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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2023

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  • That makes sense! I definitely share in your experience of anxiety that comes out of wanting to be open and expressive but also protect yourself. I’m navigating something similar and, well, I don’t have a good answer right now about what to do.

    Generally, for people I know, I’ve found that I’m a very good judge of whether or not they will accept/embrace/vibe with my gender expression or be off-put by it and I know that influences the degree to which I mask (which I’m unhappy with, but working on). For people I don’t know—generally they don’t care as they have their own problems to work through, but I live in a socially liberal city so there’s that 😅










  • I get that this is a bug, but it kinda sucks that people feel it’s all right to act this way. Software is hard and unless you’re using a language with zero-overhead iteration you’re probably writing your drivers in C and iterating with a for-loop like our ancestors did. Off by one errors are stupidly common and everyone is human.

    I mean, fuck mega corporations. This is still cringeworthy.

    That being said, it’s going to be fun to see quality differences in these operating systems in a few years because, as far as I know, Apple would rather force Swift into the systems-level language space than adopt a memory-safe language today.

    Meanwhile Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, etc are all investing heavily in Rust by integrating it into their platforms.


  • Been there with facial epilating. Noo thank you. I’ve started electrolysis which has been simple enough (though time consuming). I can see some results, but wow, I think I’m still not even a quarter of the way there with 7 hours done. It beats the pain of epilating though.

    I have no experience with laser, though. I’ve heard it is less permanent than electrolysis which is why I avoided it. Was it completely ineffective?


  • On blockers as well, the main things I’ve noticed is a slight improvement to my complexion (not a huge difference to be honest), slightly less muscle strength, and less of a raging sex drive (I have a high sex drive, it’s less insane now).

    Facial hair is exactly the same. I’m having electrolysis done to correct that (slowly 😭)

    As far as starting on HRT, I’m in Seattle and it was as easy as getting an appointment with my primary care physician, explaining that I’ve been experiencing gender dysphoria and that I’d like to start taking t-blockers, and then signing a release form and having some blood work done. I was also asked about what kind of support I had in my life (family, friends, therapist) but it felt more to gauge if I was in a good place mentally and offer resources than as a gatekeeping question.


  • That’s really exciting!

    What has helped me is to focus less on labels and more on how I’m reacting emotionally to different things. Like, how happy I felt seeing myself in a blouse and skirt for the first time. Or how badly I felt understanding that a conversation about “girls night” wasn’t an invitation to me. Or the relief of telling my partner what support looked like for me as I figure all of my own stuff out. Getting “sir”'d at a local bakery.

    Like, I can either fall into the self-critical trap and view it as “evidence” of how valid my ideas of myself are or aren’t. Or I can chase those things that makes me feel whole, good, and welcome and trust that the work I put into being fulfilled in life is going to make everything I do that much more wonderful to experience.

    At least that’s what I tell myself. Who knows how good I actually am about it. Being human is inherently messy and full of mistakes and learning from them.


  • It makes sense that you have your own unique experiences, and that you do and don’t resonate with others’. What’s been helpful to me is thinking of gender as a spectrum and that it’s fine if I don’t 100% fit into a neat little gender box.

    It’s easy to try and fit yourself (or others) into these boxes. That’s how human brains work; by categorizing.

    The reality is that your self and your experiences are unique and that transgender lesbian is a label you can use to describe your own experiences. There are many many more labels, all of which try their best to capture the nuances of the human experience with respect to gender and sexuality.

    If transgender lesbian doesn’t feel 100% right then there is a plethora of other labels that maybe align better.

    Another thing to be aware of is that, today, transgender CAN be meant to describe someone who’s true gender identity is on the opposite side of the gender spectrum. Maybe you’re actually somewhere in the middle, or off to one side, or some combination, or even feel that gender isn’t a part of your identity at all.

    Ultimately you are the final authority on what you choose to label your true self.