tob-anon

[tob-anon]

…

can I come over?

Take this quiz, then tag a friend (or many) and say what you think they’ll get.

@b-r-a-i-n-v-o-m-i-t (Justice) @artyboidoesstuff (Kindness) @qhostpi22 (Bravery) @maurmondz38 (Perseverance) @klutzytomb (Perseverance) @moldieecheese (Kindness)

[tob-anon]

…

I dont even have a Soul, mama

Take this quiz, then tag a friend (or many) and say what you think they’ll get.

@b-r-a-i-n-v-o-m-i-t (Justice) @artyboidoesstuff (Kindness) @qhostpi22 (Bravery) @maurmondz38 (Perseverance) @klutzytomb (Perseverance) @moldieecheese (Kindness)

[tob-anon]

…

I don’t think this quiz is right here…

Take this quiz, then tag a friend (or many) and say what you think they’ll get.

@b-r-a-i-n-v-o-m-i-t (Justice) @artyboidoesstuff (Kindness) @qhostpi22 (Bravery) @maurmondz38 (Perseverance) @klutzytomb (Perseverance) @moldieecheese (Kindness)

[tob-anon]

Can people like stop acting like everyone outside of a specific group is bad, like I see so many posts against all cis people, against all straight people, against all men, against all white people, against all neurotypicals etc, and like, there are people within those groups who are our allies, can we stop acting like all of them are bad? Like yes, they have privileges that some of us don't, but like their entire group isn't bad because of it. It's really tiring seeing so many people hating just in general, can't we try to focus more on like helping eachother or something?

[tob-anon]

that’s nice

Hey, Assnon, I stole these for you

Uh, there’s some weird tea brands but buba said they were good: Hōjicha, Baihao Yinzen, Narcissus Wuyi, and a bit of Da Hong Pao! As well as a bunch of tea packets I found in a supermarket! I hope u like em!

Sincerely, TOB

..WHOLE FUCK?! H-HOW U.. DO U FUCKIN KNOW WUT ARE THESE OMG?!

[tob-anon]

Every time a small child starts crying or having a tantrum in my vicinity and I catch the parents glancing at me I’ve started saying “me when…”.

Friend kept trying to tell his crying kindergartener to calm down and relax and the kid growled “I AM relaxed” while visibly tensing every muscle in his body and I was like “oh that’s me at work every day” and we had a chuckle.

Parents look to other adults like “shit are they mad? Do they think my kid is acting like a demon?” And this response is my attempt to say “no. I think your kid is just acting like a human being.”

I WISH I could fling myself on the ground and cry because I experienced a minor inconvenience.

[tob-anon]

no, but the humans I took them from weren’t happy about it.

do you like them?

Hey, Assnon, I stole these for you

Uh, there’s some weird tea brands but buba said they were good: Hōjicha, Baihao Yinzen, Narcissus Wuyi, and a bit of Da Hong Pao! As well as a bunch of tea packets I found in a supermarket! I hope u like em!

Sincerely, TOB

..WHOLE FUCK?! H-HOW U.. DO U FUCKIN KNOW WUT ARE THESE OMG?!

[tob-anon]

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.

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I’m gonna get my Buba on you!!!!!

TeM hAv neW PfP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!1!!!!;;;1;!1!1!1;1!1!!!!;!!!!!¡!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!

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I was today years old when I learned that when you type “otp: true” in AO3 search results it filters out fics with additional ships, leaving only the fics where your otp is the main ship

[tob-anon]

I just had the greatest nap ever, my mama is very comfy and nice

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