#have you ever talked to a single trans person with mental health issues?

[agendercryptidlev]

it's a specific kind of evil for someone to look at your post that says "this marginalized group is killing themselves at astronomically high rates, please be kind to them" and respond with "Okay but they don't get killed enough." Holy shit

Replying to these anons together because they touch on the same issue, and yeah what we're seeing here is the "children are starving in Africa" type of comparative suffering B.S. that happens so often in discussions of oppression.

There's also of course the stigmatization of mental health and suicide as systematic issue. People are uncomfortable talking about the fact that suicide is caused often more by environmental factors than internal ones, they want to be able to say those who commit suicide had personal problems because they want to absolve our societies responsibility for the epidemic of depression and self harm.

This is a bad way of looking at thing given that if you look at stats, those who are marginalized and isolated have the highest rates of suicide. Being made an outsider in the community you live in is what leads to self harm.

Another issue we're seeing here is the polarization of discussions of trans oppression. Basically that anon likely assumed that because I care about the issues that affect trans men I must not care about the issues that affect trans women. This is absolute bullshit, and in my opinion you cannot support any trans identity without supporting all trans identities, if you claim to than you are lying or a hypocrite. None of us will be safe until all of us are, and that means sometimes you have to give a shit about issues that affect other people more than you.

The trans community is currently under attacks from people who would like to see ever single trans person dead or detransitioned. Our enemies take many forms be it TERFs, Fundementalist Christians, edgy Atheists, LGB without the T, etc. Our enemies however are not the trans people who identify in a different way than you do.

Solidarity with other trans people, especially trans people who identify in a different way than you, is more important than ever.

Take care of each other <3

[ftmtftm]

I’m sorry but until xenogenders and neopronouns can understand that I don’t want to “share my pronouns”, that I want to go through life as a normal, binary man, that I want assumptions to be made, that t isn’t some fun thing but a medical necessity for the rest of my life, that being trans isn’t a celebration but a condition for me and that I never want to be in a pride parade or even really open about it, until y’all can respect that, every single one of you, at least the fucking majority of you, then i can’t take anything seriously. I have been outed, assaulted, misgendered, and a whole bunch of other shit by “Tucutes” who walked all fucking over me as a binary trans person, I’ve been forced to be okay with they/them pronouns and been forced to be called the t-slur by a fake trans person because it was “affirming” for them to use on “other trans people”, I’ve been forced to wait years for t because the lines weee clogged up because people wanted to microdose it because they didn’t actually want the effects but they wanted to feel special, I’ve been outed as trans by fake trans people who want everyone to know what a cool catch I am, I’ve been told how gross t made me, I’ve been pushed out of every space that makes an effort to include as many people as possible because they start using rhetoric that sounds like the same rhetoric my transphobic father uses.

I cannot ever find joy in being trans, there is nothing to find joy in for me. Ever. I’m sick of people acting like it’s fun and silly and goofy. I’m sick of people appropriating a medical condition. I will always be sick of it. I am truly sorry that you had someone assault you and that they happened to be part of a community that I am also, but all transmeds want is some fucking respect for not doing this for whatever “euphoria” or political reason but because we fucking have to. All we want is respect and to not have our medical condition turned into playing make believe that you’re a “catgender” or an alien or whatever the fuck, do that on your own terms I don’t care, but the association with dysphoria and the fact that you will spit in the fucking faces of dysphoric binary trans people? That’s why transmeds exist

.

Bullet points because genuinely, my patience is beginning to run very thin for you anon. My ask box and the new post button have two separate functions and I think there is one you should be using instead of the other.

This is just attention seeking behavior at this point, and I'll give it to you and I'll be compassionate but I won't let your shit slide.

I'm sorry, but this is genuinely like looking in a mirror at my 15-20 year old self and it sucks and I honestly feel very sorry for you. Your pain and upset is very real. Your feelings do matter. And? You need to talk to a mental health professional. Serious advice. You need a therapist or some kind of support group if you do not have one already. That is a lot of baggage that deserves to be explored with someone who can genuinely help you in a controlled environment - not the askbox of random trans people you take issue with because they remind you of traumatic events in your life. Your triggers and people who remind you of people who have hurt you are your responsibility to deal with. It's not the business of people who are literally just living their lives in ways that make them happy. The world doesn't need to change around you for your own comfort, you need to change yourself to make yourself comfortable.

It's honestly okay if being trans makes you upset. It's okay to lament and even grieve a life you wish you had but can't have because you are not cis. Again though, that is not an issue that people who aren't like you are causing though. It's genuinely your business to deal with those emotions - not theirs.

You are not a doctor. You are not a medical professional. You are not the one giving care and other people's medical needs, decisions, and histories are none of your g'ddamn business. It is absolutely ridiculous that wait times are what they are and that access to care is not what it should be - but that is a failure of the system not the people. You legitimately sound like working class folks who complain about people on food stamps "taking up all the government resources" and people who complain that "immigrants are taking all our jobs" right now. You are putting the burden of the system onto the individual when it legitimately isn't their fault. Ultimately you are actively being failed by the medical system you are attempting to covet, not by your fellow trans people.

I've also been told I'm disgusting for being on T. I've also been told I'm disgusting for wanting facial and body hair, for feeling comfortable in my masculinity, for loving being a man in all of its complexities. Even by other trans people. You are not alone in that experience. The solution to working through those emotions isn't to throw conservative complaining about food stamps and immigrants level tantrums about it like you are doing now though.

Being trans can be fun. Being trans can be silly and goofy. Again, it might not be that way for you and it sounds like you've been in an environment where you're not allowed to love yourself for any reason, let alone for being trans, so it's probably very hard for you to conceptualize experiences outside of your own - but you sound... very young. I promise it gets better with time and distance. Please leave the environments you are in when you are able, they don't sound healthy for you.

Point of order: My ex was not a transmedicalist, by any means. I was assaulted by them and felt disgusting and dysphoric because of it and found transmedicalism on my own afterwards to try to validate my sense of self. I was hurt by someone else and then turned my hurt into a weapon. It sounds like you've been hurt and are also turning that hurt into a weapon. I hope some day you're able to put it down.

[silas-png]

well I guess it’s official that my mom doesn’t realize that what she said hurts me; we had an argument last night and I cried the whole time. She didn’t do anything. Just kept talking. I told her some mental issues I was having (stuff with my bad memory and a couple telltale signs of ADHD) and she said that it was because of sitting at a desk all day. Then she said that I was obsessed, that all LGBTQ+ people were obsessed with making their gender and sexuality their personality (which was another thing she said could be the cause of my mental health not being great). She asked if it was because I was trans that I wasn’t eating; cause I’m malnourished but I don’t think she’s ever considered seriously that what I say is actually true considering that I’m literally a teenager but yk. She also made me cry three times last night, had to have my dad stop her from talking because I was yelling, crying, and had said outright that I was panicking and overwhelmed, then cried myself to sleep. I really don’t know what to think of her anymore. I mean she said that she cared for me and that she would fight for me, “even if I have to fight you for your health,” as she said, but that last half I just wanted to yell at her. I just wanted to ask her if she had ever considered that maybe she’s the problem, not me? But idk, maybe I just sound spoiled and complaining. I really don’t know anymore. I don’t. And that makes her angry, too.

I know she doesn’t know what being on the other side of her talks is like. She said that to me. Because I asked. She doesn’t know that what she says hurts me, but I feel like me crying a lot should say a lot about what she’s saying. Maybe she thought she was saying the truth or something, cause she kinda wasn’t. I don’t make my being trans my whole personality; I only talk about it because it’s a thing that needs to be talked about, it’s a modern issue and I don’t know how to explain that without sounding stupid.

for the record, I never cry in front of her. So I feel like it should’ve been concerning to her that I was actively sobbing and started yelling. I kept apologizing for things I thought I did wrong, for things I thought you apologized for. Maybe I’m just bad at social cues.

my dad had to stop the argument by telling my mom to stop and me to go to bed. I just whispered thanks then left and cried for a while then fell asleep. But in that single moment dad told my mom to stop I was more thankful than I think I’ve ever been in my whole life.

[akkpipitphattana]

‘ever realised one of your friends is a terrible person’ SPILL

if i were to spill completely, we’d be here all week because this has happened to me on MULTIPLE occasions, but i’ll give a brief rundown of The Big Three as i’ve come to call them

-the toxic codependent homoerotic adolescent girl friendship is basically a trope at this point, but i had one of those and she was like. a genuinely awful and terrible person. i met her in like kindergarten and dealt with her bullying/manipulation/abuse until like eighth grade when i finally dropped her. they reached out to me in like my senior year of high school to apologize and explain themselves and i have forgiven them and we follow each other on social media and stuff now. they’ve grown and learned since then, they were a kid in a really shitty and abusive home so like i get why they were the way they were - especially cause their parents did some insane shit to my family as well which was a whole thing. but still they Were shitty and awful to me and there’s not an excuse for that, so i doubt i’d ever be able to be real friends with them again, so we stick to liking each others posts occasionally on insta

-had a friend from fourth grade until my sophomore year of high school who just completely ghosted me and the rest of our friend group after they got really depressed and stopped coming to school. and here’s the thing, i obviously know how bad mental illness can get and we all were really sympathetic and worried for a long time. when i tell you it took a year for this friendship breakup to happen because we were all really forgiving and trying to be there and understand what was going on with them, i mean that. we had multiple interventions, multiple attempts at getting them to talk to us. meanwhile they were also constantly posting on their twitter and communicating with their online friends but couldn’t send a single response to our pages of texts asking if they were alright. there was one time when one of us texted them to check in and then they SHITTALKED HIM ON THEIR TWITTER like lmao?? he was trying to be a good friend?? one time we showed up at their house to drop off something and try to invite them to see a movie with us that weekend and they HELD THEIR DOOR SHUT so their mom couldn’t open it and let us in. and they were also REALLY WEIRD AND FETISHISTIC of our trans friend when they were around. like “uwu smoll bean” levels of weird

-friends with her from fifth grade until literally this past summer, but she was just genuinely a horrible friend and person for so long and it took me so long to finally cut her off cause i didn’t wanna risk losing the rest of my friends but they all had issues with her too lmao. she always seemed to target my insecurities and make me feel shitty about things she knew i already felt bad about. and she was also a huge hypocrite, insanely self centered, and also weirdly mean and judgmental?? like she had the weirdest shit to say about the queer community despite BEING queer herself and i was always like ??? girl what. and her victim complex was fucking crazy, she somehow managed to make three of her closest friends telling her she had been a shitty friend and should probably be better about that into us saying all that cause she’s black. like girl in what world does me pointing out that you’re really weird about my mental health and are acting like a hypocrite have to do with racism. what does you inviting our friend to visit you and then nearly abandoning him to go to a party bc he doesn’t like them and also pressuring him to drink after he told you he doesn’t want to have to do with racism. answer quickly.

[orionsangel86]

I don't often ever really talk about these things but like, does anyone else have MAJOR franchise fatigue?

Marvel, Star Wars, Disney, HARRY FUCKING POTTER

I am so done with them all.

I'm gonna rant about Harry Potter for a bit. Fair warning.

I got tired of Harry Potter well over 10 years ago. The final movies hadn't even been released and because I have the disadvantage of living in bloody England Harry Potter bullshit has been EVERYWHERE for TWO FUCKING DECADES. I remember my friend dragging me to the studio tour because she got tickets for her bday. I like movie BTS stuff but my god the amount of BUY THIS BUY THAT that gets shoved in your face drove me mad. Proud to say that other than the OG books I read when I was a teenager I have never owned a single bit of HP merchandise in my LIFE. It took my irl friends bullying me to finally go on pottermore and get sorted into a Hogwarts house when I was 27. TWENTYSEVEN. I resisted for years!! I don't even care. They sat me down and made me log on to that stupid website and take the stupid quiz whilst I raised an eyebrow the whole time and tried to smile and pretend it was fun. After all, I'm not actually a total bitch and they are my friends and were enjoying themselves and I didn't wanna upset them. But why do I need to know if I'm a hufflepuff or whatever? Oh thats right, so I can buy the appropriate MERCHANDISE.

You know real witches make their wands? They go out and find a tree and ask the tree if they can take a branch, you have to give the tree something back and say a blessing. You can add crystals or ribbon or whatever you want but a wand is NOT something you buy in a bloody shop. I hate that HP made kids think that.

Why would anyone wanna buy a game about a nearly 3 decade old franchise thats been shoved in all our faces practically our whole lives (if you are a millennial or younger). Im not a gamer anyway so I don't get the appeal but even without all the transphobia and antisemitism involved the whole concept is extremely tiresome to me.

Can we please be done with Harry Potter now??? I dont wanna see it. I dont wanna see anything about it. I didnt give a fuck when I was in my early twenties and I dont give a fuck now in my late thirties its never been any fucking good. Its a rip off of Lord of the rings crossed with the writing of Terry Pratchet and Neil Gaiman anyway.

For years I felt awkward even mentioning to people that I didnt like Harry Potter, like it was a cardinal sin or something. I'm glad people are finally seeing it for what it truly it, even though I wish it didnt take the lives and rights of transpeople to get to this point. Its disgusting that its still so damn popular even WITH JKRs blatant transphobia. I hope the boycotts work. Trans and Jewish people you have my love and support, for both your sakes and so that bloody franchise can stop being shoved in my face everytime I leave the bloody house. Im glad people are finally picking it apart and realising how problematic it was. Things I think made me uncomfortable about it before I really understood the depth of reasons why.

I have been obsessed with witchcraft and paganism since I was a child. I was a weird kid. Harry Potter turned something I was passionate about in a deeply personal way into a consumerist nightmare. Witch became synonymous with it, spells, charms, magic, I'm honestly surprised JKR didnt try to copyright the terms.

Look I dont often talk about social issues. My tumblr is my escape from the injustices of the world and I take my mental health very seriously. But I support trans and jewish people in boycotting this game.

I care about trans rights, about the rights of LGBTQA+ people. The rise of antisemitism AGAIN deeply disturbs me. People truly never learn from history do they? I try to do my bit where I can offline. I have signed petitions, I have donated to causes where I have found them and I am most definitely gonna do my damndest to get everyone I know to vote the transphobic (and otherwise generally evil in every way) Tory government OUT at the next election.

This rant may come across a bit selfish. It is tbh. I am fucking glad Harry Potter isnt popular anymore. Though outside of online communities particularly in the UK its still huge and everywhere. I wish we could wipe it off the face of the Earth.

I am fed up of all these franchises though. If I never have to sit through another Marvel movie it'll be a happy day. If I never have to hear the fucking Star Wars theme again I'll celebrate, if I never have to read about another Disney remake again Ill be so relieved (although I do get some satisfaction reading about them flopping). This post capitalism hellscape we exist in is fucking exhausting.

What we really need to do with these franchises though is pull an Avatar on them (the blue people not the cool cartoon). We need to stop talking about them. Stop letting them infect our collective cultural consciousness. The only way to get them out of our faces is to actually let them die. We did it right with Fantastic Beasts. We can do it again. Remember that in capitalism, even negative press is good press, and the more the press focuses on the controversies and discourse, the more the name of the game is getting into the minds of consumers, especially those that dont give a fuck about trans rights or antisemitism.

I dont know where it ends, but my god I hope it HAS an end. Something surely has got to give right? Anyways. I dunno if there was a point to this rant other than im fed up of a lot of things and feeling particularly grumpy today, but anyways. Boycott Harry Potter and all things related to it.

Support trans rights. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Enough of this bullshit already.

[written1nthest4rs]

Just reblogged the only 4 posts I ever made regarding the situation with em1grate and m1llionaires. I didn't know their new blogs until about 8 hours ago. I legit thought they were gone and leaving me alone but it seems that isn't the case. For the last day or so they've been accusing me of stalking them, and talking shit about them when I haven't. You can scroll back on my blog. I have nothing to hide. It's the #the puppeteer // mun tag if you didn't know. And I've been informed that ever since that incident they've been watching my blog, vaguing about me every single day, and even sent screenshots. Now, keep in mind. I originally found out m1llionaires had me blocked bc they were interacting with a mutual. I was curious who they were so I clicked their name. Found I was blocked. I went ok and carried on with my life.

Flash forward a week later, I find out that m1llionaires was h0rrorwood, who got all butthurt cuz I said not to follow me if you don't like my faceclaims. And I never told her bf to block her. I wanted him to say something to her cuz she vagued about me right after I made my post about the fcs issue.

I was gonna leave it there but it kept going (you can scroll my posts from earlier today. They're every single screenshot I had about it.) So I blocked him too and moved on. Now I'll admit I was a bit petty. I posted lyrics to Slaughterhouse, and Massacre The New American Dream, as well as reblogged several pics of palaye supporting LGBT, including trans people. But I eventually stopped and moved on with my life.

Flash forward to a few days ago, and the whole thing with nevermoreunihq starts up. Now, I'm not racist or ableist. I'm gonna say this rn before anybody jumps to conclusions. I do not wish to change my characters or rp characters who do not share the struggles I do, out of respect for the people who do. I don't feel confident enough that I'll get it right and I don't wish to offend anybody. This stranger things blog, inactive from August, chimes in only reading half the post, calls me racist and ableist. Not willing to listen. (These screenshots are also below.) I go into their dms and try to clear the air like an adult. They still are unwilling to listen so I blocked them. Then saw they got an ask from an anon and wouldn't you know. It was the same people with the FC drama. My post about nevermoreunihq, and my response to their post was deleted from here but it still exists on that stranger things blog brokenmvses. Go ahead take a look. As well as the Anon.

After that happened I decide to take a break. It wasn't good for my mental health. I was already dealing with a lot at the time of this happening. Then I get a DM from m1llionaires. (Screenshot is also below from the last day)

I shrug it off, screenshotted it and blocked them. Then I find out just who m1llionaires is. And oh boy. I find out from my sources that m1llionaires had been accusing me of stalking them for the past week, despite me not knowing their URLS until earlier today, and I checked both blogs to see what I could see what had been said. Now at this point, I'd made the new blog and sent dms out to a bunch of people with the new url so we could continue to interact. I found out that someone had ratted out my new blog to my stalkers. They sent me Anon hate but I didn't respond to it. I merely blocked it, hid the blog completely, and changed the URL.

Now here's what's going through my head. One person must've said something or was actively looking for my new blog. If it was the latter, you got too much time on your hands and you're clearly obsessed. If it was the former, somebody ratted me out. Now I told one person I didn't fully trust. And get this, they're mutuals with m1llionaires. So of course my first thought was "seriously? After I defended you after you attempted suicide? I did nothing to you." So I block them on both blogs. Then I got screenshots of a portion of a callout from em1grate.

The only thing that's true here is that I told people not to follow me if they didn't like my fcs. I wasn't sent the full callout bc it's apparently very long and I can't view the account cuz it's password protected.

And at this point I'd had my pinned post up for a WHILE. Then I get sent this.

I was never attacking you. I was proving a point. You're just trying to incite hate towards me by playing the victim. IDC if the original post wasn't about me. You vagued about me after I blocked you and told people not to follow me if they don't like my fcs. It's in my rules now because it has to be said now that if you don't like somebody don't follow them.

You need a life. I got better things to worry about in my own life than to worry what goes on in yours. I never actively sought you out. I didn't post about you at all until today. I never looked for you. And now you've brought this on yourself.

Now, as a conclusion. These two are stalkers. They've been stalking my blog since they made their new ones and have been vaguing about me nonstop since when I nearly forgot about them. Consider this a callout, will you? This is how you do a true callout. I am sick of being pushed around by you when I did nothing to you. I'm sick of being bullied. If you see this post, report m1llionaires and em1grate.

[kharmii]

After scrolling around on your blog and reading some past posts I have to say that it's refreshing to see someone in this climate be this "normal" when it comes to politics and everything.

Seeing as so many people have this so far-left view with living and seeing politics 24/7 I enjoy how you openly say how you don't care about certain issues (or other non-issues that are made a big deal even though they shouldn't)

Also refreshing to see your view on this transtrender thing going on. It's so insanely shocking to me how many people can't see how this is wrong on so many levels, how they're exploided for life and how these people ruin their lives on a whim and just to be trendy. It's also frustrating and annoying to me that these politics have invaded fandom to this ridiculous degree. If they think celebrating mutilation is something they enjoy then let them, but I don't have to engage or see it. I believe in biology and not in reality bending appeasing of emotions. And I don't need to see this in fandom.

I've always managed to keep my neutrality or opposing view to these topics with only showing vaguely "support" but it has become increasingly difficult. Seeing people with similar views being so openly about them is so encouraging. I may not have the mental stability to stand up just like you but I admire you for not caving into this nonsense and for keeping common sense in this day and age. Thank you for showing me there is still common sense and brain left here.

I have always lived like "I don't care about your views or anything. Don't be a hypocrite and just be a decent human being to me, treat me nicely and I'll treat you nicely too." And no amount of political bs will ever change that.

What's amazing is that I'm getting flak from people for enjoying the twin fetish -in a small-ass fandom where half the people have had a Blankshipping sock at one time or another- and yet nobody talks about how pushing trans bs is basically grooming by their own admission. THERE ARE MINORS ON THIS SITE!! THINK OF THE MINORS!!1!!

If you are an adult on social media glorifying trans mutilation during a point in history when it has become a social contagion preying on vulnerable insecure young girls mostly, then you are a creepo and pervert akin to a child molester. The reason I say it is because molesting a child is something that will alter that person's psyche so badly, they will never live a normal life and might even off themselves young. Taking puberty blockers -basically chemical castration- does the same thing. That person given hormones at a young age was not mentally mature enough to make that decision, therefore they were pushed into it by some sort of creepo.....mostly far leftist attention seeking white women with Munchausen by Proxy.

Do any of the people pushing trans ideology even know the sordid history behind it? The people who founded the trans movement were all mentally ill dysfunctional people who often did horrible things to children. Matt Walsh did a segment on it, and I will post the transcript, along with the video, in case any readers might be more interested in reading than watching.

When the sixth circuit upheld Tennessee's ban on the chemical castration of children last year, they singled out the World Professional Association for Transgender Health or WPATH. This is the organization that major hospitals of general clinic site as the all-important authority on so-called trans healthcare. In fact, in court the ACLU argued that WPath's professional opinions are so important they should overturn the will of the overwhelming majority of voters in the state of Tennessee. The court was not convinced in its opinion.

It pointed out that WPATH by its own admission has presented quote 'limited data on the long-term physical psychological and neurodevelopmental outcomes that result from administering puberty blockers and cross- sex hormones to children' in part because WPath data and the documentation wasn't exactly comprehensive. The court allowed the ban on these so-called treatments to take effect. Six months later we now have a window into what data and documentation WPath actually does have in its possession, and it's not limited as they previously said.

Instead this Internal Documentation at WPath is comprehensive evidence that so-called gender affirming care quote unquote is an 'unscientific scam that ruins the lives of children and permanently damages their bodies' and crucially the documents prove that WPath knows it. These leaked WPath files come to us from a think tank called Environmental Progress and the independent journalist Michael Shellenberger.

Among the files is this internal communication at WPath from a doctor concerning a 16-year-old girl who developed liver tumors, large ones, after she was given drugs to suppress menstruation, as well as testosterone. Quote 'the patient was found to have two liver masses and the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agents are the hormones'. That's a quote in response to a report another doctor on the WPATH discussion forum said that one of his The Truth colleagues had developed liver cancer and died after taking testosterone for about a decade. To the best of my knowledge, it was linked to his hormone treatment. The doctor wrote quote 'it was so Advanced that he opted for palliative care and died a couple of months later'.

Now at no point in these documents does WPath suggest that they should go public with these concerns. They don't immediately run to the media with their determination that cross-sex hormones could contribute to fatal liver cancer. They don't warn anybody as far as I can tell. Instead, they press on with a plan to mutilate the 16-year-old girl with liver tumors, and the tumors that they have apparently caused. Quote 'We're prepared to support the patient in any way we can'. EG Top surgery when medically stable Etc.

Now ghoulish doesn't even begin to describe this after concluding that they've possibly caused tumors in a teenage girl's liver. Their only concern apparently is how quickly they can remove her breasts. In fact from the documents, it appears that WPATH tries to rush these procedures in general before patients can reach adult age. One surgeon Christine N McGinn boasts that she's performed more than a dozen vaginoplasties on patients under the age of 18. In this context vaginoplasty means that they are removing a child's penis and testicles and scrotum and replacing them with a nonfunctioning open wound. They're doing this to children.

The surgeon writes quote 'I feel the best time for surgery in the US is the summer before their last year of high school'. Many others in this community agree with her. What makes this even more egregious if that's even possible is that WPath knows that children can't provide informed consent to any of this butchery. They admit that in these files Shellenberger obtained this footage showing WPath members discussing how little patients understand about these procedures. Parts of this video were made public last year but Shellenberger obtained the full thing here are a couple of parts of it watch.

I think the thing you have to remember about kids is that we're often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven't even had biology in high school yet. I know I've heard others in this kind of a setting say, "Well, we think adults are like really slick biologically. Lots of people have very little medical understanding of stuff like that. Medical professionals and mental health professionals take it for granted, but I don't know still what to do for the 14-year-olds. The parents have it on their minds, but the 14-year-old does not. It's like talking with diabetic complications with a 14-year-old. They don't care. They're not going to die. They're going to live forever, right? So, I think when we're doing informed consent, I know that that's still a big Lacuna. We try to talk about it but most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space to really talk about in a serious way."

"That's always bothered me, but you know we still want the kids to be happier in the moment, right? We try to talk about it but most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of brain space to really talk about it seriously." That's just one of the many quotes like this from WPath members. Here's another quote 'It's out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them. They'll say they understand but then they'll say something else that makes you think oh they didn't really understand that. They didn't really understand that they're going to have facial hair.'

These are the doctors doing this stuff admitting that the patients they're doing it to cannot really consent to it. Elsewhere in the files there's a confession from a therapist that in 15 years she's only turned down one patient for gender treatment. That's only because that patient was in active psychosis and was hallucinating during their interview. There are also discussions about boys who began transitioning when they were 4 years old. To understand the extent of the barbarism you need to read the WPATH files for yourself. I'm not going to summarize them all here only because it would be redundant.

For now it's important to emphasize that none of these findings are surprising. They're unbelievably disturbing, but there's nothing in here that would surprise anyone who's done even a cursory look into WPath. There's no excuse for any hospital or Medical Association to listen to a word WPath says and that's been clear for a very long time. Redux has done extensive work exposing the various perverts who are connected with WPath including fetishists who post their fantasies anonymously on the internet. These are academics who have lectured at wpath and spoken at conferences, and they're apparently sexually aroused by the idea of castrating themselves.

Imagine entrusting the care of your child to an organization that promotes people like that. They want to castrate themselves and they want to do the same to your child. It's unbelievable, but the truth is that even before these kinds of people became affiliated with wpath the organization had no credibility. WPath, the organization that major hospitals and medical organizations hold up as the gold standard for Trans health, was a radical cult from the very beginning. That's what you have to understand so I'm going to recount WPath's sordid history because to my knowledge no one has done it before. You need to understand what this organization is and to know that you need to know where it came from. The history of WPath starts with a gender confused new AG drug addicted lesbian rich kid named Rita Ericson, her prolific nudist friend Zelda Suple, and something called the Ericson Educational Foundation or EEF. Reed Ericson was born Rita Ericson in Texas in 1917 to successful business owners named Robert and Ruth Ericson.

With immense privilege and educational opportunities ironically at an all-girl school, Rita grew up to become an engineer. She contributed to the continued success of her family's lead smelting business. She ultimately inherited and sold it for millions of dollars in 1963 after her father had passed away. Rita sought to transition into a he under the care of a quack doctor named Harry Benjamin. Rita changed her name to Reed Erikson and became the ultimate financial force in the push for mainstream acceptance of transgenderism. Then in 1964 Erikson launched the EF to quote provide assistance and support in areas where human potential was limited by adverse physical mental or social conditions, or where the scope of research was too new controversial or imaginative to receive traditionally oriented support.

Imaginative is one way to put it, but despite Rita's plans for the EF Advance human potential for everybody, supposedly her own life was falling apart. Following the mutilation that Ericson received under the care of Dr Benjamin, she had four failed marriages. She developed a drug addiction and ultimately fled from California to Mexico to avoid drug charges. Her daughter had to take on a conservatorship of her estate due to her mental and physical decline. Beginning around the time of Ericson's transition and all through her decline the EEF pushed transgenderism and mutilation-based care of gender confused people under the leadership of its director Zelda R Suley who was the right-hand woman to Ericson.

Now Suple her claim to fame was her obsession with nudity. Mostly she owned multiple nudist camps and became the first woman to post fully on the cover of Playboy. She also did psychic research and dabbled in past life new age beliefs. Under Suple the EEF sponsored symposiums to bring Fringe doctors together. The organization paid these doctors to travel and spread gender ideology. They also sponsored programs at colleges to inject transgenderism into Academia. They handed out propaganda to doctors and lawyers and police departments and social workers.

The EEF even provided grants for doctors who wanted to pursue gender mutilation. Contributing heavily to today's more mainstream acceptance of this Butchery, the EEF helped to bankroll the first major gender clinic at Johns Hopkin University where Dr John money an EEF board member worked at the time. The clinic received a reported $85,000 from the EEF and that's approximately $750,000 in today's dollars. Now the EEF revered John Money calling him a 'leading scholar and researcher of our time' in a newsletter in 1972. Now what was John money doing in 1972 to be celebrated and financed by the EEF?

Well according to Arizona State University he became Infamous for directing twin boys to quote 'inspect one another's genitals' and 'engage in behavior resembling sexual intercourse'. He also attempted to change one of the boys into a girl, a story you know if you watched What is a Woman. Ultimately one of the boys shot himself in the head and the other died of a drug overdose. Now the EEF suspended its operations in 1977 but not before helping fund the Janis information facility which overtook much of the EEF's work.

The JIF also absorbed the nudist director of the EEF Zelda Suple. The JIF served as a referral service for gender confused people to find fringe doctors willing to sterilize and mutilate them. Along with Suple it was run by the University of Texas's Dr Paul Walker a former Johns Hopkins colleague of Dr John Money through the late 1970s. Bankrolled by the EEF, the Janice Information Facility and Dr Paul Walker led the continued push to mainstream these extreme surgeries which were increasingly marked by patient regret and high complication rates.

In 1982 researchers at Yale and University of Kentucky found that post-operative complications included quote "breast cancer in hormonally treated males, the need for surgical reduction of bloated limbs resulting from hormones, repeated destruction of vaginal openings, infections of the urinary system, rectum hemorrhaging, loss of skin grafts, post-operative suicides and suicide attempts, and patient demands to reverse surgery". Some sex change patients the researchers reported quote 'threatened to shoot the genitals of the surgeon with a shotgun'.

Now those are pretty bad results of this new form of surgery. Did any of this make Ericson, Suple, Paul Walker, John Money, Harry Benjamin or any of their other unhinged counterparts stop? Did it give them a moment of hesitation? No, they doubled down. In 1979 the EEF funded symposia led to the formation of the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association which took over from the Jif. It was chaired by Dr Walker who left the University of Texas thanks to some financial backing from Ericson. Dr. Harry Benjamin the new organization's namesake had long been bankrolled by his former patient and extraordinaire Ericson. Benjamin received $118,000 per year from Eriksen which is worth about $176,000 today.

In the early years of the Harry Benjamin Association, at the urging of Benjamin, Erikson allowed the EEF to be revived for a year to fund newsletters to get its message out to the masses. What was it about Benjamin that made him so beloved? Well, in 1966 Dr Harry Benjamin had authored the transsexual phenomenon which inspired this community of fringe doctors. In it, Benjamin acknowledges that fake vaginas are quote 'wounds' and says that these fake vaginas can degrade to the point of being quote 'obliterated and useless for sexual relations'. This is him admitting that they're creating open wounds in patients and calling them vaginas.

Benjamin also outlines the social motivation behind some transitions. In one case Benjamin writes that a mother was embarrassed to be seen with her son in public, but when her son began identifying as a girl, the mother suddenly became proud of him and even found him to be quote 'attractive'. In an especially creepy passage Benjamin writes that he could also verify the attractiveness of the supposed young lady. The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association led by Paul Walker fully recognized its roots in Dr Harry Benjamin, Reed Ericson, Zelda Suley, presenting them with lifetime achievement awards.

The newly formed Harry Benjamin Association wasted no time creating their first standards of care in 1977, despite the ample history of failure and suffering they had inflicted on people who often had co-orbit mental illnesses. They declared themselves Arbiters of Authority. Their only mild redeeming quality was that they seemed to agree that this sadistic quackery shouldn't be inflicted upon minors who were obviously incapable of consent. That's what they said back then in 2000.

One of Dr Anne Lawrence earliest iterations of the website for the Harry Benjamin Association linked to another website called transsexual women's resources run by their early members, Dr Anne Lawrence who sat on the standards of care committee for the association. He was and still is an admitted gynephile, which is a paraphilia where a man is sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female. In a paper Dr Lawrence refers to a gynephile as an underappreciated paraphilia. Now few have been as honest about this paraphilia as Dr Aaron Lawrence. In a 1999 version of his website which is the Harry Benjamin Association linked to, he wrote about his personal experience with genital mutilation saying that he very badly wanted to be a quote 'receptacle' and that's why he wanted to get the mutilation surgery.

Lawrence resigned from a hospital after admitting to a serious lapse in judgment quote unquote 'involving a patient' and the lapse of judgment was that, according to an incident report, a hospital gynecologist repeatedly told Lawrence that a patient an Ethiopian woman had not experienced female circumcision. When the gynecologist left the room Lawrence performed a non-consensual genital exam on the woman who was unconscious that was his lapse of judgment otherwise known as sexual abuse of a woman. Now how many quote unquote 'trans women' are just men with a paraphilic sexual arousal of themselves as women. More concerningly how many of them who view themselves as, uh, you know....women, also view women simply as quote unquote 'genital receptacles'? How many are being allowed in the restrooms and locker rooms of actual girls and women?

Despite having published this garbage Dr Anne Lawrence remained involved in the standards of care for the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association. He was a co-author on the sixth version of the standards which were published in 2001. That was the last version published before the organization changed its name in 2007 to WPath or the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. Now despite this new branding WPath continued promoting the same radical gender ideology and sexual paraphilia of its predecessors. The seventh version of the standards of care released under the new WPath name in 2012 and valid all the way through 2022 continue to reference the work of Dr John money whose victims killed themselves. WPath also cited the receptacle auto gynephile Dr Anne Lawrence as recently as last year.

The WPath website fully acknowledged almost proudly their origin with the the EEF and how its suspending of operations in 1977 directly led to this pack of fringe doctors forming the Harry Benjamin International gender dysphoria Association which is now WPath. Despite its sordid history WPath is somehow now taken seriously as the standard setter in the field by major hospitals and medical associations. This is maybe the single greatest scam in modern medicine. It's destroying the lives of children across the country and that much is clear. What's less clear is why anyone who knows the truth about W path's origin would ever listen to a word they have to say.

The W path of today is the proud product of decades of quackery and sexual experimentation. It's a threat to Public Health, in particular to children. Now the good news is that there's a simple solution. The fact that radical activists at WPath provides standards of care doesn't mean doctors, hospitals, medical schools, and insurance companies have to follow them or use them for any purpose at all. Medical professionals have the capacity and capability of rejecting barbarism and doing what's right. They can exercise some level of Common Sense and restraint. It's happened before

Physicians used to engage in a wide range of practices that we now recognize are gruesome and unethical, like lobotomy, using heroin as cough syrup, and treating asthma with chloroform. In time WPath's standards of care and the procedures they endorse will meet the same fate. WPath exists because for years most people didn't know about its history or how its standards of care are used. Most people didn't know that hospitals will perform double mastectomies and other life-altering operations on children. Well, that's all changing now. WPath and everything that stands for has been exposed and now it's time for the medical profession to do what it should have done a long time ago and shut down these con artists once and for all.

[yet-another-autism-blog]

Your doctor has done the right thing for you, you'll understand later. Hormones have a HUGE impact on bipolar symptoms. There's evidence to suggest that oestrogen and testosterone affect bipolar differently. For example, testosterone levels may be related to the course of bipolar disorder and suicidal behavior. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230614943_Testosterone_levels_in_suicide_attempters_with_bipolar_disorder

Also evidence that stopping HRT can bring on sudden manic or depressive episodes: "hormone replacement medication can reduce the levels of some mood stabilizer medications―and that can increase the risk of relapsing into depression or mania." https://www.dbsalliance.org/education/ask-the-doc/can-going-on-or-off-hormones-cause-mood-swings-or-a-manic-episode/

HRT is not a walk in the park and hormones affect every part of the way our bodies and minds work. It's no easy task for a doctor to prescribe HRT especially for people with severe mental illnesses. It doesn't mean you'll never get on HRT, it just means you'll need to be a lot more careful, and whether you like it or not, doctors know what they're doing and are the authority on this.

Anon, did you read the part of the post where I said this therapist spent less than 20 minutes with me?

In that time she didn't ask me a single question about my mental health/bipolar symptoms or my gender identity. Her decision was entirely based on an intake screening done by a different therapist.

Now I don't know what kind of mental health training you have but I have a bit of medical training, and I was always taught to actually talk to my patients about those kind of things. What's true for one person may not be true for another, as a medical professional you're job is to treat your patient not their condition.

And yeah, hormones can cause changes with mental health issues but funny enough, having to spend your life pretending to be someone you're not and constantly being misgendered also causes some pretty significant negative mental health issues. Every single mental health issue I have ever had has been a direct result of my gender identity not be acknowledged or respected.

My bipolar symptoms are perfectly under control, and have been forever. I have never had a single significant issue as a result of my bipolar.

Which is definitely a good thing because this therapist is also refusing to treat my bipolar because of the whole inherently violent thing, no point in treating that.

My actual doctor, the one who treats my bipolar, saw absolutely issue with me starting hrt.

And finally

In what fucking world is it acceptable for a therapist to tell a patient they their just inherently violent and there's nothing to be done. Like in what fucking world do you live in where that's okay, regardless of other circumstances?

Edit:

Final thing I don't know what gives you the confidence that "it doesn't mean you'll never get on hrt" because that's exactly what it means. I'm not working with unlimited time here. I've been trying to get on hrt for 5 years now and something always comes up, insurance, "You're to pretty to be a man", "wait a year", etc. I have until my 24th birthday and that's it. No more chances after that. I'm 23. I turn 24 in 7 months. I don't have time to keep trying.

[paperandsong]

I've been watching the Old Guard fandom deal with a toxic person in their community and I've been inspired by how much people are openly talking about what happened and how it affected them personally. The Phantom of the Opera fandom has two very toxic people that are causing a lot of people pain. And no one ever talks about it. 

@filthybonnet regularly weaves hateful, dehumanizing terf posts into her PotO blogging. More recently, she has made numerous disgusting comments that Lucy St. Louis's hiring is mere "virtue signaling." Few people challenged her on it, but when they did, she doubled down. She isn't alone - other fans have made similar comments, letting their hatred for Cameron MacIntosh become racialized criticism of Lucy. There has been a general insensitivity towards Lucy: comments about her wig, complaints about the inclusive lyric changes, racist asks being published over and over. This should be challenged publicly. If you see people in the fandom making racist posts, call them on it.

People in our fandom seem reluctant to deal with these issues and as a result they fester. What we think is a "nice" place isn't actually that nice if it tolerates terfs and racists. And on that point I agree with @trans-flint/@cefantomeenhabitnoir. Despite that my saying so before has landed me on his list a third time, I do actually believe this. 

The list is another thing we don't talk about. I have never addressed the accusations made against me publicly. I don't want it to seem like I don't talk about it because I don't care about being called a racist. I was called some disgusting names after reblogging this post on critical thinking after phandombigotryarchive's call out of Madame Faust. I reblogged that message because I disagreed with what PBA did. I do think it's important to call out racism in fandom, but I don't believe PBA's goal was ever to actually address racism in fandom, otherwise she would be active today, posting about the racism against Lucy St. Louis. PBA was out to destroy another author, and I don't agree with that. I did not respond to PBA's accusations against me because they were absurd. She had no evidence that I am a racist person - because there is none. She knows nothing about me - she couldn't even get my nationality right (I am white, but I am not Brazilian, and have never pretended to be something I am not). She was clearly angry and nothing I could say would change that, so I kept quiet.

But the list continuously harms people in the PotO fandom and I think by not talking about it we are making it worse. This list of "transphobes" and "racists" includes both trans people and people of color. The list is managed and promoted by @trans-flint/ @transphandom/ @cefantomeenhabitnoir, who is white. So there is this very messed up dynamic of a white person accusing fans of color, many of them Asian, of being racist. Pharoga creators in particular were singled out as being racist and writing "Orientalist" fics even while many Pharoga writers and artists are themselves Asian and actually have lived experience with Orientalism. A white person doesn't get to tell Asian creators they are being Orientalist. Especially when that white person has also written Pharoga fic. They seem to have deleted it all. So, @trans-flint gets to delete their fics without consequence, while the majority of people on their list are there permanently, without evidence, without opportunity to defend themselves. This is wrong.

The result of this list is not a safer phandom. The result is writers and artists of color leaving the phandom because they do not feel safe, because the list affects their mental health. It means less Pharoga content, less PotO content with a canonical person of color, and less LGBTQ+ content. If posting support for trans rights lands someone on the list again, the result is fewer people in the phandom willing to reblog trans fics and art and support for trans rights. You know who probably doesn’t care about being put on this list? The actual terfs and racists.

I don't see how this list is helping the phandom become a better place. But then, the creator of the list also states on their blog that they've been "destroying phandom since 2020". How can you say you want to protect people while trying to destroy their fandom at the same time? 

[thesoftrainbows]

Were the Marauders really that popular?

NOTE: I can go more into spoil-free details on my headcanons for them, you just have to ask :)

TW:// contains brief mentions of abuse, mental health issues, mild swearing, smoking, brief mentions of homophobia, racism, ableism, transphobia. I think that’s about it. 

I’m writing this long-ass Wolfstar fan fiction and based on my personal headcanons, here’s the answer:

Yes and No. 

In my fanfic, and the way that I always see them in my head, we have an Indian (Gujarat) James Potter who’s stupidly in love with a plus-sized, snarky Lily Evans. 

We have a half-Japanese, genderqueer and gay Sirius Black who’s well known for being a blood-traitor ever since their second year, not to mention that they’ve been leaving people awe-struck every single time she feels like a girl and dresses in a feminine way. They’re also deaf in one ear. He suffers from panic attacks and childhood PTSD. NOTE: His family dynamic slightly changes to fit the story. They’re still from an abusive home, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. Sirius’ relationship with his parents - particularly her mother - will be brought up and explained.

We have a heavily-accented Welsh Remus Lupin, who’s scrawny and awkwardly tall that lowkey scares the shit out of everyone. He knits, but his scars and unpredictable aggressiveness that comes near full moons is enough to keep people away. He’s unlabebed but madly in love with Sirius. He’s also depressed, anxious, has low self-esteem, and daddy issues. Also, I made sure to bring up his relationship with his mother because I just love Hope Lupin and I just think she’d be an awesome mom. 

We also have Peter Pettigrew, who’s known for his fierce protectiveness for his younger sister, Jess (she’s a Slytherin, btw). He also probably has black lungs with the amount of cigarettes he smokes daily - he’s the reason why so many people even got cigarettes. He comes from a home where his parents are constantly at each other’s throats, so he’s never been able to see what love is supposed to look like when it’s healthy, but he’s working on that with a special Fem!OC. He’s depressed, has low self-esteem, and is constantly looking for someone to love him and prove himself to. 

As mentioned before, Lily Evans is a snarky, plus-sized queen. She’s also really fucking hilarious and has so many awesome prank ideas once she befriends the Marauders. She also befriends Regulus, and their dynamic is the absolute cutest. She likes the academic side of school, but it’s not the center of her world, leave that to James. She likes sneaking around with her friends at night just for the heck of it, she’s never been caught.

Marlene McKinnon is a trans woman who’s basically a lesbian version of Sirius Black. She was actually the fifth roommate of the Marauders’ until her third year. She’s always baking but Merlin save you if you piss her off or any of her friends. She’s one of the best Beaters and duelist Hogwarts has seen. She and Sirius are the definition of platonic soulmates. 

Dorcas Meadowes is a chaotic bisexual and also a raging feminist and activist that a lot of people don’t like because she’s “hard to talk to”. She’s loud, and bold, and constantly holding meetings with staffs so that they can improve the school to make it a safer environment for POCs students (and staff, too), LGBTQ+ folks, women, and literally every other minority. 

Mary MacDonald is a Korean ballerina who’s been on a violent streak ever since that group of Slytherins cornered her and...did some...things to her (it’ll be explained in the story, don’t worry). 

SO. Yes they were popular, but not in the way this fandom usually portrays them. They’re very well-known because they’re such an odd group filled with every possible outcast you could think of. Some of them (James, Lily, Peter, and Mary) are liked, but the rest are either feared or hated. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of people who genuinely like all of them and think them fun to be around, but Sirius, Remus, Marlene, and Dorcas are walking Change-That-They’re-Not-Ready-For and for a school that has so many homophobics, racists, ableists, and transphobics, it’s a struggle. 

BONUS:

Regulus is a half-Japanese, Hemophiliac Slytherin baby. (For those who don’t know, Hemophilia is a blood clot disorder that causes spontaneous bleeding and also excessive bleeding when injured - a lot of European royals have historically had this as a result of inbreeding). He would meet his brother and friends in secret just so that they could preserve their relationship. Regulus actually loved the Marauders & Co. and vice versa. There’s more but I don’t wanna spoil too much. I just love him. 

[blood-sucking-freaks]

a psa to anyone who works in the school system;

the first few weeks of school are hard on everyone of course, but

if you have students you know are trans, check in on them. frequently.

we have to go through the back-to-school stress and anxiety ON TOP of having to deal with getting deadnamed and misgendered multiple times on a daily basis, even after teachers are informed of our names and pronouns. it is so detrimental to our mental health that unless you are trans, you most likely will not even begin to understand. also keep in mind when we pull you aside to officially tell you we're trans, that you are not the only person we are doing it to. we are having to have that conversation with most likely 6-10 other staff members. we are going to be anxious. we are going to be worried. we do not know you yet, so we will not be able to go into that conversation knowing wether or not you will be accepting. it is terrifying to have that conversation that many times. work with us.

if you have students you know are neurodivergent, check in on them. frequently.

and this isn't just for autistic students. if they have ADD or ADHD or anything under the neurodivergency umbrella, check in on them. we have the stress and anxiety of school starting, topped with sensory issues and many other factors of being neurodivergent. we will get extremely overstimulated and overwhelmed. we will not process things the same as other students. during the first week especially, we need your help. work with us.

today was my second day of school and I was deadnamed by all but two staff members I see, and was misgendered in front of the entire class by someone who had previously seemed so truly care about my pronouns. today I had two meltdowns (full on crying and hyperventilating, and not a single person noticed, so that made it worse), one because of a conversation/activity that included having to talk with someone I barely know about things I'm not even fully comfortable talking about with some of my friends, in a room full of 35-40 people all talking at once. the other because I couldn't process the text I was reading, and the teacher (although she didn't mean to) truly made me feel horrible and stupid because she tried to simplify it multiple ways, which I still didn't understand, and ended up having to tell me the answer to the main question for the classwork because in the end I still couldn't get it.

tldr;

Teachers, the first few weeks of school are hard. But they are even harder for trans students and neurodivergent students. Check in on us, let us know that you understand, and that you are here for us should we need it (reach out to us first, we will most likely not be capable of reaching out to you for help). We are mentally struggling more than you'll ever know

[azurowle]

@dworkinsdaughter okay I’m making a separate post to address this bullshit but I’ll say it right up front, because your response to me only confirms it:

You are not talking TO me. You are talking AT me. Your rhetoric is based on the presumption that our vaginas and breasts will be enough for us to relate to one another, rather than trying to engage me in good faith, on my own terms, as an individual. It’s lazy and it’s little wonder why trans masculine people are not fans of you.

If you relate to the fact the environment is the issue,

I don’t.

It doesn’t take a master literary critic to understand where you were going with that. It was trite and cliche. I just don’t relate to it.

Understanding a metaphor and relating to it are not the same thing.

you have to understand your conclusions are wrong.

The irony of you telling me this is just…something else. The absolute audacity.

The hatred directed towards the female body you have decided to internalise and allow to consume you emotionally.

Did you just ignore the “I’m more ambivalent or even positive towards my body since I started transition and HRT” in my last post?

To the point where I’m in no real hurry to get my top surgery done?

It’s truly sad.

You are calling the fact that I am more mentally stable and happier than I’ve ever been “sad.”

The radical feminist philosophy places the blame where it belongs - outside of your body.

The radical feminist philosophy does not give two shits about trans men or trans masculine people, at least not beyond those who are gender critical.

If it did, it would elevate our voices when we talk about the unique obstacles and struggles we face, and would do everything it could to include us in struggles for reproductive justice.

Instead we get blamed for when OB/GYNs treat us like garbage or even refuse to treat us entirely. We get blamed when insurance denies us coverage for essential treatment because we have an “M” on our documentation. We get told to suck it up and deal with it.

We get called fujoshi, traitors, “pedophilic autoandrophiles,” and delusional.

You don’t see me as a person. You see me as a text to deconstruct and analyze, a prisoner to be liberated, and someone you know personally based on whatever universal experiences you think we have simply based on our vagina and breasts.

It is not your body that is wrong.

Your metric for harm is skewed. Tell me, which would you rather have - a “healthy body” belonging to someone who is suicidal and miserable in it and self-harming and drinking to cope? Or someone who is transitioning who is finally at peace with themselves?

It is harm for you and the people around you to medicate and pathologise a perfectly working healthy body

Making assumptions about my friends, family, and support team is…pretty out of line to be perfectly honest.

You as a female found this world excruciating towards women and decided you could escape by means of transition.

And what do you know of my personal life and experiences?

What do you know of me beyond words on a screen?

You don’t.

You are wrong.

I’ll accept the consequences of that if that’s the case, but I’ll be going on three years in November since my first T shot and I wouldn’t change a thing.

The truth will bite you

It’s taking it’s sweet time. Which is fine by me.

and radical feminists are trying to prevent you from further self harm that you cannot undo.

So tell me, what do detransitioners think of the TERFs that claim to be the only ones to support them calling their bodies “mutilated?”

We love you enough to tell you the truth.

You don’t even fucking know me.

You love some sort of platonic idealized archetype of me, based on nothing but my breasts and vagina and words on a screen. You love me as a victim - as someone that needs to be saved, as someone who you can fantasize about detransitioning and recruiting.

You don’t even try to engage with me as an individual. If I even went into my story would you even fucking listen, in good faith, without applying your ideology to my experience?

I’m pretty sure you’d nitpick every single part of my trauma instead to show me why I’m not really trans, just a lost delusional lesbian.

And you have the audacity to say you love me?

Fuck. You.

There is no escape.

This is what caused my suicide attempt when I still thought I was faking being trans.

Your body was never the problem.

No, it wasn’t. The disconnect between my physical reality and my sense of self was what causes the distress.

HRT saved my life and has objectively made my life better.

Gender critical ideology left me with no mental health assistance, no support, and no hope.

[buytheticket]

like if you needed more proof terfs have no real skin in the game- instead of showing solidarity and building support and joining hands in a single effort, terfs would rather bitch and moan about trans (should mention that i use trans to also include non binary people, idk if theres a better term now or if trans and nb is fine though i suppose it depends on who you’re asking, anyway) people talking about how a roe v wade ban would affect them

like it’s truly moronic thinking! though i guess if you’re exhausting yourself with the mental gymnastics the terf mindset demands it’s not surprising to see something like that spewed out

i’ve seen it said that a big aspect of being trans is the right to fully autonomy over your own body, your own self. like in this world it’s so hard to feel fully autonomous over any decision- like college for example like sure you can go to college for anything but is there a school in your area that offers the program? can you dorm? are you willing to take out a loan? will you settle on something so you can save money at a state school or community college? how does this determine what kind of jobs you can get? is it enough to pay off a loan? do you have to move? sure there’s a “choice” here but the options are severely limited by external circumstances beyond a lot of people’s control

so, i guess what i’m trying to get at, is that transitioning, how ever way that looks for someone, really has the potential to be a fully autonomous act (provided the person has the ways and means and is lives somewhere and is in an ok position to do so) and i think thinking about transitioning is very powerful when you look at it from this perspective

plus what i think also needs to be emphasis is that abortion is just another option for repro care. and like, just with trans health care, repro care needs to be just provided as a given for who needs it like how they need it. like idk abortion and repro care quality and access also being a trans issue is a no brainer! and like it’s also a race issue - like don’t black babies have one of the highest infancy mortality rates in the us?- like speaking about this all as a “woman’s issue” buries the lead on so many related issues.

this all feels like surface level observations and thoughts and there’s a lot to dig into but thinking about this got me think about like how working on my relationship with myself helped me get a lot more comfortable with being trans, that and listening to other people’s stories and just getting out more. but it took a really long time for me to even start working on stuff like this and i was very far into my transition at that point. for me, it’s very easy to brush off terf stuff since like, i feel confident enough in my scruples and what’s what to not be bothered too much by something that’s just flat wrong.

this isn’t to say that this rhetoric doesn’t bother me. people being wrong about something like this bother me! i think terf stuff should bother anyone with a conscious and it bothers me more that pre and early stages transition trans people get like the brunt of the hurt that comes with it. it’s a very vulnerable and personal time even if you have a good support system. idk it’d be nice to see people get excited at transitioning cause they know they’ll be able to get what they need as soon as they need it. like i wish living was something people looked forward too. idk i felt that me and my friends were kinda dreading going from elementary to middle school or from high school to college and then trying to keep our heads above water after.

it doesn’t have to be this hard!

[recurring-polynya]

I have to say I knew that at one point renji, ikkaku, yumichika and iba were in the same squad with kenpachi but good god you managed to paint a beautiful picture for me. I simply assumed that for them it was simply party time all the time along with a few bald jokes but this is much better. Emotionally healthy squad 11 which still love fighting more than anything. I always cringed when someone would just describe them as hooligans that do nothing but fighting. I mean they do that too but I love the idea that they are all emotionally healthy and mature, a loving and supportive family to their own - in their own wakka doodoo kind of way thats endearing - and of course they are in my opinion they single capable force against sexisim. Because they don't care about anything else - gendere, sexuality, gender performances, race, mentality or anything - other than if you fight good you respectable and if you fight good in squad 11 you family. ( like when kenpachi just became captain he made yachiru his lieutenant and no one was against it no one thought it was beneath them, sure thru nag at her sometimes but that's mostly in a banter like way because she call them stupid nicknames but no one hates her for being unrightfully their superior. One day they got a new captain and a new lieutenant that's a child and they just went with it.) I admit their disdain and disrespect to squad 4 is still frowned upon but I do believe some squad 4s can handle their own, it's just that we saw the really peaceful ones. Anyways sorry for ranting. Just wanted to say that yeah, I really like how the past squad 11 with iba and renji in it was a great place in general. I think if they found out some one was being sexist - for whatever reason - they would be there right next to nanao - or iba's mom protesting. Kenpachi and yachiru as well. And that makes me want to be squad 11 ,despite not being much for fighting, so bad.

So, for starters, thanks! I try to have fun whenever I write Squad 11, and I’m glad you enjoy my take on them.

My Squad 11 is just... really not very canon, though. Canon Squad 11 is actually pretty gross and sexist. Yumichika is transphobic, Kenpachi makes homophobic remarks about Yumichika, they bully Squad 4, there’s a filler episode devoted to a guy that Ikkaku bullied for, like 100 years because the guy lost his reiatsu saving Ikkaku’s dumb ass.

When you write fanfic, you occasionally run into these more problematic aspects of the source media, and you can choose to dig in and analyze them, or just... remake them in your own way. Take for example, Gin. If you read fanfic about Gin, there are some people who will peel away the layers of him and his fears and insecurities and still make him be a horrible gremlin, and it’s really stellar writing. Other people prefer to write him in an AU where maybe less bad stuff happened to him, and he’s more mischievous than sociopathic, and this is a less meaty interpretation, but it’s also more fun. Sometimes fanfic is a meal and sometimes it’s candy. It fulfills different needs and different fantasies and all of it is welcome.

Yumichika, who for me is the fulcrum of Squad 11, presents this problem. I really don’t like the way his “appreciation for beauty” plays out in canon. He doesn’t actually appreciate beauty, he just likes telling other people they’re ugly. I don’t think he’s ever pointed out beauty in anyone else aside from himself or his zanpakutou. I remember the first time I watched his fight with Charlotte and it struck me as so off -- why wouldn’t he find her beautiful? I mean, I know it’s a transmysogynistic joke, that’s why, men dressed as women is funny, hurr hurr, but Yumichika is gender nonconforming himself. This was an opportunity to make a cool character point, and Kubo took the cheap laughs road instead. Going back to what I said last paragraph, a skilled writer could, in theory, write about his insecurities and his brittleness and meanness and write a pretty compelling story, but a) Kubo certainly doesn’t, and I have never actually found a Yumichika-centric fanfic of this nature, and b) this doesn’t fit the role I need him to play in my stories. I am rarely really interested in writing about Squad 11 for its own sake. I like to write them as a backdrop for the period of Renji’s afterlife where he hit absolute rock bottom and bounced back up again. We already know the role Ikkaku played in this, except that Ikkaku is a complete moron in terms of mental health, and I really, really felt like this is where Yumichika needed to come in.

I like to massage Yumichika’s character a bit, but I do want to keep the flavor of some of his character flaws-- he’s still shallow and mean and judgy, and I love that for him, but I like to add in a positive side to his appreciation for beauty. Having Yumichika make fun of Izuru’s pores is funny but it’s even funnier if he’s just given Renji a compliment on his hair first. The idea that a Yumichika compliment is attainable makes all his drags the more vicious. Yumichika also judged people by their beauty instead of their moral character, which is humorous to me. He dislikes Byakuya as a person, but is obsessed with his haircare regime. I like to have him treat Rangiku as an equal, beauty-wise, and a person whose opinion he respects based on her aesthetic. Rangiku is actually a pretty savvy and very emotionally intelligent person whom many people write off because she likes to present herself as a lazy airhead, so in an extremely convoluted way, this all works out. I like to think that Yumichika’s ideas of beauty are also caught up in boldness and risk-taking and having one’s outward presentation ring true to their inner self. To me, this is the core of why he loves Ikkaku. To him, Ikkaku’s devotion to doing the most Ikkaku thing at all times, no matter how stupid, is irresistibly sexy. 

Aside: At some point, I decided that the fact that a lot of people in Bleach have colorful marks on their faces and elaborate hairstyle and accessory games implied that make-up in Soul Society is gender neutral. I like to think there is actually more of a divide between the nobility, who like their make-up to follow rules and be classy, and, well, Squad 11, who like to get make-up ideas from Jem and the Holograms. I don’t even wear makeup (I don’t know how and it’s expensive and I am ashamed of myself, we can talk about my own gender presentation later) but I like to write about both my male and female characters wearing make-up. I don’t actually know how my readers feel about it, but it just falls under the “Is that what people want?”/“It’s what we do” philosophy of all my writing.

I think one of the theses of my writing is that middle management is more important to the character of a squad than the person at the top. Captains sort of act as ideals to strive for, but they are generally unapproachable for one reason or another. Yachiru is more like her captain in this respect (which makes sense, since she is, in fact part of her captain). Ikkaku and Yumichika present this dual idea that 1) strength is awesome, fighting and being the best is awesome, and 2) part of strength is presenting yourself to the world in a bold and confrontational way. (The fact that both of them are hiding huge parts of themselves is laughably ironic). Kenpachi and Yachiru are shining examples of Do Whatever You Want and Be So Strong That No One Can Stop You. 

What really makes this work is that you need someone one layer down-- does anyone actually subscribe to this nonsense, and that’s why Iba - Abarai Squad 11 is Best Squad 11. I really, really enjoy the genre of Reddit posts where a total bro will find out that his girlfriend is trans and react by becoming a vehement advocate for trans rights. I love the bodybuilders typing encouragement to each other meme. Our world is flooded with disingenuous messages from concern trolls trying to tell us why being kind and inclusive to one another is bad or that you should reject help because struggle makes you stronger and the idea of a Himbo looking at something like that and saying “that seems dumb" is delightful to me.

I actually feel like there are a lot of awful people with bad ideas in Squad 11, it’s just that Renji and Iba don’t put up with their shit, and over time, that becomes the culture of Squad 11. I think that Squad 11 has incredibly turnover, but the ones who stay are the ones who subscribe to the ideas you mentioned-- fighting is what matters, if you wanna go argue about shit, go join Squad 5. In the IkkaYumi story I wrote, which happens shortly after Zaraki takes over, a ton of people leave. The Bount Arc (which I know a lot of people skipped) features a dude who was extremely pissed off because he had liked the old Kenpachi and thought Zaraki sucked and was so mad about it that he betrayed Soul Society. You might think that this arc would feature Zaraki caring about this in some way shape or form, but he really didn’t. So, I think there are a lot of Soul Reapers that took issue with serving under a little girl as a vice captain, they just aren’t in Squad 11 anymore.

Oh, one last note on Iba’s mom. I am of an age where a number of my friends have mothers who were Second Wave Feminists. The moms in question are a real mixed bag, because they Came From a Different Time, and on one hand, you have to respect what they went through, and on the other hand, they are very difficult to get along with. I liked the idea that Iba has always chafed against his mom and her big personality, and then Renji comes in, and is like, “hey, your mom is strong as hell and she has a lot of ideas that I never thought of but they make sense” and Iba realizes that, even though she’s still a huge pain in his ass, his mom is the person who made him who he is. Moms are complex.

Uhhhh, I have definitely lost the thread of wherever I was going with this post. Thank you for enjoying my Squad 11, which is nothing like canon Squad 11. Hopefully maybe this year, I will actually finish my Squad 11 Self Care story, where Renji stops being a drunk disaster person after Yumichika teaches him how to fill his brows; I got stuck on a part where Rangiku gives Renji a talk on ethical sluttery.

[atruththatyoudeny]

Monthly Reads | September 2020

Happy 28th! All the love for all the authors in this fandom. Thank you for making my days better with your work! ♥ Here are all the fics I read and loved this month: 🍂 Remember Me Fondly | kiddle | enemies to friends to lovers - 1990s - historical - angst - humor - closets - 74k “You’ve told the beginning of the story so many times. I want to hear the end.” Louis laughed, scratching at his chin. “I can’t say I really know when the end happened.” “How about the tour of ninety-five?” “Alright.” Louis took a deep breath. “But it took a few steps to get there. What would you like to know?” Penny cleared her throat. “How did you first meet Harry Styles?” Grunge legends Fearless Doe topped the rock charts in the ‘90s, but they spent the decade kicking Smudge off their heels. From lawsuits to jaw-dropping scandals and a surprising joint world tour, the two bands share a complicated history. Twenty-five years later, frontmen Louis Tomlinson and Harry Styles are finally ready to sit down and tell the world their two sides of the same story. Truth may vary.

🍂 you came into my life | disgruntledkittenface | Queer Eye AU - american AU - closeted character - Coming Out - pining - fluff - angst - implied/referenced homophobia - 57k They stand around talking for a minute and then Jonathan starts to ramble, “Has there ever been, like, an unrequited gay love story in here? Like a Brokeback Mountain moment where, like, someone just fell in love and they didn’t mean to?” Louis feels bile rise in his throat as Jonathan’s eyes sparkle, pleading for a yes. He manages to look around and see thoughtful looks on his coworkers’ faces before their heads shake no. “Not here,” Liam says finally. When the Queer Eye cast and crew sweep into Louis’ small town and fire station to make over his best friend and coworker Liam, Louis’ carefully constructed walls start to fall down and he has to face his fears – and the only guy he’s ever been able to see a future with.

🍂 Everything I need I get from you | jaerie | a/b/o - mpreg - strangers to lovers - emotional/ psychological abuse - sexism - unplanned pregnancy - 10k In a world where music and sound are just as vital to health as food, Harry is stuck in a town that thinks professional music is a scam and a relationship he never wanted. One chance event changes his life.

🍂 at last, at last | suspendrs | post-apocalypse - dystopia - cult - mentions of violence - mentions of death - homophobia - internalized homophobia - 41k “Come with us,” Tommo says, stopping at the other end of the gymnasium, near the doors. “Don’t let them make you suffer any longer. Come with us, and be human.” Before Harry has even finished thinking it through, he’s on his feet, gaining the attention of every single person in the gymnasium. What has he got to lose, anyway? Or, Harry is born into a cult in a post-apocalyptic world, and Louis is the leader of the rebel group tasked with the mission of shutting them down. Together, they make a rather effective team.

🍂 give me love | falsegoodnight and soldouthaz | a/b/o - past relationship trauma - past abusive relationship - slow burn - touch deprivation - touch starvation - nesting - angst - fluff - 41k Despite being an omega, Louis’ always had a blatant dislike of alphas. - Or, Louis doesn't feel like a good omega, Harry doesn't remember how to be an alpha, and they figure it out together.

🍂 You, Who Never Arrived | abrighteryellow | Only You AU - strangers to lovers - 90s AU - world travel - soulmates - fluff - angst - Fate & Destiny - 42k “That was him, Niall.” He claps a hand over a disbelieving laugh. “My soulmate – the person I’ve been waiting for since I was nine years old. That was him on the other end of the phone.” “But it can’t–” Niall stutters, unsure of what to do, how to put a stop to this. “That wasn’t real.” “Wasn’t it?” Louis rushes past him, zipping up his fly. He grabs a black denim jacket from a hook near the door. “Then who did I just talk to?” “Where are you going?” Niall demands as Louis pockets his keys and swings his front door open. “I just have to get a look at him. I just have to see, that’s all!” “You’re not serious. Louis, it’s already late.” “He’s at the airport. Fifteen years I’ve been expecting him around every corner, and now he’s half an hour away. I can’t just sit here.” “Bu–” “I’m not going to do anything crazy, I promise. I just–I have to see him. This is my chance. Maybe my only chance.” Louis Tomlinson is days away from marrying a perfectly nice podiatrist when he gets a phone call that changes everything. Or, the Only You AU in which Louis has a soulmate and it's definitely not Harry Styles.

🍂 Shall we sleep, my love? | givelourrylove | angst - emotional hurt/comfort - kid fic - 15k There is so much sincerity in Harry’s voice. So much that says you, Louis, I look forward to seeing you, you and your soft eyes and your petite body, just you, you, you, but Louis forces himself to ignore that. To gulp it down again, sizing up the lump that had formed beneath his lungs, possibly reappearing any time and choking him with everything he decided not to think about for the past year. or Louis loses his job as a teacher, has to move out and find somewhere to live. A certain someone named Harry offers his home to Louis and his son. Pining, crying and reading bedtime stories involved.

🍂 so much I could live for I could die | louisnights | dystopia - trans character - sexual harrassment - friends to lovers - strangers to friends to lovers - no smut - 15k “Sometimes I wonder what’s out there,” Louis confesses, tucking into his second biscuit. “I wonder if what they’re saying is true, about the Thieves, about the other compounds. Why are we not allowed to leave? Go to other compounds?” Lottie gets up, letting out a sigh as she squeezes his shoulder. “You shouldn’t think like that, Lou, it will get you killed.” “They can’t take away my thoughts,” Louis answers defiantly. Lottie pats his shoulder before she disappears to her room, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. or: Louis is a transgender man who escapes his compound after extenuating circumstances, and meets the Thieves, who show him what freedom really is.

🍂 A Road To Hope | he_wants_to_write | historical - World War II - 1940s - farm/ranch - PTSD - emotional hurt - hurt/comfort - angst - mental instability - internalized homophobia - 18k “We’re far from the people and their issues, don’t hold back. Please.” It’s true. They are far away from anything that could stop them, the middle of nowhere being the safest place on Earth for them to fall in love. The sacred land where sacred love is created. However, Louis is certain that even if they weren’t safe, he wouldn’t resist the sight of Harry, his pleading eyes, his warm skin beneath his touch. or In the heat of April, 1944, an escapee soldier lost in a dirt-road stumbles upon a small farm and finds himself recovering from the traumas of World War II in the simplicity of a frugal life, with the help of a little boy's innocent soul, and a farmer's hopeful green eyes.

🍂 With Love's Light Wings | 4ureyesonly28 and reminiscingintherain | Rome and Juliet AU - a/b/o - 1920s - marriage proposals - 12k Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair London town, where we lay our scene... — Or something like that, anyway. On either side of the River Thames live Louis Montague and Harry Capulet, their noble packs entangled in a feud so old, nobody even remembers what caused it. As fate will have it, against all odds, they fall in love. Harder than the bricks that make up their families’ estates and faster than a Duesenberg car. AKA The 1920s ABO Romeo & Juliet AU that we desperately wanted to write.

🍂 The Very First Words of a Lifelong Love Letter | LiveLaughLoveLarry | first meetings - friends to lovers - weddings - no smut - 9.5k The prompt I picked was (lightly edited): "Harry and Louis have been best friends ever since they met through fandom (I picked Critical Role) twitter. Person A (I picked Louis) lives in New York City and Person B (Harry) lives in the UK. They’ve never met in person but they FaceTime and text daily. Person B’s cousin is getting married to a rich American who’s paying for the entire family to travel to The Hamptons for a summer wedding. Are Harry and Louis ready to meet?" ~*~ Harry thought he was just imagining things when the flower girl looked like one of the twins, but -- he’s almost certain that groomsman is Louis. The pictures he's seen haven't been the best quality, granted, but he knows Louis. He does. Harry stares wide-eyed as he walks down the aisle in step with the bridesmaid, taking their places on either side of the stage. As they turn to look out into the audience, Harry’s strong suspicion solidifies into certainty. That’s Louis. He’d bet his life on it. But Louis doesn’t look at him, and it’s not like Harry can wave. He can only stare, mouth still hanging half-open. Suddenly, as much as he loves weddings, he can’t wait for this one to be over.

🍂 promise you'll remember (when the sky is grey) | Anonymous | american AU - summer - 33k "Once you come to this town, you find that it's not so easy to leave," Niall spoke with a fond tone in his voice. "Canyon isn't a place that one leaves behind easily." "I guess we'll be able to test your theory come August," Harry spoke with a small grin, "because I'm set to leave on the twenty-ninth to get back to work in LA." Niall smirked back in reply, "I guess we will, but mark my words, you'll end up finding something to make you stay. We all did." Harry laughed, surprised at the man’s unwavering confidence in his statement. "We'll see." - a summer spent in small town Maine, filled with trips to the farmer’s market, lemonade tailgating, taylor swift, and falling in love at quite possibly the most inconvenient time ever (not necessarily in that order).

[oleanderblume]

A Not Very Easy Thing to Talk About.

☆Detransitioners☆

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

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

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

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

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

That is terrifying.

Except its not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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