#and i won't get into online communities centered around it those are the worst

[catboybiologist]

Hello, I've heard from a few trans women that their transition made higher education impossible I wasn't sure if they were talking about college or grad school, but since you're a woman in a PhD program I was wondering if you think transitioning would make getting a higher education harder.

Thanks

Someone who might be trans that wants to pursue a master's

Hm. This is weird to answer. Unfortunately I can't offer TOO much insight here. I'm very much a baby trans (~1.5 months HRT) and I present as a man day to day without issue (seriously, y'all have NO idea how masculine I look outside of my pictures). When I do finally socially transition, I'll probably have more thoughts.

With that out of the way, here's my personal experience so far:

I don't think I would have transitioned if I was NOT in academia/pursuing my PhD. I think most of the issues people run into can be divided into three categories:

1. Financial difficulty with acquiring HRT or other gender affirming care

2. Closer ties (financially and emotionally) to family and being seen less as an independent adult means greater pressure to not transition, and consequences if you do

3. Academic stress and pressure while you're undergoing emotional changes that may make things difficult short term.

Personally I was able to dodge most of those issues.

A huge part of this is because I spent a lot of time meticulously ensuring a lot of aspects of my life are in place before I started HRT. I waited until I was out of undergrad, which has weirder finances, I scoped out options at my student health center vs in the community, established queer community, waited a year to start in a good lab and establish there, scoped that lab out for queer acceptance before I joined, and in general became more financially and emotionally secure. Also, while I'm still in good terms with my parents, I'm not financially or emotionally reliant on them anymore- so if that changes when I come out, it won't affect me as much.

Looking back, it's hard to say whether I would recommend doing things this way. During the time that I was "figuring things out", I was dying. I was depressed and aimless, and I couldn't make happiness or contentment my baseline emotion. Starting an online femboy account was my only outlet for a while. Also, my results are going to be less drastic now that I've waited until I'm 25 to start.

Obviously, I still have the stress of a PhD to worry about while my emotions and body are changing. But to be honest.... My PhD has been kinder to me academically than my undergrad. All of my goals center around two or three long term, overarching projects instead of a million tiny assignment and study snippets from a million directions. I personally think this is easier to manage even if it's more work overall.

In return, the academia environment has been good to me about my queerness. There's a gender care specialist on campus via student health where I can get HRT, queer organizations and events are much easier to come by in a university environment, and people on average are far more educated and open minded towards LGBT issues than the general public. I have a role in the main queer graduate student group here, and it would have been hard for me to find explicitly supportive friends without that.

I'm gonna throw an additional paranoid note your way: a master's degree is hell for everyone. While the exact ways in which this is true vary from program to program, but in general, they feel like the worst of both worlds from undergrad and a PhD. You're locked out of or have less of a chance for the financial stability and employment positions of a PhD position, but you're also locked out of the financial aid and support of undergrads. I'm very biased from a miserable MS experience, though.

So yeah. I think my experience has been different than a lot of people, but I hope there was some small insight there!

[nnjidi-moved]

Don't R B

i'm too tired and lazy to make a coherent rant type post and i'm also on mobile but i've been having thoughts about that "trash fandom culture" post and the way kids get sucked into things where adults have that "omg we're such trash/x is garbage but we still stan" mindset. it de-sensitizes them to content that is actually trash bc it's harmful and, i can't articulate it well but there's a way that it ties in to: people that can't differentiate between thinking x is "cringey" or making fun of kids liking it, and actual criticisms of y and how kids don't realize that it's harmful

like for example people making fun of kids liking an anime vs. people pointing out that an anime is just gross and fetishistic/pedophilic/promotes racism/imperialism etc. Etc. like you can think of fandom for each of those categories where irresponsible adults just act like those things are okay 😬 and when u talk about how they're not then they get all defensive and shit and it's like. why are you defending these things but when x whether it be an anime or game or whatever is content that kids access without knowing the things wrong about it or about its creators (and knowing about the creators is important too, because a piece of work doesn't exist on it's own and is definitely influenced by the views of the creators--like I can think of aot and h*talia, where the creators obviously have fascist/imperialist views or pmmm with the loli trope or the *rc*na where the creators condone sexual abuse like incest and you can't divorce their works from that context!) like these things need to be talked about!

adults are responsible for checking how their fiction affects reality and especially in fandom you can't deny criticism if there's something harmful and you should share information about it widely without bitching like it's a personal attack and, if you continue to promote those things despite knowing better yes, you are a part of the problem!

because tbh kids who discover fandom really don't know better :/ this is bc i remember when I was 12/13 and had a friend with that self described "trash otaku" personality who'd make incest jokes around me and why that happens. and she was into a lot of bad stuff. in some fandoms it's like, normalized. it's your Sin Bin Trash am I right. Especially here on tumblr it's worse because you can't control what is shared to whom and who sees it so freaks thrive and that is a problem! If you see criticism about something take it seriously and understand why you shouldn't promote it!

and when i mention creators and their works and bring up h*talia and pmmm and the *rc*na is because those are just examples i'm familiar with (i never watched aot but I've seen ppl say similar things abt it to h*tlia so) and if you're like "well those things aren't as bad as the others!" Then you're proving my point lol. whatever aspect of that is normalized usually is something racist or sexual and it's just gross coming across something as a kid like "hey this looks like a cute magical girl anime!" and then discovering later that it's just exploitative. you feel gross! and I know a lot of anime creators are horrible especially the Men but still, pointing out the issues is vital especially when there are a lot of impressionable children on this site