#part of the reason i went on birth control was cause like. dysphoria but also i needed to Do things i couldn't live like that once a month

[vulpinesaint]

BEEN TWO DAYS NOW BOYS I THINK WE'RE IN THE CLEAR! NO MORE CURSE OF THE BLIGHTED I AM FREE... IMAGINE A WORLD WHERE TESTOSTERONE TAKES ALL THE PAIN AWAY...

[honeyandbloodpoetry]

My Gender-Affirming Hysterectomy Journey

❗️❗️❗️Tldr: I wanted to write about my experience and feelings on getting a hysterectomy for both gender affirming reasons and as a medical emergency. There is a tw for suicidal ideation and organ photos are at the bottom. This does not cover everything in my journey of course, and I may write more on my experiences sometime. But this was just a very emotional write-up for me during my recovery s few days ago. ❗️❗️❗️

The lifelong journey to getting my hysterectomy was hard. As of right now, a hysto was the only gender affirming surgery I was interested in--I do experience dysphoria, but am uninterested in surgery. A hysterectomy held a lot of weight for me even before I knew I was transgender. The earliest moment I can recall dysphoria and pain over the ability to become pregnant/expectations of motherhood as an inevitability was in kindergarten. In fact, as someone with CPTSD, it is an astonishingly clear childhood memory. As I got older, the dysphoria and eventual phobia got worse and worse, no matter how hard I tried to stuff myself into a box. My dysphoria began to make my psychosis worse starting I'm high school, it affected my self esteem and bodily insecurities, it affected by sex life and relationships. Within the past four years, the dysphoria and phobia relating to having a female reproductive system began taking over my life and making me so genuinely miserable and honestly delusional over my own body.

All I wanted was a male body. And it felt like the most female and painful part of me was in a place I could never touch, but controlling everything bodily, sexually and mentally about me. Since childhood I was haunted by this and in an indescribable amount of pain. My first puberty hit and I had extreme reproductive problems--less than 15 or 20 periods in my entire life. Extreme pain. Then, starting in mid December symptoms started happening, and in January I started heavy bleeding for 80 days straight. I lost weight uncontrollably (I choose to be fat on purpose and weight loss or gain out of my control is a trigger for ED for me), I was in constant severe pain, I had cramps my doctor compared to birthing cramps, I could barely walk anymore. I fought with our healthcare system as a poor person who's trans wife was recently fired due to gender discrimination and has STILL not found justice to try and get emergency healthcare. I was told how sick I was, and that it was obvious I was at least in precancer stages, and that my entire reproductive system was basically a minefield. It was almost funny that the thing in my body that had caused me the most suffering in my life could be what killed me. My testosterone was also tanking during this time, slowing my transition and causing my estrogen to be higher than I would obviously want. It felt like my reproductive system was destroying me, and honestly it had been for a long time.

As I prepared for surgery and went to appointment after appointment, I had to keep returning to the maternity ward and gynecologist office. I was repeatedly misgendered in person and in documents and even told by an ultrasound specialist that my uterus looked fine and "there's no reason for her to have this surgery". I came out of most of my appointments crying and just wishing I had been born a man, or not at all. My mental health plummeted because I was convinced the surgery would not be successful, and overall my dysphoria was at an all time high. I never told anyone because I was ashamed, but the first gynecologist from my usual community clinic who referred me to a wider network basically walked into the room and told me I had cancer because I was fat and misgendered me the whole time. I did not tell anyone because I was ashamed and embarrassed, but my surgical team and other doctors have been amazing and let me know this was astounding medical malpractice. Still... all of these appointments really drilled into me and just hurt. It got very bad for me and I was unsure how to reach out. I felt like I was so wrong and bad inside and out, and that even my sickness was a burden. I was not sure how to go to anyone, but my suicidal ideation had gotten worse and worse since December and was beginning to peak to something that felt out of my control. It was terrifying, and at my breaking point I scheduled therapy and made the decision to go back on antipsychotics.

The day of the surgery, I felt resigned. I had hope, but I was also scared of what might happen. I have a notoriously frail body and was scared I would not make it through surgery. Or that it would be unsuccessful and... then what? I just held hands with my wife and sang to her in the car on the way there and let her love just sit with me. I hadn't slept a wink the night before and it felt like I was in a state of floating. As I was being prepped for surgery, I felt still. Somewhere in between. I got to be held by Millie one last time and I said a prayer to the diety who has walked beside me since childhood. As I was put under, all I could think about was going home and playing some video games and cuddling with my wife. Being peaceful. Being loved. Nothing wild or crazy or outlandish. Just peace.

Maybe being free of this burden.

When I woke up from surgery, the first thing I did was look around then down at my hands. My first thought was "I'm alive". After struggling so much with being suicidal, it felt so happy and real and I felt so happy to be here. I leaned my head back on the pillow and swam in and out of sleep for some time. I had no idea if my surgery was successful for an hour or so, but I was in pain and somehow felt at peace, like I knew. I finally felt like I was resting for the first time in a long time. The surgeon came to my bedside and told me that the surgery was a complete success--not only that, but it was astonishingly smooth and easy, one of the best surgeries she had ever done. I smiled and just thanked her and told her this was all I've ever wanted since I was a child. She almost cried and told me she was so happy she could help me.

Millie hugged me so tight when she could see me. We were both so relieved and so happy and I just got to tell her how happy I was. It was just tear filled joy and peace and the feeling of finally everything is okay. Finally something has went right. I will never forget how happy I was to see her and tell her it was successful (even though she knew before I did) and the feeling of wholeness I felt. Coming home really felt like coming home--plus, I had my amazing friends Nathan and Suyin there to help care for both of us and make an amazing dinner. I felt so warm and so loved and so OKAY. I'm learning to let people in and it is such a warming feeling, especially during recovery.

It's been a little over a week since my surgery and my recovery is going smoothly. My body is a lot stronger than I thought. I started my new medications yesterday, and while this isn't suddenly a cure all for my mental health, it genuinely feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. My gender affirming healthcare is inspiring me to keep going. It saved my life in more ways than one. This dysphoria is no longer active--it is now a past trauma I can healthily process. I can now feel right in my body, right in my sex life, right in my gender identity in a way I never have before. Despite the mood swings that come with menopause and despite the pains of recovering from surgery, I feel more happy and whole and not-in-pain than I ever have in my whole life. I have never experienced gender and body euphoria like this before! I just feel...complete.

I am really happy I held on and had hope. I am really happy I fought my way through the medical system to get this surgery. I am happy I get to live my life with this healthcare. I look at the little boy me still deep inside my heart and hug him so tightly because WE DID IT! This feels like a new chapter to my life that I am incredibly happy to get to be here for. It's honestly difficult to put the gravity of all of this, both the euphoria, dysphoria and pain, into words. But I wanted to try.

I am unsteady, but I am okay. I am happy. I am free.

I AM NEUTERED BAAAAABY

[cookinguptales]

Today, SCOTUS is hearing arguments about whether businesses should have to cover birth control for their employees in their health insurance plans and I just. It’s hard to read.

I was going to make up this big informational persuasive post about the situation. But I’m just. I’m just so sad and angry and tired. So I figured I’d make an emotional one instead.

Let me tell you about my hormonal birth control journey. 

(Rest under a cut for length and content. cw: mental illness, graphic discussion of medical issues, injuries, & menstruation, discussions of suicide & self-harm, discussion of opioids, alcohol, & recreational drug use.)

 I started taking hormonal birth control late in high school to help regulate “painful periods”. It wasn’t for actual birth control at that point and I hadn’t been diagnosed with any disease, not even POTS yet. I just had “painful periods”.

Things were okay for a little while, but when I got to college, things started to fall apart. The double whammy of undiagnosed mental illness and a barely-diagnosed chronic illness (POTS was relatively unknown at the time and my doctors gave me information which I now know is incorrect) really caused me to spiral during my first year of college. I didn’t know it yet, but I react very poorly to some forms of hormonal birth control. Put succinctly, they drive me batshit insane. On one pill, I literally did not leave my apartment for over a month. I became very literally agoraphobic. Bouncing off the walls, irritable, angry, high suicidal ideation. As bad as side effects can be.

But I didn’t know that yet. I just stopped taking BC as part of the whirlwind of medicines and doctors that my life became for about two years while I was on my (first) medical leave from college.

My ribs were coming out back then. I didn’t know that yet, either. I knew that when I was around 16, I started getting severe back pains. The first time it happened, I had to go to the ER because I couldn’t breathe and my teachers thought I was having a heart attack. I got a narcotic shot in my butt. It did nothing to dull the pain. That’s how much it hurt. But it went away on its own eventually and I over the years I started medicating reoccurrences with a lot of different things. Physical therapy. Muscle relaxers. (Medically prescribed) opiates that made me puke. Prescription strength Advil. Wine.

I didn’t see that it was all connected yet. Not yet. I didn’t realize, with my periods as irregular as they were, that the back pains were coming around the same time in my cycle each time.

My “painful periods” got worse. I talked to an OBGYN, with my mother in the room. I told her that I was scared of something like childbirth. I knew that my blood flow was dangerously bad. What if the fetus didn’t get enough blood? Oh, my doctor laughed, that wasn’t a problem. The fetus would always get enough blood. The risk was that I wouldn’t. That it, like the tiny vampire it was, would take it all until I simply died. If I got pregnant, I would likely die. I asked about permanent sterilization. My mother cried. My doctor said no. I didn’t ask again.

I went back on birth control.

It was odd. I didn’t want children before that visit, not really. I was so tired all the time. I knew I’d never be able to manage to raise a child — and honestly, I didn’t care to try. I was so depressed. I was so sick. It sounded like so much work. I still don’t want to have kids. But it still feels… weird, knowing that I can’t. And knowing that I could die if I get knocked up.

I’m bisexual, but I have zero sexual contact with men (because I don’t love them, despite being somewhat sexually attracted to them) and zero sexual contact with people with penises (because they could literally kill me and it would be no one’s fault). But I’ve been followed home by men before. I’ve had cabbies lock me in and ask me for a date. I’ve had men who won’t take no for an answer. And my god, it terrifies me that I might have to deal with both sexual assault and a slowly creeping murder all at once.

(It’s laughable to think he’d be tried for both.)

I ended up getting sick off birth control a few times. I went on and off it periodically during my college career. I now in retrospect see that a lot of my “meltdowns” were a combination of discrimination-based stress, physical breakdowns, and hormonal whirlwinds. At my worst times, I was on birth control. The wrong ones.

My periods, over time, got worse. My back would hurt. The cramps were unbelievable. I couldn’t feel my legs. I could feel them too much. I couldn’t keep food down. I’d be so angry, so sad, so everything.

I went to the doctor again. I was diagnosed with both endometriosis and PMDD. PMDD, or premenstrual dysphoria disorder, is like PMS on steroids. I remember telling my doctor, in halting tones, that I wasn’t well before my periods. That I always had depression, always had anxiety, but I wasn’t well before periods. At her prodding, I confessed that sometimes I would just lie there for hours, for days, in the fetal position. That I’d clutch at my own arms, mooring myself, because I knew that those white knuckles were the only thing between me and killing myself. That my brain, always somewhat malevolent, became an inescapable mantra of death. That I’d just lie there and sob because it took everything I had not to hurt myself. That I’d find claw marks, bruises, on my arms later, and all I could do was get some ice.

It was better than the alternative.

I told my doctor about how painful my periods had always been. How I’d heard a story once about, y’know, that Spartan boy? The one who hid a fox kit under his shirt during an examination and stayed perfectly silent even as it clawed at him so he wouldn’t be caught with it? How it tore at his stomach until he fell down dead, still silent? I told her how I felt like I was holding a fox kit every damn month and sometimes I couldn’t stand the pain of it. Sometimes I considered ending that pain, one way or another.

She put me back on birth control.

A little less than a year later, or in layman’s terms, about a year ago, my mental health was so bad again that I was almost committed. Literally committed. I had to go stay with my parents for a few months while I transitioned to new medications because it wasn’t safe for me to be alone. I learned that the birth control I was on could create those symptoms — but they didn’t start until months after you’d started taking it. So you didn’t realize it was the medicine. You just assumed you were crazy and unlikable and so, so angry. At the world, at your loved ones, but mostly at yourself.

I learned, around that time, that I also had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. That the pain I felt every month right before my period wasn’t just cramps. It was my bones coming undone from their sockets. It was my hips dislocating. It was my ribs popping out of my spine. I realized that that lump my parents could feel in my back wasn’t a hard knot of tense muscles. It was my fucking rib poking out of my back. I learned that there is a period right before menstruation that mimics a period during pregnancy where your joints loosen — your body thinks it is preparing you for birth, for loosening your pelvic cavity so an entire head can pass through. For someone with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, that period of joint looseness was enough to wreak absolute havoc on a system of already-weakened joints.

I learned how to put my own ribs back in with a foam roller. I started drinking marijuana tea for the pain. I went on a different birth control. I stopped taking the placebo pills. I had to fully eradicate that entire portion of my cycle. Goodbye PMDD and ribs constantly popping out. I don’t miss you!

I am still on that pill, y’know. Every day I take it and wonder if I’m one step closer to the day when it inevitably destroys me. The last one took about a year. Tick tock.

Or maybe I finally found the one that works… I really just don’t know.

The fact of the matter is that I have a full handful of maladies that require birth control so I can function. PMDD, endometriosis, dangerous pregnancy, EDS. I need hormonal birth control. I would probably be dead by now without it. The PMDD especially was that bad. My internal organs are likely a scarred-up mess. But the birth control itself almost killed me, too. God, it was close.

Simply put, birth control is heaven and hell all wrapped up in a pill. It treats illnesses and it prevents pregnancy. In other words, it provides you with both freedom and peace of mind. It is absolutely essential. But it’s also monstrous. The sheer number of sometimes-deadly side effects that come with hormonal treatments is staggering. Which is why you need to be under a doctor’s careful eye when you’re on it. You need to be free to choose whichever brand you need. You need to be free to switch kinds at a moment’s notice. None of these things are possible in a system where these pills are not fully covered by insurance.

(And yes, I know, this is a stupidly American problem in so many ways. Obviously the ideal thing here would be single-payer for all medical procedures. But that’s not up for debate here and insurance for BC is. Because for some reason we let some people’s religious convictions determine others’ health care. But I digress.)

Please don’t worry too much for me. I have a good employer who has told me in no uncertain terms that I don’t need to worry about my healthcare coverage. But there are so many people just like me. Who may not have diagnoses yet. Who may have “problem bodies”. Who only know that they need to do something and that they might have to go through several pills to find it. Whose employers either have the strong religious belief that hormonal birth control is a sin or the strong religious belief that they want to pay as little as possible for their workers’ health care. (Call me cynical.)

Those are the people I worry about. Those are the people I feel absolutely sick over as I watch the SCOTUS argue whether we should be allowed to have life-saving medicine. The people who I know will fall through the cracks the second that the cracks are widened enough for them to do so. The people who will die.

It’s a tense time right now. It’s a tense time for very obvious reasons. But this morning I find myself to be even tenser, and my stomach hurts thinking about it. It feels like all I can do is stare at a pill packet and remember every horrible reason I need it and every horrible thing it’s done to me and I just.

It’s a lot.

[lil-wurm-iswantedformuder]

CHRYSANTHEMUM - A Story About Mental Illness

This is a story about two teenage boys who are suffering from mental illness(es). The reason for this story is to bring more awareness to the fact that males also suffer. Throughout the years, women are more likely to be diagnosed with Depression or Anxiety over a male who also show the same signs. This has to do with the presumption that women are more prone to emotional issues and so forth. That being said, both of my male characters within this piece have Depression.

The reason for this story being titled, “CHRYSANTHEMUM” has to do with the meaning behind the flower itself. Chrysanthemum means loyalty and love. Seeing as this is a romance story, the love part gets covered by that. The loyalty part, however, gets covered by the fact that both these boys become loyal to each other. Both want to die, and it’s not something that they hide at all. But by meeting each other, they find a reason to stay, both in the hospital with each other, and on the outside where someone, be it, parent or guardian, is waiting for them.

These following paragraphs are the backstories of both characters told through their own perspective during a meeting with their therapist. 

Isaac’s Backstory: "... According to my mom, I had episodes. Whenever she would leave, I would freak out and get hysterical, to the point of passing out. She said the neighbors thought she was beating me or something. It got to the point where she couldn’t leave me anywhere by myself. Heh, guess I had separation issues. Mom said she tried to get me looked at, but no one around in our area took any of it seriously. Guess I just got worse after that.” Isaac rubs his neck, as if uncomfortable with his next thoughts. “I guess fast forward a few years and all I wanted to do was fight. I remember always being angry with everyone, including my mom. Most people chalked it up to hormones, but that wasn’t it. I had this fire burning hatred in my heart. I wanted to hurt people. So I did. I got into fights, and I would give it my all.” Isaac lightly drags his fingers over his nose. “That’s why my nose is so jacked up. Fought some kid who was bigger than me in all ways, knocked me out with one hit. I deserved it. Oh well.” “What about the incident? Tell me about it?” Isaac tenses up tremendously, leg bouncing out of nerves. “Uh, well,” he hesitates - “there isn’t much there. I started hating everything but in a different way. Nothing made me happy. After a while, you sort of shut down, ya know? I figured it would be easier to get it over with and die, but I guess that didn’t work. My mom found me, we agreed to come here, and that's how it ends.” The therapist nods her head in understanding, causing Isaac to release a sigh of relief. “Thank you for being honest.” Isaac gets up to leave.”Before you go, you’ll be getting a new roommate. Be gentle with him, okay?” Isaac nods his head as he walks out of the office.

Isaac was hospitalized when he was in 9th grade due to him attempting to commit suicide. Upon further inspections, it was found he was suffering from many mental illnesses that went untreated for so long. He was diagnosed with Paranoia, Depression, Anxiety, and BPD. Because these went untreated, he developed psychosis. It is a mental break where the brain can not tell what is real and what isn't. This isn't Schizophrenia though. Psychosis is a side effect instead. This can happen with stress, depression, anxiety, and/or schizophrenia. His admission into the hospital was voluntary, but he will not leave until both he and his mother agree that he can survive in the "real world" with these illnesses.

Seth’s Backstory: ... “I guess it should just come out and explain huh? Around the time of the first “attempt”, I was going through with my surgeries for my gender. Like everyone else, I was getting nerves. This was one of the biggest steps in my life. I couldn’t calm down. This rubbed some people the wrong way. My parents to be specific. I don’t live with them, instead, I live with my grandparents, but my parents still have some influence in my life. Around the time of the surgery, they were getting mean and nasty with their comments about how their “little girl” wasn’t their little girl anymore, or how I was a sick f**k who didn’t deserve love. They would misgender me to make me feel horrible and then would get upset and angry when my Abuela would correct them. The night before the surgery, we all had dinner together, and they went hard on me. Left and right they wouldn’t stop. They ripped me apart and knocked me down. My father went as far as to hit me. I.. I don’t know what came over me. I ran. In my room, I had a small pocket knife with me for protection. I guess I just lost it.” Seth sits in silence again as the memories start to fade again. “You know the rest.” She nods. “ That was the first time. After that, my surgery got postponed, and we waited for me to heal up. I started seeing a therapist while recovering. Time goes on and I get my surgery. Everything is going great. I am finally who I want to be. I should be happy, right? I wasn’t. I don’t know what went wrong. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t fully me. The hormones I was taking weren’t working anymore. I still sound like a girl. People were still judging because they knew. Nothing was going right again. I guess my friend Lily noticed my attitude change, so she invited me to a party.” Seth stops talking for a moment, staring off into the abyss. Dr. Riley just watches. Suddenly, a small voice could be heard, and it was coming from Seth. “I.. I did nothing wrong. It wasn’t my fault.” Riley knew exactly what he was talking about, but instead of going into it further, she encouraged him to keep telling the current story. “After that, I gave up. I didn’t want to live. Nothing mattered. I went to a bridge. I sat there for a moment, and then I jumped. Heh. I guess someone saw me and got help.."

Seth was recently hospitalized against his free will. When he was found after attempting suicide a second time, the doctors admitted him into the hospital. His Grandparents also agreed so that is where he is now. Seth suffers from Suicidal Tendencies, Depression, and Gender Dysphoria. His gender dysphoria plays a huge role in his depression and tendencies. Gender Dysphoria is distress a person experiences as a result of the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. Though Seth had the surgery, sounding and looking feminine is the leading cause of his GD. 

The whole point of this story even becoming a thing is so awareness can be brought to these heavy topics. Most people know little to nothing about mental illnesses, or they know the wrong facts and make assumptions based on their information. All I want is there to be a better understanding of these issues so that suicide rates will drop and those with an illness won't feel like they are worthless just because something out of their control is causing issues. I want people to be more understanding when someone calls in and says they are having an off day and can't come in because their depression is kicking in. I want friends to understand that their friend can't come to an event because they ran out of spoons. Hopefully, that will happen.

[aliapohno]

character information

this will be edited upon the creation of a new character, or if i decided to add an already existing one into the jumble.

Ezemshil Qestir | Formerly of the Himaa | 19 years old | Female

Being of the Himaa, Ezemshil is one of the many to of had a twin sibling at birth; however, her sibling was still born, and the clan took note of the striking difference between the living child and the dead, as well as how she looked nothing akin to her parents. Born with blood red hair, and eyes as pitch black as they abyss, they were edged with red limbal rings.

Since birth, she was thought of as a demon - a monster - in disguise. Her parents believed that she had killed her sister in the womb.

She grew up hearing the whispers behind her back, and was always under the hateful, scrutinizing eyes of her parents.She listened. She dealt with it on her own by ignoring it. But, a child can only take so much and for only a certain amount of time.

At the age of 12, an older child of another family in the tribe decided to loudly call her names and throw insults at her. She ignored it - ignored him - until something within her snapped. All she saw was black, and then red. Upon her hands, upon her clothing. Her face stained with other child’s blood after she had near-pummeled him to death, and it was only because of his brother that the boy hadn’t died.

I feel it deep within, it's just beneath the skin

She left the tribe after that, not wanting to succumb to whatever drove her to that bout of madness, and to get away from everyone that had been the cause of it. She wandered the Steppe, hiding from the creatures that roamed and called it home; she hid from the other, more vicious tribes, and wandered alongside the Goro for a bit. Up until she reached Reunion.

Shedding herself of her old tribe, Ezemshil proved herself to the Qestir and joined their tribe at nearly 14 summers of age, and she has been a part of it ever since.

Please note that she is not a yandere; she is a yangire. The latter is easily mistaken as the first, but the only reason she would kill someone? Isn’t because she wants to be the only person in her senpai’s life. It’s because of the bullying and abuse she went through as a child, during her time with the Himaa; she easily becomes violent went stressed out, and pushed into a corner that she can’t find an escape from. The “monster” within in her - the creature that was created - “escapes” and “takes control”. In this state - in this psychotic episode - Ezemshil is extremely dangerous so please proceed with caution.

Currently, after meeting a few Eorzean travelers, Ezemshil has taken to adventuring herself and finds herself in a foreign, far off land.

( Server: Siren )

( More characters below the cut )

Ayame Shokunin | 23 years old | Female | In a relationship

Born in a trading village in Hingashi, Ayame grew up learning the ways of the monk from her father - a man that had gone and trained alongside the Fists of Rhalgr. He had left before The Mad King annihilated the temple, and had returned back to his home to prepare for his marriage to his future wife.

She lost her father when she was still a young girl, during an Oni’s attack on their village; her father had - years prior - retired from hunting and any sort of fighting because of an injury. However, he had continued to train his daughter in the ways he had been trained. Because of his retirement, her father had taken up to opening a bakery in town.

None of the other hunters in the village could match the creature, so Ayame’s father took it upon himself to fight it. A long, bloody battle, and one that took both his, and the oni’s, life. Ayame had no time to mourn the passing of his her father, and took it upon herself to be strong for bother herself and her mother.

This was the start of how their relationship with one another began to crumble.

Following in her father’s footsteps, Ayame helped her mother at the bakery, all whilst keeping up with her training. She used her training as an outlet, due to some of the kids in their village picking on her for being overweight, and the weight never shed even as she grew up and older.

Ayame would always remain a chubby little newt, but it didn’t bother her in the slightest.

As of current, Ayame has opened three of her chakras, and is still doing her best to have her father’s Soul Crystal attune to her. She is also living in Eorzea with her boyfriend/basically husband.

Because of her training - and the extent of opening chakra - Ayame has various scars along her body. By this point, most have healed and have left light marks on her skin. She is also missing a number of scales, leaving only darkened, scarred skin where the trauma was too much for them to grow back:

○ On her left arm (shoulder area). 》》 Ripped off. ○ On her right leg (upper thigh). 》》 Scratched and chewed off; unable to heal due to burn scars overtop the area. ○ Along her chin and jawline. 》》 Bitten and torn off during her first chakra opening. never healed properly, making it impossible for the scales to grow back.

( Server: Mateus )

Miah Aliapoh | 28 years old | Identifies as Male, appears Female °° In a relationship (married)

Born in the South Shroud, Miah is the fifth son of Nhagi Aliapoh - a woman of less tradition than most other members of her family. Her (male) children don’t follow the usual naming conventions of Keeper families and each was given their own unique name; the reason for this? Was because Nhagi believed that if she did this, her next child would be female.

Sadly, that would not prove itself to be true until a handful of years later, after Miah’s birth. She took to raising her fifth son as a girl; she dressed him in cute, pretty little girl’s clothing, and kept his hair long. Whilst the practice may not be as uncommon in some families and Keeper villages, the others that lived with the Aliapohs kept the young boy from developing any sort of dysphoria as he grew older. 

Miah knew he was a boy - despite his name (something that would - for a very long time - be a bother to him) - and he never questioned his mother’s behavior or reasoning behind what she did. 

When the calamity struck, Miah’s family packed up their things and moved northward, from their home near Camp Tranquil. They took to the outskirt of Buscarron’s Druthers. It took them a handful of years to set themselves back up, to what they had been.

At 16, he left home. At 18, Miah took to a little home in Bentbranch Meadows, taking to a life of hunting and foraging.

Miah took up adventuring at 21 and found himself pulled into a whole hulabaloo of a mess; he is a warrior of light, but not the warrior of light. He doesn’t like everything that comes along with the title, nor does he think of himself as any sort of hero; he absolutely abhors it all, and wishes the Mother Crystal had never chosen him as one of her own. At some point - after his physical change - Miah wound up telling Mom Crystal to go and fuck herself, and retired from adventuring all together. (Canon point this took place: Heavensward, before the battle with Estinien/Nidhogg.)

He has taken to a more simple life, working as a healer (canonly a White Mage, which took a lot of talking and begging and training to have the Padjal and Elementals allow him to become one), a mother, as well as running a spa and eatery in the Lavender Beds (The Healing Winds - Lav Beds Ward 9, Plot 21).

°° Was using a male character model; however, due to an alchemy incident and accident, Miah retains his gender idenity while having a woman's form and body.

( Server: Mateus )

[loudlytransparenttrash]

I wasn’t prepared for this...

There’s plenty of weird and wacky things going on in America these days. The Apprentice guy is our president, BLM is rioting in defense of criminals and chanting for cops to be killed, SJW’s are rioting against democracy and feminists are walking around dressed as giant vaginas and calling themselves oppressed.

The left tries to normalize everything from Islamic terror to 400 genders but not even I could have imagined they would go low enough to try normalize child abuse. I mean, it’s bad enough that they’re forcing 5 year olds to carry “this pussy grabs back” signs and forced to say “which one of us will be raped next?”, “I shouldn’t need a penis to get paid” and “fuck the patriarchy”. But what’s worse is this whole gender issue that’s becoming out of control.

When people ask me what I think about trans people I give a pretty distinct answer. In general I have no issue of women transitioning into men and men transitioning into women but what I do have an issue with is normalizing children being forced to become transgender.

These two parents went on Buzzfeed in a video called “I Am A Gender Non-Conforming Parent” to brag about how awesome it is to force your child to live as a boy AND a girl because gender doesn’t mean anything, right guys? It’s pretty fucked up. In the video we have a mom… and a mom, raising their kid and essentially messing with them psychologically. “My understanding about gender is that ultimately it doesn’t mean anything, it doesn’t give you the information about that person.”

In 1965, some kid named David Reimer was born and he was reassigned to become a girl and raised female at birth. He was given hormones, surgeries, etc and he was raised entirely female. For a long time David was fine and researchers and phycologists such as John Money took this as proof that gender identity was learned and not biological. But it ultimately turned out to be a failure after David stopped calling himself a girl aged 11 and transitioned back into being a guy aged 15 and began discouraging others from transitioning, after being depressed for years he killed himself. It’s the many cases like these that are swept under the rug by people who claim that there’s no difference between guys and girls and their behavior and identities are all just a social construct.

Raising your child as something they’re not, the child is going to grow up thinking they are something they’re not. Gender isn’t this amazingly complicated thing some people like to make it out to be. Already kids are being confused as hell because everybody is telling them to question their gender and change their gender, even when they’re just three and four years old.

The fact is, most children who experience gender dysphoria will not remain gender dysphoric after puberty. Most kids grow out of it. And the ones who don’t are usually confused by their homosexuality as most GID children turn out to be either gay or bisexual.

Children aren’t born with the cognitive capacities of your average adult, and before the age of 11, most children are simply unable to perform abstract reasoning or understand nuances when having a discussion. Instead, children below this age generally see things in either-or scenarios, and divide the world into dichotomies of “wanted or unwanted.” So when a parent asks a little girl if she wants to be a boy, the little girl probably thinks, yeah sure I want to play in mud and wrestle people so their mom excitedly posts on facebook that she’s a cool mom with a cool transgender kid and books the next appointment to see a therapist to begin the transition process.

How about we let the kid grow up first before we start pumping them with hormones or blocking their hormones, it’s really not that hard to stop yourself from abusing children. Anyway, back to talking about the crazies in this video:

“The person I am today was very much in line with a person that I was or longed to be when I was little. I was a tomboy, my best friends were primarily boys, I played with “boys” toys.”

I don’t know how many times I have to make this point. Liking things that aren’t traditionally for guys or for girls doesn’t make you a new gender. It means that you may not be traditionally masculine or feminine. If I like something that wasn’t traditionally female, it doesn’t mean I should turn myself into a guy or start calling myself genderfluid or whatever one of the 400 new genders I can pick from. What makes these people think that since they have some non-traditional gender trait (which is fine by the way) they have to change their entire gender, transition into a new one and enforce their kids to do the same? What the fuck is going on?

“People ask me, “do you have a boy or a girl?” Whatever that means, this person could be anybody.”

This is like saying it’s wrong for humans to call their babies human because many people identify as a non-human. Whether you’re pushing for children to be genderless and to stop conforming to oppressive gender roles or whether you want them to be known as non-human and stop conforming to oppressive human species roles, first you must throw out everything we know about biology, endocrinology, neuroscience and any last piece of common-sense that you have left - which is something most people just ain’t willing to do.

“It’s real funny because our son is super into sports, like maybe he was like an Olympic athlete in his past-life, like he’s come with all of these sporting talents that were like visible at seventeen months.”

Yes, it’s so funny and weird that your male son is super into sports and is naturally talented at sports even though you’re raising him as a total genderless child. Totally shocked! Who would have thought! … These people like to contradict themselves. First they call their “genderless” child a boy and then they talk proudly about him being a traditional male. This entirely goes against the non-binary, agender narrative. She’s telling us that the kid is just a typical boy but she’s trying to queer him up not because it’s what he wants but it’s what she wants to make herself feel better, so why not mess with him right? It’s like those fat dance moms and beauty pageant moms who force their 3-year old daughter into dancing on stage and wearing wigs and make-up and the mom is stood up in the middle of the audience desperately encouraging and reciting their kid’s choreography and routine while the kid is dying on the inside as everyone watches on, all because the mom wants to live her own fantasy through a toddler.

“I’m constantly trying to like queer up my relationship with him and get him to wear tutus and he hates it, he’s just like NO!”

They laugh at this. They think they’re doing a noble feminist deed by forcing their son to dress and act like a girl, even when they themselves admit that he hates being dressed up in feminine clothes and begs them to stop, they just laugh it off and continue to force it onto him. He’s too young to understand the importance of dressing like a girl but he’s old enough to tell doctors he wants hormone treatment, right? Am I the only one who’s noticing how fucked up this is? What’s the difference between this and forcing a little girl to wear dresses instead of jeans? They go mental when it’s reversed but when they enforce their own version of genderless roles on children, it gets turned into a cool empowering Buzzfeed video to inspire others to do the same.

”He’s taking in like kid media and he has a book that is like just pictures and words but it also has like a picture of a girl and there’s a picture of a boy and but I’m just like child - child. This is where he starts learning like what things are and so I hate the idea that he’s getting imprinted on him what people look like.”

Oh shit, he’s being introduced to reality? Oh fuck, learning about biology is going to cause some problems. I mean, it goes back to what I was saying earlier, getting pissed that a children’s book shows a boy and a girl and calls them a boy and a girl would be the same as a human non-conforming parent getting pissed that there’s a book with human children being called human. I’m so sorry science isn’t changing just because parts of it goes against your fantasy. A woman is a woman, a man is a man, a human is a human. If YOU don’t identify with these, that’s fine, you have my sympathy, but leave children out of it and stop trying to force the world to play along. I can’t believe that saying something as realistic and obvious as “don’t abuse and lie to your children” is now controversial.

“Everybody needs to be reconsidering the way that they’re presenting genders to their kids.”

No. They don’t. This goes to show just how closed-minded these people are for thinking they have the moral high ground to tell every parent out there to join their genderless utopia where everyone pretends to be equal and abide by their oppression rankings and rules and if they don’t, well they’re just bigoted assholes. Why does the word “cult” continue to spring to mind whenever I start talking about their ideology? Maybe it’s for good reason…

[invisible-mirror]

Sooo this is normally a thing I would work through in a private journal, but I deleted my LJ not long ago, so I'm gonna post it here. Feel free to engage or not.

I got on the subject of transgenderism the other day, and surprised myself by going into a bit of a rant. Let me preface by saying I support trans people's rights to undergo surgery or hormonal therapy, change their pronouns, choose which bathroom fits them better, etc. It's no skin off my back, and it clearly means a lot to them, so it'd be pretty boorish of me not to let them have it. But this conversation I had recently led me to realize that, on an emotional level, I seem to feel there might be some skin off my back after all. That's okay, though, I can work through my feelings like a rational adult, watch and see.

My rant, once I'd backed off enough to fully analyze it, boiled down to two root causes:

1) My BS meter going off. I'm sorry, I am WORKING on recalibrating the thing, that’s the point of this post. But it’s a process. Telling me that someone who was raised male and looks like a male "is actually a woman" or vice-versa evokes the same instinctive gut reaction as telling me "This Jackson Pollack painting is a masterpiece that represents the human condition." I'm sorry, maybe that's what Pollack was aiming for, but I'm like 90% sure he secretly tripped over a row of paint buckets and then sold the dropcloth. It's a reaction that says on a barely-conscious level "That can't possibly be right, the physical evidence contradicts it" and follows up with "If that's not right, it means you aren't telling me the truth. You're trying to gaslight me and wow that's rude, how stupid do you think I am." In the presence of an actual trans person (I've met a couple), it's easy to take them as an individual and accept that they're not personally trying to gaslight me, they really do simply prefer certain pronouns, and I can apply the directive in my opening paragraph (don't be a boor) without any trouble. But in the abstract, the prospect of nodding along to the statement "If you say you're a woman, then that makes you a woman regardless of any other factors whatsoever" triggers a chorus of How stupid do you think I am​? that only gets louder in self-defense when you try to shout it down.

2) While I can't technically deny the existence of sex-based differences in brain structure and function, I can (and have on occasion been known to) vehemently declare that my "female brain" even if I have one does not in any way control my destiny, these are not the gender stereotypes you're looking for, move along and freaking give me the goddamn STEM job with equal pay already. So it hurts, a little, when I look at someone like Caitlyn Jenner posing in her white corset because her female brain simply couldn't go on without a pair of breasts in a corset, I mean, those female brains and their obsession with body image, what are you gonna do. And I KNOW, I understand that gender dysphoria is much more serious than your run-of-the-mill teenager wishing she had a bigger cup size, and that there are male brains who equally feel they can't go on without flat chests and facial hair, so it's not necessarily a sexism thing. I just really wish there were a way to avoid the implicit message I see in media/dialogue surrounding trans issues, in which the definition of woman = person who wants to look feminine and nothing else matters. Because if that's woman then frankly I don't want to be one, and I was here first so buzz off.

TL;DR My current understanding of transgenderism threatens my self-identification as a Smart Person, first by questioning my perception of reality and then by hinting that perhaps Real Smart People don't actually have the same kind of brain as Real Women, and I can't be both. These are my issues. Interesting.

So I did some reading. And came away with the points summarized below, now with 200% more analogies:

1) Here is a fantastic blog entry on semantic categories:

https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/21/the-categories-were-made-for-man-not-man-for-the-categories/

It's very long, but it stole my heart a few paragraphs in with the mental image of King Solomon and a time-traveling biologist arguing about genetics. The transgenderism bit starts in Part III. And I fully understand the argument. There is no natural law stating that society can't redefine the words "woman" and "man" to mean whatever we darn well want them to. My hangup is actually mentioned in the blog entry's analogy, but glossed over—it's where Solomon says "I understand why you need a word to categorize creatures that are genetically mammalian, but find your own word, because my word already has a definition and it does not include whales." Put less combatively, I'll grant that we have conceptual use for a category that includes both cis women and trans women (the reason that comes to mind being that unfortunately we live in a society where we still have to deal with gender stereotypes, so everybody likes being able to succinctly say “People I stereotype as XYZ”... but someone who's thought about this more than I have can probably come up with a more charitable interpretation). But we also have conceptual use for a category that includes cis women only—for example, doctors determining whether one is at heightened risk for certain diseases, or someone determining whether a conversation partner is likely to be interested in a discussion about their birth control pill side effects. If we wanted to do this semantics thing right, then, we'd invent two separate words. Which I am 100% in favor of. But instead we seem to be taking all the words (woman, female, etc.) that used to mean #2 and decreeing that every one of them now means #1 instead. This doesn't close a lexical gap, it only shifts the gap from #1 to #2, AND it induces confusion (and hostility) because some people use the words to mean #1 but others assume that they still mean #2.

I suppose if "ciswoman" ever enters everyday usage for a majority of the English-speaking population, that could qualify. "Cis" probably isn't used as a slur outside of Tumblr, right? I could get behind that. "Woman" for the fuzzy general category of "people who are similar in some particular ways but not necessarily all of them," kind of like how bowling is a sport even though there’s no running and track is a sport even though there’s no ball. And we can use "ciswoman" for medical forms and also to reassure people like me that nobody's trying to gaslight us into believing that bowling and track are two different names for the same sport.

I went with the sport analogy because it more directly expressed my concern--that I can’t name anything I have in common with Caitlyn Jenner yet we’re supposed to share a category. But I ALMOST used an analogy about how tomatoes are biologically fruit yet we classify them as vegetables, and nobody seems to care. I actually really like this one. Has it been used much? I wonder how it would play with the whole “Men have XY chromosomes and women have XX, end of story” crowd.

2) Someone on Reddit made a compelling point, backed up by others (side note: r/CMV is a great place for intelligent discussion, whodathunk?) that for transgendered people (we'll stick with women as an example) who have decided they want to present as female, gender stereotypes can be used an effective weapon by which to fend off misgendering. They're not thinking "My female brain compels me to wear nail polish because that's how female brains work." It's more like "People keep insisting I'm a man, so I need to prove them wrong by behaving like the femalest female to ever female. What does that even mean? Well luckily, my culture has provided a convenient list of behaviors that it thinks are especially female, so I'll start with those." It's like how I was free to grow my hair long and wear pink glasses frames after I'd been accepted into an engineering school, but not before. You need the signals for your chosen category to outweigh the signals for categories you don't want, and sometimes that means artificially manipulating your own signals.

So from that perspective, it's a survival strategy. Trans women aren't trying to force all women back into the old gender pigeonholes; they're using the pigeonholes as bases to avoid getting tagged out of the game. Which means preventing the rest of us from dismantling the pigeonholes entirely, which is annoying because some of us would rather picnic than play baseball for either side... and this analogy has officially contorted beyond recognition, hasn't it. The upshot is that even when a system could use serious change, sometimes you need to play by the rules of the system in order to achieve a short-term goal that's more urgent to you personally. Lord knows I've used that excuse myself.

I still can't wrap my head around why anyone would care about being called female by others if it's not about the stereotypes/cultural baggage that comes along with the word. Gender dysphoria, yeah yeah, but then I start reading somebody's argument that not all trans people experience dysphoria and I am nowhere near being able to touch that, so I won't try. What I can do is assume that since it's not about stereotypes, there's a good chance that I would not emphatically disapprove of whatever it winds up truly being about. And I can operate under that assumption until proven otherwise.

This concludes my self-assigned transgenderism research project.