Also every bit helps. I struggle to maintain full femme voice, but I went from extremely deep (ie would out anyone) to androgynous for the most part

You’re from Cleveland I see

Yeah it feels good in large part because we know how awful puberty can be. That being said, when I started hrt I did notice myself getting into stupid emotional fights with my mom (I lived at home at the time)

As someone who’s done it for fun and dated people who’ve done it for money. Yeah I stick to amateurs for a reason. It’s great to pay sex workers, but amateurs have a certain vibe. It’s one where I know you’re having fun because that’s the only reason you’re doing this

I’m an industrial engineer who was hanging out on lemmy and my IT guy was talking about his piracy server, and well I thought that a legitimately aquired media server might be nice, and that home assistant thing sounded cool so he gave me the form to get two used desktops for free from the company. And well now I’m still fucking around with them every once in a while in anticipation for when my space will warrant actually using them full time.

It also helps that my local bdsm community had had self hosters who talked about it for years.

One trick that may help is asking her if she has a reputable source. I got sucked into believing what I saw on reddit a few years ago and that’s what my wife did. Got to the point that when I tell her the news I say who said it if it sounds sensational and like it may be unrealistic.

I picked the other coast, but jersey was nice for affordability comparatively

There isn’t a better chili than skyline

Are you kidding, new jersey was one of the places I considered leaving ohio for

I just left last year dammit

The idea of too late implies that less improvement than had you started earlier is worse than never improving at all. If transition is right for you then starting transitioning too late is akin to quitting smoking too late, it’s not, even if you missed out on some benefits or lost some years that could have been better

Hot! And nice tie

Food not bombs prioritizes food that wouldn’t be sold like day old baked goods and produce that’s still fine to eat, but is no longer fresh enough that people will buy it.

It means left wing

Oh jeez looked it up, no it just means opposing antisemitism and banning people engaging in it.

Yeah those trans spaces are more for someone like you than someone like me (post transition). And yeah it really was this wild shift of thinking of such spaces as so scary to them turning out to be so welcoming. And eventually you just find your place in fellowship with other trans people.

The other thing is that knowing other people at a similar stage to yourself is hugely important. Someone my age who’s just now transitioning is going to have a wildly different entire experience from me given I transitioned at 20 in college, but also it’s long over. I remember the sleepless nights, the hormonal fights, the hope, and the dread and all that stuff, but it’s in the same way I remember being 16. Both groups need people who are there and people who had been there recently to thrive.

But yeah, you’re at the exciting and scary stage. Try to enjoy what you can of it, eventually being trans just becomes your normal.

Welcome sister. I understand how hard it is to step into the community and to actually embrace being one of us. May you find all the sisterhood and joy that I have.

Also I highly recommend that any trans people who are able should join some irl trans spaces, especially early on. It was so good for me back in the day and helped me so much. I fell out of them, most do, but they tend to be there mostly for folks early in transition

Yeah, that’s just chasers. Some aren’t violent, but the well is full on poisoned. This is explicitly the reason why the standard advice has long been to never go for chasers no matter how lonely you are. There are cis men who are just pretty damn into trans chicks but aren’t chasers, you can learn to tell the difference, but if you go where the chasers are then you’re probably going to find a lot of them. Chasers are typically only or primarily interested in sex, they see our bodies through a fetishized lens, many are ashamed of their attraction to us, and they’re disproportionately violent.

I had to use it in order to lose it

As a trans woman I generally agree with you, especially about the amab/afab bit. Like, yes, sometimes it’s necessary information, but so often it’s used as politically correct wording to misgender. I’ve seen it used in so many contexts where I’m just like “you understand that I’ve been living as a woman full time for nearly all of my adult life and have undergone a lot of medical transition right?”

Like I don’t mind the term transfem, but ime its far more often used in conversations about transmisogyny. In that context I think it’s useful. But at the same time, I had a long period of frustration with being treated as though I’m anything less than the binary woman I am. I still don’t like it, but I don’t experience it nearly as much

That’s basically how coming out to my mom went lol