehow navigate this complicated maze to figure out whether someone actually has gender dysphoria or is just Gender Non-Conforming, or going through a phase/MOGAI "genders". This is why Transsexual people feel like they have to go through so many hoops, and all this MOGAI stuff is only making the issue more confusing for everyone. Which means, you're making it harder for doctors to figure this shit out. Which means, more hoops.

Now let me make myself clear I'm not blaming the Trans movement or even suggesting that it must go away because "tHeY're cOnfUsIng tHe cHilDRen!1!!"

There's no hidden dog whilstle in what I am saying, I am only stating what is the reality of the situation and Unfortunately because our society, until recently, has been very biggoted for years aginast certain individuals that don't fit into specific gender roles, the Tucute Trans community is incredibly sensitive to anything that can even remotely be perceived as an attack. Which I understand. However, the problem is when ever people go under intensive physical treatment for a condition, it’s the Medical community and even society's duty to make sure that an individual really requires that treatment because, having medical treatments that are either 'over prescribed', or turned out horrible have littered our history from blood letting, to shock treatment, to even staring at the sun for health reasons, & we can't forget about lobotomy. Even now, there are concerns of kids being over prescribed Adderall & Riddilen*, Which is basically speed. Not to mention all the people with pain killer addictions. Being prescribed things you don't need can lead to messing with how your body and brain functions. That's why its important, although difficult, to put our emotions aside when dealing with these medical issues to avoid the Medical pitfalls that we humans have fallen into time, & time again.

Or just take everything I just said as merely "a dog whilstle" for Transphobia because I'm actually "a hateful biggot."

"Even if you're not a Transphobe Alec, you keep making this distinction between biological and pyschological, Assuming doctors can even untangle these 'interlinked concepts'. Why should a person, who only has gender dysphoria psychologically not be allowed to Transition????"

Because, If your 'gender dysphoria' is purely pyschological, that means that “Gender Dysphoria” you’re experiencing is a SYMPTOM of another problem. It's not the problem itself. Allow me to give you a very over simplified example.

Lets look at Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister, on several occasions has stated that she wishes she was born a male. Lets say there was some magic potion in G.O.T. that she could take to change her sex. You better believe she would drink it but, reason for this is not because, she has Gender Dysphoria. Its not because, she has some innate feeling of being born in the wrong body/gender/sex. The reason is because she exist in a world where her biological sex/gender limits her ability to get power. Which is her primary goal. So, her complex for not being a male is secondary, it's a means to an end. The doctors evaluating whether or not someone has gender dysphoria needs to concentrate on making sure the underlying problem is that the person feels that they are born the wrong gender because, they simply are. Something biologically innate. Not that they were born the wrong gender, because they develop a negative pyschological complex about what means to be their birth gender, or a negitive pyschological complex about a specific body part that just so happens to be a body part realted to biological sex because, an issue like that is transient and can be revolved through other means.

"Fuck you Alec, that Game of Thrones expamle was shit. It's far more complicated!!1!"

Yes, real life is more complicated.

So let me give you a more grounded example. While simultaneously criticizing the DSM & all of its additions. So far I have been seemingly deflating the DSM which maybe makes you believe that I think the DSM is some h o l y b o o k. The literal word from g o d. I don't and it's not. It has some very serious flaws in my opinion. One of those flaws is in the creitiera of gender dysphoria. Right now, and adolescent female could be going through puberty; the time her chest starts growing, & if you happen to be this female or simply talk to someone about their experience you will find that many of those individuals actually had a quite negative experience with it when they were adolescent.

One such story that has always stood out to me is when a friend told me about how she developed breasts when she was 13, and how incredibly disturbing and some times scary for her it was to see grown men lusting sexually after her even though she was only 13. At least to me, it doesn't seem that out of the ordinary that someone in that position could develop a pyschological complex about their breasts.

In today's confusing world they could incorrectly assume that complex is meaning you have some Gender related issue, possibly even gender dysphoria, & under the current DSM-5 criteria, someone in that position could be incorrectly diagnosed as someone having gender dysphoria.

In fact, I once read an article titled, "My daughter isn't Transgender, She's a TomBoy."

The article describes how because, of all this confusion, This young 7 year old girl who is Gender Non-Conforming keeps being asked by teachers, her pediatrician, and even random adults who have known her for years, if she's sure she's not a boy. Now, this girl has a strong sense of self so she's able to say, " No, I not a boy. I'm just a girl who likes things that are typically male." This is a happening because, of this confusion of Gender Dysphoria being compared to Gender Non-Conforming people &/or MOGAI "genders" and that’s because, we don't have this clear distinction between Transsexual and Gender Non-Conforming people &/or MOGAI "genders". My fear is that not only are we confusing the fuck out of adults with the incorrect conflation of these terms but also, confusing kids who may be simply gender non-conforming making them think they are Transsexual.

And as a last note; Perhaps it's unfair for me to point this out but, I do find it somewhat ironic that the Tucute Trans community is fighting against the idea that the strict binary view of male and female gender by advocating a strict binary view of Sex & Gender.

End Rant.

Problems with the DSM-V:

1) The DSM-V is heavily criticized by the medical community for not using any scientific evidence to back up many of the things it says. It’s also just heavily criticized in general. This alone makes it an unreliable source as there isn’t any scientific evidence suggesting you don’t need gender dysphoria to be trans ergo the statement “ you don’t need Dysphoria” means nothing.

2) Psychology uses “transgender” as an umbrella term and has for a very, very long time. It includes trans people, transvestites, crossdressers, and other GNC people. Just because usage outside of the psychology field has shifted “transgender” to more mean “trans people” doesn’t mean that the psychology field has. This means that they’re likely speaking about their own term for what transgender is and seeing as how there’s no differentiation clarifying this, it’s ignorant to assume they’ve suddenly changed the meaning of one of their terms without stating as such.

3) Potentially most importantly, transgender/trans falls under the field of neurology/biology, not psychology. This means that while mental health professionals can certainly help us, it doesn’t mean they have all the answers and it doesn’t mean that their word is more important than that of the harder sciences involved.

Please share to spread awareness. I hope this helps someone.

[apparitionism]

Helicobacter 10

Well. Anybody else do anything interesting last weekend? I’m not going to put up a separate post about it, as my inclination at this point is to keep things pretty quiet. JK—and JM, but we all know her attitude toward social media is more laissez-faire—gave me permission to tweet that one photo of her and JM on the first day, so based on how it all played out, I’m going to say, for the time being and as a reminder to myself when I one day look back on this, that that and the wedding question are my contributions. (All hosannas to @lejunkdrawer for giving everyone access to the panels, particularly Sunday’s unprecedented experience. Although I suppose most of the experiences were unprecedented...) As I mentioned in tags of this very story, in late June, a lot of things happen in due time—specifically, I noted a quote of which I had lately been reminded, that “the universe’s delays are not the universe’s denials.” As you might imagine, I’m more convinced than ever that that should be taken to heart: I’ve been lurking in this fandom since it began, and I’ve been posting my writing for it since 2013. I noted also, in early August, again in tags on this very story, that the fact is you never know what you’re setting in motion. So we’ll see. As is the case here in Helicobacter: don’t say I didn’t warn you. (See part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, part 8, and part 9 for all of that.) Anyway, this is a short part; talky as ever. How they do go on. As do I.

Helicobacter 10

And if the kiss had lasted forever, they would have lived happily ever after. Easily ever after, never needing to face a consequence or make any active, possibly disastrous choice ever after. One continuous moment, perpetually right and good...

The kiss did not last forever. It ended, and that meant something had to happen next.

Don’t think don’t think—but then Helena thought. Her mouth still poised near Myka’s, she thought of mountains and fountains, what was and was not, what could be and could not.

“You’re thinking,” Myka said. She moved her head away, only a little movement of neck, but away.

“And what am I thinking?” Helena said, with some difficulty. I could pull her back to me. Should I pull her back to me?

“Every point is a decision point.”

“That’s what you think I’m thinking?”

Myka said, “You might as well be. Because it’s true.” She offered a small shrug under Helena’s hands.

That made Helena think some more, and what she thought she said out loud: “I wouldn’t have believed it, not before you. Before this. I told you: impulses.”

Myka nodded. “Getting you into trouble. Although following an impulse is a decision. A snap one, but still.”

“Still ill-considered,” Helena said. Their mouths remained very close.

“I wouldn’t call all that thinking you’re doing right now particularly good or healthy. Come with me.”

The hallway down which Myka had run before, down which Helena had wanted to follow: Myka pulled Helena down it now, not aggressive but insistent, taking little steps, not room-devouring strides, letting Helena keep her balance; considerate motions, sweet even, but what balance?

And then they were in a room—not the transitional hallway anymore, but a room. Its purpose right there in its name. “Your bedroom,” Helena said. Brainless stating of the obvious... or perhaps brainful. Overthinking: unhealthy and poor.

“That’s what this is, yes,” Myka said. Also stating the obvious. Gently. She had only one hand on Helena now, her left palm warm as it rested on Helena’s right arm, just above her elbow.

The hand lay soft, with no intent, as if Myka thought that anything more would make Helena startle. And it might have done; she might have run out and away, now that she had yet another moment to think, which she hadn’t wanted to take, but the doorway had affected her. Going through it: wrong, right. She sought—literally, looked around to find—something about which to speak and lit, somewhat incongruously, on the bedroom itself, because it was, itself, incongruous. “This room... it’s perfect. Photograph-ready.” Each piece of furniture was placed well, at precise, correct angles with every other; every opulent, expensive textile was folded or draped just so. Pillows were dented as if by a designer’s hand. Nightstands... the only things even vaguely out of place were the stack of books on one of the nightstands and the tortoise-shell-framed eyeglasses balanced atop that stack, yet even they might have been chosen by a photographer seeking to convey essential facts about Myka, so well did they signify the presence of intellect. “The rest of your apartment isn’t like this,” Helena said. This room breathed design intent, and while Myka’s other spaces weren’t unattractive, they were more haphazard, a “this piece was given to me by X” sensibility. Nothing in this expensive room had been obtained from any friend.

Myka looked around, as if through Helena’s eyes, and she nodded at the impression she received. “That’s true. I try to keep it up, because I had it redone—actually, done in the first place—right after the cancer.”

“Because...?”

The hand on Helena’s arm became a tease, a little push. “You want me to say ‘because I hoped you’d see it eventually,’ don’t you?”

“No.” But now that Myka had said that, Helena found herself hoping it could be the reason. What an egotist you are, and Myka knows it too.

“Doesn’t matter,” Myka said, and with a mind-read: “I’ll freely admit to finding your ego attractive. Attractive and justified, which just makes it more attractive.”

“Stop. You think highly of yourself as well. And it’s even more justified.”

“Now you stop.” One more push, and Myka gave a little eyeroll as well.

“If you didn’t have a sizable ego of your own, you wouldn’t have set any of your plans in motion. But you were certain you’d get away with all of them.”

“Not certain. Hopeful. So hopeful.” Her hand fell from Helena’s body, but a beseeching note in her voice called back to the abandon of those few moments earlier. Now a small but not inconsequential space separated their bodies—a space that left them far too close to continue having this conversation, but not close enough to not continue having it.

“But we were talking about your opulent bedroom,” Helena said, with what she hoped was only the smallest of hesitancies, “and why it is so. Not egos and whether mine prompted me to think that you hoped that I’d... see it. Which I now have. Rather, am. Am seeing it.” She didn’t mean to say it again, but she did: “Your bedroom.”

Myka said, “The real reason isn’t unrelated. I didn’t ever honestly believe I was going to die, but—reassessment. Things I’d always vaguely wanted.”

“Pushed, like problems, into the future?”

“Exactly.” Myka moved closer again. She raised that same hand to Helena’s face, stroked from her temple down to her chin. Helena leaned into the touch. “And you. I would have pushed you into the future, too—some alternate future.”

At that, Helena leaned away. “You should have.”

Myka stayed where she was, but she said, “If you don’t want this to happen, it won’t happen. If you really think it shouldn’t.”

“I told you I didn’t have explanations for you.”

“But you do?”

“But I don’t,” Helena said. “Other than: I have wanted this to happen, from the beginning. Which is not at all compatible with anything else.”

“You didn’t make any move. Was that all ethics?”

“Any move?” That was too much, and untrue besides. “I kissed you completely inappropriately! And extremely thoroughly! In front of your mother!”

Myka laughed, but she said, “It could have been an act. Because I forced you into it.”

“Do you believe that? You can’t possibly believe it now. Did you believe it then?”

Myka was silent.

“You came to my house,” Helena said. “After your mother told you what she told you.”

“And I told her yes.” Retestifying.

“And you said you meant it. If you did mean it, you knew you hadn’t forced me into it. You knew it wasn’t an act.”

“All I knew was that it wasn’t on my part.” Myka paused. “I thought you’d see. I thought you’d already seen. I mean, if my mother had.”

Helena smiled. “I’m fairly certain she knows you better than I do. I didn’t trust what I thought I saw—rather, couldn’t let myself trust what I hoped I saw. And it did begin as an act, didn’t it?”

“You keep forgetting that it’s H. pylori’s fault: it began as a medical emergency, one that you helped me through. Which I’m still betting you would have done anyway, never mind the act.”

Helena was not entirely certain that was true... but then she thought of the ambulance, of stricken Myka. What wouldn’t she have done, when faced with that vulnerability, all while telling herself—pretending—it was about the bid and nothing else? “But what if it is only that I was there when you needed support. And we’re both still being... affected by that circumstance.”

“What if it is? What if we are? I think that’s how things like this start. You’re in a circumstance, and things happen that affect you. Would you rather we met some other way? Online? Or in a book club?”

“I would so much rather we met online,” Helena grumbled. “Or in a book club.”

“Look at it the right way, and we sort of did, both of those. Emails about books,” Myka said, with an I’ve got you there note in her voice.

“But that was because I researched you. Those Twitter accounts you follow.”

“But then you came up with interestingly booky things to say to me. Unless Steve or somebody else was Cyrano-ing for you?”

Helena tried for a moment to work out the ramifications of lying, saying yes. Would that fix anything? All the ramification roads seemed to lead to Myka discerning that she was lying, particularly since Myka was looking at her now with that “you’re so transparent” expression. “No one was Cyrano-ing,” Helena thus said, a little sullen at having been read.

“You do keep trying, don’t you? It’s sweet. Anyway, I told you, I looked you up too. You, your projects... I was interested in you, even at the beginning. I liked those emails. Even if I didn’t recognize that it was my old friend H.G. Wells sending them to me.”

Helena remembered Abigail using the word “moony.” She said, “I’m glad you did like them. For whatever reason you did.”

“What if they really were reminding me of undergraduate you? Maybe they weren’t, but what if they were?”

“Then I’ll try to be grateful for that. And yet I’m sorry at the same time, for it’s true that I was trying to influence you.”

“Well, so it worked. You influenced me to bring you all the way into my bedroom. It’s your own fault.”

“This and everything else.”

“And H. pylori!” Myka said with mock exasperation. “But I like eloquence. Whatever form it takes. Emails, margin notes...”

“So do I. Do you remember what you said, at the very first, about Wilson’s Odyssey?”

“Right now? No.”

They were stuck staring again.

“I wonder if it’s like smiling,” Helena said, to say something.

“Wilson’s Odyssey? That’s not what I said.”

Helena would have kissed her perplexed mouth, but she was not sure where they stood now. Other than in a bedroom, not quite in each other’s arms... wanting was one thing, but wanting and doing were not the same. She retreated to science: “The way in which the physical act of smiling—the performance of a smile—can elevate mood. That is, the causal arrow need not point in the direction one expects.”

“I’ve read that too. So you’re saying that in our case, performing this intimate relationship led us to the real thing? Or led us to want the real thing? Fake engagement was the smile, and here we are in an elevated mood of...?” Myka hooked a finger in the V of Helena’s shirt-neck, gave a little tug, then let her hand fall again.

Helena swallowed. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Myka stepped back, put a hand to her chin, and contemplated Helena, who found it both disconcerting and flattering to be so carefully regarded, preparatory to a verdict, and this was the verdict Myka gave: “I think you should smile more—and by the way I don’t mean that the way men tell women ‘you should smile more,’ and while I wish I didn’t have to tell you that’s not how I mean it, I do want to be clear: I think you should smile, but mostly around me, and mostly because your smile’s so beautiful. I mean you’re beautiful, so I guess it was always going to be the case your smile would be too—then again, teeth. You never know. Anyway, you’re beautiful, and so is your smile, and I love to see it, and I love to see you, and I don’t care at all why I feel romantic about you, because the only thing that’s important to me right now is that I do, and you had better feel the same way, because otherwise I don’t know why we’re standing here in an overdecorated bedroom making awkward conversation about whether this is authentic Duchenne romance or some facsimile version where nobody’s eyes move.”

“You certainly know how to make the causal arrow point in the direction one expects,” Helena said, for who, in response to that mood-elevating monologue, could have refrained from smiling?

“See, there it is,” Myka said, with a smile of her own. “Beautiful.”

“Did my eyes move?” Helena asked, even as she knew they had, and were moving still, as her smile continued to grow.

“The corners of your eyes are crinkled like...” And then the thesaurus: the pause, the search, the surrender. “Like something really crinkly. You’ll be even more beautiful decades from now.”

Decades from now. Helena felt an unexpected anthropological wish to this minute see Myka’s own decades-from-now face, and, paradoxically, a wish to have watched it become that face. To be able to answer “decades” when anyone asked, “How long have you two...”

“I want so much to kiss you,” Myka said, as if from inside that wish. “Kiss you and more, both of us, on purpose, knowing why.”

“Not pretending to fool anyone?”

“Not even each other. Not even ourselves.” She moved close again, her fingers back at the neckline of Helena’s shirt, playing there, whispering a touch. “We’re in a bedroom, and nobody knows we’re here. We can do anything.”

They could have, yet Helena stood still, savoring Myka’s light physical coaxing even as she wondered aloud, “Why am I letting you do all the pursuing?

Myka’s smile in response to Helena’s wondering was, without question, authentic, her eye-corners crinkled like... something exceptionally crinkly. “I think you like it. Even beyond all the very good reasons for you to try to be good and resist, I think you like it. Sitting back, waiting till I prove to you that I can’t take it anymore and I have to see you or die. Speaking of ego.”

“I may have liked that,” Helena conceded, “and it may have had to do with...” She stopped speaking as the fingers on her neck stopped playing, to be replaced by Myka’s lips. “With... ego. But I meant this minute, now, here, when nobody knows. When we can do anything. That isn’t my...” She found herself kissed on the mouth, still light, but it was a less subtle form of persuasion. “My MO,” she finished weakly.

“Maybe it is with me,” Myka told Helena’s collarbone.

Helena gave one last try at some sort of challenge: “I thought I wasn’t supposed to change.”

“I like that you remember I said that. And I’m in no way opposed to you working very hard. But let me do a little work first, because I sort of get the feeling that you—”

One ecstatic jump-cut later, Myka’s leg was stilling between Helena’s and a new and wicked and sinful smile was curving Myka’s lips as she said, “I knew you’d be fast.”

“That was embarrassing,” Helena said, trying to avoid looking Myka in the eyes. Just like a body, to take it upon itself to tell the truth. To make everything so very clear.

Myka kissed her deep and long, then said, “Not if I’m fast too.”

She pushed Helena to the bed, pushed her down, pushed and pushed, then gasped, laughed, and said, “See?”

“You did that to make me feel better,” Helena said, up into the curve of a long neck.

“Trust me,” the neck-column vibrated back at her, “it had more than a little to do with how I feel. Besides, I told you, there’s only so long before you can’t stand it anymore. I was pretty sure that’s where I was. It’s more than gratifying that you were too.”

Both of them, on purpose, knowing why. Knowing why not, but also knowing exactly why.

TBC

[bearofohu]

changes (please read)

hhi it’s your boy welcome to mcnugget 

 (if my url is already changed by the time you read this post, this is chewyloon)

also note im still very new to this the changes im about to make so please know i havent done all my research yet im doing my best ok thanks.

i don’t really want to make this post. i really dont. its not because what i’m about to do is something to be ashamed of in any regard but its just because i am so goddamn bad at wording things that this is going to come out sounding like my most intricate meme yet. its not.  i would never make this up. im going to write this post trying to pretend like my heart is not going at a million beats per minute so if it comes out also looking like an elaborate crytyping post i promise its not.

if you lurk my blog, which i absolutely don’t mind, you might notice that 90% of the posts that you may have seen before i deleted them 2.6 seconds later were about how i dislike being a cis female, posts about wanting to be what i knew i wanted, and posts venting about how my family would laugh at me for trying to hint at the changes i wanted to make to my identity. i deleted these posts almost instantly after i made them because i felt like people would look at it on their dash and be like “ew, edgy” or some dumb shit, i dont know, im just so paranoid  

a lot has changed in my life this year. my family no longer constrains me, and their contact with me is very limited. i’m alone. and at first it felt like the worst feeling in the world, sitting alone, doing things alone, but honestly, i’ve been thinking about all of this nonstop and i realize now that..

bitches, im free. i can be what i want to be. i can buy as much choccy milk as i want and no one is going to stop me from shitposting at 3 AM. and nobody is going to tell me i can’t change my identity anymore, either.

honestly guys im unprepared. im so unprepared for this but i know this is what i want and i’ve already signed a blood oath in my brain that no matter how hard this gets for me i cant back down. this really is what i want. guys i dont feel like a girl. i dont like my body and how it feels as a girl. i dont like being called a girl, i don’t like being identified as a girl, it’s not me and i don’t think it ever was. and im probably the least masculine bitch on this website, but that doesn’t define whether or not i can identify as a boy. i want to be a meme boy. i want to be a shitpost boy. i want to be a weed king boy. i wanna be a boy that cuts their hair real short and wears flannels constantly and rocks a fucking pair of weed socks. and im going to do that. i promise. no matter how hard it gets i’m not going to let anybody stop me

im really sorry if it sounds like im talking in circles i really am not trying to, so i’ll just try to get to the thiccness of this post and exactly what im changing about myself.

i no longer identify as a girl. i’m a trans boy who just started transitioning like fuckinn uh yesterday. i havent told anyone in my family and i dont fucking plan to. i have friends who support me and im changing my name this weekend. i feel like i havent entered dysphoria hell yet but i know for a fact it’ll come soon. right now im not worried about my appearance. and im sorry but i can’t provide a coming out selfie because this is just now happening and im ugly and have been crying for hours and my zipper’s stuck so no. soon i’ll start getting to work on my appearance. i know for a fact that i can’t afford any medical help for my transition and i won’t for awhile, but that’s on the to do list for the coming years.

ok now we get to talk about my new name and this is the part where you’re allowed to cringe but please i am just a boy and my crops are dying no criticism on my christian minecraft server please. also shoutout to all the confused people on discord who caught my not subtle profile name change.

 my name is fuckinn uh... luek. luke. its luke. 

i gET it, i know INEVTIABLY there’s going to be some ppl that look at my blog and then be like “ew another tumblr gremlin changes their name to an anime boy” but i sWE a R the character of luke is a big part of why i felt compelled to the name but its not the entire thing. i grew up with the character luke triton since i was 7 in a very hard time in my life and im very fond of him and he’s one of my favorite characters if not my favorite character of all time. i love his character a lot and its because of that that i felt compelled to the name. im not just changing it to luke because i think luke is my fursona, i don’t, im changing it because i love the name because of the character. i don’t really feel like i have to justify my name change but i know most if not all of you will be supportive of it and ily so much <3

uMM what else this entire post is a clusterfuck. ok so this is probably going to be the most disruptive change at least in a tumblr aspect. im going to be changing a lot of social media usernames in the next few days, including my URL here on tumblr. i dont like chewyloon anymore. i dont like being called chewy anymore. i wanna be called luke and i feel like i’ve outgrown the username chewyloon and it doesnt fit my identity anymore. so i’ve decided my display names on various websites is going to change as well, and i’ll be changing my username on most sites and my email to Ryukkan. the weeb overtakes me sorry if you don’t like it the username Luke and ChickenNuggetBoy was taken.

now im not changing my URL as soon as this post goes up but shortly after, just so people who read this will know who the fuck sent it and if not i put my former user at the top so ppl don’t get confused.

ashgf im running out of things to talk about. i will be changing things in the upcoming days but please remember im not trying to make this a giant deal so please dont spread this or anything, just let people find out naturally.

ily guys very, very much and i dont know what i would do without ya’ll. you guys mean the world to me <3

ok well this post physically hurts me to write so im going to end it here. im sorry if im inevtiably acting a little strange in the next weeks or so, like i said this is a huge change so adjusting is going to be difficult. 

ily guys <3

- luke

[foragehawaii-blog]

Q&A Former Die-hard Vegan

I met Terry a few months ago at the Kailua market when she came to pick up beef bones and liver. Through e-mail I had learned that she was converting from six years of Veganism, to embracing regenerative agriculture and eating more of a keto based diet. Terry had been the most die hard, activist, hard-core Vegan I had ever encountered. So I wondered, what changed her mind? 

Due to the fact that I am a meat advocate, I have gotten my fair share of hate from the Vegan Dogma advocates. I have tried my best to stay neutral and remind myself that eating a vegan diet is not associated with hate and sophomania. I love and enjoy vegan meals. I also commend anyone making an effort toward improving their health and the environment and I’ve always known I share that in common with every vegan out there. I think vegan diets can be very helpful to people if it gets them on track to a better lifestyle and eating healthier. That being said, I believe (based on science) that a long term vegan diet is nutritionally inadequate and not optimal for health for most people and especially children. I also believe there is adequate evidence to confidently say, that it is not better for the environment that a diet based on the natural ecosystems of regenerative agriculture. 

So...here is some of the Q&A I received from Terry: 

Q: Tell us a little background about yourself and what your diet was like before you went vegan.

A: Typical S.A.D., (Stupid/Shitty American Diet), with improvements, along the course of my 60 plus years on this planet. I had minored in health in college, and seemed to be up on what foods were good for you, (as ruled by F.D.A. Food Pyramid, the American Medical Gods,etc.).  I have/had no major health issues, like being over weight, diabetic, etc.

Q: Why did you decided to go vegan and for how long?

A: My oldest daughter had been vegetarian, then vegan, since high school, but I called her a "closet" vegan because she never said much about it...like her big mouth mom would have!  We'd touch on it, in conversations along the years, with not much thought to my ever becoming veg/vegan myself!

It was the night before my birthday, and I had just got done talking with my daughter.  I was on my way to bed, and thought, what's something new I could do on my birthday that I'd never done before?  It hit me:  I'll go Vegan!I went to bed, got up the next morning, and have been, 100% VEGAN, for 6 solid years ever since. (until August 16th of this year). 

Q: Did you experience health benefits or detriments along the way? 

A:  I was on such a VEGAN HIGH, eating, breathing and sleeping VEGANISM, I thought I had died and gone to Vegan heaven!  I was the Vegan Queen of my community, all my new friends were Vegan, I started a group called, Imagine A Vegan World, for 5 years+, I went to the First World Vegan Expo, in CA., I read every Vegan book, saw all the great Vegan gurus, only ate at Vegan restaurants, activly marched and demonstrated for animal rights, wore Vegan t shirts, and I was known by my car license plate read: BVEGAN. Was I healthy?  I sure as hell knew I was! Never doubted that for one moment. Even when my diet usually ended up being more junk food Vegan than whole foods, I used to say, if they ever found out that the Vegan Diet was bad for you, I would still do it for the animals.

Looking back, I and most Vegans live in our own little Vegan Bubble, hang with only other Vegans, read only the Vegan side of issues, etc. And we separated ourselves from those, Vegetarian heathens, let alone those terrible meat eaters! I never questioned whether I was healthy. How could I not be? I told everybody I felt 1000% better, had such mental clarity and just knew it was the best thing I had ever done in my life!

Q: What made you change your diet to include animal products and was it a difficult transition? 

A:  All of the difficulties were NOT because of transitioning my foods, as it was sticking my head up out of the Vegan Herd, and the hypocritically hostile ostracization to blatant banishment, without ever being open to understanding why I could/would possibly do such a thing?! THAT was a revelation, and opened my eyes to just how crazy the Vegan agenda is.

Just some things I became 'woke' to:*  Most Vegans are on the Left, and in "my" tribe, I found out I was the only outsider, leaning right.* Vegans always take the moral high ground, and will turn on you like a hungry bamboo eating baboon if you cross their belief barrier. About that time, I started feeling less energy than normal, and knew I wasn't eating the best. So, I began to do some personal research by getting some blood work done...before I started a high fat, low carb, medium protein, Keto type diet.

Being full fledged vegan for 6 years, it surprised me that my blood test results weren't too bad; no red flags to speak of. I wanted to see what changes a real grass fed butter, beef, eggs, cheese, organ meats, etc., would do for me. I did it mostly in secret, away from the vegan vultures of virtue. It's been 4 months on Keto and solid, fatty meats, dairy, eggs. If you would have told me, even 6 months ago, that I would not be vegan anymore,and that I was thriving on a meat lifestyle, I wouldn't have believed it!

The more I read, and research, I realize how closed minded, and wrong I was.  I truly did not know there are many people who got sick and almost died because of vegan's poor nutrition, and blind ignorance. That it's next to child abuse to put a baby on a vegan diet?! Then the rabbit holes of finding out that the vegan diet does not improve our planet. That's a whole other topic, and one I'm hoping will begin to snap people out of this vegan fog they are in.

Thank You Terry for sharing your thoughts with us and supporting Forage!

-Jess

[your-dietician]

Twenty Years Later | Postpartum Support International (PSI)

New Post has been published on https://depression-md.com/twenty-years-later-postpartum-support-international-psi/

Twenty Years Later | Postpartum Support International (PSI)

Twenty Years Later – The story behind the Yates Children Memorial Fund

Written by: Vanessa Park Told by: Mary Parnham

When Noah, John, Paul, Luke and Mary Yates woke up in their Houston, TX home on June 20, 2001, they did not know it was to be their last day on earth. But it was. The events of that day ripped through countless lives, hearts, and homes, leaving a trail of mourning and disbelief. In the 20 years since, much has transpired. 

What I know, and what others in the legal and mental health professions understand, is that the children’s mother, who ended the lives of Noah, Paul, Luke, and Mary, loved her children more than her own life and truly believed she was saving them. 

Andrea Yates was not, and is not, a monster. The only monster in the house that day was postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness but one with distinct warning signs and symptoms, though few recognize them, even many medical and mental health clinicians. 

The tragedy—for tragedy it was—could have been avoided. Here’s the story. 

Twenty years ago, when word of this tragedy was released by news outlets in Houston and across the country, most people, including those of us in the local criminal justice system, were horrified and numb. Really? Were we hearing this correctly? That mother must be pure evil to have done such a thing. Some people even called for Andrea’s immediate execution—without a trial. She didn’t deserve one.

That brings us to the second monster in the story. Ignorance. 

The law firm my husband George Parnham and I operate in Houston was contacted on official business regarding the Yates murders. Would George take Andrea’s case? That momentous day, he said yes. George had heard the story on the news already, and, like any red-blooded defense lawyer, he hoped he’d get the call. Let’s be honest—it was obviously going to be a huge case. Little did any of us know it would be a groundbreaking case, as well. 

As eager as we were to dig in, neither George nor I took what we’d agreed to lightly. Andrea’s case was already being tried ruthlessly in the media, a situation that dogged us throughout and certainly did not help. Within a day of George’s name becoming linked with Andrea’s as her attorney, our office received over 150 media calls in one weekend. That was our first reality check. Life, as we knew it, would never be the same. 

Houston had experienced a devastating tropical storm just prior to June 20. Our jail and courthouse systems had been displaced by flooding and other consequences of the storm. As we prepared our case that summer, this fact just made things a little harder than they already were. 

The competency hearing was scheduled on September 11. The timing and circumstances guaranteed this was a recipe for disaster. Oil companies in downtown Houston were abandoning their offices and buildings that day, while the media from all over the country were camped out to witness the hearing. Mass transit was at a halt, and the countless reporters who needed to get back home, to New York or LA or wherever they were from, quickly realized they might be stranded. Houston that day was a full-fledged hot, humid, immobilized big-city nightmare. 

Looking back, I’d say that post-storm Houston evacuation coinciding with our competency hearing foreshadowed the challenging journey that lay ahead for us all. 

Despite strenuous efforts to develop a robust insanity defense for Andrea, when we went into the first trial early in 2002, we still knew too little about the facts of postpartum psychosis (as we later realized). The jury found her guilty of capital murder, entirely rejecting our defense. The State had sought the death penalty. Fortunately, the jury chose to spare her life. 

It’s worth noting that, once her psychosis was treated and had abated, Andrea was fully aware of her actions, their consequences, and had to live every day of her life with the unbearable pain of knowing she had killed her own children—who gave her life meaning and provided her with what little joy she found in an otherwise lonely life.  Regardless of her illness, the verdict, and any facts that came to light after June 20 of 2001, Andrea Yates would never forgive herself. 

In the aftermath of the shattering verdict, there was one idea that George and I could not let go of—there must be a way to avoid these tragedies in the future. There must be a way to educate and bring awareness to an oblivious public—the people who sit on our judicial benches and make up our juries, the new moms and dads bringing children into the world, medical practitioners who likely have never seen a case of this rare mental disorder in their careers. 

Knowledge is power. The public has to be made aware that misdiagnosed and untreated mental illness was the culprit here—not mom.

We found our way to Mental Health America of Greater Houston and the Yates Children’s Memorial Fund (YCMF) was created. Our mission was “to raise awareness about postpartum illness for the benefit of mother, child, and family.” We flourished for some time in the greater Houston area and our list of milestones was impressive. We were also successful in having Andrea’s case reversed in the appellate process. We were granted a new trial—a second bite of the apple, so to speak.

We knew from the start of the second trial that the State could not seek the death penalty this time around, since it was rejected by the first jury. So, thankfully, that part of the trial was not in dispute. Almost five years had passed since the tragedy. YCMF had been circulating in the community and we truly believed that this time we would have a more aware, more educated jury pool. This trial was long, as the first was, but the difference was the amount of time the jury spent in deliberation. There was no hours-long rush to a verdict as there was the last time. The jurors took two and a half days to deliver a reasoned verdict: Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. 

Wow. It worked! We did it! 

Interestingly, Andrea hadn’t wanted us to try her case a second time. She had little recollection of the first trial due to her mental state at the time. Five years later, she was perfectly sound of mind and painfully aware, so that the presentation of all evidence, day in and day out, was bound to be very hard on her. (And it was.) But George convinced her. He helped her believe in herself, and that she was strong enough to do it. He also convinced her it would be worth it. All the work, learning, interviews, research, and planning that he had done over five years to prepare for this moment made him confident we would prevail this time around. 

And he was right. 

Andrea, of course, still suffers the loss of her children, the weight of which none of us who have not experienced such a thing can ever imagine. However, rather than languishing as a felon in prison, she is being well cared for in a clinical setting. She keeps as busy as she can and waits for the day when she will be reunited with her children. 

Andrea has become our dear friend. As close as we are to her, George and I fully realize that, to Andrea, everyday life is a kind of living nightmare. But her faith, fortitude, and desire to be reunited with her babies keeps her going—keeps her alive.

But justice for one is not justice for all. We realized more and more that we needed to expand our efforts and advocate, educate, and engage on a broader scale. As if someone overheard our prayers, we were able to do just that, but in the strangest of ways.

Weather disasters are part of living in the Gulf Coast Region, and three years ago we were directly impacted by Hurricane Harvey. (The worst flooding Houston has ever seen.) As part of its aftermath, Mental Health America was moving in a different direction with post-Harvey grants. In other words, our funding dried up. YCMF lay virtually dormant. But Postpartum Support International (PSI) took up the reins and welcomed YCMF to its family as the PSI Yates Children Memorial Fund Justice and Advocacy Program. A mouthful, yes—but music to our ears. The direction has shifted a bit from YCMF’s first iteration, but the fit with PSI is indeed perfect.

The PSI Justice and Advocacy Program was developed out of the need to provide education and awareness of the plight of mothers who were implicated in the criminal justice system for infanticide or filicide. The goals of the program are to provide support to families and resources for professionals involved with cases concerning perinatal mental illness in the legal system. The list includes law enforcement, first responders, attorneys, maternal mental health expert witnesses, and psychiatric providers.

We’ve all heard it—tragedy begets change. But change is still too slow to suit me. 

Andrea was not the first mother suffering from PPP to be unjustly convicted of murder, nor, unfortunately, was she the last. Twenty years later, the headlines keep coming and moms keep suffering and children are still victims. And yet, in spite of everything, we do believe our efforts have made a difference. But we have only scratched the surface of this problem in the US justice system, which falls far behind other developed nations in terms of its legal handling of maternal mental illness. 

Until these tragedies become extinct, our work is not and will not ever be concluded. 

We ask you to renew your commitment to make change—to educate—to reach out—to encourage—to shatter the awful stigma around mental health—and to speak up for change. We know so many who advocate for change in the world of maternal mental health have had their own experiences. And to all of you, we see you, we hear you, and we thank our lucky stars that you made your way to PSI and work to encourage and engage in our mission. We couldn’t do this work without you.

    PSI provides support, resources and referrals for those who suffer from Postpartum Psychosis and other Perinatal Mental Health Disorders.  If you want to learn more about Postpartum Psychosis, or need help for yourself or a loved one, you can find more information about symptoms and resources here or contact the PSI HelpLine at 800-944-4773.

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