theconqueringchicken

[theconqueringchicken]

now that my post about breaking down one's idea of what a woman looks like has circulated for a while (thank you all), i'm now going to make this post, as i do not want people to derail that specific conversation, nor this one.

we also must break down our idea of what a man looks, acts, sounds, behaves, and presents like.

men are not cis, het, allosexual or highly sexual beings, tall, muscular, strong, hairy, deep voiced, broad chested/shouldered, emotionless, mean, aggressive, unemotional, uncaring, distant, cold, stoic, heartless, standoffish, bread winners, bad/absent fathers, macho, obligated to work despite disabilities, or obligated to be "the man of the house."

men are people. first and foremost.

men are allowed to express just like anyone else. men do not have to be pillars of their communities. no obligation. men are allowed to be disabled, tired, weak, emotional, caring, compassionate, asexual, aromantic, friendly, warm, in need of support, neurodivergent, mentally ill, chronically ill,and have personality disorders. men have their own struggles and we have to stop telling them to "suck it up" and "move on" and "pull yourself up by your boot straps".

we are forcing men to do this: this is a cage of our own design.

once we dismantle this idea of how a man "should" be, once more: we will move past radfeminism, patriarchy, trans/androphobia, and fostering a culture where this is an acceptable way to treat men. it's not. we must allow men to be diverse. we must allow men to be who they are on the inside

[theconqueringchicken]

This is why there should be better regulations about who can perform what surgeries. There is a difference between cosmetic surgery and plastic surgery.

From what I understand, any doctor can perform cosmetic surgery which makes sense for removing a mole but not for something as complex as top surgery.

There's never a guarantee that a surgery will go as planned but making sure that the doctor you're working with is a certified plastic surgeon is one way to help protect youself.

I'm so glad this person was able to get medical help before they ended up with sepsis. It is very hard to treat and even with antibiotics some patients just don't make it.

You all be safe out there while persuing your transition. If something doesn't feel right, trust yourself.

I found this TikTok y'all might wanna look at

[theconqueringchicken]

you see how i'm hiding under my blanket with the heating on in august? very demure, very climate change

[theconqueringchicken]

The Stress of Accessing Gender Care

It took me years to decided to have any type of gender care and the process of accessing it is really stressing me out.

I met with my provider in summer after waiting about a year and a half to establish care. I told myself I was going to treat my PCOS and get on birth control or other hormones like I was supposed to but the words stuck in my throat. I told her I couldn't do it, that getting care to be more properly a woman felt like going in the wrong direction, and I wanted to try testosterone therapy.

She was very supportive and so said we should schedule a longer appointment to talk more about that. I was expressionless, tense, and closed off throughout. I wasn't ready to talk about the what I want. I have been holding it in since I was a teenager hoping the desires I have would go away.

No one wants to hear about it. It's not even something I can talk to my trans relatives about. One told me to come back and talk when I knew what I was and what my pronouns were and not before. Another told me that I just needed to learn to be a woman properly and my problem was lack of guidance and community. Step by step aigot pushed back into the closet.

My therapist's first reaction was "There's a lot of ways of being a woman. Maybe you just need to find the right one." Basically asking if I've tried not being trans. Oh yes, I have, for 15 years. Subsequent conversations were just as unproductive.

At my next doctor's appointment we talked briefly about health risks and why I wanted to try HRT. Never mind I'm already facing those risks from PCOS. My body is already making enough T to give me extra body hair and stop my periods for six months at a stretch.

I didn't know how to articulate why I wanted HRR. I've never talked about it and I feel so numb from depression and am so used to repressing these feelings they just slip through my fingers.

I only know that they are there. A pang of jealousy when I meet a trans man, a stab of shame when I don't meet a standard that was never meant to apply to me. A burst of pride when I push my body. The secret, desperate joy when I started growing chest hair and facial hair. The deep wrongness of being too feminine or completely masculine.

I can clumsily say what I feel but I do not know why I feel it.

I told her I was never normal, being a girl never fit, and if someone had offered me HRT when I was a 14 I would have taken it without a second thought.

She listened though I knew she didn't understand at all and I thankex her though I knew it wasn't what she was looking for. I was no less closed off to her and to myself.

Heading home I finally let myself feel happy. It was such a a fragile feeling, like a soap bubble floating along beside me, and if I looked at it too hard it might burst and all my fears would come crashing down on me again. Letting myself believe that HRT was a possibility for me felt like asking for disappointment or humiliation but I let myself have that hope,to pretend to believe in it just for a little while.

Then the gender limbo began. I was supposed to have an appointment scheduled with an endocrinologist but no one ever called me back. I felt this spark of panic and paranoia. Was someone trying to hook up my care? Like the person at the front desk who angrily snatched my ID out of my hand when I used my chosen name and not my given name?

After two weeks I called to ask what was going on. That day the entire phone system at the clinic went down so I got up and I went in person and was assured they would get back to me asap. They did not so I called them.

I asked about the scheduling and they told me it was being held up because they didn't have my new insurance information. Then, after another week it was being held up because they needed to do "information gathering". They did not specify what information they were gathering or why it took more than three weeks.

The next week I got another call telling me that they still had not scheduled anything and had no idea when they would be able to fit me in. So I made an appointment with a different provider and started the whole thing over again.

I had so much anxiety about keeping that appointment. I could feelyself panicking as I headed out the door and then when I reached the clinic I felt excited and relieved and so so glad I came. Then I was told my appointment was at another clinic. There was no time to get there on the bus so I just had to go home.

I told the receptionist that it was okay, that's just the way it goes sometimes, and then I went to the restroom and cried quietly on the floor for a few minutes. I kept myself together as I left and walked past the weirdos prowling around the clinic. Then I made the call and told scheduling I couldn't make my appointment and they told me that there never was an appointment and I started crying all over again.

I cried half the way home, then got junk food and a face mask, and made up my mind to fill my day with chores and crafts and go out later so I wouldn't be stuck at home. Yes, I am aware, getting the address wrong was my fault. That really doesn't make me less miserable.

This whole process has been so exhausting I don't know how anyone even does it. I don't know how people in the UK deal with all the wait times and all the nonsense.

I don't know how folks in the US copewith finally getting that prescription and then finding out that a pharmacist can just refuse to fill it because they hate transgender people.

I don't think what I've been dealing with personally is bias, it's just that healthcare is a shambles and has been for years. It's so stressful and it must be for everyone. I hope your journies are going better than mine.

[theconqueringchicken]

this was actually the first pride design i made for myself back in 2017, with nonbinary colours. so i thought it's time to bring it back with more identities and available for other people to buy and wear, or simply use as their lock screen.

here's the link to my shop where you can get this on t-shirts and hoodies: https://freakshop-2.creator-spring.com

[theconqueringchicken]

[theconqueringchicken]

from shon faye, author of the transgender issue

[theconqueringchicken]

Lainey Molnar

[theconqueringchicken]

cisgender butch lesbian: i don't care about being misgendered

all the cisgender people in the comments: she understands how she looks. why can't everyone be like that about misgendering?

weird way of telling transgender people to stfu about being misgendered.

like they're just pointing at gnc cisgender people and say "see, this person doesn't mind being misgendered based on looks, those transgendereds are just too sensitive!"

when they know full well misgendering hits different when you're transgender.

especially because she also said "when they see my boobs, they know i'm a woman".

and for transgender people it's often "and when they see [gendered body part] they think they know i'm a man/woman".

those are very different experiences.

especially as a nonbinary person where no one ever genders you correctly.

i've seen more and more cisgender people recently telling transgender and nonbinary people that we're not allowed to get upset when people misgender us if we "look like men/women". i'm tired of it.

stop holding transgender people to cisgender standards down to how we feel about being misgendered.

like, especially for me as a nonbinary person every he and every she just reminds me that the world was never meant for me.

gender stereotypes need to be abolished so people don't get misgendered based on clothes or hair or bodies anymore.

and don't even get me started on "but you look cisgender/like your AGAB". cisgender, transgender, nonbinary, female, male etc. don't have a look. i am nonbinary therefore i look nonbinary.

[theconqueringchicken]

Having polycystic and being trans has put me in a situation I did not expect. I've been telling myself for years that I did not need or want a medical transition. Never mind the periodic fantasies of suddenly having male puberty.

And then, I started getting chest hair at 19. I could hide it, I could pretend it wasn't there. No one had to know but me. It wasn't anything, it was a few hairs, but I didn't shave them or pluck them for fear they'd never come back.

It took me years to be diagnosed and then I ignored treatment options even though I was in pain. I couldn't make myself take hormones to make me more femine. I just couldn't.

Ten years later I woke up to find I had enough facial hair that plucking was no longer realistic; I needed to shave. I texted a friend in a panick asking how to shave because I never had, not even my pits.

For the first time in my life I bought shaving cream. It was embarrassing and exciting frightening. I kept thinking someone was going to grab it out of my cart and ask why I was buying it. It felt like buying tampons almost.

Just like my first time through puberty it was out of my control. I kept thinking about how much trouble it would be to shave every day. How could my depressed ass add one more thing to my routine when I can't even style my hair and brushy teeth all the time?

I kept thinking. See? You don't want this. You're crazy. You've always been crazy. You're not trans, you're traumatized.

Underneath all that though it felt good. It felt amazing. I was doing something so simple and annoying and part of a world I hadn't been able to touch and I loved it. I wanted more. I want more. So call me a hrt convert I guess.

[theconqueringchicken]

PRIDE BEES!!!!

available on stickers, buttons, t-shirts, and more on my Redbubble

[theconqueringchicken]

[theconqueringchicken]

When I was a kid, I hated the desert. I grew up in a desert area and was constantly at war with the heat and longed for the moss and ferns and trees on the west side of my state. I was miserable on a family vacation to Arches national park, and I even wrote a song with the lyrics "I am no desert girl"

I came out as trans in college, still living in a dry desert, but with my freedom as an adult and as a man, I was falling in love with the landscape. I had a dream early in my transition about my pre transition self dancing around a campfire, but being lured into the desert by lights and warmth and magic, and watched my female form sink away into the night.

I finally moved to a coastal city to restart my life, where no one knew my name from before. I love the ocean, I love the rain, I love my lush ferns and damp earth. But I understand now that I'll never fully untangle myself from the desert or from the versions of me that lived there. I miss the smell of warm juniper on those nights after the heat of the day had retreated. I miss my sky.

And I respect and honor that those two versions of me, those two desires, can coexist. I think that longing is part of what makes my life and the person that I am so endearing.

Submitted April 28, 2023

[theconqueringchicken]

Before I was diagnosed, when I started noticing I was getting chest hairs and missing periods I started having these hopeless fantasies about magically turning into a man overnight.

It feels so validating that my body just stopped being what other people want it to be and stared reflecting who I am instead.

Puberty was supposed to be this triumph for society to shape me into what it wanted and neither me, nor my body aparently, were having it. Instead of being the enemy I guess now it's my acomplice.

For me, it is not at all as good as hrt would be but it's better than nothing. Knowing I'm doubly infertile is huge for me.

The problem is, I'm never getting treated for it. I know I could get cancer and sometimes I'm in a lot of pain but I just can't. I know thats bad, I know it's self destructive but it's true.

cis people please only interact with this post if you plan to be respectful. thank you.

y'know I think the shittiest thing about being a trans guy and having pcos is that I don't really feel like I'm allowed to speak about my experiences with it because they're just so different from that of the cis women with it. especially when it comes down to the symptoms like voice deepening, hair on the chin and face, more masculine physical traits caused by the hormonal issues of it, that cause cis pcos havers so much discomfort. which I respect, I know that those symptoms create a feeling of dysphoria* for them, and I know how awful that can feel.

but, with that said, that's what a lot of the conversations on pcos are about- the loss of femininity, and that's something I don't understand because for me, those masculinizing symptoms brought me so much euphoria. in fact, now that I'm being treated for it, my dysphoria has worsened because that sliver of masculinity I had is disappearing- my voice has raised slightly, my chest got larger (enough that I had to purchase a new binder), the sorry excuse for a beard I had that made me so happy barely comes in enough to be worth leaving there, and don't even get me started on experiencing periods monthly.

it can feel very isolating because I honestly haven't ever seen another transmasc or nonbinary person speak about having pcos, or their experiences. I feel really alone and it's kinda sucks.

so I guess, if there are any other trans people with pcos who see this, please interact? maybe we can talk or do something to make this experience less isolating :)

*gender dysphoria is not a trans-only experience, it is just most commonly used in the context or trans people due to its importance to our experiences

[theconqueringchicken]

When I was a kid, I hated the desert. I grew up in a desert area and was constantly at war with the heat and longed for the moss and ferns and trees on the west side of my state. I was miserable on a family vacation to Arches national park, and I even wrote a song with the lyrics "I am no desert girl"

I came out as trans in college, still living in a dry desert, but with my freedom as an adult and as a man, I was falling in love with the landscape. I had a dream early in my transition about my pre transition self dancing around a campfire, but being lured into the desert by lights and warmth and magic, and watched my female form sink away into the night.

I finally moved to a coastal city to restart my life, where no one knew my name from before. I love the ocean, I love the rain, I love my lush ferns and damp earth. But I understand now that I'll never fully untangle myself from the desert or from the versions of me that lived there. I miss the smell of warm juniper on those nights after the heat of the day had retreated. I miss my sky.

And I respect and honor that those two versions of me, those two desires, can coexist. I think that longing is part of what makes my life and the person that I am so endearing.

Submitted April 28, 2023