#when i get one and say I'm just trans in order to get hrt and surgery and shit

[imaveryevilenby]

alright hold on hold on hold on we're doing 3am gender thinking again

so the initial idea of my views on gender that occurred to me at 5am last time in what was probably a manic episode is fuck gender I can't fit the boxes expected of me so I'll dismantle the whole system and do my own thing

so problem is I can't do that, I can't dismantle the whole system and go my own way because I am entirely dependent on the sex and gender systems we have in place and how other people view sex and gender

additionally the idea that gender itself is the outdated stereotypical system is flawed, gender is the way a person feels and we've made categories and boxes to describe incredibly complex feelings

the problem is the more specific a gender gets, the smaller that box gets, the more people are excluded from that box so the solution is another box that fits better or make their own like with neogenders

the solution is a line of gender boxes like hermit crabs...

the fun part about thinking of gender and stuff is that I personally believe that every single person on earth experiences gender and life differently from every other person, even if only slightly

so theoretically if every person on earth were to describe their gender outlook and gender experiences and form a gender identity from that, then there could theoretically be 8 billion god damn genders

the solution is more genders

the solution is running Doom (1993) on my fucking gender

[ceilidhtransing]

It's frankly horrifying how blasé some American queer people are being about the stripping away of legal rights under a potential Trump administration.

I'm very aware that queer politics and queer liberation are bigger than just “what's legal” or “what the state allows us to do” or whatever. Queer people have a very long history of existing without state support and building our own community structures when the rest of society fails us. But oh my god this doesn't mean that our legal rights aren't important. Protection against discrimination is important. The right to marry is important. Being able to access legal HRT is important. The right to legal gender change is important. Adoption rights are important. Protection against “gay panic” and “trans panic” defences is important. Not being classified as a “mental illness” or a “sex crime” is important. Having laws that are on our side isn't everything but it sure as hell isn't nothing.

I feel like some queer people today have this idealised, romanticised idea of what life was like for the queer community in the west in the 60s, 70s, 80s - this sense that Yes It Was Tough, But It Wasn't Anything We Couldn't Deal With, that it was more “radical” and “punk” and “politically pure” and so really we should be wanting to return to that because That Was When All The Cool Grassroots Queer Organising Was Happening before we started getting proper legal protections.

But a lot of the organising that people were doing back then - not all, but a lot - was towards the very rights that some people now don't seem too concerned about throwing away. They fought hard for stuff like anti-discrimination protections and HRT access and I know that's not “glamorous”, it's not “throwing bricks at cops”, but it's important activism that makes a genuine material difference to the lives of so many queer people. They wouldn't have fought so hard for these rights if they didn't matter. And the idea that acknowledging this is somehow “anti-revolutionary” or “bootlicking” or whatever is absurd.

And from these people there's so little recognition of the fact that actually, for many of us, we didn't survive this era. Or we survived but endured so much avoidable suffering. There's a tendency to romanticise “community organising” that tries to compensate for a hostile state while forgetting that community organising can't save everyone. [And it's much, much easier to do community organising when you have a modicum of legal protection. It's a lot harder to organise your queer community pantry and support hotline and safe sex supplies dispensary when the law now defines running any kind of queer venue as “child grooming” or “a public obscenity” or whatever and starts jailing people for it.] Don't rose-tint this time as one of Cool Underground Radicalism without acknowledging that a hell of a lot of people suffered and died because society was far more hostile to them and they didn't have the legal framework that we have now.

Am I saying that, because queer people have some legal rights now, everything is lovely and perfect? That queer activism is “finished because we have gay marriage now”? No. Of course not. Inequality persists. Discrimination persists. The rights that currently exist still don't protect everyone equally, especially where queerness intersects with other forms of marginalisation. There is still so much more to push for.

But pushing for more is completely incompatible with allowing a rollback of what we already have. This casual “so what if Trump takes away our rights; I'm still not voting Democrat” is a spit in the face of all the people who fought so hard for queers to have these rights. Throwing away your vote in order to make a political point and thus allowing someone into power who plans to remove legal rights for queer people - and who is also unimaginably worse than his opponent on basically every other issue - is not what queer activism looks like, and this casual willingness to sacrifice hard-fought rights is demonstrative of either immense privilege or an incredible blindness to what life is like for queer people who don't enjoy these rights. There are queer people in the world who are still fighting for their identities not to be fucking criminalised, who will be looking at the attitude of essentially “who cares if Trump gets into power and sets fire to decades' worth of queer legal victories, if that's what it takes to prove a point to the Democrats” with utter appalment. (And if you're not queer, but are perfectly unconcerned about sacrificing our rights on the altar of Refusing To Vote For A Democrat, that is disgusting, and you are not an ally.)

People fought so hard to have these rights. Rolling them back will have horrific consequences. Please don't just toss them away.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

WIBTA for using my status as an agender person to get a surgery I want although I do not want it for gender-related issues ?

TW : talk of uterus, menstrual cycles and menstrual blood

I'll start by saying this is not the US so please don't make your judgement based on that. I'll describe how things are in my country.

So I (X24) want my uterus removed. The main reason is that I want to be sterilised to stop having so much anxiety about becoming pregnant, which would be a nightmare for me, and I never ever want this to happen again.

But I can't get any other form of sterilisation as then I would keep my uterus, so I would keep my period, and without hormonal treatment it's just not liveable. To give you an idea, my natural cycles are 21 days instead of 28, I get my period for 7 days instead of 5 and it can be hemorrhagic for up to 4 days of these 7. (I used to get post-op medication because of the hemorrhagia before I was under contraception.) And of course I get through excruciating pain every time, beside having iron deficiency among other things. I'm currently trying another hormonal contraception, it's still not going well. There is always something wrong. My first pill just stopped working, the next ones made me gain 20kg, I'm currently trying hormonal IUD and although I don't bleed as much, I bleed for so long and there is so much pain that no available painkillers can block. I'm so tired. I can't imagine going through that for another 15 to 25 years.

In my country, it is written in law that you are allowed to be sterilised using various methods, all of which keep the uterus. Nothing is said for hysterectomy as a sterilisation method. And although many refuse to sterilise you at all, if you find the right surgeon you can be no matter your age. The procedure is also fully reimbursed. Nothing is said in law about hysterectomy.

This means that the vast majority of surgeons won't remove your uterus. Except if you have a pathology related to it or if you're trans (coming back to that later).

So what I described above does look like a uterus with a pathology, right? It certainly looks like endometriosis at least. I went to a surgeon known for doing the other kinds of sterilisation and tried to convince him to just remove my uterus. He refused, not without an asserted pathology. To his credit, he looked for it. He had me take an MRI. Well, they found nothing.

Which means that, although I have a pretty dysfunctional uterus that I never want to use and just keeps causing me problems, he won't remove it. Because they can't find the cause. Even though I feel completely alienated from my body because of that damn organ that keeps trying to make me bear children and will have me bleed out and in pain when I won't allow it.

Then there is the other solution. I said above you could get surgery if you are trans. It's actually a bit more complicated that that. In order to get HRT and gender affirming surgery, you first need to get diagnosed with body dysphoria by a psychiatrist. And then you get a special status in our health system that allows you to get free access to all kinds of things in the medical field (like surgery and HRT) and beyond (like laser depilation).

As I said, I'm agender. They give this status to nonbinary people so my specific flavour of gender (or lack thereof) is not the issue. But I don't have body dysphoria, only social dysphoria. People misgendering me to my face will make me feel horrible but I don't see my body as gendered. My breasts and specifically my uterus are not something that I see as gendered, so they're not something that causes me distress in terms of gender-related issues. Which means as psychiatrist is never going to diagnose me with gender dysphoria as is, and I won't have access to hysterectomy through trans care.

Except if I fake it.

Now, I have no idea if it could even work. If I could even fool someone. But I've been considering trying because I really, really want to get rid of that damn uterus. And technically, I wouldn't be faking my gender identity. Just expanding on my dysphoria. Still, it feels wrong. I wouldn't transition in any other way except removing the uterus. This path doesn't feel like it's mine to take. I feel it would be disrespectful towards actual, dysphoric trans people.

So, what do you say Tumblr ? WIBTA if I tried it anyway ?

What are these acronyms?

[coldresolve]

Hi, I'm Elias, I'm a 26yo trans guy from Denmark. I write shit, I draw shit, and I get into unneccesarily tedious arguments with anons about torture apologia in fiction. I think that sums up my vibe

I've made a few posts about this already, but tl;dr: the Danish NHS has been refusing to treat me for gender dysphoria for the better part of a year now because they've deemed me "unstable." Unstable how, you ask?

I have depression.

No, that is quite literally it. Full context under the readmore.

Fighting to be heard and having the door repeatedly slammed in your face sucks peak ass, and I'm done now. The NHS is so lackluster when it comes to trans people, all of a sudden, it makes perfect sense to me why 31% of transgender Danes get HRT outside of the NHS.

And I'd rather not have to turn to the black market, so rn I'm hoping to get a prescription with GenderGP. The issue is, I'm poor as fuck and can't afford the start-up fees for the forseeable future - unless I do something like this. I hate asking others for money, and I hate it even more if I'm not in a place where I can give anything in return. But I also recognize I'm in over my head with this, so. If you've got a cent or two to spare, I'd be grateful as hell.

I've mathed it out, and my best estimate is that I need around 3500,- DKK / $500 USD. Again, this is just to cover the initial subscription as well as mandatory consultations/blood tests. I should be able to cover the prescriptions on my own, as well as further tests/consultations down the line, so I'm hoping this is a one-and-done sort of thing.

paypal: elimunpau@gmail.com

Also, important note. We're in a global cost of living/housing crisis and this isn't a strict life-or-death situation. If you're in a tough spot right now, don't send me anything, that'd just make me feel worse about asking. I appreciate the thought but you gotta take care of your own needs first. Peace and take care ✌️

So I've been dealing with major depressive disorder since I was 11. It runs in my family, and as you might imagine, after 15 years of living with this thing, I've learned how to manage it pretty well by now. I know what it's like to genuinely be unstable - and if I were in a place like that, no problem, I'd be open about that. I wouldn't be making decisions like this. I know myself. You kind of have to when you're dealing with a chronic mental illness.

Here's where I am right now: I've got no suicidal ideation, been clean from self harm for four years, no psychosis, no inpatient admissions for the last five years. I live on my own, take my meds, and I'm keeping my life in order. Depressed, yes, but about as stable as someone with my history can get, and ask anyone who knows me, me wanting to get on HRT isn't some spur of the moment decision. I've done a fucking decade of soul searching, and a few years ago, I finally (duh) reached the conclusion that living as a woman isn't something I can even fake being content with - believe me, I've tried. I'm well aware of the scope of medical transition, but I'm settled in who I am. And I just want to live like me now. That's the only thing I want.

If it counts for anything, my partner and family have supported me through this, which has been priceless obviously, but it also goes to show that me saying "I'm capable of making medical decisions" isn't purely a personal assessment. I'm pretty sure they'd speak up if they thought I was being unstable about it or whatever

But the CPH clinic for sexology, who have consistently refused to listen to me telling them all this, have somehow magically aquired divine knowledge on my capacity to make adult decisions about my own body, and on the basis that I have MDD, they're refusing to even set me up for a preliminary interview - one that would preceed a 6 month full-team psych evaluation before the prospect of HRT would even come up. They said in their latest refusal that they wont accept another referral from me until a year after my last in-clinic conversation with them, which happened on October 24th, 2023 - meaning that with the NHS, if they accepted my referral come October (which I don't have much faith they will), the earliest I could possibly get on HRT is April 2025. Arguing for my own sanity would've sucked enough as is, but it's made harder by the fact that they won't even talk to me. You're a trans guy who would like healthcare, but you have a mental illness? Good luck, you're on your own. Long live the Danish bureaucracy.

Dysphoria makes me fucking miserable. I'd rather not have to write a sob story here, and tumblr is like 80% trans people so I guess a good portion of you can imagine why waiting another year for the possibility of maybe-perhaps-if-all-goes-well getting on HRT would not actually make me less miserable about it.

So. I'm sitting down next week along with my mom to file a formal complaint with the patient's rights committee. I don't know what to call this other than some form of discrimination on the basis of mental illness, because nothing in my current situation would prohibit me from making medical decisions for myself. And I honestly don't think that a complaint is going to do much, but I intend to make it obnoxiously long, because by law, a specialized doctor and an attorney have to read through the whole thing. If you can't beat 'em, make 'em read 50 pages of you going into detail about why you think they suck, right

And yeah, like I said, in the meantime, I'm trying to go via GenderGP. It'd be nice if my poor ass could get HRT via the NHS instead of having to pay out of pocket, but apparently the bar for entry requires that you 1) have gender dysphoria to the point where it impedes normal function and 2) somehow aren't mentally ill. Who wrote these rules? Some 60yo cis guy in a suit in Christiansborg, I imagine.

Feel free ask about anything relating to this whole situation, I'll be as open as I can about it, cause I understand that if you're going to give money to someone, you want to know what it's going to. Though I hope you understand I'm not going to doxx myself more than I already have now, or give you my entire medical history - only what's relevant to my current situation.

I know Denmark is a welfare state and on a global scale we're doing alright, but I hope you don't mind if I say this: This shouldn't be happening as often as it does. Fuck the Danish NHS.

[pupintransit]

Something fun i've noticed in the last couple days is that the novelty of my pussy has worn off.

I mean, realistically that's the goal right? You go through untold eons of feeling wrong about your body, you take the opportunity to correct it, and by X units of time it feels normal. Like you've always had this body, like walking around and simply vibing was always your reality. I remember that I possessed a penis and testes and i remember what they looked like on my body, but how they felt is becoming more and more of a distant memory.

My vulva feels natural to me now. I think all of the mental remapping my brain had to do in order to get accustomed to the change is over and done with. My folds and textures are second nature to me now, like i can look at myself in a mirror and think "Yes, I know what that part of me is supposed to look and feel like now, i don't actually have to reach down there to find it."

I reach down anyway of course. Have i mentioned how much fun masturbating is yet? I could literally do it for hours now and it feels just as natural as jerking my cock did. Moreso!

I'm taking a minute now and trying to remember the feeling of my balls dangling between my legs. I can describe it; sweaty, delicate, loose if the temperature was a little too warm. It sort of felt like a floppy stress ball that you weren't supposed to squeeze too tightly. I can recall, too, how those physical sensations made me feel, and remembering is making me physically uncomfortable already. Now though, when i turn my minds eye toward my body those sensations are absent. Of course they would be, right? I don't have those parts anymore. But I did for 30 whole ass years. It was a fundamental component of my being, and now i can only recall those feelings if i but an active effort into doing so. How dope is that shit?

I know folks who have said that their pre-op memories get changed ever so slightly after they get gender affirming surgery. Say you're thinking about a vacation you were on were the shower in your hotel wasn't working, and you get blasted with freezing water when it should have been nice and warm. That version of you would have your post-op or post-HRT body instead of what you had back when that memory was formed. That's so interesting to me! I'm not at that stage yet but i'm really excited to see if it's something i experience.

I think now's a good moment to mention something, and against my better judgement I'll probably write about how this relates to The Discourse™️ of my flavour of nonbinary, but your dysphoria doesn't actually have to be crippling in order to qualify to gender affirming care. I could still masturbate and wash myself pre-op without significant distress, for example. You don't have to "earn" it by proving you're sufficiently. If HRT or gender affirming surgery would improve your quality of life, if you can explain that without lying to your care providers and demonstrate you understand the medical risks, then that's all you need to do to "earn" your medical care. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you, even if they themselves are transgender.

Especially if they themeselves are transgender.

If you're pushing back against nonbinary indenities, or people "inventing" new genders, labels, and definitions, or even just against kink in the trans community, i hate to tell you that it won't make the people oppressing us think you're one of the good ones. Us living authentically isn't setting the trans acceptance movement back, it's what it's supposed to allow us to do in the first place. I would really encourage you to rexamine why you have those beliefs, and why me getting a cunt installed as someone who passes as cisgender constitutes a net negative for our community.

Anyway that concludes the ranting portion of today's mini-essay.

Every time i think i've hit an apex with my joy it keeps getting stronger and stronger. This is the best decision i've ever made, not just because it made my body finally make sense to me, but because it made feeling normal so boring. I can't ask for a better outcome than that.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Anecdotally I definitely would say my center of gravity has shifted much lower since I went on estrogen! Propioception is difficult for me, so exactly where is unclear, but I think somewhere below my belly button at this point.

Though funnily enough, even before then, when I did the basics of parkour dad would always get onto me about focusing too much on my lower body and not enough on my upper body--my weight was distributed relatively top-heavy but something about what felt like the most natural way to move always prioritized the lower body.

AHHHHH this is so cool!!!

I love hearing from other trans people the different ways we're noticing our embodiment of gender change (or NOT change!!!!) in response to our medical transitions. I just think it's so much fun learning more about how and why bodies do things lol

Anyway, I really think it makes sense that it would shift! Because like. It is working in coordination with your strongest force applying muscles surely! So surely it tracks for the CoG to get "dragged" up or down a bit depending on how that has changed in response to our hormones???

I would REALLY love to know more about that tho! Like WHY is it happening and HOW (not least of which because I'm about 8-9 months on T now and I want to know how I might need to learn to carry my body differently)

But ALSO now that you mention it, I think you might be onto something????

Because my center of gravity is "high"! At least in that I need railings set around like. Lower rib cage height??? In order to feel less like I'm "following my CoG over" into that vertigo feeling? And I would say that I have always tended towards a leading CoG somewhere between my belly button and my bra band.

Okay I'm officially curious! Roll call! Where do people notice their center of gravity BEFORE and AFTER medical transition or HRT of any kind - intersex siblings, this includes us - (and what hormones got added to your system) if you've done that?

And secondary rollcall! If you HAVEN'T started medical transition or HRT of any kind, what is your gender, and where is your center of gravity? I don't actually know that it will be helpful in this to include whether you're cis, gnc, trans, nonbinary, etc, but feel free to include that as you're comfortable!

I'm going to reblog this shortly (or link to a new post as appropriate -> HERE BE LINK IF THERE BE LINK) with the "low" CoG poll

[manicpixiedreamguy]

The trans man's guide to singing (on T and other things)

Introduction:

First things first: I am a trans man on HRT who's studying to become a professional singer (not opera lmao, I'm studying modern singing) and all the information I'm providing comes from my personal experience and what my current teacher, who's been teaching me since I started T, taught and told me during my voice change. This is directed towards people who want to go professional because, again, that's my personal experience, but if you're reading this because you like singing as just a hobby, most of what I'll be talking about applies to you too. I might overexplain things because I want this whole thing to be understandable to everyone, including people who barely know what vocal cords and the diaphragm are; on the same note, I hope I don't end up sounding condescending and if I do, just know that's not my intention at all. I won't be saying anything about pre-T voice training because I never did that and giving the wrong advice when it comes to these things can lead to serious damage to people's vocal cords and throats, so this is strictly a singing through and after a voice change post.

The Basics:

The first thing you have to do is talk to your teacher and explicitly tell them everything about your situation (this applies to anyone, cis or trans: you've worn a back brace during your whole childhood? Tell them. You've had any kind of surgery on your nose? Tell them, and so on; they'll probably ask anyway). I know it can be hard and even scary when you're trans, but if you don't do it you won't achieve your goals; I remember going to another teacher when I was a semi-closeted teenager without disclosing I wanted to work more on my lower register and it made my dysphoria so much worse that I just quit after a few months and didn't try taking singing lessons again for years. And being straightforward helps with both finding a good teacher and finding a safe and positive environment by avoiding bigots (sad, but true). Being honest with your teacher is also crucial because when it comes to singing, it's very important to find positions that feel comfortable and don't physically hurt your throat and vocal cords (or any other body part that's involved in singing) in order to not train your muscle memory on movements that are detrimental for your body, and while no one can find them for you, you need to tell your teacher when something your muscles are doing hurts or feels uncomfortable. Singing is almost like doing sports as the vocal cords are muscles that can and do get hurt, and adopting the wrong positions can result in a less than ideal performance at best and in injury at worst. I can't really help with this though, because I can't tell someone else how to move their own body and how to flex their own muscles and I am not a teacher, I can just tell you to take it slow and that when something's right you'll feel it and when something's wrong you'll also feel it. And remember that something not working for you doesn't make you a failed singer or anything like that, it just means you haven't found what works for you yet.

Singing while wearing a binder:

I wanted to start with this first because I think it's very important. Back in the day I've read posts on the Internet saying you should not sing while wearing a binder and while I do get where those posts are coming from, not everyone can afford to not wear one, myself included (before getting my top surgery last year). At first I tried going to my singing lessons with a sports bra under a loose flannel shirt (that kind of pattern, along with checkered patterns, helps hiding curves) but honestly it sucked as I felt too dysphoric, so I had to come up with a solution. At the time I happened to have an older, more stretched out looser binder that I decided to relegate to the role of singing binder because it didn't do its job properly anymore as an every day binder, but if worn with looser shirts in warm weather and layers in cold weather, it was perfect for singing. It still hid my chest fairly well and wasn't as constrictive as a newer and tighter binder would have been. One important thing to keep in mind is that while wearing a binder your ribcage doesn't have as much freedom as it would have without one and while that does suck, don't beat yourself up if you notice that it's difficult to do some things. I've sung while wearing a binder for most of my life and you can make it work, it just takes time and patience. If you can/want to, you can just not wear anything underneath your shirt to sing, but personally I tried doing that like once and felt awful. And if you wear tape, I guess that would be the best option; I never figured out how to wear it so I have no experience with it, I watched video tutorials and stuff but for me it never worked and I still don't know what I did wrong, but if you do wear it, try going with that.

Singing after top surgery:

I'm sorry for what I'm about to say, but after top surgery you'll have to forget how you sang while wearing a binder and start learning (almost) all over again because it's a whole 'nother story: your posture will be better and your ribcage will be more free, making you able to hold notes for longer and breathe in more air, which means you'll have to do some adjustments. First things first, you'll have to wait at least a month after your surgery to sing again (that's what my surgeon told me but you should still talk to yours, even though I'd say that as long as you'll have to wear the post surgery tight thing I forgot the name of you should avoid singing) and you'll have to take things slow. I got my surgery in August 2023 and I'm still (re)learning stuff, so be patient because it's worth it, my ribcage feels so much better now and my posture has improved, making singing overall better and easier. The most important rule when it comes to singing is listen to your body. If something feels weird or wrong, stop, figure out (with your teacher if you're taking lessons) why it feels like that and try to fix it (again, with your teacher); don't push yourself too far/too hard, otherwise you could get hurt. This applies to singing with a binder, singing after surgery, and just singing in general. Trans, cis, doesn't matter: listen to your body. I can't say anything more about this because everyone's different so I don't think I should be giving tips as what works for me might not work for you, you have to figure it out yourself. Having a teacher helps and there are some things that are pretty much universal, but their body is not your body and there are multiple ways to do the same thing based on each individual's preferences, needs, and bodies.

Can I/should I take singing lessons while my voice is still changing?

Yes, it's actually recommended! I've already said it here, but a couple months before going on HRT I found out through another trans man singer's website that taking singing lesson during your voice change helps a lot, both with your technique and with your voice is general. For your technique, it's beneficial because otherwise you'd end up with a completely different and untrained voice all of a sudden, making it harder to get back into singing and harder to find new positions that work for you, and for your voice in general, it just make the change easier. I have recordings of me singing and talking that I made each month as my voice change progressed and while my singing voice was a mess, some months literally changing every week (not necessarily going lower and lower each time, one week I'd be a baritone and the week later I'd be a tenor for some reason, then back to baritone and so on), my speaking voice rarely cracked. No idea if it's related to me taking singing lessons since the beginning but I'm saying this regardless just in case. For reference, I started T on August 4, 2021 (on this exact same day three years ago!) and started taking singing lessons the following month, so I've basically trained my voice during its entire journey.

Oh no, my voice change is a mess!

Worry not! It's totally normal and there will be lots of adjusting to do and what works for one week or one month or any other period of time probably won't work anymore as your voice keeps changing (especially when trying to switch from your regular voice to your falsetto, as your muscle memory was trained to switch at/on a different range), that's frustrating but, again, normal so don't panic if a position you adopted for a few weeks suddenly doesn't work anymore and you'll end up sounding like a hairdryer with no sound coming out of your mouth. Actually, sometimes what my teacher and I call the hairdryer effect isn't even a matter of positions, sometimes during your voice change you just won't have some specific notes and your voice will break instead but again don't panic, the notes will come eventually. While my voice did drop pretty fast, it took me around two years to finally get a full range (in my case the missing notes were exactly in between my regular register and my falsetto register, making switching between the two a pain; I think it's actually how it is for everyone in general but I'm not sure as I am just me y'know). Also my teacher told me most guys' voices will drop very low for a while and then stabilize themselves on a higher speaking range and while it kinda didn't happen to me according to her due to me being a bass-baritone and my voice stabilizing itself on a much lower speaking range, that's the average experience. Anyway don't worry, your lower notes aren't gone, you still have them but you'll have to work a little more than you used to to hit them.

Figuring out your range and type:

I'll have to tell you about voice types, ranges and classifications first. There are many different voice type classification systems, none of which universally applied (music is messy), so I'll go with the basic operatic six types one that I grew up with and that most people use. From highest to lowest: soprano, mezzosoprano (also known as just mezzo), contralto, tenor, baritone, bass. Those are the main groups, but there are subcategories as well, such as countertenor (sometimes considered a main group for some reason, no shade though) and bass-baritone (my voice type! 👋). If your voice's done changing or if you are pre-T, figuring out your range and type will be quite easy but if your voice is still changing, don't worry about it, you'll just have to check what it's up to from time to time until it'll be done and it'll settle on its final range and type (me and my deep ass voice had to go through almost the entire male range spectrum in like a year and a half so I'm speaking from experience here). An important thing to know is that pitch isn't everything as there are many other characteristics that together define and categorize a person's voice, and that voice range and voice type are two separate things as well; your vocal range doesn't define your voice type on its own because voice types are more about where you feel more comfortable singing rather than what notes you can hit (which is what defines the range of one's voice). To have an idea of what you'll probably sound like after your voice's done changing, you have to see what you sound like pre-T. The length of the vocal cords plays a huge role in this: the longer the vocal cords are, deeper the voice is; testosterone puberty results in elongated vocal cords, so if you've always had longer vocal cords like in my case, your voice will be on the lower end of the spectrum. As I just said, I had a pretty low voice pre-T, as I was a contralto as a preteen (I sang in a choir from age nine to twelve, started as a mezzo but then my voice started dropping around eleven years old), and therefore have a pretty low voice now, as I am a bass-baritone (a subtype of both the baritone and the bass types; the term refers to a lower baritone or a higher bass that can sing both and I am a lower baritone but usually sing bass because it's more physically comfortable for me), because I have long vocal cords and that's it; and while there aren't many studies about the exact role of genetics in the developing of the human voice, I sound eerily similar to my father so here's that.

Don't think that starting T sooner would have given you a deeper voice because I started it at twenty and while I acknowledge that's still fairly young, my first puberty was (sadly) already done and yet my voice is deeper than most cis men's (both statistically and anecdotally speaking). You can start whenever and it won't impact how your voice turns out. And if you're thinking about starting to smoke to make your voice lower: don't. I'm a former smoker myself and while I don't make a fuss about people smoking because I'm European, it's just counterproductive from a logical standpoint. Though one thing about singers is that, just like doctors, we smoke; when you meet a singer there's a high chance they're a smoker and if they aren't there's a high chance they used to be, no idea why. Anyway, don't smoke because it's not worth ruining your voice and lung capacity over and it's also not recommended at all while on testosterone (I smoked very little, like a few cigarettes every two weeks or sometimes even once a month, and my endocrinologist still told me to quit because my blood tests were a little messed up because of that). While it's best to go to a professional, there are YouTube videos that illustrate how to find your vocal range if you want to do that on your own or only plan to sing as a hobby, so I won't say anything about that. What I will say though, is that you should warm up first (always warm up first at least a little no matter what you do, especially if you plan to sing in the morning; even just talking out loud for a while can count as warming your voice up) and if you want to find out your range on your own please use the aforementioned YouTube videos, I've watched and even used a few back in the day and they'll tell you exactly how to do things right, don't just start belting out note after note until your voice is straining and uncomfortable because you'll get hurt (I want to make clear, as I've mentioned the possibility of getting hurt in the previous paragraphs, that getting hurt when it comes to singing ranges from having a bit of a sore throat for a while because you didn't drink water before performing to permanently ruining your voice and losing parts of your range because you tried metal screaming with no training so yeah, be careful).

Useful exercises:

In my experience the most useful exercises to do during a voice change are interval slides with the classic, iconic brrr (that I had to look up the name of because I swear no one, not even one singer, in human history has ever called it by its proper name: lip roll; I'm leaving the brrr thing instead of editing it out because it's funny) and some basic hear it and sing it. Also my teacher and I found out, during a phoniatrician check-up I did while my voice was still changing, that singing big jumps between notes helps a lot, even though I have no idea why. Basically, get a piano or keyboard (here's a link for a virtual piano if you need it), play random notes, and sing; it's important for you to switch between your modal (what I've been referring to as "regular" in this post) register and your falsetto register. I suck at explaining things, but this is what you have to do: play one note, sing it, then play the next, and so on. Additionally, I went through my text conversations with my teacher back when my voice was at the beginning of its journey and found the links to three videos we used a lot at the time, so here they are: this 10 minute vocal warm up, some beginner bass vocal warm ups, and some other bass-baritone vocal warm ups. If you go through these channels you'll find other exercises for other voice types and ranges as well. I recommend using jazz singer Judy Niemack's recordings (playlist linked in the above paragraph) because those are the one I used and still use. Your range and voice type don't really matter, you can either harmonize with her or sing in your comfortable range (in tune!) (or not in tune if you're doing this as a hobby I guess, I'm a singer not a cop) (but ear training is fundamental if you want to go professional, so: in tune!).

Alright I think I explained pretty much everything, but if you have questions don't hesitate to ask! I'll be more than happy to answer.

[hmserebusadjacent]

Self love

So, this is another self projection story after I read two articles in the space of seven days that made me realise that me loving Dorian Pavus is a ginormous act of self love.

So now Emmrich is helping my Rook have a self love moment of his own. Hope you enjoy.

Emmrich Volkarin x Trans Male Rook (Established relationship, comfort, so much love, gender euphoria, self love, Thedas equivalent of top surgery and HRT, some light smut at the end.)

Word count: 1,433

AO3 link

"What are you thinking about, my love?", Rook questioned as Emmrich got lost in stroking his fingers over his lover's chest scars. Emmrich had been staring at them on and off for a while, a wondering sort of smile on his lips that he sometimes pressed to the scars in a kiss.

Rook knew Emmrich loved those scars, as he loved all of his body and especially the more masculine parts of his body affected by the potion he took each month.

But this seemed to be something more than just admiration. The necromancer was so deep in thought it took Rook verbally prodding again before he looked up, blinking owlishly for a moment as he came back to himself.

"Sorry, I was somewhere else then", Emmrich admitted with a shy smile, and Rook couldn't resist reaching out to trace the older man's jaw with his pointer finger.

"That's OK. I just wondered what you were thinking about so intensely."

The mage closed his eyes as he let Rook's touch ground him in the moment, pressing a kiss to the rogue's fingers when they strayed close to the corner of his mouth.

"I was thinking about how brave you are. And how I can't fathom the bravery of what you have done, and how far you have come."

Awww.

"Thank you, my heart. It means a lot to hear you say that again. What brought this on?"

It did mean the world that Emmrich thought he was so brave for striving to find himself in the hollow shell his parents and society had wanted to create for him. Literally pulling himself out of the ashes had been a long and arduous process and in a lot of ways he was still reaping the long term benefits of it now.

One of them being the amazing necromancer that was currently lying between his legs, looking up at him as if Rook had hung the very stars in the sky.

"I was looking at your scars and thinking how they are an embodiment of the compassion you have for yourself."

Emmrich said it so casually yet so powerfully, as if that wasn't a statement that could shatter walls inside Rook's mind that he didn't even know existed. But he was right. It was an act of compassion of the self, wasn't it? To give both his body and his mind the solace they needed that couldn't be found through any other means. To give himself and the little boy who still lurked inside his ribcage the comfort of nudity, of looking in the mirror and not turning away ashamed.

Of allowing Rook himself to want to live. The compassion of wanting himself to live and to thrive.

The self love of such a gesture was extraordinary. And Rook had never been able to put those feelings into words before now.

"Oh, Emmy", Rook whispered, the wet tinge to his voice the first indication that he was on the verge of bursting into tears. As soon as he heard the first wet sounding syllable Emmrich was looking up, concern falling away to worry as he took in Rook with a hand over his mouth trying to hold back tears.

"My love! Oh, my darling, I'm sorry! Was it something I said?", Emmrich babbled as he crawled his way up the bed and pulled Rook into his embrace, scanning his lover's eyes for any hint of what he could have done wrong.

Rook let himself be bundled up, let the smell of Emmrich and his cologne wash over him as he wrapped an arm around his neck and just tried to breathe around his own quiet sobs.

"It's-not your-fault", Rook managed to get out, snuggling up to the necromancer's neck as Emmrich breathed a little sigh of relief, allowing his lover to hide himself away in order to calm down.

"Let it all out. I'm here."

Let it all out. I'm here.

Rook had hoped so many times to hear those words spoken to him so fondly, so full of love and kindness in the time before he had met Emmrich. And then Emmrich himself had blown every dream Rook thought he had had out of the water by being more amazing as a friend and a partner than he could be possible.

Emmrich was holding him oh so gently, making soft little humming noises that made his throat vibrate next to Rook's ear. With a shaky smile Rook recognised the tune as a lullaby he had told Emmrich about once, one that always served to calm his frayed nerves.

It took a few minutes for Rook to cry himself hoarse, not even trying to stop the tears because his feelings evidently needed to get out of him somehow. Even after that Rook allowed himself a few more moments to come back into his body, to feel Emmrich holding him so carefully.

"Are you with me, darling?", Emmrich questioned as he offered a cloth that he had probably picked up from the nightstand.

"I'm here, Emmy", Rook replied, his voice sounding stronger than he expected.

Emmrich gave Rook the space he needed to wipe his face clean, but his expression showed he was still eager to find out the reason for his lover's outburst as Rook gently pulled away enough to look at the mage.

"I'm sorry, your words caught me off guard", Rook ventured, his heart still aching in his chest as he processed the raging internal feelings too.

"There's no need to apologise for that. I'm sorry if I caused you distress, even inadvertently", Emmrich promised, the hand that wasn't still wrapped around Rook now reaching out cup his cheek instead.

"It's not your fault, Emmrich. I just hadn't been able to put those feelings into words before, and you said everything so perfectly", Rook admitted, his small smile turning into a grin as he raised a hand to trace over his scars.

"These show I love myself more than I thought I did. And that's wonderful."

Emmrich grinned too, looking so damned proud that Rook had to resist just kissing him on the spot. It didn't help that Emmrich was smoothing his thumb near the corner of his mouth, disturbing the peach fuzz that grew there.

"That is wonderful. I hope one day you might see why I am as in love with you as I am. Completely and utterly."

Fuck!

“I love you enough to fill the world. Maybe I can fill my body with love for myself too.”

Words seemed to be not enough for Emmrich to express his feelings as the mage let out such a soft little noise as he crashed his lips against Rook's. Rook responded in kind and let out a little whine of his own, not content with their current state of closeness.

Twisting in Emmrich's arms he placed a hand on the mage's chest, keeping up the passion of the kiss even as he tried to push Emmrich down into the mattress. Emmrich let out a low moan as he let himself be pushed backwards, hands reaching for Rook to pull him down and on top of his body. Bare skin met bare skin, one of the mage's large hands spreading across the rogue's back as another wound into his hair.

Rook felt so deliciously pinned even as he led the charge by questing forth with his tongue, tasting honey and tea on Emmrich's tongue.

“I love you! I love you so much!”, Rook managed to get out in-between kisses, using the limited space that Emmrich would let him have.

“I love you too! Maker, I love you too!”, Emmrich practically whimpered, a familiar desperation creeping into the way his hands squeezed and moved over Rook's body.

By the time the kiss was broken, both men were panting hard, foreheads pressed together in a gesture that Rook still believed to be more intimate than sex in some ways.

“Let me make love to you. Let me love you!”, Emmrich pleaded, his voice sending shivers down Rook's spine. Time for him to enjoy the rewards of being with a man who had always seen him as a man and always would. Who had just shattered and reformed part of his heart and the very way he saw himself and who continued to teach him what love in so many different forms meant.

“Take me, Emmy. Make me yours and mine!”

And Emmrich did just that. And also made Rook remember that he was also entirely his own person too, and that he was an incredibly lucky man.

[redheadbigshoes]

I'm so done with being calm and respectful about my anger towards those who intrude on sexual boundaries.

Every time a man makes an advance when a woman says no, or that she is a lesbian and not interested, it is an attack on her agency, on the worth of her will, and many people will just say 'its weird' and try and shrug it off, but those were precursors to some of the harassment I experienced, to unwanted physical contact by a coworker in the office I used to work in, trying to erode my boundaries and self-respect.

After I publicly transitioned to a woman when I graduated and moved to a new city for my first job, I was able to come out publicly as a lesbian after having gone through literal comphet forced relationships with men in order to get a letter from my therapist for hormones. I was happy to finally be able to say who I really was, having to just hope that everyone would be nice and accepting of my gender and sexuality since working in an office means you have to be around people you dont choose every day.

I expected my main issue to be transphobia, but I didn't understand how well I passed after just 1.5 years on hrt while closeted, and I doubly didn't expect to get the attention of my male coworkers who kept on making unwanted advances over and over despite me getting upset, disgusted, and angry at them. I told them I was a lesbian and it only increased the degree of my harassment, they wanted to wear down my self-worth and knew noone else in the office felt like standing up for me. It got to the point where I had to file HR cases against two of them. Even when I broke the woman's dress code (yes there was a dress code mandating wearing skirts and dresses, Bank of America's IT department is fucking weird) and just wore concealing jackets and facemasks (this was before the pandemic) and baggy pants they kept pestering me until I got a doctor's note to work from home.

I know some of it was definitely because I'm a trans woman too, a vulnerable target, because few of my coworkers already bothered to talk to me, and when I went to HR and other company assets for help they never took my word above others. Trans Lesbians are more at risk of sexual abuse than most people because most people don't give a fuck about us or our safety.

I just get fucking incredibly upset every time I hear people pushing lesbian's boundaries to include men because that was the precursor to some of my abuse. So anyone who thinks lesbians are 'mean' for being fucking angry and upset when people push men on us can go fuck themselves, I could literally punch every man I see in the face and it wouldn't even be a fraction of recompense for what they did to me.

Just wanted to vent this after reading about a lesbian talking about how a trans man keeps flirting with her despite her saying no and it makes me want to rip something apart

-🌻

I am so sorry about what you had to deal with. I truly hope you’re safer now.

People don’t care about women’s safety in general, so when it comes to a trans lesbian it must be much much worse.

People who try to push cis and trans men in lesbianism are probably the same ones who say transphobic shit and who don’t care about SA.

[eternal-nyx]

I started HRT!

Whew been a minute since I updated hunh? Well, it's been busy! I got approved to start testosterone HRT on September 25th, 2023.

I was surprised. I live in a bible belt, conservative, state and town. The trans health care here is.....the best word I have is mental whiplash. I started with a PCP at Medical Group A. He said he wasn't qualified for tran's or gender care and that no one in practice A was. He then said that there are rotating residents who DO the gender care and he put me on a wait list with them. I finally got to the appointment after a couple months and it was so easy. They used my chosen name and pronouns. They were respectful. Almost too respectful They tap danced around terminology to try to avoid offending me. It was......strange? Surreal? Twilight Zone? The Matrix? Either way. It felt very formal and professional and I do very much like the resident. It was just a very surreal experience.

But she was satisfied with our appointment and sent out the prescription the same day. She even tried to work with me when I voiced a desire to avoid injections if possible, but that I would take them if no other option existed. She tried hard to make the gel work, but in the end we went with the injections.

Then the next stage of trouble began. My normal pharmacy was out of the medication. It's a controlled substance in my state. So I called walmart pharmacy, but they were out of stock too. So was CVS, but at least they offered to order it if I filed it with them. I called a few other local pharmacies and FINALLY found one with the medication in stock. But everyone was closing so I had to wait until the next day to do the transfer.

I wake up the next morning and call to make the transfer, but because its a controlled substance, and I hadn't filled it before, they couldn't transfer it. My doctor would have to send it to the new pharmacy. So I made those phone calls and got that all set up. The next day it's FINALLY ready for pick up but my insurance won't cover it at this pharmacy. They run it on a discount card and get the price down to approx. $40 USD.

As a low income family we panicked briefly about how to afford the medication. We ended up having to charge it to our credit card. But we got it!

And on 9/27/2023 at noon I did my first self injection of Testosterone!

Day 1: No noticeable changes.

Day 2 9/28/2023 @8pm When I find alone time and find myself aroused, I have a daily habit to get into me and my fiance's shared toy box and do my thing. Well I did my normal thing today, and I noticed I could FEEL things with my fingers. So I did a LIL inspection and it was bigger. Not by a lot but I KNOW my anatomy, and my AFAB parts are heavily hooded and usually don't extend past the hood even when aroused. Today was different, and that is ALL I will say to anyone about my genitals. Then when all was done it was less plump, but still slightly larger than I am used to. I HAD MY FIRST ERECTION! And not only that, but I have growth!!!!!! On day fucking 2!!!! I'm gonna cry.

Also….It's itchy. And I seem to be unable to stop being aroused. Whoops.

--------------

I hope to do weekly check in's on my social media like tiktok and all of my blogs. The journey continues. Stay queer my friends.

Nyx [They/He/She]

[thetantiger]

Pride Doodles 2024!

Most of these are based off of real things I saw when me and my husband went to a pride faire this year, with my own goofy OCs as inserts. I'm going to talk about that a little bit and what it meant for me under the cut, but if you're just here for the art, all you need to know is: shoutout to that samoyed with the rainbow-dyed tail I saw.

So in order to really put into perspective as to why this pride event in particular was so meaningful to me (though, if you, reading this, are queer yourself, I'm sure the feeling isn't unfamiliar to you), let me give you a little bit of backstory. I live in rural Indiana, which is a statement in of itself. Last year I was unable to attend any pride events because me and my husband were getting married in June and, as you can imagine, being a bride the month leading up to such an event is an extremely busy time, lmao. If we could have fit it into the schedule I'm certain we would have, but it was just not possible at the time. Usually, I attend some sort of pride event every year.

Additionally, my husband's family is.. not the most supportive. I am bisexual and genderfluid, as well as demisexual (though this is not public knowledge in my real life, I'm not exactly closeted about it, I just don't bring it up a lot) and questioning polyamorous (which me and my husband are closeted about). Many members of his family regularly and casually use homophobic slurs (as well as racial ones) but his grandmother in particular is the main issue. When I first started dating my now-husband I was very forthcoming with the fact that I am genderfluid and this resulted in her somehow managing to find a way to steer the conversation into political debates surrounding trans people (trans people in sports, HRT, etc) every single time me and her interacted without fail. She has since at least slowed down about this, but highlights of conversations I've had with her since include: A, her questioning whether or not I'm actually bisexual because I've never been physically intimate with a woman (apparently being in a six month long committed relationship with somebody who thought they were a woman at the time [they're out as a trans man now] is not "bisexual enough"), B, her consistently pressuring me to dress more "feminine" because "your husband will like it better," and most recently C, where she made an entire event at dinner in a public restaurant while we were discussing planning to go to this pride faire, arguing that there should be a "straight pride parade" (and my father-in-law, bless his heart, proposed that it was as stupid as saying there should be a white history month, to which my grandmother-in-law vehemently claimed that there should be because "straight white people have been oppressed too"). I physically had to get up and leave the restaurant.

Anyway this is all to say that I was feeling particularly insecure about myself leading up to this event. It was repeatedly hammered into me that who I am was not worthy of acceptance or validation or love and even though I pride myself on being an extremely honest person about who I am and what I believe in, I felt myself repressing those things about myself. My husband has supported me through all of this (and sincerely, to that post about "please don't bring your straight cis male partners to pride," suck my fucking dick) and I cannot thank him enough for his unconditional reassurance that he loves who I am. As a matter of fact his parents were supposed to accompany us to the event but they flaked out on us, and he expressed great disappointment because he knew I was struggling with myself and that his grandmother was being bigoted and hateful and he wanted his parents to express their support by tagging along.

And then we got there.

I saw people flying their flags as capes upon their backs. I saw supportive ally parents walking alongside their kids. I saw service dogs with pride-themed vests. I saw lesbians with hand-knitted crop tops in orange and white and pink and I saw polyamorous couples enjoying each other's presence and I saw a trans woman in bright red mesh clothing and red leather heeled boots. I saw vendors selling vibrators and leather bondage harnesses with gay furry art decaled on the side of the tent and original graphic tees with giant cocks on them and yet no scarcity of asexual flags anywhere. I was offered free healthcare (though unfortunately we had crossed state lines to attend this event so I couldn't take advantage of it) and STI/STD tests and I stopped somebody to compliment their extremely well-made (and cool-looking) fursuit head and somebody else stopped me to compliment my shirt. I saw a guy just strutting down the street with his abs out, I saw amputees, I saw black women with fishnet stockings and pride-themed makeup and at least three pairs of men I'm nearly certain were partners and I felt at home. I was stopped by an older woman, who offered me a "glitter blessing." I asked what that was and she half-explained it to me and I offered her my hand. She put glitter on my hand, and told me I was loved, that I was accepted, that there will always be a place for me, and to never lose my sparkle and I cried right there in the street.

To see so many people come together, to love each other (platonically or otherwise!) unconditionally and to support one another, to craft a safe space for each other and to see people like me, unapologetic and unfiltered.. it meant the world to me. It meant everything to me.

My online friends are extremely supportive of me and my 60+ characters that are almost all unanimously queer. I've expressed insecurity about making so many of them queer, convinced it was redundant or tiring or "shoving it down their throat" and was only met with "okay and? make that bitch gay anyway." I can't thank them enough either, but sometimes you'll always run into that person that will never accept who you are no matter how "palatable" you attempt to make yourself. No matter how many shavings of yourself you lose trying desperately to smooth out the edges to please other people. No matter how much you try to conform.

So.. I've been reminded of something: to be myself. No matter how much I have to kick and claw and bite and gnash, nothing is more important than being myself. Nothing is more important than never losing myself for the illusion of acceptance from people who will never be convinced anyway.

Nothing is more important than never losing my sparkle, one could say. But perhaps that's a little cheesy.

And to anybody that can't publicly celebrate, to people that have to stay closeted for any reason, whether you're in a country that'll kill you for it or a household that'll leave you homeless for it or maybe you're just simply not ready yet, as I've said before; know that you being alive as a queer person is a radical protest in of itself to those who would have it otherwise.

I love you so much. Happy pride <3

[lift-heavy-be-gay]

Let's talk about transgender athletes

this is gonna be a long rant so I'm just gonna put a cut down below. dni if you're a terf or just wanna cause problems.

So, recently in class we were discussing different drugs used illegally and legally in sports and eventually the topic of transgender athletes came up (because of course). However, my professor handled it really well and as a trans athlete (pre transition), I just wanna talk about my feelings on the matter.

Keep in mind that this is my opinion, but I have been studying this in uni and may have more of an insight on how testosterone and estrogen actually affect the body. Anyway, there are two main points I wanna make.

As an afab athlete myself, I compete in a mostly strength based sport (though some technique and skill is necessary). However, I could not even begin to think about competing with my amab counterparts. It would put me at an unfair disadvantage and them an unfair advantage.

The first being that—depending on the time you began taking hormones/how long you've been taking hormones—you most likely won't be able to compete in high level competitions like the olympics. I know that people are going to be upset at this, but please listen. If you began taking hormones around the age you would begin puberty, then by the time you're an adult still presumably taking said hormones, then your levels would most likely be that of a cis person. However, if you're taking hormones after puberty, then the testosterone difference between amab and afab people is *staggering*. This article states that amab people generate 15x more testosterone than afab people. Even if they begin taking hrt, it takes YEARS to even begin to see a significant difference.

But

(and this leads to my second point)

There are numerous advantages and disadvantages for cis people in sports. Whether it be financial status, family history, access to training, facilities, or injury prevention/rehabilitation. If kid A is from a long line of well-off basketball players and has the resources to compete, then he definitely has an advantage over kid B who is from the middle of nowhere with no support and even worse facilities. Fact of the matter is, cis people are unevenly matched up against each other all the time. There are a hundred and one different ways that they may have an advantage or disadvantage over each other. Why is it different for transgender athletes? Scratch that. Why is it different between genders at all?

What I'm trying to say is that, I've met plenty afab people who are stronger than amab guys. I really don't think gender matters that much in a lot of sports. I believe we should start separating athletes based on weight rather than gender. (Of course, that's just my opinion.)

It's just that whenever I hear the topic about transgender athletes in sports, it's always about trans women. It's about how it's "not fair" and they are "doing it on purpose to get an easy win" and a bunch of other excuses to try and justify not letting them play. Surprisingly, I don't often (if at all) hear the same argument about trans men. On the surface, a lot of these debates about trans athletes is good ole' transphobia. But if you look deeper, it's really just misogyny. Most people don't even care about the sport, they just want another avenue to oppress a group of people.

Basically, the situation is not as black and white as most would like to believe, and there's a lot of nuance involved when trying to understand this topic. It's unfortunate that many trans athletes have to even deal with this extra bs in order to compete.

anyway, end of rant. thanks for reading if you made it this far. there's definitely more I could say on this, but these are the main points I wanted to make.

tldr: while there are inherent biological differences between amab and afab people, that doesn't excuse excluding trans athletes from being able to compete

[evegwood]

I was rereading your breakdown of the playlists and I was kind of intrigued by how you outright stated that David's insecurities are not related to his transness but to the power things - because, like, I don't think it's all meant to be a 1:1 metaphor, but specfic stories like that exist very much in conversation with more mundane issues people face so that distinction stood out to me? (cont.)

(cont.) Like, people such as David get detained in places that feel and work and look like the institutions in Inhibit IRL for various non-specfic reasons, and stories like this are a bit of a dialogue with these issues, especially one like this that goes into the mundane little miseries of it all. Would it be correct to say that that was your way of saying "I don't want people to reduce his character entirely to transness"? Thanks, love the comic!

Hey that's a good question! For sure there are real-world counterparts to a lot of the themes of Inhibit, but specifically when it comes to my queer characters I wanted the story to be completely neutral about their queerness. I do have a lot of thoughts on this so this might be long haha. Hopefully I cover everything I want to cover, I wrote this whole thing out and then hit ctrl+z to delete a line and Tumblr deleted the entire post without letting me ctrl+y because this is a working website that doesn't suck ass. I had to retype it all so I'm sorry if any of it is disconnected, I couldn't remember the exact order I said everything argh ANYWAY

When I started writing Inhibit I didn't realise I was trans, and then I came out as nonbinary, and then I started to transition, so I've had a whole spectrum of thinking "how should I handle transness in this comic?" over my time working on it. Pretty early on I decided that none of the characters would suffer because of being trans, they wouldn't have any anxiety about it, other characters wouldn't treat them differently etc; the story takes place in a world where superpowers are real, so it wouldn't be crazy for transness to also just be normal and accepted there lmao

However now I think that this is a pretty reductive way to represent the trans experience. Like it or not, being trans informs almost everything about you, and I didn't let my trans characters have that nuance. Vic being a white, seemingly cis* seemingly het** dude is pretty central to his character arc***, so actually examining queerness in this society would have been interesting. There was room to do that; something that is canon and just has never come up is that Urquhart sponsors their trans officers' HRT etc so they don't need to go through the NHS, meaning those officers are reliant on Urquhart long past their service. You're right: what would a conversation between the mundane and fantastical elements of Inhibit look like? I, 2023 Eve, would like to have that conversation! But this far into the story, I kinda missed the train on it.

* he uses any pronouns, he is shrug-gender ** he is bi *** spoilers wow he is privileged actually

I honestly think that I haven't done a good job at highlighting my trans characters, particularly for an audience that doesn't expect to see trans characters. I don't think I've done David and Masha justice as trans characters beyond little nods that readers could miss or not even understand, and there are some characters whose nonbinary/trans identities have just never been mentioned (Holly is nb, Jezza and Toby are trans - again just hasn't come up because of scenes and lines changing or being cut, there's so much that you can't fit into a story even when it's as long as this). So to finally answer your question, it isn't that I didn't want people to reduce David to his transness, because I don't think there's enough of his transness in the comic for that to even happen. I don't think anyone reads Inhibit and thinks oh yeah, David, you know, the trans one. It really was that at the time of writing the playlist breakdowns, I was firm that none of the Inhibit characters had anxiety or neuroses about being trans. Instead, all their neuroses were about their superpowers, because that's the fun angst.

Now looking back on Inhibit, there is actually an excruciating amount of evidence for the story kind of being a trans narrative ("oh god i can't control my own body oh god", "oh no people think my body should do this thing" etc). It's so interesting how creators have these themes that they continuously go back to in their work, even unintentionally, and mine is oops all trans. If I were to rewrite Inhibit from scratch now, I'd probably try to include more of that nuance and actually engage with those themes because I realise that they're there haha.

I hope all this answers your question? Kind of? A little? My ultimate conclusion is that I thought what I was doing was writing good trans characters, when ultimately I think I failed to write characters that are truly explicitly trans. On the other hand, maybe characters like David and Masha are the exact kind of trans rep that some people want and are looking for. Either way I'm actively working to write better trans characters in the future because trans people rule, and this was a really interesting question to reflect on, thank you!

[windwardstar]

So my two year mark on T is coming up in the next few days and while I will be writing up a longer post about all my experiences later, I do want to say this:

It is never too late to start hormones, you'll see amazing changes no matter how old you are when you start. And I know how hard it is to wait.

I know a lot of those starting hrt later in life stories are from people who didn't realize they were trans until later. And maybe you're thinking it's great for them but that you know you're trans now. You know the options for hormones and gender affirming care exist and you want it but just aren't allowed.

And I'm here to say i know how hard it is to wait.

I knew I wasn't a girl at 5. I wasn't allowed to not be though. Part of the requirements for stopping therapy in elementary school was that I learned to stop saying it. I realized being trans was a thing in high school even if i didnt know nonbinary was an option. I was given room to be tomboy irl and not-a-girl-not-a-boy in my mind. And then I went to live with different family members who expressed violently anti-trans beliefs and any social transitions I did had to be limited to safe spaces, where the countdown to eacaping them also became a countdown to being able to transition socially and medically. I wasn't able to move out and into my own place until I was 25. I didn't get to start T until I was 29 because of insurances. And had to wait until this past year for top surgery and hysto. And am still waiting for bottom surgery.

And I still wish I could have gotten on T earlier. That I could have been able to transition in all the ways I wanted earlier. But they're absolutely worth doing it now because it means I get to be me now. I'm still read as a girl 100% of the time but I feel better about my own body and so many aspects of my dysphoria have decreased. There are things that haven't changed but what has has been entirely worth it.

The wait has also allowed me to build up a history of having a consistent gender identity. It has allowed me to figure out exactly what I want and know down to my bones what the right choices for my transition are so that when I speak with the doctors with other people I have the weight of a decade+ of certainty backing up my choices. And being 30 rather than 13 people are more likely to listen to me and trust that I know myself. It allowed me to save up money and to find a job with good insurance to facilitate my transition.

You shouldn't have to wait. Whatever your age as soon as you know what the right choice is for you, you should be able to make it. And other people stopping you because they think they know better is infuriating and can make you feel hopeless. But one day you will get to transition in all the ways you want.

Bide your time. Use it to figure out what you want. To figure out what you have to do in order to get what you want. To save money. To identify the hoops. Find places where you can be yourself.

I know it's hard to wait. I still struggle with the grief over having to. Wonders of what my life could have been like. But I do know what it is like to finally get to transition and all the joy I've experienced over the past two years, that no matter how long I have to wait for more it'll never be too late because any time I have to experience this joy is worth it.

It's hard to wait, but please stick around and wait. It'll be worth it once you get the chance. I promise.

[dimonds456-art]

vent art below the cut, as well as an explanation for it. it's a mess on purpose. read the tags.

Starting off positive, here's how I draw myself now :) Style improvement! And my mustache hairs are growing in and one of them is over a centimeter long and it's my pride and joy.

okay now onto everything else. fucking help me. /ns

Gonna start with the butterfly imagery, since it's a reoccurring theme when I talk about my disabilities. The butterfly is because of my Graves Disease, which is a subgenre of hyperthyroidism. What's that? Uh basically there's a gland in your throat called the "thyroid" that's shaped like a butterfly, and it's responsible for your ENTIRE METABOLISM, and mine decided to do cocaine one day and never stopped. This results in increased heartrate, shaky hands, dizziness, and an eye disease where your eyes swell and can make you go blind if not treated.

(and no mine is not currently being treated so. :) )

I've had Graves since middle school, and I will for life. For reference of how bad it got before I got treated after 6 months of suffering, if I ran around outside for 5 minutes my heart rate could get up to 220 BPM. Which can kill you. Somehow I only ever saw stars once.

The next imagery I wanna point out is the layers on me. I show some things as brighter, and there's two layers like that- a bright one and a much dimmer one, which is why I kept this a sketch. The bright one is the surface-level disabilities, such as joint weakness, my eye disease, and my swollen thyroid. The dimmer one is my brain and skeleton. I have never actually broken my bones, but for some reason these days, joint weakness has me and they'll just fucking stop working sometimes for no goddamn reason.

The diamonds on my shirt is obviously a reference to my name, "Dimonds456." The design was actually made by my abuser, and so I actually am starting to have some second thoughts about using this particular design despite how much I love it, thus the shattered idea. Plus, diamonds don't break- they shatter. I'm about to shatter, too, so it's just like me fr.

After that, the text all around me. There are three layers. Let's talk about the black ones first. Those are all my disabilities. That's it. To make it easier to read, they're:

Autism

Anxiety

PTSD

Mental regression (probably because of all the other mental shit I'm dealing with)

Depression

ADHD

Weakness in joints

Inhaler as needed

Tires easily

Abuse

Graves Disease

On meds for life (methimazole literally keeps me alive)

Eye disease

Prone to falling

Eating disorder: ARFID ?????

Asthma

Audio processing disorder

Trauma

:,)

Then, the blue layer. The blue and red layers and kinda having a conversation with each other, with blue being my inner monologue and the red ones being still that, but more intrusive and hopeless. The blue thoughts range from "I can't do this" to "I want to," to "Wait, this is too much" to "STOP" to "THIS IS TOO MUCH" and various stuff like that.

The red texts are much, much more negative. "Running out of time." Never safe. I will never feel safe." "My own body wants me DEAD." "NEVER SAFE." "WHAT IS SAFETY?!" these are my intrusive thoughts, and... yeah. My anxiety and trauma already make me feel like I can never be safe in the spaces I'm in, so when I do actually feel safe with the people or location I'm in, my body's there to remind me that no, I'm not. Because I could literally just die at any goddamn moment.

Which brings me to the scythe. The Reaper. He's close. I'm running out of time. To do what? I don't know, live? Impact people? Fucking exist?

The clock shows that, too.

Finally, the dialogue bubbles. The straw that broke the camel's back in terms of me making this art. My recent doctor visit. I'm trans. I'm a demiboy who just wants to figure out what my fucking gender is. I know I want top surgery, but the dr says I HAVE to start HRT in order to get the surgery I want, which is enbyphobic. I've talked about it with other trans people, and we all agree what the dr told me was fucked.

The other bubbles are other things people have said to me. Particularly, I wanna talk about the "are you ACTUALLY disabled?" one because so so so so so many people have fucking asked me that and I want to scream. Like gee, I dunno, maybe it's all in my head. Maybe I'm normal. Maybe my graves disease was all a FUCKING DREAM. The eating disorder I'm getting now that not even the doctors are sure what the fuck it is wasn't real, I'm just a picky eater and I am just a fucking attention-seeking masochist. SURE. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME.

Shut the fuck up.

The butterfly is actively choking me. I'm loosing weight. I've felt more anxious recently than I ever have in my fucking life. I have a goddamn eating disorder where I physically CANNOT EAT. It sounds like ARFID but it's also not quite that, I'm in a weird grey area.

i'm 20 years old.

Ever since I got diagnosed with Graves in middle school, I've felt like my existence was defying something. Like I was supposed to die. I also had intense depression at the time, so that definitely added to it, but yeah. Then more happened. I had my first fall. I got put on the wrong dosage and nearly got killed. Struggled to breathe. My eyes tear up more often due to the disease, and I have an aversion to light I didn't have before. The eating disorder. Not to mention my bad knee, weakness in joints, pain in hips, ect.

It just keeps piling up. More, and more, and more, and more disabilities appear and try to catch me by surprise. I got deathly ill last winter. I quit college this year because of the trauma of being outside while on my wrong dosage from last summer. But this time, I'm fucking freezing when I'm anywhere except in the sun, which still makes me feel viscerally uncomfortable, because of whatever the fuck is happening with my eating disorder.

I'm so fucking tired. I don't know how much farther I can go. I'm running out of time. I can't handle another disability. I just can't. If I wind up getting appendicitis or something I'm running back home to my parents and staying there because at least they make me feel SAFE.

I'm not safe. I will never be safe inside this body. I will never feel safe because of my anxiety and trauma. I'm reaching a boiling point where it's starting to spill over onto those around me and I hate it. I am aware that this post is not helping that at all. But... I just don't wanna suffer in silence anymore. I'm tired. I want to be a good memory, but I fear my time is coming and I don't have much more "memory" to make.

I want to be wrong. Please, stars, let me be wrong. Let this all be in my head. Let this all be one big misunderstanding on my part. Please. Please let me wake up and realize that this was all a fucking nightmare.

I can't look at this screen anymore. My eyes hurt and my wrists are starting to give out.

[sevarix-blogs]

It says in your bio you’re trans? Is it ok if you share a little bit of your road to discovering who you are?

oh sure, i don't mind! this might be a little ramble-y but also keep in mind this is just my experience, every trans person has their own experience! some don't experience dysphoria, for example. i did, however, so warning there are discussions of dysphoria.

i didn't actually realize i was trans until i was like 29. i grew up in a conservative household without knowing anything about trans people or lgbtq+ in general. in fact i was kind of transphobic until i was in my mid 20s. (i am ashamed of this, but in my defense i was pretty damn ignorant). i'm also aroace and i didn't understand THAT until i was like 23 but that's a different topic entirely.

there were signs of gender dysphoria when i was younger, now that i think back on it. my mom forced me to try makeup when i was 16 and when i looked at myself in the mirror i had a panic attack and hated how i looked. i realize now this was gender dysphoria.

i also was always obsessed with male characters and wanted to be them. back in the day, i wanted to cosplay roy so bad. i wanted to BE roy fire emblem. (i have red hair too so it kind of fit). when my friends and i made ocs based on ourselves, i always made a male character.

but anyway, i just assumed i was a less conventional woman. i was a woman in STEM too, which made me feel Special and so i accepted that role of being a woman in my professional life.

but then the pandemic changed everything. for the first time, i could work from home. I found myself dressing more masculine without even thinking. I didn't have to show off to anyone in the office that I was a Woman In STEM so instead of feminine blouses i could wear tshirts. you couldn't tell the difference from a zoom call, so it didn't matter.

it was around this time that i started identifying as nonbinary. i scheduled top surgery soon after that.

the top surgery was a huge relief. at the time i wasn't sure if i wanted to go on T yet, but my surgeon didn't require HRT in order to do surgery so it worked out. I never liked having boobs. when i was 11 i had to start wearing a bra and i hated it. when i was a teen all my friends wanted to show their cleavage and i was like 'why the hell would you want to do that i hate having boobs'. i was a bridesmaid at my brother's wedding and i got the only dress style that didn't show cleavage and covered my chest completely. i hated everything about having boobs. mine were decently large too so it was annoying.

the top surgery went really well, and to this day i feel like it's one of the best thing's i've ever done for myself. i'd do it 5 times if that's what it required. i love my flat chest. i have absolutely no regrets. (tmi) i even opted to not have nipples and tbh it's great being nippleless lol

shortly after top surgery i started T. i was iffy about it at first, but i had PMDD so on top of my voice changing i wanted my periods to stop. i really wanted my voice to change most of all. i even recorded my voice monthly so i could hear the difference. it's incredible how much it changed, actually. it was gradual (i did have a voice crack stage but it wasn't too bad) but now it's where i've always wanted it at. i get called sir on the phone uwu

and i will say, HRT and top surgery are not for everyone! it was what worked for me, but some trans people opt out of them and that's super valid too. i had dysphoria around my voice and chest so it helped with that, but transmascs with higher pitched voices and boobs are also valid and i love them <3

now i'm working on a legal name change. at work people call me my preferred name (and it's even in my email address and everything) so that's good, but it would be nice having it on my ID and stuff too.

anyway, that's pretty much my gender journey as of now! hopefully my story helps you a little bit. if you learn anything from this, it should be it's never too late to realize you're trans!