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cocklessboy · 1 year ago

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The biggest male privilege I have so far encountered is going to the doctor.

I lived as a woman for 35 years. I have a lifetime of chronic health issues including chronic pain, chronic fatigue, respiratory issues, and neurodivergence (autistic + ADHD). There's so much wrong with my body and brain that I have never dared to make a single list of it to show a doctor because I was so sure I would be sent directly to a psychologist specializing in hypochondria (sorry, "anxiety") without getting a single test done.

And I was right. Anytime I ever tried to bring up even one of my health issues, every doctor's initial reaction was, at best, to look at me with doubt. A raised eyebrow. A seemingly casual, offhand question about whether I'd ever been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Even female doctors!

We're not talking about super rare symptoms here either. Joint pain. Chronic joint pain since I was about 19 years old. Back pain. Trouble breathing. Allergy-like reactions to things that aren't typically allergens. Headaches. Brain fog. Severe insomnia. Sensitivity to cold and heat.

There's a lot more going on than that, but those were the things I thought I might be able to at least get some acknowledgement of. Some tests, at least. But 90% of the time I was told to go home, rest, take a few days off work, take some benzos (which they'd throw at me without hesitation), just chill out a bit, you'll be fine. Anxiety can cause all kinds of odd symptoms.

Anyone female-presenting reading this is surely nodding along. Yup, that's just how doctors are.

Except...

I started transitioning about 2.5 years ago. At this point I have a beard, male pattern baldness, a deep voice, and a flat chest. All of my doctors know that I'm trans because I still haven't managed to get all the paperwork legally changed, but when they look at me, even if they knew me as female at first, they see a man.

I knew men didn't face the same hurdles when it came to health care, but I had no idea it was this different.

The last time I saw my GP (a man, fairly young, 30s or so), I mentioned chronic pain, and he was concerned to see that it wasn't represented in my file. Previous doctors hadn't even bothered to write it down. He pushed his next appointment back to spend nearly an hour with me going through my entire body while I described every type of chronic pain I had, how long I'd had it, what causes I was aware of. He asked me if I had any theories as to why I had so much pain and looked at me with concerned expectation, hoping I might have a starting point for him. He immediately drew up referrals for pain specialists (a profession I didn't even know existed till that moment) and physical therapy. He said depending on how it goes, he may need to help me get on some degree of disability assistance from the government, since I obviously shouldn't be trying to work full-time under these circumstances.

Never a glimmer of doubt in his eye. Never did he so much as mention the word "anxiety".

There's also my psychiatrist. He diagnosed me with ADHD last year (meeting me as a man from the start, though he knew I was trans). He never doubted my symptoms or medical history. He also took my pain and sleep issues seriously from the start and has been trying to help me find medications to help both those things while I go through the long process of seeing other specialists. I've had bad reactions to almost everything I've tried, because that's what always happens. Sometimes it seems like I'm allergic to the whole world.

And then, just a few days ago, the most shocking thing happened. I'd been wondering for a while if I might have a mast cell condition like MCAS, having read a lot of informative posts by @thebibliosphere which sounded a little too relatable. Another friend suggested it might explain some of my problems, so I decided to mention it to the psychiatrist, fully prepared to laugh it off. Yeah, a friend thinks I might have it, I'm not convinced though.

His response? That's an interesting theory. It would be difficult to test for especially in this country, but that's no reason not to try treatments and see if they are helpful. He adjusted his medication recommendations immediately based on this suggestion. He's researching an elimination diet to diagnose my food sensitivities.

I casually mentioned MCAS, something routinely dismissed by doctors with female patients, and he instantly took the possibility seriously.

That's it. I've reached peak male privilege. There is nothing else that could happen that could be more insane than that.

I literally keep having to hold myself back from apologizing or hedging or trying to frame my theories as someone else's idea lest I be dismissed as a hypochondriac. I told the doctor I'd like to make a big list of every health issue I have, diagnosed and undiagnosed, every theory I've been given or come up with myself, and every medication I've tried and my reactions to it - something I've never done because I knew for a fact no doctor would take me seriously if they saw such a list all at once. He said it was a good idea and could be very helpful.

Female-presenting people are of course not going to be surprised by any of this, but in my experience, male-presenting people often are. When you've never had a doctor scoff at you, laugh at you, literally say "I won't consider that possibility until you've been cleared by a psychologist" for the most mundane of health problems, it might be hard to imagine just how demoralizing it is. How scary it becomes going to the doctor. How you can internalize the idea that you're just imagining things, making a big deal out of nothing.

Now that I'm visibly a man, all of my doctors are suddenly very concerned about the fact that I've been simply living like this for nearly four decades with no help. And I know how many women will have to go their whole lives never getting that help simply because of sexism in the medical field.

If you know a doctor, show them this story. Even if they are female. Even if they consider themselves leftists and feminists and allies. Ask them to really, truly, deep down, consider whether they really treat their male and female patients the same. Suggest that the next time they hear a valid complaint from a male patient, imagine they were a woman and consider whether you'd take it seriously. The next time they hear a frivolous-sounding complaint from a female patient, imagine they were a man and consider whether it would sound more credible.

It's hard to unlearn these biases. But it simply has to be done. I've lived both sides of this issue. And every doctor insists they treat their male and female patients the same. But some of the doctors astonished that I didn't get better care in the past are the same doctors who dismissed me before.

I'm glad I'm getting the care I need, even if it is several decades late. And I'm angry that it took so long. And I'm furious that most female-presenting people will never have this chance.

#transgender #queer #transmasc #lgbtqia+#trans man #sexism #medical sexism #feminism #male privilege

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sooniebby · 10 months ago

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Got another idea…. Bottom male reader obs 🫶🏼 reader is trans male (use of pussy for genitalia)

You live with your brother and his best friend would occasionally just walk into the apartment. You’d gotten used to him being there but you still felt it was weird but hey, you’re living there rent free.

One day, when he’s over, he starts complaining about never having a girlfriend. You just allow him to yap while you play your video game. It’s until you see him almost on the verge of tears that you decide to give him some basic level empathy.

While comfort him, he suddenly looks at you…and then your crotch. You glare at him, wondering what the hell he was looking at when he gripped your shoulders.

“Hey…you have one right? Can I…just lose my virginity to you?”

You stare at him in complete shock, almost wondering if you heard him wrong but he seemed completely serious. You wanted to kick him out but…. You haven’t had sex in months now.

It’d be nice to not have to rely on a dildo…

Pushing your dignity aside, you said yes.

But when he was fingering you open, he seemed to know what to do. You thought you would’ve had to handle that. His grip on your thighs were almost possessive as he moved himself between them.

Slowly, he sank inside your pussy, you couldn’t help the groan that left your throat. It might’ve been awhile since you had sex but you certainly knew the feeling of a condom vs a raw cock.

Just as you were about to ask him, his nails dug into the soft flesh of your skin as he began to roughly pound into you. You cried out in shock as he leaned over, looking you right in the eye as he smirked.

“You’re so naive. It’s cute. Tighter than any other pussy I’ve ever fucked before.”

You were shocked but he had you right where he wanted you. His grip tightening to hold you in place as he ravished you like a cheap slut. And when he finished, he made sure to push in as deep as possible.

The flash of a light caught your attention as you saw him holding a phone. He smirked and waved it, taunting you.

“You’re a pretty sight…can’t expect me to not take a picture to remember.”

He didn’t come over just for your brother anymore.

I love love manipulative men….think I should expand this one, I dunno… think I should start adding my tag list to these posts since I’m doing them more often.

#bottom male reader #smut ideas #mlm ns/fw #ftm ns/fw #uke male reader #mlm nsft #smut drabble

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my-castles-crumbling · 2 months ago

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smart - October 6th - Jegulus - @stag-microfic - word count: 665 - trans!Regulus Inspired by a reddit post that I heard about on a podcast so I don't have the original source to link it lol

"It's going well, I think," Effie whispered to Monty, who nodded at his wife, grinning.

"I like him. I have to admit, he's not what I thought he would be, though," Monty murmured, looking across the room.

It was true. James was so larger-than life and attention-grabbing; so loud and, Effie had to admit, dramatic. But Regulus, James's boyfriend who he'd finally agreed to introduce them to, was quieter. It had struck them as strange that it had taken so long, since Regulus was Sirius's little brother, and Sirius had practically been their adoptive son for years. But they didn't know a lot about Regulus. Just that he had taken longer to cut ties with Sirius's problematic family, and that their son was absolutely crazy about him.

He also seemed nervous and a bit skittish, though when he did speak, he came off as extremely smart. Though both men looked at each other with stars in their eyes, it was certainly a different match than what James's parents had been expecting.

When they interacted together, it made all the sense in the world, though. At least in Effie's opinion. They were natural opposites in the best way, and Regulus seemed to bring out the best in James. He'd never seemed happier.

"I'm going to do the dishes," she announced, standing and exiting the room, waving all of the boys off as they got up to try to help.

But as she began to get to work, the short, curly-haired man who had been glued close to James's side all night entered the kitchen, balancing a stack of plates.

"Oh, let me get those, dear!" Effie jumped over to grab the stack from Regulus's hand, eager to help.

"Thanks, Mrs. Potter," Regulus smiled softly. "The meal was wonderful. Was that thyme I tasted?"

"Oh, thank you, dear. It was! Do you cook?" she asked as they began to fall into a rhythm of washing and drying together.

"A bit. I learned a lot of family recipes as a child, and it was one of the few things my parents insisted on teaching me that I actually enjoyed," Regulus shrugged, meticulously drying a plate.

"Interesting," Effie frowned, speaking over the running water. "Did they make Sirius learn, too?" Sirius had become a permanent fixture in their household long ago, but had never mentioned learning how to cook.

Regulus just snorted softly. "No, they only made the girls learn."

It took a moment for Regulus's admission to sink in, and the dish Effie was now washing in the sink slipped from her hands as she realized. "Oh!" she said softly, her brain catching up with the conversation.

Regulus's eyes grew wide as he, too, figured out what had happened. "James and Sirius never told...?" His face, which had previously had a small smile playing on his guarded features, grew nervous and almost cold.

But Effie wasn't having that. "Regulus," she said firmly, grabbing his arm with her wet hand and refusing to allow him to turn and walk away. "It doesn't matter to us," she stated, looking the terrified man in the eye, making sure he understood she'd never been more sincere.

The gray eyes that stared back at him grew wide and watery, and he blinked a few times before nodding and letting out a shaky breath. "I- okay," he mumbled. "Sorry, I- It's just, my parents were-"

"I understand," Effie murmured, movign her hand up to squeeze his shoulder.

Nodding again, Regulus visibly relaxed, turning back to the dish he had been drying.

"It won't matter to Monty, either," Effie clarified, squeezing his shoulder again and returning to the sink. "As long as you and James love each other and you support his Quidditch team, he'll approve."

Chuckling, Regulus smiled. But after a moment, he turned to Effie, frowning. "What Quidditch team? Because James likes the Chudley Cannons and I can't even pretend to like-"

"No, he likes Puddlemere," Effie laughed, pulling him into a hug.

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batmanisagatewaydrug · 6 months ago

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idk if this is a sex ed question, or if you're the right person to ask, sorry, but do you have any reputable sources about what testosterone *actually* does?

i see people saying it limits your emotions, that it gives you breast cancer, that it makes you malnourished, its a second more dangerous puberty, etc, and I'd like to think im good at picking out lies, but there's a lot of stuff that sounds like bullshit coming from blogs i thought were trustworthy.

if not, all good, thank you in advance!

hi anon,

I'm really glad you sent this ask, because this kind of scaremongering misinformation is deeply upsetting and I'm so happy to provide a better information.

there are tons of reputable sources as to what testosterone does; some that I'll be pulling from in this answer include Cleveland Clinic, Harvard Medical School, University of California San Francisco, Mayo Clinic, the Society for Endocrinology, and Planned Parenthood.

so, what's up testosterone?

testosterone is a hormone produced in everyone's bodies, either in the testes or the ovaries depending on which set of equipment you're working with. all bodies produce both estrogen and testosterone, usually in different levels. regardless of the genitalia you were born with, how you understand your gender, or what levels of testosterone you have in your body, testosterone affects things like your sex drive, your hair growth, muscle and bone density, and the production of red blood cells.

in people born with testes, puberty usually comes with an increase in testosterone that kicks off changes such as growth of the penis and testicles, the production of sperm, an increase in hair growth all over the body, deepening of the voice, greater production of oil on the skin, and an increase in height, weight, and muscle mass.

either an overabundance or a deficit of testosterone can have health complications, just as having more or less of any hormone that a body needs can cause complications.

people who choose to transition by taking testosterone will experience many similar effects as cisgender men going through puberty, including the increase in body hair, skin oils, and muscle mass, as well as a deepening voice. while people on testosterone are unlikely to experience significant growth in terms of height unless they start hormone replacement therapy (HRT) at a fairly young age, testosterone does frequently cause a redistribution of fat on their bodies to be more similar to that of cisgender men. bottom growth, the increased size and sensitivity of the clitoris to more closely resemble a penis, is also common; the clitoris and the penis are homologous structures (they're made out of the same goo when embryos start developing genitalia), hence why they react similarly to testosterone.

to address your specific concerns:

testosterone does not limit the range of a person's emotions. while it may impact a person's mood and the severity of their feelings, the same is true of any hormone - for instance, people also report mood changes when they take antidepressants or birth control. the sometimes drastic mood fluctuations experienced during puberty are not tied to a specific hormone; this is a turbulent time regardless of what hormones your body is producing the most. testosterone is stereotyped as making people angry and violent, but all people are people regardless of their biology and are shaped by much more than the hormones in their body.

while cisgender men and trans people on testosterone can both get breast cancer, testosterone does not pose any particular risk. several of the sources linked about don't find any significant link between taking testosterone HRT and an increased risk of breast cancer, reporting that transgender individuals who take testosterone are not at any particularly higher risk of developing breast cancer than cisgender women. for more detailed information about potential health problems affiliated with taking testosterone, I recommend the "Risks" section of the linked UCSF document. yes, there are health risks affiliated with taking testosterone; this is true of literally any medication and, more importantly, is also true of just being a person with any kind of hormones in your body. cis men and women also have health conditions affiliated with being cis men and cis women, this is the price of admission for having a human body. nobody gets out unscathed.

there is no evidence that testosterone causes someone to become malnourished. people undergoing a testosterone-based puberty, whether they're cis or trans, are likely to experience a great deal of growth and bodily changes that will use a great deal of calories, which means they may be hungry and need more food than they did previously. this is a normal effect of puberty on a body, and is only a risk for malnourishment if a person isn't able to eat in sufficient amounts to keep their body properly nourished.

there is nothing about a testosterone-based puberty that is "more dangerous" than an estrogen-based puberty, which is what I assume is the point of comparison. puberty is a completely natural process that does not pose any significant dangers unless you want to be a real dipshit about it and pull some shit like "puberty is dangerous because you grow breast tissue and then you're at risk for breast cancer," in which case sure, great job, Sherlock. you solved it, puberty is cancelled forever. I cannot emphasize enough how stupid this is, conceptually; roughly half the human population goes through this kind of puberty every day and they're fucking fine. puberty by itself is not a risk factor of anything.

I don't know what particular interest the blogs you've been following have in making testosterone-based puberty sound like it's going to turn you into an emotionally stunted skeleton with breast cancer, although I fear it's transphobia hidden unsubtly behind concern trolling and disdain for cisgender men.

if you're interested in taking testosterone and are concerned about the changes you might see in your body please, for the love of god, consult with reputable health resources and a doctor rather than whatever nematode is posting about testosterone ruining your life.

#sex edventures 2024 #testosterone

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aliciavance4228 · 3 months ago

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Bitches be like "Oh Hades always has to deal with his stupid youngest brother Zeus who cannot keep it in his pants."

First of all, Ancient Greeks didn't wear pants.

Secondly, Hades and Zeus are actually decent with each other. Hades isn't ashamed of asking him for help whenever he considers that there's the case, whereas Zeus trusts his eldest brother enough to give one of his daughters as his wife. There's also this whole discourse claiming that Zeus got the best and Hades got the worst, but if you actually give a second thought to it the Underworld actually has some of the greatest peaks: besides the fact that you're extremely rich all the mortals eventually become your subjects. Even poets stated that in numerous works:

Ovid, Fasti 4. 443 (trans.Boyle) (Roman poetry C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :

"[Zeus speaks :] ‘My rank is no greater [than Haides]. I hold court in the sky; another rules the sea [Poseidon], and one the void [Haides].’"

Or:

Seneca, Hercules Furens 53 (trans. Miller) (Roman tragedy C1st A.D.) :

"Dis [Haides] himself, who drew a lot equal to Jove's [Zeus's]."

But if you're so desperate to give Hades a brotherly rivalry then I'm here to tell you that there's no need to erase all of Zeus' qualities (leadership skills, wisdom, long-term planning, determination, cunning etc.) and over exaggerate all of his bad actions in order to portray him as an incompetent asshole Hades always has to deal with. You could simply give Hades and Poseidon this type of dynamic instead.

Poseidon is way more impulsive, temperamental and testy than Zeus. He doesn't hesitate to show his wrath, let aside make others suffer because of it. On top of that, he's the god of the sea and earthquakes, and he's also almost as powerful as Zeus. His attributes and realm could easily represent a threat to the Underworld if he lets his anger go too far.

Take this passage from the Iliad as a relevant example:

Homer, Iliad 20. 67 ff :

"Poseidon from deep under them shuddered all the illimitable earth, the sheer heads of the mountains. And all the feet of Ida with her many waters were shaken and all her crests, and the city of Troy, the ships of the Akhaians (Achaeans). Aïdoneus [Haides], lord of the dead below, was in terror and sprang from his throne and screamed aloud, for fear that above him he who circles the land, Poseidon, might break the earth open and the houses of the dead lie open to men and immortals, ghastly and mouldering, so the very gods shudder before them; such was the crash that sounded as the gods came driving together in wrath."

Dude was freaking out in this scene. During the entire Greek Mythology he's presented as stoic and rarely frightened, but when his brother was causing a strong earthquake he was shitting himself and sucking his thumb like a baby (metaphorically). For the first and last time we see a god being vulnerable and scared by other gods in a similar way a mortal who is about to lose all of his property and belongings would be. Poseidon is pretty much capable of drowning the entire Underworld or exposing it to the Aboveworld if he wants to, so who's actually the more problematic brother? The one who can maintain his calm and control and understands better how distructive power can be, or the one whose anger was on the edge of breaking the border between the realms of the living and the dead?

What if people would stop completely changing the original personalities of the Greek Gods and create more headcanons and fanfictions based on what's actually stated (or at least what is suggested/more plausible) in the myths?

#greek mythology #greek gods #hades #poseidon #zeus #i'm just rambling

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acowardinmordor · 5 months ago

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I kinda want a fic where Eddie is straight. Strong Ally, totally safe, but the guy is straight. There's a few months after they successfully take down Vecna that he and Robin and Steve are all besties, living in each others' pockets. During that time, he makes a lot of jokes that Steve is going to make a great housewife someday, makes some comments that aren't quite jokes that he wishes Steve was a girl, and has some very much suppressed thoughts that the only thing stopping them is that Eddie isn't attracted to men.

Near the end of the summer, before Steve is going to follow Robin to Sarah Lawrence, Steve comes out as bi to the whole group, and Eddie, for the first time, unashamedly thinks, damn, if only I wasn't straight. Steve even gets brave a few days before they leave and broaches the topic of Steve having a crush on Eddie. Keeps saying that he's not going to hit on Eddie, but wanted to take the chance, just in case Eddie had ever thought about it.

"Sorry, Steve, I only date girls."

And the awkwardness isn't the only reason the three drift apart, but it doesn't help. They send letters and post cards between Chicago and New York, and try to call at least once a month, but they're all broke, and long distance is expensive. Two years out, and Eddie knows something weird is happening with Steve and Robin, but they don't want to talk about it. They still talk, they're still friends, they'd still die for each other, but there is something they're hiding from him. Three and a half years out, and the bureaucrats finally got their act together. 'Thanks for not telling anybody' checks get sent to everyone in the know. Very large checks.

Robin graduates, and she and Stevie have a comfortable cushion. They don't have to take horrible minimum wage jobs anymore, and some expensive things they've been saving up to do for a while can finally happen.

This is where the fic in my head actually starts.

Eddie hears all about Los Angeles from Robin, but she tells him that Stevie isn't feeling great after the trip, and that Eddie will get a letter soon.

Its four months later, almost exactly four years since the three last saw each other in person when they finally meet again. Robin got a job in Chicago, and Eddie is still there, now a full artist in a tattoo parlor, playing gigs for fun with random friends. Stevie, of course, follows Robin, and Eddie tries hard not to stay upset with the guy for the weirdness and the sometimes silence, and the very obvious distance that Steve put between them recently.

Then they see each other. Meeting up at what has to be the queerest bar in the city, and it takes Eddie way, way too long to put together what's waiting at a booth along the wall. He's an ally, he's heard all the terms and types and nodded along in supportive silence because he doesn't get it, but he's trying.

But there's Robin, sitting on the outside, with a brunette beside her, possibly the most beautiful woman Eddie has ever seen, strong, tall, long wavy chestnut hair, and a spattering of very distinct moles. The little bit of a smile she has when Eddie first comes over melts into something small and scared as Eddie stares in shock. It's Stevie, it has to be, and Robin's exclusive use of what was once only a nickname suddenly makes more sense. He knows he needs to make sure he's using the right name, pronouns, whatever she wants. He's friend of a friend with a couple trans people, and again, he doesn't get it, but he listened, and he cannot fuck this up, because it's Stevie and this must be what they were hiding, but the inside of his brain sounds like an endless loop of mic feedback for a solid sixty seconds.

Sixty seconds is an insanely long time.

Before his brain turns over and he can smile and reach the table, Stevie has shrunk into the corner, and Robin looks ready to launch herself at Eddie's throat in her soulmate's defense.

A whole list of intrusive thoughts hit Eddie all at once while his mouth runs on autopilot, asking the right questions, smiling encouragingly, introducing himself to, yes, Stevie Harrington, and dragging the mood to a happy place by sheer force of will. Stevie starts to uncurl, smiles a little brighter, sits up straight, laughs properly at Eddie's dumb stories about terrible tattoos, and leans closer as the night goes on.

He fixes the weirdness he started in his shock, because there is no way in hell he's not going to keep two of his best friends now that they live in the same city again.

But his head is stuck spiraling around a snarl of horrible, selfish, invasive thoughts. The worst of which: Stevie is now Stevie because Eddie told her that he only liked girls. And he knows thats stupid and isn't why Stevie made this choice, and he hates himself for thinking it, but the thought is still there. That Eddie wanted so badly that she's now Stevie. Another, only slightly less horrible thought, is that the immediate fairytale ending he imagined on first sight - might be ruined because Eddie is still straight, and he's just not sure about, you know, the details.

Eddie did a great job that first night, and they're back to hanging out all the time as soon as the last boxes are unpacked. It is not Stevie's fault that seeing her in a sports bra for the once confirmed that the payouts, the LA trip, and her new shirt size were related. It's not her fault that Eddie can't stop thinking about how hot she is.

It's absolutely not her fault that Eddie starts getting weird around her. He's trying, okay? He's trying so hard. But its weird for him. He likes her. That part he's certain of. Loves her, almost definitely. He thinks she's gorgeous, high confidence on that part too. He has a crush, but he knows, deeper than the rest, that Stevie isn't confident in herself yet. She acts it most of the time, but its under the surface, a thread of fear that she's not girl enough to count.

And Eddie has a crush. And Eddie can't tell her. Because Eddie won't put them in a situation where Stevie's pants come off, and Eddie suddenly can't see her as the woman she is. It would hurt Stevie so bad, and Eddie would never forgive himself.

It's not like he can ask her just how much surgery she got in LA so he can prepare. And honestly, he's not sure it would matter one way or the other. He's terrified that whatever her choice, Eddie will fuck up his reaction. The risk is unsolvable. Robin calls him out on his crush two months later, and since the other choice is even worse, Eddie lies, and says she's wrong. No crush. Nope. Not even a tiny one.

Eddie tries to will himself into becoming bisexual for an entire month, going so far as making out with a very feminine twink at a club - he thought he'd ease his way into this - but he's still decidedly straight. Rubbing against the twink's remarkably small dick wasn't repulsive, but it didn't do anything for him either. Sure, he learns there's all kinds of pleasurable things to try that he didn't know about, but he's still not into anyone but girls.

(I don't know if this is the right resolution bc Ive spun Eddie pretty tight here, but this is getting so long. )

Robin's girlfriend has a party at a gay bar for her birthday. Obviously, Eddie and Stevie are invited, and obviously, just like every other day on this earth, Stevie looks incredible. She has a sparkly dress and tall boots and glitter on her collarbones and Eddie wants to lick her. His lovelorn staring only gets worse as the night goes on. Stevie is dancing, and Eddie is drinking at the bar with a collection of purses and carabiners of keys slung around and clipped to him. It's obvious enough that a gay couple - Nick and Chris - starts teasing him about it, telling him to man up and ask the pretty girl to dance already.

Eddie is too drunk for this, and he for sure has a guilt trip later for it, but he just starts talking. All of his fears and all of his love, and how he can't ever say anything because he's tried, and he's straight anyway, and he loves Stevie too much to hurt her like that. It's an entire miracle that Eddie broke down in front of a decent pair of human beings, and not some assholes. They sweep him off to a quieter corner outside, help him calm down as he smokes, and feed him some fries.

Eddie is still wearing purses like bandoliers, is snotty and red eyed, is on his third cigarette and fourth whiskey, and resisting the need to runaway forever when the older of the couple calls over someone named Angel. A woman who, if Eddie was not hopelessly in love with Stevie, would be the source of an immediate new crush. She's older than he is, thin through the waist, thick thighs, bottle blonde hair in a ponytail, and has a few inches on Eddie with her heels. The primal part of his brain wants to climb her like a tree.

'Hi Chris. Oh, honey, you having a rough night?" Angel has a few words with Chris, then grins like the cat who caught the canary.

'You're gonna be my good karma for the month, cutie. You are attracted to me, no don't try, thats a cute blush but I can still see it behind your hair, you are. You're straight, right? Yeah, that's why you think I'm hot. Hey, Chris? Do you think I'm hot?"

"Not at all, babe. You know I only go for men."

Angel turns back to Eddie and leans close to explain. 'Chris is a bit of a man whore. Loooooves dick. Don't worry, he says it all the time. Favorite thing in the world, and I've heard he's great at sucking dick. Tragically, I never get to find out, because I'm not a guy.' She pushes the word a little. Then she steps even closer so she's pressed against his side.

Arousal sweeps through him because in love with Stevie or not, Angel is hot as hell. 'Wanna go fool around in the bathroom?' she whispers

Eddie is definitely tempted, already nodding, but doesn't get to speak. Angel rolls her hips. He feels -- A new bolt of arousal shoots down his spine. 'this change your mind at all?' Her voice drops two octaves, and Eddie's brain breaks.

Because, as it turns out, no. No, it does not change his mind. He's half hard, he still wants to climb her, and he's not entirely sure how to get her off, but he takes direction well.

'Aww, figure yourself out, already, honey? Or do you want to test run this a bit more before you go for it?' Angel is back to her real voice, a high alto. She has one hand on his chest, and Eddie can hear Nick laughing nearby. 'I won't lie, I know I won't get to keep you, but you look like we could have a real fun time as I teach you. Happy to get you trained up for her'

Eddie shakes his head, an insane mix of bubbly and numb.

'Ohhh, so you're gonna go get your girl?' She's teasing him.

Eddie nods, already moving, vaguely aware of more laughter and jokes about karma and saving lost lambs, but too fixated to listen. He's still carrying all the purses. He's not entirely sure where Stevie is in the bar. He has absolutely no idea what he's going to say when he finds her. Still not sure how to worship her properly. Extremely interested in following directions on the topic.

Eddie is still straight, but luckily, the girl of his dreams is dancing inside, and the rest of the details don't matter in the face of the possibility of finally asking her out.

When he finally chases her down at a high top with a cosmo, she laughs at how he looks, but he's never, ever seen her smile like she does when she agrees to a date with him.

This is sort of about a friend as they worked through realizing they weren't attracted to their wife after she transitioned, but that was sad, and this needed to not be. I guess I'm just thinking about the non-fanfic nature of life. Where it takes a guy a long while to figure himself out, because good intentions are separate from shifting how you think. Basically wanted Eddie in a situation where he has to reconcile the difference between gender and anatomy, and rewrite his own definitions of what he is and isn't attracted to. Robin had to go through a similar thing as she became attracted to Steve but only in the abstract. They're too platonic for gender to stop their bond

#steddie #my writing #sorta #this got so long #trans steve harrington #Eddie is confused #and straight

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piratecaptainscaptainpirates · 1 year ago

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Another thing I adore about OFMD is how the discussion of masculinity is so nuanced. It's like - the best way I can think to describe the depiction of gender in OFMD is it's like the opposite of the recent Barbie movie, if that makes sense? I thought Barbie was fine but its understanding of gender was very basic to the point of being almost reductive, and the whole movie just screamed "this was written by cis people!" OFMD has the exact opposite vibes, you can TELL there were trans writers in the writing room.

So often, when we see gay relationships in media, there's an attempt to force the characters to be "the feminine one" and "the masculine one" in a very transparent showing of how they're too scared of queerness so there have to be some gender roles shoved in there. Ed and Stede turn that trope right on its fucking head.

Because Ed and Stede both have different and complex relationships with their own masculinity, and they're both feminine and masculine in different ways. Stede worries about being seen as soft and struggles with what a "man's work" should look like, but even in more practical clothes he loves his little accessories and he just adores showy, campy clothing. Ed feels forced into an ideal of hyper-masculinity, but he also loves wearing soft robes, painting his nails, and writing poetry. He painted a bride cake topper to look like himself as an expression of his deepest, most tender dreams and it's never made into a joke. OFMD's thesis statement is that "the things we're taught about being a man are wrong," and it shines through in every angle of the show. The men on the show are allowed to be tender as hell and it's a fucking strength.

It's such a lovely, queer thing, to see both of these characters get to express feminine traits in their own masculine way, without the narrative telling us they're any less of a man for it or asking us to laugh at them.

#ofmd #our flag means death #and the fact that we get to see this with men of color? i fuckin' grin like an idiot every time i think about it!

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genderqueerdykes · 3 months ago

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thank you both for this, i was literally in the process of writing a post about this as i saw these.

i came out as bisexual when i was about 19 or 20 years old, in 2011 - 2012. this was such a difficult thing because everyone around me suddenly had very pointed opinions on me. suddenly i wasn't queer anymore, i was a straight person. i asked people why and they said well bisexual people are half straight, which makes you straight, which means gay people don't want to be around you. i was told nobody likes bisexuals because they're too straight to be gay and too gay to be straight

i had a literal personal dilemma because i didn't feel like that at all. when i was realizing i was bisexual i was realizing i was attracted to all genders in a queer way. i did NOT feel like my attraction to men, women or genderqueer people was straight in any way, shape or form. i've always fit in much better in both gay and lesbian circles. those have always been my home, and my community

in the early days of my transition, when "genderqueer" wasn't even remotely heard of, i had to try to transition into being a man to be seen as trans at all. i went from being forced into lesbian spaces to being forced into gay male spaces. nobody let me pick where i was existing. i was being pushed around. i liked both lesbian and gay male spaces, but i was being told when i could and couldn't occupy the spaces. and then when it came out i was bi everyone called me a traitor and said i was a straight person

my best friend at the time came with me to pride meetings and when her mom found out about that, and that i was bi, she told my friend she couldn't come to those pride meetings anymore, and that i was turning her daughter into a lesbian. her mother would not stop calling me a lesbian all throughout my life. from early childhood, she thought me and her daughter were dating because i was butch and she was femme and we were very close. her mom carried this belief into adulthood, asking her outright if we were lovers. her brother thought we were, too, and taunted us about it.

my own mom weaponized lesbianism against me. she hated how butch i was. she hated that i "looked and acted like a lesbian". she called me a butch and a bulldyke hatefully. she told me not to dress or look certain ways or else people would assume i, and her by some proxy, were lesbians. my mom was insanely butch so i don't really know why this was being leveraged against me but either way when i became a young adult and my mom was trying to force me to learn to drive (something i am terrified of doing due to having 2 dissociative disorders), she asked what kind of car i would ideally like. i said a truck. i was standing there in a purple plaid shirt and she just sighed and went "I knew you were a lesbian." she pointed out my shirt. she was weaponizing lesbophobic and butchphobic stereotypes against me, but either way, reinforcing that i was a lesbian in one capacity or another

i got so tired of my friends harassing me for saying that if i was bi that meant i was straight and i needed to stop calling myself gay because i wasn't, and that it was an "insult" to the gay community. note that nobody gave a singular flying fuck about the bisexual community at all. i was literally bullied out of identifying as bi, because my straight cishet male friends hated it, and my lesbian identifying GF was uncomfortable with it because it made me sound too straight.

the thing is, none of these people asked what being bisexual meant to me.

i actually liked the lesbian community a lot. i really love other lesbians. i have always been attracted to lesbian and butch identifying people for as long as i could remember. i loved seeing strong butch women on TV, even if there were rude jokes. i loved the idea of being a masculine person who is sometimes a queer masculine woman. i loved the idea of being with femmes, i loved queer women and people who took femininity to the next level. i also loved seeing gay men when and wherever they existed. i always felt like i fit right in, and like i was seeing a reflection of a part of myself i needed help discovering.

i have almost always, as long as i can remember, identified as a gay man, and a lesbian, at the same time. my attraction to men, women, and people of all genders is queer no matter what gender of mine is involved. it doesn't matter. i have never felt "half gay half straight" which is why people weaponizing heterosexuality against me as a bisexual forced me to strictly identify as a gay man for almost a decade. it was painful to ignore my butch lesbian side, and to stop identifying as gay, because people would criticize how attractive i found women, and other people

if people had let me exist and explain what bisexuality means to me, they could've understood that bisexual is an inherently deeply queer attraction no matter what genders are involved, but NOBODY cares to listen to the bisexual. everyone LOVES to speak for us because we're just "straight people invading the queer community."

we've had it. bisexuals are queer. even if they DO identify as "half straight" they're STILL queer. let bisexuals define bisexuality. there is no one size fits all form of bisexuality. every single bisexual defines it differently and that's the point. it's a very complex identity with many layers that often relate to gender and presentation as well as attraction.

let bisexuals define bisexuality.

#lgbtqia #lgbtq #lgbt #bisexual #queer #bisexual pride #bisexual community #bi #bi pride #biromantic #bi romantic #bi spectrum #bispec #mspec #multispectrum #our writing #about us

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transfem-tomgirl · 1 month ago

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Yo wanted to ask a bit more about your experience in the transhet community there’s a lot of animosity towards transhets and t4t relationships that aren’t…idk how to describe it but y’know what I mean. Wanted to hear your thoughts on it. Didn’t wanna DM off the bat but if you’re down to chat I’d love to!

I'd love to chat! I revel in the chance to talk with people.

in my experience there's a lot of kindness from other trans people but it does sometimes come with a distinct feeling of "We feel kinda bad that you're only into guys." Which can get exasperating.

Like. Other trans people flinch when you say you're het, in a way that they wouldn't if you were a lesbian, not because they think less of you, but they're just kinda surprised by the outcome. Het trans people just, aren't really thought of as something that happens, outside the context of your right wing grifters who try to be one of the good ones.

And, when you talk to Bi trans girls, there's a sort of unspoken idea that men are a fun little treat compaired to the default of sapphic relationships. which is a little exasperating. [In my mind I've joked about waiting for the monthly boyliking phase so i can get the chance to finally talk about guys.]

And it always feels like there's a worry, even within transhet spaces, of getting *too* het. just like how I've seen a worry in transmasc spaces of getting *too* masc. this usually stems from a desire to not want to recreate the oppressive power structures associated in both, but, in a great twist of irony, often ends up expressing both in their vehement refusal.

That's not to say that you can't be a transmasc femboy or be in a st4t relationship where the guy is small and subby and the gal is strong and dommy and have it be a healthy outlook and engagement with the facets of oppression, far from it. But if you seek those things out as escape from engaging with oppression, you tend to fall into it trying to square the circle so to speak.

these are mostly just personal outlooks and feelings on the subject, but i think they're important, because they're a real persons feelings, ya know?

#t4t #asks #transhet nsft #anon ask #t4t nsft #transhet #st4t

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camomileapplesyrup · 6 months ago

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today i got into a heated argument with two TRAs over the twoXchromosomes subreddit. i made a post about the woman-centric subreddit now being overrun with men & MRAs who harass women that share their traumatic experiences with men. from SA, to spousal abuse, women found a space where they felt safe discussing their experiences in life.

posts expressing feminist thought, traumatic experiences & general fear of men were met with downvote bombings & harassment.

men pretend to be underage girls pretending not to understand masturbation and acting they don't know how to wash "down there", asking for advice for sexual gratification of course.

men CONSTANTLY adding their two cents to posts that absolutely do not need it.

the subreddit is now uncomfortable & stifling, mods do absolutely nothing about it. so i made a lengthy post and so many women responded. over 500 comments of women responding positively, and thanking me for calling out an ongoing issue.

well, apparently i am transphobic and i am acting "sussy" with saying; “every time i come here and a woman makes a post with the most MINUSCULE feminist intent, or sharing her trauma, or difficulties in her personal experiences, it doesn't just get downvoted to oblivion, but filled up with comments of dudes adding their two cents, tone policing, making sexual & or fetish comments or "not all men"ing her. this is a woman centric community. two X chromosomes. we aren't going to make our tones softer, be gentler and tip-toe around our individual experiences to make YOU, a dude, comfortable.”

all it took was this for two TRAs to gang up on me & call me transphobic. saying this is why they don't trust cis feminists, and patronising me with expressions like "you must be so brave for calling yourself a radfem". they claimed that i cannot call myself a radical feminist because it's just bigoted towards trans women, despite me living in a 3rd world country where we don't even have working woman's shelters and proper laws against spousal abuse. "im sorry your life is hard as a woman living in a misogynistic country, but that is here nor there with regard to the terminology we're discussing" i'm sorry, what?

most of us aren't privileged enough to be libfems. i wish pink fucking girlboss they/she queen xenogender discourse was what my country could be doing, but life is not fair for everyone. if a woman here gets abused, stalked, or raped, she has nowhere to go. no phone number to call. no police to call. no prosecutor to trust in. and i went through this, personally.

by the end i had to block them, because they were derailing the conversation. but fuck, even when i literally do my best and try to be inclusive to everyone, i get spat in the fucking face.

#radblr #radical feminism #radical feminists do interact #womyn #camorant #radical feminist safe #radical feminists do touch

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thehmn · 1 year ago

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I’m intersex and I’m very hesitant to make this post because it could very quickly turn into a shitshow if I don’t word my thoughts correctly, but I’ve noticed a small, slowly growing trend and I think it’s important to talk about this before it gets out of hand.

I’ve seen a couple of posts with a lot of likes and reblogs where trans people accuse intersex people of being transphobic when they want hormonal treatment or surgery for themselves to look more female or male. It’s never about forced surgery on intersex children, but specifically about adult intersex people who want treatment for themselves. In these posts people see it as subconscious transphobia because they think this mindset is supporting the gender binary and harms trans and nonbinary people who technically get intersex bodies once they start to transition with hormones and surgeries. In their eyes not only are intersex people who use hormones/surgery to visually get out of the intersex sphere abandoning trans people, they’re also working agains nonbinary people who use intersex people as proof that there are more than two sexes which justify the existence of more than two genders.

The fact that there are a lot of similarities between trans and intersex people should be obvious. Both groups are saddled with bodies that doesn’t necessarily represent their gender and both can experience severe body dysmorphia, but at the end of the day the biggest difference is that the bodies of intersex people change on their own.

If you’re trans, imagine if you were assigned your preferred gender at birth and was perfectly content and happy in your gender experience when you suddenly hit puberty and start developing sex characteristics that goes against your gender and suddenly people around you start telling you you’re not actually the gender you think you are. Basically, imagine the way you felt before you came out/transitioned, except reversed.

I can for the life of me not understand why a trans person who thinks hormones and surgeries are acceptable for trans people can’t extend that mindset to intersex people.

It’s an ongoing debate among intersex people wether we belong in queer spaces and I can see both sides. A lot of intersex people consider themselves cishet people with a birth deformity who aren’t any more queer than people with dwarfism. Other intersex people feel more at home in queer spaces because there’s generally more acceptance of people who fall outside the norm.

But at the same time, in my experience, you get a lot of the same questions in both spaces. Both queer and cishet people often assume intersex means nonbinary, and I’ve been asked more than once how intersex people can call themselves cis or trans when their bodies fall outside the two majority sexes, forgetting that it’s all about what gender you were assigned at birth.

This leads to situations where you’ll meet trans men with functioning penises and trans women with natural breasts. A child might be born with something that looks like a vagina with a big clitoris and be assigned female but once they hit puberty the big clitoris becomes a small penis.

And even if they’re trans and start developing sex characteristics more in line with their true gender they might not be ready for it yet. As a teenager you become a target if you stand out so if you’re a trans girl living as a boy and you suddenly develop breasts that can be horrifying.

I personally experienced a much milder version of this. As a child I was perfectly content with people calling me a girl but I also felt like a different kind of girl. Not in a “not like the other girls” or tomboy way. More like a girl with something else in the mix. It was a very physical feeling because I was naturally stronger and more boyish looking than other girls and I didn’t really feel like I fit in with either boys or girls but at the same time it didn’t bother me when I was grouped in with the girls during school activities. I’d play around with makeup in my room, giving myself a beard and chest hair without wanting to be a man. It just felt like the right mix. Then I hit puberty for real and developed breasts and hips but also a full beard and chest hair. Despite all the times I had done it to myself I was mortified. This wasn’t something I could take off. I stood out wether I wanted to or not. Shaving left me with stubble. People looked. People commented on it. And my breasts didn’t grow super big and a lot of my body fat sat on my stomach like on a man, which meant if I didn’t wear a very flattering bra and feminine clothes I was sometimes mistaken for a chubby guy with manboobs. I was NOT ready for that. I was already struggling to fit in at a new school so this was like a social death sentence, not to mention I wasn’t sure about my own gender yet. It was something I should be allowed to work out on my own in peace when I was ready for it without people constantly asking what I, a child, had in my pants.

So hormones was a gift that allowed me to “transition” when I was ready for it at a later age. I’m off those hormones now and live as a “woman with something extra” like I always knew I was, but the things I had to go through as a child makes me very sympathetic to intersex people who does not feel that way and just want to be a man or woman with nothing extra because that’s their gender and like everyone else they want their gender and gender expression to align.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect people to be a martyr for other people. Most intersex people think trans rights are important but that doesn’t necessarily mean they belong in that debate. I know a lot of trans people who think women’s rights are important but feel no obligation to help the cause by sharing their experience of what it was like living as one gender and then another and how much respect and dignity they gained or lost after they transitioned.

So while I understand the natural instinct of wanting intersex people be part of a lager cause I also think it’s unfair to call intersex people who want to look like their preferred gender transphobic.

I really hope I made myself understood and that this isn’t an angry post. I just saw this “intersex people are transphobic for taking hormones” opinion with little to no understanding of the intersex experience and I’m hoping to shed a bit of light on that ❤️

#long post #very long post #intersex #trans

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gatorbites-imagines · 7 months ago

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Ohh my gosh i just saw you take jjk requests.. could i please ask for some sweet cuddly headcanons or a scenario of heian era/true form Sukuna x small-ish but chubby ftm reader?

Oh also im sorry if its weird but i uhhh i headcanon Sukuna was kinda chubby himself during that time if you could include that somehow.. i dunno its just i love soft squishy men cause i am one okay thank you bye

Heian era/true form Ryomen Sukuna x chubby ftm reader

Headcanons

Cheering and jumping up and down whenever I get jjk requests. Im such a sucker for true form Sukuna. Sukuna nation. Sukuna is also around 8 ft in this, cuz I love me some size difference.

No one would suspect Sukuna of all people to be sweet or even cuddly, and no one gets to see it, except for you and maybe Uraume.

Theres nothing your big lug of a lover likes more than to lay his head in your lap after a meal, which was probably people knowing him, and having you play with his head or just caress his face.

Living on a regular diet of human would also mean that Sukuna has more meat on his bones in this era than he does in the 2000s when he wakes up again. Think like bulking and cutting when it comes to wrestling.

It would most likely also be a result of dating Sukuna that allowed you to get chubby as well, since this was during the Heian era, where one couldn’t as easily get their hands on enough food to get chubby unless they were very rich.

But if you already were chubby, then that was more than likely what caught Sukunas attention first. Maybe he thought you looked extra delicious to snack on, or you thought it was sexy, since he doesn’t get to see chubby people on the regular, at least not ones that are actually attractive like you.

Sukuna would enjoy you being softer too, since it means he can lay his big ol head on your torso or on your thighs, or that he can squeeze your body with his big hands.

Expect him to nip at you, anywhere on your body really, and rumble about how you are good enough to eat. You know he wouldn’t actually eat you, but he likes to threaten it. and it comes more across as flirting instead of threatening at the end of the day.

When it comes to being trans. Sukuna couldn’t honestly care less. Hes got Uraume around, what makes you think he cares how you present yourself or see yourself.

Sukuna would use it as an excuse to kill more people though, since anybody disrespecting you or people like you deserve to die in his book. Aint nobody gonna disrespect Sukuna, the king of curses, lover like that.

Would hunt down anybody who might have hurt you in the past, no questions asked. They wouldn’t stand a chance against your bear of a man, curse?

If you wanted top or bottom surgery, or even testosterone, he would find a way. They didn’t have treatment like we do now, but if anybody would be able to find a way it would be Sukuna, even if it means torturing sorcerers or curses to get it.

You can also dress however you want around Sukuna. Hes one of those “dress however you want babe, I can fight” guys. Sukuna himself also wears a woman’s kimono, so I don’t think he really sees gender in clothes the same way as sorcerers or humans might.

And if you feel insecure of dysphoric about your body, Sukuna might not be the best at comforting with words. But hed find ways to show he is there for you, be it pulling you into his lap, or just lingering around whenever he’s around. Would also order Uraume to make sure you are happy and have everything you need.

Speaking of pulling you into his lap. Sukuna loves the size difference between you. It isn’t hard to be smaller than Sukuna, but you being small-ish means he can easily have you straddling one of his thighs, the lower pair of his arms wrapped around your waist, and the upper pair doing something else.

Expect to be licked by his stomach mouth on the regular when this happens, or when you guys are cuddling. If not licked, then expect your back to be kissed when no one is looking, or nobody can see.

Sukuna would find It funny if it made you blush or turn to look at him over your shoulder whenever he does it. He just raises his brow like “what?” whenever you try to call him out on it, always saying you must be making things up.

The stomach mouth always ends up licking your hands when you guys are cuddling and you’re petting his stomach. When you complain about it, he just says it’s not that bad, and offers to let you lick his hands too, you’ll have to do it four times though, you guys gotta be equal right?

Sukuna doesn’t really focus on the fact that hes on the chubby side himself, but hes different compared to you. For Sukuna imagine those big weight lifters that have a thick layer of fat on their bodies because of all the calories they need, that’s how I imagine Sukuna.

He does a lot of fighting and a lot of eating and training, so him being chubby buff would make sense. He isn’t someone to feel insecure, but he would preen like a peacock if you gushed about how hot he was.

Sukuna likes to eat, that’s no secret. But he doesn’t just like to eat people, but treats too. So, you guys will have many times where you lay on top of his chest or beside him on one of his arms, the two of you sharing something sweet.

He expects you to feed him, sorry but he does. He makes up for it by playing with your hair with one of his hands in the meantime, so I guess it’s fair.

Yes, he also expects you to feed the stomach mouth, is that even a question?

He likes cuddling in the sun with a nice comfortable breeze going. Imagine him laying sprawled out on his kimono, you laying on top of him or beside him, the shutters to the room open, just enough wind and sun to make it comfortable.

Sukuna doesn’t snore, but he rumbles sometimes, kind of like a big tiger or maybe a lion. He also denies doing it, but you’ve caught him multiple times. It gets extra loud if you pet his chest or face.

You always gotta be careful cuddling with Sukuna though, since he might roll over in his sleep and roll on top of you, and you’ll feel like a pancake. Hes got all that bulk weighing down on you, knocking all the air outta you, but he makes a great weighted blanket.

Your lover also doesn’t like to be woken up, but when its you its not as bad. Best bet is to wake him up with kisses, he doesn’t seem to mind them that much. Sukuna does grumble and complain a little, but its not hard to sense that he doesn’t really mean it.

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itsawritblr · 11 months ago

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Holy shit, the New York Times is FINALLY interviewing and listening to detransistioners.

The tide is turning.

Opinion by Pamela Paul

As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

Feb. 2, 2024

Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.

Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.

“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.

Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.

At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.

At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child.

“I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.”

Progressives often portray the heated debate over childhood transgender care as a clash between those who are trying to help growing numbers of children express what they believe their genders to be and conservative politicians who won’t let kids be themselves.

But right-wing demagogues are not the only ones who have inflamed this debate. Transgender activists have pushed their own ideological extremism, especially by pressing for a treatment orthodoxy that has faced increased scrutiny in recent years. Under that model of care, clinicians are expected to affirm a young person’s assertion of gender identity and even provide medical treatment before, or even without, exploring other possible sources of distress.

Many who think there needs to be a more cautious approach — including well-meaning liberal parents, doctors and people who have undergone gender transition and subsequently regretted their procedures — have been attacked as anti-trans and intimidated into silencing their concerns.

And while Donald Trump denounces “left-wing gender insanity” and many trans activists describe any opposition as transphobic, parents in America’s vast ideological middle can find little dispassionate discussion of the genuine risks or trade-offs involved in what proponents call gender-affirming care.

Powell’s story shows how easy it is for young people to get caught up by the pull of ideology in this atmosphere.

“What should be a medical and psychological issue has been morphed into a political one,” Powell lamented during our conversation. “It’s a mess.”

A New and Growing Group of Patients

Many transgender adults are happy with their transitions and, whether they began to transition as adults or adolescents, feel it was life changing, even lifesaving. The small but rapidly growing number of children who express gender dysphoria and who transition at an early age, according to clinicians, is a recent and more controversial phenomenon.

Laura Edwards-Leeper, the founding psychologist of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, said that when she started her practice in 2007, most of her patients had longstanding and deep-seated gender dysphoria. Transitioning clearly made sense for almost all of them, and any mental health issues they had were generally resolved through gender transition.

“But that is just not the case anymore,” she told me recently. While she doesn’t regret transitioning the earlier cohort of patients and opposes government bans on transgender medical care, she said, “As far as I can tell, there are no professional organizations who are stepping in to regulate what’s going on.”

Most of her patients now, she said, have no history of childhood gender dysphoria. Others refer to this phenomenon, with some controversy, as rapid onset gender dysphoria, in which adolescents, particularly tween and teenage girls, express gender dysphoria despite never having done so when they were younger. Frequently, they have mental health issues unrelated to gender. While professional associations say there is a lack of quality research on rapid onset gender dysphoria, several researchers have documented the phenomenon, and many health care providers have seen evidence of it in their practices.

“The population has changed drastically,” said Edwards-Leeper, a former head of the Child and Adolescent Committee for the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the organization responsible for setting gender transition guidelines for medical professionals.

For these young people, she told me, “you have to take time to really assess what’s going on and hear the timeline and get the parents’ perspective in order to create an individualized treatment plan. Many providers are completely missing that step.”

Yet those health care professionals and scientists who do not think clinicians should automatically agree to a young person’s self-diagnosis are often afraid to speak out. A report commissioned by the National Health Service about Britain’s Tavistock gender clinic, which, until it was ordered to be shut down, was the country’s only health center dedicated to gender identity, noted that “primary and secondary care staff have told us that they feel under pressure to adopt an unquestioning affirmative approach and that this is at odds with the standard process of clinical assessment and diagnosis that they have been trained to undertake in all other clinical encounters.”

Of the dozens of students she’s trained as psychologists, Edwards-Leeper said, few still seem to be providing gender-related care. While her students have left the field for various reasons, “some have told me that they didn’t feel they could continue because of the pushback, the accusations of being transphobic, from being pro-assessment and wanting a more thorough process,” she said.

They have good reasons to be wary. Stephanie Winn, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Oregon, was trained in gender-affirming care and treated multiple transgender patients. But in 2020, after coming across detransition videos online, she began to doubt the gender-affirming model. In 2021 she spoke out in favor of approaching gender dysphoria in a more considered way, urging others in the field to pay attention to detransitioners, people who no longer consider themselves transgender after undergoing medical or surgical interventions. She has since been attacked by transgender activists. Some threatened to send complaints to her licensing board saying that she was trying to make trans kids change their minds through conversion therapy.

In April 2022, the Oregon Board of Licensed Professional Counselors and Therapists told Winn that she was under investigation. Her case was ultimately dismissed, but Winn no longer treats minors and practices only online, where many of her patients are worried parents of trans-identifying children.

“I don’t feel safe having a location where people can find me,” she said.

Detransitioners say that only conservative media outlets seem interested in telling their stories, which has left them open to attacks as hapless tools of the right, something that frustrated and dismayed every detransitioner I interviewed. These are people who were once the trans-identified kids that so many organizations say they’re trying to protect — but when they change their minds, they say, they feel abandoned.

Most parents and clinicians are simply trying to do what they think is best for the children involved. But parents with qualms about the current model of care are frustrated by what they see as a lack of options.

Parents told me it was a struggle to balance the desire to compassionately support a child with gender dysphoria while seeking the best psychological and medical care. Many believed their kids were gay or dealing with an array of complicated issues. But all said they felt compelled by gender clinicians, doctors, schools and social pressure to accede to their child’s declared gender identity even if they had serious doubts. They feared it would tear apart their family if they didn’t unquestioningly support social transition and medical treatment. All asked to speak anonymously, so desperate were they to maintain or repair any relationship with their children, some of whom were currently estranged.

Several of those who questioned their child’s self-diagnosis told me it had ruined their relationship. A few parents said simply, “I feel like I’ve lost my daughter.”

One mother described a meeting with 12 other parents in a support group for relatives of trans-identified youth where all of the participants described their children as autistic or otherwise neurodivergent. To all questions, the woman running the meeting replied, “Just let them transition.” The mother left in shock. How would hormones help a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder or depression? she wondered.

Some parents have found refuge in anonymous online support groups. There, people share tips on finding caregivers who will explore the causes of their children’s distress or tend to their overall emotional and developmental health and well-being without automatically acceding to their children’s self-diagnosis.

Many parents of kids who consider themselves trans say their children were introduced to transgender influencers on YouTube or TikTok, a phenomenon intensified for some by the isolation and online cocoon of Covid. Others say their kids learned these ideas in the classroom, as early as elementary school, often in child-friendly ways through curriculums supplied by trans rights organizations, with concepts like the gender unicorn or the Genderbread person.

‘Do You Want a Dead Son or a Live Daughter?’

After Kathleen’s 15-year-old son, whom she described as an obsessive child, abruptly told his parents he was trans, the doctor who was going to assess whether he had A.D.H.D. referred him instead to someone who specialized in both A.D.H.D. and gender. Kathleen, who asked to be identified only by her first name to protect her son’s privacy, assumed that the specialist would do some kind of evaluation or assessment. That was not the case.

The meeting was brief and began on a shocking note. “In front of my son, the therapist said, ‘Do you want a dead son or a live daughter?’” Kathleen recounted.

Parents are routinely warned that to pursue any path outside of agreeing with a child’s self-declared gender identity is to put a gender dysphoric youth at risk for suicide, which feels to many people like emotional blackmail. Proponents of the gender-affirming model have cited studies showing an association between that standard of care and a lower risk of suicide. But those studies were found to have methodological flaws or have been deemed not entirely conclusive. A survey of studies on the psychological effects of cross-sex hormones, published three years ago in The Journal of the Endocrine Society, the professional organization for hormone specialists, found it “could not draw any conclusions about death by suicide.” In a letter to The Wall Street Journal last year, 21 experts from nine countries said that survey was one reason they believed there was “no reliable evidence to suggest that hormonal transition is an effective suicide prevention measure.”

Moreover, the incidence of suicidal thoughts and attempts among gender dysphoric youth is complicated by the high incidence of accompanying conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. As one systematic overview put it, “Children with gender dysphoria often experience a range of psychiatric comorbidities, with a high prevalence of mood and anxiety disorders, trauma, eating disorders and autism spectrum conditions, suicidality and self-harm.”

But rather than being treated as patients who deserve unbiased professional help, children with gender dysphoria often become political pawns.

Conservative lawmakers are working to ban access to gender care for minors and occasionally for adults as well. On the other side, however, many medical and mental health practitioners feel their hands have been tied by activist pressure and organizational capture. They say that it has become difficult to practice responsible mental health care or medicine for these young people.

Pediatricians, psychologists and other clinicians who dissent from this orthodoxy, believing that it is not based on reliable evidence, feel frustrated by their professional organizations. The American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have wholeheartedly backed the gender-affirming model.

In 2021, Aaron Kimberly, a 50-year-old trans man and registered nurse, left the clinic in British Columbia where his job focused on the intake and assessment of gender-dysphoric youth. Kimberly received a comprehensive screening when he embarked on his own successful transition at age 33, which resolved the gender dysphoria he experienced from an early age.

But when the gender-affirming model was introduced at his clinic, he was instructed to support the initiation of hormone treatment for incoming patients regardless of whether they had complex mental problems, experiences with trauma or were otherwise “severely unwell,” Kimberly said. When he referred patients for further mental health care rather than immediate hormone treatment, he said he was accused of what they called gatekeeping and had to change jobs.

“I realized something had gone totally off the rails,” Kimberly, who subsequently founded the Gender Dysphoria Alliance and the L.G.B.T. Courage Coalition to advocate better gender care, told me.

Gay men and women often told me they fear that same-sex-attracted kids, especially effeminate boys and tomboy girls who are gender nonconforming, will be transitioned during a normal phase of childhood and before sexual maturation — and that gender ideology can mask and even abet homophobia.

As one detransitioned man, now in a gay relationship, put it, “I was a gay man pumped up to look like a woman and dated a lesbian who was pumped up to look like a man. If that’s not conversion therapy, I don’t know what is.”

“I transitioned because I didn’t want to be gay,” Kasey Emerick, a 23-year-old woman and detransitioner from Pennsylvania, told me. Raised in a conservative Christian church, she said, “I believed homosexuality was a sin.”

When she was 15, Emerick confessed her homosexuality to her mother. Her mother attributed her sexual orientation to trauma — Emerick’s father was convicted of raping and assaulting her repeatedly when she was between the ages of 4 and 7 — but after catching Emerick texting with another girl at age 16, she took away her phone. When Emerick melted down, her mother admitted her to a psychiatric hospital. While there, Emerick told herself, “If I was a boy, none of this would have happened.”

In May 2017, Emerick began searching “gender” online and encountered trans advocacy websites. After realizing she could “pick the other side,” she told her mother, “I’m sick of being called a dyke and not a real girl.” If she were a man, she’d be free to pursue relationships with women.

That September, she and her mother met with a licensed professional counselor for the first of two 90-minute consultations. She told the counselor that she had wished to be a Boy Scout rather than a Girl Scout. She said she didn’t like being gay or a butch lesbian. She also told the counselor that she had suffered from anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. The clinic recommended testosterone, which was prescribed by a nearby L.G.B.T.Q. health clinic. Shortly thereafter, she was also diagnosed with A.D.H.D. She developed panic attacks. At age 17, she was cleared for a double mastectomy.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m having my breasts removed. I’m 17. I’m too young for this,’” she recalled. But she went ahead with the operation.

“Transition felt like a way to control something when I couldn’t control anything in my life,” Emerick explained. But after living as a trans man for five years, Emerick realized her mental health symptoms were only getting worse. In the fall of 2022, she came out as a detransitioner on Twitter and was immediately attacked. Transgender influencers told her she was bald and ugly. She received multiple threats.

“I thought my life was over,” she said. “I realized that I had lived a lie for over five years.”

Today Emerick’s voice, permanently altered by testosterone, is that of a man. When she tells people she’s a detransitioner, they ask when she plans to stop taking T and live as a woman. “I’ve been off it for a year,” she replies.

Once, after she recounted her story to a therapist, the therapist tried to reassure her. If it’s any consolation, the therapist remarked, “I would never have guessed that you were once a trans woman.” Emerick replied, “Wait, what sex do you think I am?”

To the trans activist dictum that children know their gender best, it is important to add something all parents know from experience: Children change their minds all the time. One mother told me that after her teenage son desisted — pulled back from a trans identity before any irreversible medical procedures — he explained, “I was just rebelling. I look at it like a subculture, like being goth.”

“The job of children and adolescents is to experiment and explore where they fit into the world, and a big part of that exploration, especially during adolescence, is around their sense of identity,” Sasha Ayad, a licensed professional counselor based in Phoenix, told me. “Children at that age often present with a great deal of certainty and urgency about who they believe they are at the time and things they would like to do in order to enact that sense of identity.”

Ayad, a co-author of “When Kids Say They’re Trans: A Guide for Thoughtful Parents,” advises parents to be wary of the gender affirmation model. “We’ve always known that adolescents are particularly malleable in relationship to their peers and their social context and that exploration is often an attempt to navigate difficulties of that stage, such as puberty, coming to terms with the responsibilities and complications of young adulthood, romance and solidifying their sexual orientation,” she told me. For providing this kind of exploratory approach in her own practice with gender dysphoric youth, Ayad has had her license challenged twice, both times by adults who were not her patients. Both times, the charges were dismissed.

Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.

Proponents of early social transition and medical interventions for gender dysphoric youth cite a 2022 study showing that 98 percent of children who took both puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones continued treatment for short periods, and another study that tracked 317 children who socially transitioned between the ages of 3 and 12, which found that 94 percent of them still identified as transgender five years later. But such early interventions may cement children’s self-conceptions without giving them time to think or sexually mature.

‘The Process of Transition Didn’t Make Me Feel Better’

At the end of her freshman year of college, Grace Powell, horrifically depressed, began dissociating, feeling detached from her body and from reality, which had never happened to her before. Ultimately, she said, “the process of transition didn’t make me feel better. It magnified what I found was wrong with myself.”

“I expected it to change everything, but I was just me, with a slightly deeper voice,” she added. “It took me two years to start detransitioning and living as Grace again.”

She tried in vain to find a therapist who would treat her underlying issues, but they kept asking her: How do you want to be seen? Do you want to be nonbinary? Powell wanted to talk about her trauma, not her identity or her gender presentation. She ended up getting online therapy from a former employee of the Tavistock clinic in Britain. This therapist, a woman who has broken from the gender-affirming model, talked Grace through what she sees as her failure to launch and her efforts to reset. The therapist asked questions like: Who is Grace? What do you want from your life? For the first time, Powell felt someone was seeing and helping her as a person, not simply looking to slot her into an identity category.

Many detransitioners say they face ostracism and silencing because of the toxic politics around transgender issues.

“It is extraordinarily frustrating to feel that something I am is inherently political,” Powell told me. “I’ve been accused multiple times that I’m some right-winger who’s making a fake narrative to discredit transgender people, which is just crazy.”

While she believes there are people who benefit from transitioning, “I wish more people would understand that there’s not a one-size-fits-all solution,” she said. “I wish we could have that conversation.”

In a recent study in The Archives of Sexual Behavior, about 40 young detransitioners out of 78 surveyed said they had suffered from rapid onset gender dysphoria. Trans activists have fought hard to suppress any discussion of rapid onset gender dysphoria, despite evidence that the condition is real. In its guide for journalists, the activist organization GLAAD warns the media against using the term, as it is not “a formal condition or diagnosis.” Human Rights Campaign, another activist group, calls it “a right-wing theory.” A group of professional organizations put out a statement urging clinicians to eliminate the term from use.

Nobody knows how many young people desist after social, medical or surgical transitions. Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.

As Americans furiously debate the basis of transgender care, a number of advances in understanding have taken place in Europe, where the early Dutch studies that became the underpinning of gender-affirming care have been broadly questioned and criticized. Unlike some of the current population of gender dysphoric youth, the Dutch study participants had no serious psychological conditions. Those studies were riddled with methodological flaws and weaknesses. There was no evidence that any intervention was lifesaving. There was no long-term follow-up with any of the study’s 55 participants or the 15 who dropped out. A British effort to replicate the study said that it “identified no changes in psychological function” and that more studies were needed.

In countries like Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands and Britain — long considered exemplars of gender progress — medical professionals have recognized that early research on medical interventions for childhood gender dysphoria was either faulty or incomplete. Last month, the World Health Organization, in explaining why it is developing “a guideline on the health of trans and gender diverse people,” said it will cover only adults because “the evidence base for children and adolescents is limited and variable regarding the longer-term outcomes of gender-affirming care for children and adolescents.”

But in America, and Canada, the results of those widely criticized Dutch studies are falsely presented to the public as settled science.

Other countries have recently halted or limited the medical and surgical treatment of gender dysphoric youth, pending further study. Britain’s Tavistock clinic was ordered to be shut down next month, after a National Health Service-commissioned investigation found deficiencies in service and “a lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.”

Meanwhile, the American medical establishment has hunkered down, stuck in an outdated model of gender affirmation. The American Academy of Pediatrics only recently agreed to conduct more research in response to yearslong efforts by dissenting experts, including Dr. Julia Mason, a self-described “bleeding-heart liberal.”

The larger threat to transgender people comes from Republicans who wish to deny them rights and protections. But the doctrinal rigidity of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is disappointing, frustrating and counterproductive.

“I was always a liberal Democrat,” one woman whose son desisted after social transition and hormone therapy told me. “Now I feel politically homeless.”

She noted that the Biden administration has “unequivocally” supported gender-affirming care for minors, in cases in which it deems it “medically appropriate and necessary.” Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told NPR in 2022 that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera — about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.”

Of course, politics should not influence medical practice, whether the issue is birth control, abortion or gender medicine. But unfortunately, politics has gotten in the way of progress. Last year The Economist published a thorough investigation into America’s approach to gender medicine. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the editor, put the issue into political context. “If you look internationally at countries in Europe, the U.K. included, their medical establishments are much more concerned,” Beddoes told Vanity Fair. “But here — in part because this has become wrapped up in the culture wars where you have, you know, crazy extremes from the Republican right — if you want to be an upstanding liberal, you feel like you can’t say anything.”

Some people are trying to open up that dialogue, or at least provide outlets for kids and families to seek a more therapeutic approach to gender dysphoria.

Paul Garcia-Ryan is a psychotherapist in New York who cares for kids and families seeking holistic, exploratory care for gender dysphoria. He is also a detransitioner who from ages 15 to 30 fully believed he was a woman.

Garcia-Ryan is gay, but as a boy, he said, “it was much less threatening to my psyche to think that I was a straight girl born into the wrong body — that I had a medical condition that could be tended to.” When he visited a clinic at 15, the clinician immediately affirmed he was female, and rather than explore the reasons for his mental distress, simply confirmed Garcia-Ryan’s belief that he was not meant to be a man.

Once in college, he began medically transitioning and eventually had surgery on his genitals. Severe medical complications from both the surgery and hormone medication led him to reconsider what he had done, and to detransition. He also reconsidered the basis of gender affirmation, which, as a licensed clinical social worker at a gender clinic, he had been trained in and provided to clients.

“You’re made to believe these slogans,” he said. “Evidence-based, lifesaving care, safe and effective, medically necessary, the science is settled — and none of that is evidence based.”

Garcia-Ryan, 32, is now the board president of Therapy First, an organization that supports therapists who do not agree with the gender affirmation model. He thinks transition can help some people manage the symptoms of gender dysphoria but no longer believes anyone under 25 should socially, medically or surgically transition without exploratory psychotherapy first.

“When a professional affirms a gender identity for a younger person, what they are doing is implementing a psychological intervention that narrows a person’s sense of self and closes off their options for considering what’s possible for them,” Garcia-Ryan told me.

Instead of promoting unproven treatments for children, which surveys show many Americans are uncomfortable with, transgender activists would be more effective if they focused on a shared agenda. Most Americans across the political spectrum can agree on the need for legal protections for transgender adults. They would also probably support additional research on the needs of young people reporting gender dysphoria so that kids could get the best treatment possible.

A shift in this direction would model tolerance and acceptance. It would prioritize compassion over demonization. It would require rising above culture-war politics and returning to reason. It would be the most humane path forward. And it would be the right thing to do.

*~*~*~*~*~*

For those who want tor ead more by those fighting the cancellation forquestioning, read:

Graham Lineham, who's been fighting since the beginning and paid the price, but is not seeing things turn around.

The Glinner Update, Grahan Linehan's Substack.

Kellie-Jay Keen @ThePosieParker, who's been physically attacked for organizing events for women demanding women-only spaces.

REDUXX, Feminst news & opinion.

Gays Against Groomers @againstgrmrs, A nonprofit of gay people and others within the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of "LGBTQIA+"

#detransitioners #detransition #gender critical #New York Times #gays #lesbians #trans #trans insanity #long post #article #detrans #transgender #post trans #desisted

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