from the artist who brought you

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last haus of decline for now

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Synthesized hormones are one of the truly greatest wonders of modern medicine. It's alleviated suffering and complications for millions of cis people around the world, let alone us trans folk. In this, we have a nuke against transphobic nonsense, and we need to get trigger happy with it.

For a long time now, hogs have been working towards getting HRT for all trans people banned in various states. I read an article recently where conservative Ohio local law makers expressly said that that was their intent to work towards and that banning it for kids was the first step, as well as their coordinated efforts to do the same in neighboring states. We've known for a long time that this is a pretty universal playbook, build the underpinning of your ultimate goal by passing less sweeping laws and gradually turn up the restrictions. Likewise, the tactics that they use in their rhetoric is to manipulate their emotions - tell people that kid's genitals are being mutilated and it'll get people riled up enough to not think critically about the premise. 'Who doesn't abhor the idea of children being abused?.. The blue haired communist abusers, that's who!'

This framing of course does not hold up to scrutiny, and I'm not going to preach to the choir on why - the point is this, framing is powerful. Even more powerful, is if the framing simply reflects material reality. If trans folks are actually abusing kids, it'd be pretty damning and then they can say 'see, bunch of sickos!' or whatever. Propagandists have manufactured hoax situations out of whole cloth to try do this, and they frequently fizzle out for obvious reasons. Then the think pieces and op-eds come out and say 'yeah, but what if they did abuse kids?!' to keep this thought in the news cycle and spreading the brain worms.

This weapon however, is a double edged sword, and we can wield it to greater effect because we have material evidence. Remember the hog politicians in Ohio I mentioned? Yeah, these freaks love to tell on themselves and they have been for quite some time. The goal is this - abolition of synthesized hormones - especially birth control. I'm not putting so much effort as to search out the reporting right at the moment, but we've seen it time and again that that's what they want. (CW: CSA/Incest reference in the following sentence) They regressed abortion in the US, and it's created an uproar and back lash when people read about the law trying to force a 10 year old to give birth. People were rightfully sickened by this, and it finally hit home for some. When people see the horrors of what these policies do, they run the other way. And people will start to become alarmed when you are able to frame things into something that will directly impact them. Abolition of synthesized hormones would mean that testosterone and estrogen wouldn't be able to help people through mid-life body changes. Low T sucks for men, low E is a part of the misery of menopause. In our conversations and rhetoric, we need to be hitting on this non-stop. Everyone knows someone who deals with these issues at some point, my dad is quite the hog, but being able to take supplemental testosterone has given him a new lease on life - he'll be able to understand this at a deep level.

Likewise, if you have these conversations, we need to call these things what they are - gender affirming care. The cis are more like us than they know, and they will sooner or later feel the pain of a body that is not doing what you need it to do and be. This is humanizing and normalizing a fact of life, while connecting it to our fact of life. These are talking points relate to every age, every walk of life, every income strata.

The enduring philosophy is that of human connection, not destruction. We can win this this battle, we can liberate ourselves and others from the misery of the past, and we can create a better world.

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My girlfriend (23) and I (M22) have been together for three years now. My girlfriend started her transition last year. And at first I was fine with her maid costumes and cat ears, and the way she voice trained by saying "ara ara", but lately my girlfriend has been taking all this anime stuff way too far. Yesterday's incident was the worst one yet. That afternoon I tried to call my girlfriend to invite her over, but she wouldn't answer… Then about ten minutes later I saw out of my front window, an M1 Abrams tank driving down the street, while being chased by police cars and helicopters.…Yeah, it turns out that my girlfriend had taken the whole "tanks are feminine" spiel from Girls und Panzer a bit too literally. And honestly, I should've guessed that "I'm going to joyride a tank" was what my girlfriend meant when she tweeted "Miho Nishizumi is so gender, #MTF #goals", but I just didn't think my girlfriend had it in her to deal $230,000 in property damage and injure 12 people. So yesterday's incident has put a serious strain on our relationship, and I could really just use some advice. Thanks!

even more bluntly: What were those completely and utterly ridiculous thoughts that you had in hindsight that make you wonder how on earth you ever even managed to convince yourself that you were cis? I'll start:

I remember browsing through a bunch of trans memes on reddit (already very cisgenderly) and I kept coming across ones that were some variation on stepping out of a time machine to meet your past self as a different gender. For maybe about 2 months until I realized that it really was true, I admitted to myself and two of my close friends who are both trans women that i would just not be surprised if I stepped out of the time machine from the future as a trans woman. my only thoughts on that were basically to laugh it and say "yeah that tracks". Somehow I could admit that I think it's totally plausible to be a trans girl in the future yet still be 100% cis

anyone have any other fun thoughts like that?

It never even started it is so over

Tennessee has recently passed a bill, effective July 1st 2024, declaring it a class-C felony to "recruit, harbor, or transport an unemancipated minor within this state" for transgender healthcare procedures, carrying a sentence of 3-15 years in prison. This applies over state lines and states that do not have anti-extradition laws relating to trans rights can extradite you to Tennessee.

Notably: the bill is vague. This means: telling stories of your own transition, describing your healthcare experiences to an open group chat, describing your trans experiences on a public website, creating trans health guides online, describing how you have gotten DIY HRT, describing anything to do with trans healthcare, even as a cis person, can result in a class-C felony conviction.

Given that being arrested in any capacity for transgender people can be an incredibly dangerous experience (CW: SV), I strongly suggest you begin caring about opsec, stop referring to where you live, use VPNs, stop using apps like Discord, and stop using social media sites that track your IP or user agent fingerprint while unprotected. Remember that for a bill like this to be challenged in court, you have to be arrested first.

Will discuss creating / linking to a transgender matrix chat so that we can help people to move off of things like discord.

I was in my usual work wear, full makeup, my prosthetics, etc. I wanted to grab some kombucha and there was a guy going through the usual type that I buy. Brief banter between him and I about the flavors, and it's clear that I drink it. This bro tells me that I should really drink it because it's good for your gut bacteria... Like dude, no shit... I brushed it off, but I realized a day later that I was just man-splained to, probably means I was passing, I believe it's called eww-phoria.

I've carefully curated things to where my feed is actually pretty good and I've had little to no problems with it. Then out of nowhere I'm getting all these transphobic recommendations, especially detransitioner content. It was a wild departure from the usual and way beyond the amount of topic specific recs that I'll get if I look up something specific. It was really gross and I was already having a dysphoria day. Fuck YouTube.

Also videos from gender criticals. It's so incredibly upsetting. One thing I've noticed is that there is simultaneously a claim that we are being lied to, and yet when trans content creators talk about their surgery complications it's used as ammunition against us and our care. Which is it? I have always found that trans creators are fully open about the risks and complications that can happen from surgery and yet I still desperately yearn to have it even though I know recovery is going to suck. I have to hear this GC rhetoric from my parents and it breaks my heart. I just want to live my life as the woman I was always meant to be. To grow old and die as a woman. To finally have a chance at happiness. Why do we have to justify our existence? Why can't they just leave us alone?

Took me a bit and I am a little drunk but here are the totals. We had a good showing.

Note: some comments got cut out because the server doesn't like displaying more than 300 from what I can tell. I did my best with what it would show, I just sorted them by new. This should be fairly representative of the currently active userbase. As an aside, I believe we did a similar survey a looong time ago, and we had only 33% of the active userbase as trans.

Random thoughts:

A lot of people were very very cute and confused and essentially asked me to decide their gender for them. Eggs? Probably. This isn't Harry Potter and I'm not a hat so I just went with what they were sounding more convinced of.

A lot of people are even cuter and don't understand how to follow instructions, though some of this is my fault. Made this a little harder to organize.

Some people were not cis and did not identify with the words 'transgender' or 'gender diverse'. If I ever do a trans/adjacent survey again, I think I will ask 'Are you cis?'

I may do a survey for queer people overall eventually, and the question will be 'Are you cishet?'

I would love to do more scientific, inclusive polling and have better and more questions and options, but we need some good secure polling tech for that, which we don't have. So I just have to ask simple questions and get a handful of answers.

Next time I will look into how feasible it is to post a couple of comments and get responders to upvote certain ones. This might fix the issue of the display of comments being limited.

Since some people have two sets of pronouns, both of their pronouns are included separately.

Since the poll was public, some marginalized groups probably shied away from answering. If we ever get a secure way to poll people, we would get more realistic estimates of the trans and cis women userbase.

#Tallies

Yes: 121 
No: 137
Maybe: 37 
Total: 295

If you think something is fucked, you can do it yourself, the thread is public. Hope you like pie!

2000% better than reddit holy shit

She will save me, and if god wills it I WILL be her wife

Shout out to the old man outside my local pinball brewery that said "Hold the door for this young lady!"

Anyways unrelated picture of my dog and Blåhaj.

Almost 3 years ago now, surfing around r/traaaa I came across this comic. I just liked the community because I thought trans people had some great memes and sense of humor, and I thought it was pretty cool that people stepped out to be themselves... Then this. Just wanted to share.

haibane

paul in order to win the respect of the fremen and become the emperor you have to ride the biggest worm in the land. you have to change your name. drink this blue stuff for girls. have you been practicing the voice

Paul should've been trans. Hell maybe intersex too. No I have not read the books

A landmark of trans and feminist nonfiction, Whipping Girl is Julia Serano’s indispensable account of what it means to be a transgender woman in a world that consistently derides and belittles anything feminine. In a series of incisive essays, Serano draws on gender theory, her training as a biologist, her career in queer activism, and her own experiences before and after her gender transition to examine the deep connections between sexism and transphobia. She coins the term transmisogyny to describe the specific discrimination trans women face—and she shows how, in a world where masculinity is seen as unquestionably superior to femininity, transgender women’s very existence becomes a threat to the established gender hierarchy.

Now updated with a new afterword on the contemporary anti-trans backlash, Whipping Girl makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activists must work to embrace and empower femininity—in all of its wondrous forms—and to make the world safe and just for people of all genders and sexualities.

you can order a copy here with code SERANO20 for a discount

embarrassingly i've never read this, but a new edition is the perfect time to change this! it's one of the big books people always talk about as a must read for understanding transphobia and transmisogyny, so now i'm doing that and i feel pretty comfortable recommending others do so as well

i hope he's changed! and i'm glad people being shitty to trans women using femboys as a cudgel no longer have such a high profile tool to use! but i need people to understand this

Girlfriends (colored) by Akemimi on DeviantArt

if you call everyone dude and a transfem person gets mad about it, don't get defensive. just say like "sorry, i won't do it again" and don't argue "actually it's gender neutral" or "i call everyone dude". even if you do, i guarantee she's heard that argument from someone who very much does not call people they see as women dude. i certainly have

same goes double for the word guy.