fracture [he/him]

  • 8 Posts
  • 282 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 21st, 2023

help-circle
  • OK good it’s a relief you have that contingency in place. it sounds like you have a really good support system in place and i’m really glad to hear it

    so i guess i’ll leave you with my best advice for getting through the time until you start HRT:

    really sit and internalize that you are a woman. you might think of it as, the way you look right now, on the outside, is not very much like a woman. in a way, it’s the least you’ll ever look like a woman. but regardless, you must internalize that you are a woman

    which means confronting all of the internal biases you have about what a woman looks like. about facial structure, about facial hair, about your facial hair, if you have it. the way your body looks

    you are a woman.

    it’s hard and it’s painful to confront these things. but it’s important, not even every cis woman looks how they want to, or might look manlier than they want. but they are still women, and so are you

    obviously, you shouldn’t come out anywhere you feel uncomfortable or unsafe. but, in the places you feel safe, you should be open about your identity. it’s nice to be affirmed. if you can find community irl, that would be helpful, too

    you’ll probably have to work through a lot of internalized transphobia. i know i did, it took me a long time, and i’m probably still working through things

    but it’s so so so so SO important to internalize that you are a woman regardless of how you look

    it is the antidote to the kind of mind poison that comes from scrolling transition timelines and comparing yourself to faceapp

    so many trans girls i know look amazing and beautiful and still see a man in the mirror

    start seeing a woman in the mirror NOW, so when you start HRT, you can truly appreciate all of the little changes it bring. or if you get surgery or whatever

    you can only see a woman in the mirror when you start telling yourself the person in the mirror is a woman

    when you feel that bite and sting of dysphoria, remind yourself that you are a woman

    you are a woman. now, before the HRT, before you look how you want to look, before everything - you are a woman

    godspeed, i hope everything works out for you


  • i mean, if it’s really that important to you to have kids, that’s cool. it’s a tough spot to be in, but it probably is simpler, in some ways, to wait it out for a couple of years and bang out the kids and then transition

    but, if you’re already feeling this strongly after a month, i think you should really assess how realistic it is for you to make it through several years. yeah, it sucks for you to give up your life goals, and it sucks for your wife too, but sometimes we wake up and discover we’re trans and that’s life. you can transition and adopt, or not actually have kids… these are still options that you should at least consider on the table

    i think, ideally, IVF would be the route you take. maybe you could take out a medical loan for it? idk if they make non-predatory medical loans, maybe it’s something you can look into. and you can just accept if it doesn’t work, natural pregnancy might also not work, there’s testing you can do for that too

    anyways, obviously you’re not gonna sort this out in one post, and you gotta sort it out with your wife, too. like i said, really tough situation. just remember, you need to survive it for it to be a viable option. you getting one or two kids in and CENSORED’ing yourself is a non-starter. be honest with yourself and what you can handle

    (when you start using language like “i feel trapped in this body”, it’s very concerning for thoss kinds of feelings)



  • honestly check out archipelago, it’s a framework that allows you to play a lot of different randomized games with your friends. you can play synchronously or asynchronously, and if you’re handy with code, you can even add any game you want to it

    appendix

    “what’s a randomizer?” a randomizer is a method of scrambling the items in a video game, while keeping it solvable, to be able to re-experience the same game with a fresh sense of progression. an easy game to think about this with is something like metroid or zelda. you need powerups to unlock certain parts of the game, but what if you could find those powerups anywhere you found a missile expansion or a chest? that’s what a randomizer is

    “how does that work with multiple people?” now imagine that, between you and your friend’s randomized games, the items for both games could end up in either game. if we use the metroid/zelda idea from earlier, metroid might have zelda’s boomerang, while zelda might have metroid’s morph ball. the logic to ensure the games are solvable is still there, but you might be stuck waiting until your friend finds your key item. this is called “being in burger king” or 'being bk’d"

    other vocab

    check: any spot you can collect an item in a randomizer (think all collectibles and powerups in metroid, for example)

    burger king: when you have run out of checks of your own and are waiting for someone else to send you a critical item you need to make any meaningful progress again. named after the first multiworld randomizer, where someone was stuck for so long, they were able to go to burger king for six hours and return only to still be in the same situation


  • while i can appreciate that you’re at least respecting that medication choices are between a doctor and a patient, i would love for this myth that ADHD meds are meth to die.

    it’s incredibly frustrating to see this sort of misinformation perpetuated. it is not difficult to search “differences between adderal and meth”, here’s one such link if you’d like: https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/how-do-adderall-and-meth-methamphetamine-differ#differences

    there is only technically ONE ADHD medication which is meth, which is… methamphetamine, and as i understand it, it is prescribed very rarely and is quite different from illegal meth

    adderal, ritalin, and other less frequently used stimulants are not called meth because they are not meth

    this misinformation is harmful because it perpetuates the idea that illegal drugs are the same shit that people are taking for treatment, often for necessary functioning or quality of life, and also perpetuates the judgement of those people for taking those important medications. these associations or judgements can make. people reluctant to get diagnosed or treated, which can prevent them from living their lives to the fullest






  • while noting your experience, i do think it’s good context to have that testosterone for trans men / transmasc folks can also improve their ability to process emotions and also generally their temperance (and personally, estrogen just makes me a goddamn wreck; i get depressed, irritable, cynical, etc)

    (i worry that the anecdotes you’ve heard from trans women may be a little biased, as well 😅 i personally tend to think it’s more about the right hormones, than what they are)

    there’s plenty about trauma itself that causes behaviorial instability. hormones may be a contributing factor in some situations, but i question how universal it is


  • i kinda wish this was… more? like, this isn’t not a part of the process, but it’s a pretty limited analysis of why men would be reticent to approach women. there’s a lot of (very real and good) consideration for women’s safety and consent, which situations are OK to approach in and which aren’t, etc

    i guess the article is focused on how men feel, which is cool, but i think omitting this point means also missing how those worries feed back into creating those feelings of insecurity of men, too







  • i guess it’s a good motivation to go actually read the paper. i can’t stand not knowing if the summary i just read was accurate or not (and i’m assuming that you didn’t go double check yourself, either. not hating, but it is a known downside to using AI summaries)

    … oh, do you (the reader) want to know if it was accurate? guess you’ll also have to read the study to find out :p

    seems especially relevant when talking about a study related to discerning truth from false