are you in Australia? 😄

(it’s cloudy and snowing where I am)

I was a very grumpy guy before, which makes me sad to think about

oh I meant more like I use the phrase a lot IRL 😅

agreed about cis people being genital focused and the term feeling different coming from them in a context like that.

tbh I think most people have a kind of implicit genital essentialist view of gender, and I’m sure that kind of view influenced my own dyphoria and discomfort with my genitals (though it’s hard to tell when dysphoria is coming from social expectations or socialized ways of thinking vs something more culture-independent and presumably biological).

Regardless, my essentialist views were pretty challenged by transitioning, and I even find it difficult now to think of trans women as having “male” genitals, that’s just not the reality …

through God all things are possible

it does suck, but more frequent injections also helped reduce my needle phobia, and I had more psychological distress from injecting when I went back to once a week, ironically…

a lot of the links are to dead / expired campaigns, are the links old or something?

I wonder what faux pas you had in mind or if there is are more specific questions you had. I’m happy to try to help answer questions you might have, but others have done a good job.

Mostly what comes to mind is the importance of good communication and not making assumptions. Trans women vary significantly in how they want to have sex or seen or treated.

I eventually came to understand trans women on estrogen have genuinely female genitals - without some effort they are not likely to function or be like male genitals. Likewise HRT does really change the biology, in ways that scientists are only now beginning to discover. Trans women on estrogen are much more “biologically female” than commonly believed. This point seems difficult for cis folks to understand, which is why I raised it.

Regarding faux pas, I don’t know - it’s generally as simple as recognizing and treating her as a woman. A bisexual cis man who was dating a trans girl friend of mine told me he hasn’t had sex with a woman in years because he was in a poly relationship having sex with the trans woman friend of mine and with a transmasc enby (who I didn’t know or meet). That was definitely a faux pas because he basically just let slip he doesn’t see my friend as a woman…

In general I would say you shouldn’t worry about rare mistakes if your heart is in the right place and you are sincere and making consistent effort to not mispronoun or misgender people. There is no need to be fragile or overly apologetic, trans people can be accustomed to being misgendered and mostly they want to know you saw you made a mistake and that it was a mistake, so they know it’s not intentional and they are still safe.

Or at least that has been my experience.

your point about pre-op is so important, since not everyone wants bottom surgery, but I am a trans woman who uses the term “pre-op” a lot, but mostly to refer to before my surgery; when talking about other trans women I might use the clunky “pre- or non-op” as a more inclusive phrase to indicate what OP originally meant by just “pre-op” (though it would only be in niche contexts, like if talking about getting through airport security or how to tuck, etc.)

On the flip side, a lot of people just assume trans women are pre- or non-op, almost to the point where it feels like “trans” just communicates “has a penis” to a lot of people, and that can be similarly frustrating for various reasons.

fwiw I have had success with monotherapy with valerate injections, I just had to inject every 3.5 days …

I’m not sure there is anything quite like vaginal skin that could be used as a graft, tbh - I think there is an attempt to do something similar to this with the peritoneal pull through method, which grafts parts of the abdominal lining which produces a kind of mucus … though the mucus from the peritoneum is not like cervical mucus and as far as I know does not contain glucose that would feed lactobacillus. Nor would the mucus be acidic enough.

“Douching” here refers to vaginal douching, basically squirting liquid up into the vagina to clean it out. I guess it’s like a shower for the vagina, in a sense.

ah, my lovely Schrödinger’s forehead

it’s not too bad, tbh - I’m just dysphoric about it, but most people probably won’t notice (it’s a subtle difference). My hairline bothers me more, and my nose, and my lips, and my jaw, and my chin … etc. 🙈

accurate, how tf else will I hide my hideous man-forehead?

the meme is almost funny because it doesn’t work

like, what about all the stereotypical trans goth and alt girls?

also, the image is so generic that it almost describes nothing, like saying: all trans women look like women

m e t a

yay for selfie posts; they also like selfies on !trans_joy@lemmy.blahaj.zone if you felt like x-posting 😁

Mr Burke was initially suspended from the school in 2022 for refusing to call a transgender pupil by the surname ‘they’, and “the manner in which he conducted his objection to transgenderism,” towards the principle, according to the judgement.

The school also obtained an injunction restraining Mr Burke from trespassing on the school premises, which he has defied a number of times.

Should be clarified:

https://glaad.org/reference/trans-terms

TERM TO AVOID:

“transgenderism” “gender ideology”

These are not terms used by transgender people. These terms are used by anti-transgender activists to dehumanize transgender people and reduce who they are to “a condition” or a “dangerous ideology” that threatens “free speech.” Learn more about the term “transgenderism” via GLAAD’s Guide to Anti-LGBTQ Online Hate and Disinformation

BEST PRACTICE:

Refer to being transgender instead, or refer to the transgender community. You can also refer to the movement for transgender equality and acceptance.

From that “Guide to Anti-LGBTQ Online Hate & Disinformation”:

The current, popularized usage of the term “transgenderism” arises from anti-trans extremists who seek to delegitimize and dehumanize transgender people by falsely implying that being transgender is an ideology rather than an identity. (See here for a longer history of the term’s usage.)

In her March 2023 essay, “On the Right’s Call to “Eradicate Transgenderism” (It Means Exactly What You Think It Means)” journalist Parker Molloy further explains: “words like ‘transgenderism’ and ‘gender ideology’ are almost exclusively used by anti-trans activists to obscure the fact that trans people are simply people who just happen to be trans. It’s not a belief system.”

For example, the term “transgenderism” was notably weaponized in a speech by far-right commentator Michael Knowles at the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he pronounced: “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.” Knowles posted versions of the speech on YouTube, as well as variations of the same rhetoric on his other social media accounts, while disingenuously asserting that his call for violence was not violent.

On social media, Knowles and other far-right media figures employ the term (along with other variations of the trope such as “gender ideology”) to disingenuously evade platforms’ hate speech and harassment policies — which prohibit speech targeting people with hate on the basis of protected characteristics such as gender identity (while speech targeting ideologies is allowed). Anti-trans figures and groups continue to promote the term online and offline as a dog whistle expressing contempt and hatred of transgender people.

I am so disappointed, I would have expected more from NZ - I wonder how this came to be?

yeah, sorry - I meant emotionally mostly - reworded it to make more sense

I was pretty afraid of what would happen if I fainted, so having someone nearby was supportive for me, and it makes sense in general to have emotional support in that moment.

quick googling shows that fat memory operates over a decade

https://www.dw.com/en/fat-cell-memories-why-its-hard-to-maintain-healthy-weight/a-70840434

“In the timespan we looked at — 2 years in humans and 8 weeks in mice — we still found changes that persisted in cells of the adipose tissue. It is possible that these will be erased over a longer period of weight maintenance,” Hinte told DW.

Human fat cells live for around 10 years, which means it could take 10 years for the obesity memory in cells to vanish.

that’s super disheartening 😞

I mostly spent the first year on estrogen gaining weight, I was worried that losing weight during early breast growth would be a problem, but my high body fat might have made that irrelevant - my breasts seem to maintain the same relative size, as I lose weight I seem to lose it from all over in roughly equal proportions? I wish my neck, shoulders, and belly would melt, though.