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[Great Order]

Very happy for you, very cool that body does cool things when provided hormones. I'd like to make an "it's plug & play gender" joke, but I fear that might also be a) a woeful oversimplification and b) also crude and insensitive, and I don't personally know any enby/transfolk, so I don't have a good read for the community's sense of humor. Will accept recommendations and/or browbeating.

I'll have you know it's not plug and play.

That'd be boofing pills.

[Rolan7]

Yeah, uh... XD
Look.  One friend said it didn't make a difference at all, and I believe she believes that.  But another friend claimed it was 10x more effective according to some study I didn't check.  And I believe them more because they're NB

I decided to split the difference play it safe.  Besides, it bypasses the liver.  That increases efficiency and reduces liver stress!

To be clear: I'm talking about progesterone.  Do NOT boof hard-packed "chalky" pills such as estradiol, that doesn't help (and probably isn't healthy).  Such pills should be absorbed sublingually rather than swallowed, though, which ALSO bypasses the liver.
So yeah, there's obviously lots of humor in trans culture... Some of it's actually funny unlike the above '
I highly recommend allies hang out in trans spaces and participate!  ...Carefully, of course, but still.

Because like, I talk a big game about transhumanism but I've also been struggling with an annoying fear that progesterone might "change my gender".  I keep overthinking things and it gets really complicated, and the idea of introducing a new med had me really questioning the nature of mind/body/soul etc...  I joke, but I'm also serious.

So a joke along that line didn't bother me!  Mostly because I've already heavily interrogated that moral quandary and came to a satisfying conclusion.  It truly didn't bother me, and it's important that someone so respectful gets to participate and have fun with trans culture.

I'm spiralling a little (a little?).  The point is... wait, let me find a recent quote that helped me with these intrusive doubts:

I refuse to "become" a woman via HRT, that's stupid anime BS.  The true me is something I found through intense meditation and, primarily, dreams.  I may be genderfluid, but I don't think I'm binary.  I refuse to let hormones change me.  They only let me unlock my true potential.  I love my body, and I guide my body.  It mustn't guide me.

If it turns out that you're a trans woman who prefers men, it won't make you any less queer. Many people have taken this journey with highly variable results. The outcome can't really be predicted in its concrete details, nor controlled.

okay that was not NEARLY as recent as I thought O_o
Still very helpful though.

I am a genderfluid trans woman who prefers masc people.  I prefer They/them or she/her, though I still don't mind any/all.

except from people who ought to know me.  I have thick skin but I let people in.

I love being gender non-conforming, which happens to mean I'm not betraying all those years of being NB.  Yay!
I keep thinking "I can't be a woman, I like having pockets/strength/androgyny" which is just misogyny.  Straight-up misogyny.  I am Samus [suit], Sheik, an oni.  I am a shapechanger, I had to be.  I had no identity for so long, so very long.  Just a mask...

But there WAS something underneath.  I did have an identity, I just couldn't... I had so much else to do first.  Whenever I was exhausted by life I would make a promise to myself, and I don't remember what it was.  I don't think I even knew, I think it was unspecific.  Something I couldn't afford to think about.  It's almost like I was... paving the way for someone else.  A real me?

But who can say how much of that is rationalization.
Anyway...

I am extremely het and I don't think that's just internalized homophobia.  I'm just not attracted to high-femme people and that's fine, I get along with them great.  They're wonderful.  All gender expression is wonderful, NB and binary.  i just like the NB or masc more in that way <3

Estradiol didn't make me a woman.  I never even worried about that, oddly.  I gave it a try, and WOW I needed it like water.
Progesterone... isn't making me a woman either.  This is always what I wanted.  I'm just a bit less reserved about it.  My body is catching up with my soul, and my mind is reeling that I can finally think the thoughts which I couldn't bear to think.  Those buried hopes and dreams.

[Vector]

I'm really happy for you, Rolan. Finally some good fucking news.


In another common trans experience, I'm personally spiraling and I wish I was dead. Yay <3 Also I'm about to come out to my advisor in my PhD program as nonbinary, yay! And militias are active in our area, yay! And businesses are taking down their pride flags, yay!!

Having some medical issues I think. I'm having nonstop migraines. I don't know what to fucking do.

[Vector]

I have decided to look into trying a low dose of hormones in about a month :I

[alway]

If the migraines are just migraines rather than a symptom of some other thing, T may help reduce those too iirc.

[Egan_BW]

I guess that I'm a they/them now. In real life, not just internet imagination land. Neat huh?

Well, I asked my closest family to please update their usage of pronouns in regard to me, and they said sure.
And I got a little praise which doesn't feel entirely earned, if I'm being honest. It's just a simple thing.

[Loud Whispers]

Also what the hell's up with the they/them "controversy?" I swear to God when I grew up we were all taught that you could use they to refer to people, and this was way before gender politics was in the public awareness or on educational syllabi. But then when it did come up, people were saying there's no they/them for people, only he/she. Witnessing this harsh reaction over what had seemed obvious and uncontroversial for ages felt like how I imagine the early-modern Christians felt seeing the rise of creationists taking the OT literally in response to archaeology and natural selection

[Starver]

Not that I'm sure that this explains it (in a satisfactory manner for any of those involved) but I think "they"/etc was nicely used as a third-person singular indefinite insofar as one not knowing anything at all about a future referencee. "The first person through the door will be given their complementary glass of champagne..." That's just simple hedging of bets.

It's a further step, again, to be presented with an actual and unhypothetical person and to be asked to not at all presume 'their' gender (in a binary manner) based upon however they present. (Correctly or not. And I imagine there's also that frisson of being definitively addressed by the assumed gender, if one is trying to fully pass rather than aiming for ambiguity or contrarianism.) Not everyone will get their head around this.


I would say that anybody can ask for the use of any pronouns they want, and I'm happy to honour them under normal circumstances. But you can't always expect me to know (or remember) what you prefer if you don't give me something like a pronoun-badge clue. Honestly, I'm terrible with names/faces, and tying them to relevent biographies. If I get it wrong, in anybody's particular case, then I'm more likely just being faceblind/unobservant/forgetful/oblivious, than positively resistant to your wishes.

(Yet once you start gravitating towards "xir"-type constructions, you have to acknowledge that you're going beyond a planned ambiguity and are now possibly trying to actively ellicit a reaction amongst the less enlightened/flexible. Or attempting some form of transhumanism. - I don't say you can't, of course. And maybe if the choice is particularly distinctive then perhaps it'll be more memorable, even for me. Yay!)

[Rolan7]

If people haven't seen this microfiction yet somehow, it's sweet.

This is really something.  (I was checking my posts to analyze my journey)
I was already tearing up reading the thread, and I mean literally.  There's a lot of pain there, along with the hope.  (Plus I have appropriate emotional responses these days)

But I stopped and cried and came here to post, before the end.  I'm surprised nobody replied to that tweet.
It's the one where

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

they say it's the sixth try
it's that rare

and also like, they kept trying.  So deep in denial but they knew.  I know that feeling.  I relate to them a lot.

that could have been the end of the fic
I'm going to take some time and absorb that as a conclusion.

[Frumple]

Also what the hell's up with the they/them "controversy?" I swear to God when I grew up we were all taught that you could use they to refer to people, and this was way before gender politics was in the public awareness or on educational syllabi. But then when it did come up, people were saying there's no they/them for people, only he/she. Witnessing this harsh reaction over what had seemed obvious and uncontroversial for ages felt like how I imagine the early-modern Christians felt seeing the rise of creationists taking the OT literally in response to archaeology and natural selection

It's been approximately 99% bigots being assholes with everyone with sense telling them (to fuck) off, and little to nothing else (about the only exception is with some trans folk who strongly prefer to be called their preferred gender, and that is an even smaller minority of a small minority of the population; the 99% is probably not substantive hyperbole).

They as a singular pronoun has been uncontroversial usage in english for longer than there's been a united states, it's something like five or six hundred years old at a minimum, and flowed just fine in more modern writing. It didn't get jumped on as an issue until usage ticked up a bit as an effective gender neutral pronoun and some colossal fuckwits decided it was a good thing to use as fuel in the culture war. The controversy is pretty much entirely because it offers an alternative to he as the default singular pronoun, and some jackasses get in a tizzy over the thought of it.

It is remarkably useful for writing where you don't know the pronouns involved, or as a catchall for folks that have trouble remembering which one to use, though. It's much harder to fuck up if you're using they/them.

[scriver]

It's just another case of something that's been around forever but people didn't think about, but then suddenly it becomes associated with a group and now it's outrageous. We have a parallel case of men cross dressing suddenly becoming a banable offense in some American states as if men haven't been cross dressing for performances since... forever, basically.

[alway]

It's because saying nonsense is free, so fash love doing so at all times. It's a signal jamming technique; make folks talk about some nonsense you make up to ensure it doesnt stick, instead of important, much more relevant topics, like the over 400 anti-trans bills introduced across 41 states in the US. Gotta recognize it as being in bad faith and toss it out on its head accordingly.

[Great Order]

Also what the hell's up with the they/them "controversy?" I swear to God when I grew up we were all taught that you could use they to refer to people, and this was way before gender politics was in the public awareness or on educational syllabi. But then when it did come up, people were saying there's no they/them for people, only he/she. Witnessing this harsh reaction over what had seemed obvious and uncontroversial for ages felt like how I imagine the early-modern Christians felt seeing the rise of creationists taking the OT literally in response to archaeology and natural selection

My favourite thing about "Nooooooo they is exclusively plural!!!!!" is that it's been used as neutral singular since the 13th century at least.

It literally predates modern English.

[Great Order]

Had my blood tests, oestrogen is somewhere around 150 (400-600 is the desired range), testosterone dropped to 4.6 which is from what I understand higher than in women, but lower than in men. The only other thing is slightly elevated ALT, but I got that a year and a half ago which makes me wonder if my body just does that sometimes.

Looks like the monotherapy *may* be dropping my T levels by itself, which is good because it'd mean no injections into my arse.

[alway]

Texas law to ban books and media mentioning trans or gay characters from school libraries
https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1631487855527706627?t=szMP_uLS6GCgimrQo3-RyA&s=19