Finished How We Fight For Our Lives yesterday. It’s a very powerful memoir from a black gay man that grew up in the Southern US. Very well written, very bug topics, lots of insight into his world, and the struggles he dealt with. Obviously it will deal with racism and homophobia; the book goes through his experiences understanding who he was. It was a good book! I’d recommend a read if that experience is interesting to you.

I’m gonna depart from the last 2 books for now (Stone Butch Blues got canceled bc of stock, so I’ve gotta buy it from somewhere else), as I bought a bunch of lesbian romances (I couldn’t help myself). No clue if you would be interested in any of that, but let me know if you might be and I can review those, too!

Congrats! You’ve discovered something new about yourself and had fun in the process! 🎉

Yes, it is possible, as per your linked resource, however it would be up to the server maintainers if they feel it is reasonable to do. Note that federation is not supported over Tor, so federation would go over the clearnet via the original instance. This is not an issue, because the only thing that would be useful for Tor is hiding the client connection IP address, which would be handled under this configuration.

I read Suicide Notes. It’s an extremely heavy book with about every trigger possible buried in it, just as a warning. I’m not going to say what exactly it covers from the LGBTQ+ spectrum, but it really let me see into a different world. Someone else’s world. It’s a fiction, but it’s not a fantasy; it feels like living someone’s real life. It’s incredibly moving, but it is very depressing (the name is a good indicator), so keep that in mind before deciding to read it. I learned a lot from it, including things about myself. I’d highly recommend it if you’re willing to get really sad about it; I feel it was very cathartic for me, and it’s a great portal into the queer experience.

Also, there is a sequel called Every Star That Falls. I’ll be reading that at some point, but likely not especially soon.

Just finished Kiss Her Once for Me. I absolutely loved it and would highly recommend it, but only if you’re willing to read a lesbian romance. It’s very queer in general, it has nonbinary characters, trans characters, bis, lesbians, polygamy and monogomy, and demisexuality. It’s a fiction, and it is certainly a romance novel, but if that might be interesting to you, it’s a wonderful queer book! It also deals with some of the issues many of us queer folk have with family and acceptance, but those aren’t the central points of the story; it’s part of being queer, and I think that those aspects add a lot to the story by being only small parts (kind of like acknowledging our problems in a healthy way without focusing on them too much that it becomes depressing). I’ll update you with more as I get to them!

If you’re looking specifically for trans activism, The Transexual Menace came back and already organized a protest at Stonewall last week or so, and they have plans to organize a lot more across the US. They’re US based, so I suppose it may not be helpful if you aren’t in the US

I also just got back into reading, and was curious about the same thing!

I HIGHLY recommend Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. That’s the book that sparked my trans realization, and it’s incredibly well illustrated with a wonderful story of eir life (it’s a memoir); I’ve read it 3 times. I actually just bought 5 other queer books, but I have yet to read them:

• Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun
• How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
• Suicide Notes by Michael Thomas Ford
• Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
• The Stonewall Reader by New York Public Library

I can update this comment when I finish reading a book to give my thoughts on them if you’d like!

Well, the hardening, just as with Tor Browser, does break some sites. It comes preinstalled with NoScript and uBlock Origin, the former of which you will either have to learn how to use or disable, depending on your wants for privacy. While it doesn’t include some of the anti-features of base Firefox, it is still based on Firefox so it will have similar performance for similar tasks.

Personally, I use Mullvad for most of my browsing, and Firefox for a few specific things (like staying logged into site long-term and such).

It’s available as a flatpak via Flathub for an easy installation, otherwise you can check https://mullvad.net/en/browser/linux for distro-specific installation instructions.

I use Mullvad Browser. It’s maintained in coordination with the Tor Project, and is essentially the Tor Browser with Tor itself stripped out. Same browser fingerprinting protections, however, among other things.

EDIT: I’d like to clarify that this has nothing to do with my trust in Mozilla or Firefox itself, especially not concerning recent panics about benign changes. I still use Firefox on the side, it just does not have fingerprinting protections by default, and hardening it manually leads to minor differences between user configurations (even with Arkenfox if that’s still around) that is solved by Mullvad Browser for me. I use Mullvad Browser for my main browsing, and Firefox for specific exceptions. Firefox itself is fine, and no, Mozilla is not burning it to the ground.

Yeah, I personally went the DIY route. I started my transition in August of last year, and started HRT January of this year. I had predicted things were going to get bad pretty fast, so I have avoided being ‘official’ for the time being until I can figure out what to do. I, personally, would like procedures in the future, and the unfortunate reality of that is the fact that my insurance requires a letter from someone actively prescribing and monitoring the progress of HRT for 12 or more months consecutively to cover any of those services, so if I’m gonna have to make a choice in the future of if I’m going to set myself back for years to avoid the potential consequences of being ‘official’, or go to a provider for a prescription so that I can get the necessary letters. Right now, I’m just biding my time while I see how things go (though that won’t stop me from activism).

If you’re in the US, here’s a big list of resources that could help you figure out where you want to go! There are multiple provider finders for gender-affirming care, therapy, financial assistance, and all sorts of stuff. I do recommend seeing a therapist (like a LICSW)! Not only is therapy wonderfully helpful in finding out who you are, but if you’re looking for some types of care further down the line, insurance may require a letter from a qualified professional (sometimes even 2 different ones depending on what you want; I have a therapist and a psychiatrist so I go to them). Getting things documented and tracked would be to your benefit if you ever need a letter.

I wish you luck on your journey!

EDIT: Gender Justice League is based in Washington State, so there will be many resources specific to Washington, but there are also national resources listed that you can search through!

This was already posted here, and the original post has a paywall bypass link

I really don’t like it. That’s a term that I’ve only ever seen associated with porn and sexualization, and I’d prefer not to be sexualized or objectified. I agree with you that I find it dehumanizing, and I really don’t like being fetishized. I feel like anyone that would use that term for me is either a chaser or a transphobe, and I don’t want to interact with either. And that’s without getting into the whole Japanese culture talk, which revolves around traditionalism, heteronormalcy, and misogyny that makes it extra uncomfortable.

I agree with the shared sentiment here. Satire is great, and it has its place, but when the things the people you are satirizing are saying are on par with your satire, it’s just depressing. Like, I can understand things being a joke, but it isn’t funny if all it does is remind me of how, without the context, it would be impossible to tell by glancing if this was actually stuff said by these kinds of people. The joke falls flat when the joke is so close to reality, that it’s just a reminder of how awful people truly are. I understand that people deal with trauma and misery through humor, but this is such a strongly sensitive topic, that the jokes about it in this capacity (at least with this execution) aren’t funny. They’re simply depressing. So personally, regardless of the satirical nature, I’m not going to go out and defend that community. There are plenty of people out there who wouldn’t even think it’s satire, and it could simply feed the cycle of hate they’re a part of. I draw the line on humor when it can be used to fuel the very thing it’s making fun of. The reliance on people being aware enough to understand that it’s satire is a big flaw to me, especially given how widespread this kind of thinking is, and how close your satire is to the reality.

Just my two cents.

I’ve had it go back and forth my while life (at least that I can remember). I’m my youth, I mostly was male in my dreams, but had the occasional dream where I was a woman (and some dreams that really should have cracked my egg sooner). I realized I was trans about 9 months ago. By “realized”, I mean that I had been thinking about it seriously for 2 and a half years (and had fleeting thoughts long before that), and 9 months ago is when I was finally confident that it was who I am. Since then, I have dreamt of myself as a woman much more often. I’m on hormones, and I don’t dream most nights (always been like that), but its rare for me to have a dream where I’m a man nowadays, despite the fact that I haven’t outwardly transitioned (only among friends and online am I presenting fem because of some life reasons that make it unsafe right now). I spend most of my time alone in my room, and I present fem to myself in the way I behave, in my mannerisms and such. I have spent a lot of time changing my voice, so when I’m alone, I speak to myself in my new voice, even though I never use it with anyone else in person. I’ve very significantly changed the way that I think about myself, and for me, that has affected my dreams significantly. That’s not to say that just because someone else has a different dream experience that they way they think of themselves is differently than I do. Dreams are a really mysterious thing, and everyone has different experiences with them. They aren’t necessarily representative of your real life, or your real beliefs or thoughts, though they can often be influenced by them.

But I think something that has actually had a significant effect on my dreams is how much I’ve been daydreaming since my realization. In daydreams, I’m entirely in control, and I imagine myself as the girl I want to be. I think that has affected my dreams significantly, and it’s definitely influenced my conscious thoughts. I don’t know if it’s related, but now that I’ve gotten used to my voice, my inner monologue has changed. I’ve almost outed myself by accidentally using the “wrong” voice before because of it, but I really think that it’s a lot of little things that have caused my thoughts and dreams to change.

I think it’s going to be different for everyone. Just remember that your brain loves to use the same connections that it has used your entire life. It loves being lazy and ignoring new things when it can get away with it. Your brain controls your dreams, despite it not being conscious control, so it’s likely to use connections from the before times when you are dreaming. That doesn’t change who you are, and it doesn’t make you any less (or any more) valid. That’s just the brain doing it’s thing; falling into patterns established when it was younger because it likes to be lazy about it.

Norway is wonderful for LGBTQ+ travel, pretty much everyone is able to speak fluent English, and the natural beauty of the country itself is breathtaking, even in the urban areas!

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Correct, but I believe the user is looking for a cracked version, as they don’t have a license. The likelihood of that existing is significantly lower on Linux than it is for Windows given the much smaller userbase, the fragmentation into multiple package formats, and the overall distaste of proprietary software in the Linux community.

I can’t help with pirating software, your options are going to be heavily limited because most people running Linux would just prefer open source alternatives (like Blender), so it’s far less likely you will find cracked software specifically made for Linux (plus, there is a far smaller userbase). On some quick searching, I did find someone who had issues running Houdini in a VM (for multiple distros), but it worked fine when it was installed natively. I’m not seeing an entry in the WINE database for Houdini, so while you could always try running a Windows version through WINE, given the type of program it is, I highly doubt it would run without issue. I have no recommendations on how to get ahold of a Linux compatible version without a license.

I had a similar experience! When I first started questioning, I ended up concluding I was agender, but mostly because the feminine parts of me had been deeply repressed by childhood trauma and life experiences. It was probably 3 or 4 weeks where I was sure that’s where my gender identity was, but that revelation came with a huge wave of dysphoria, and as I started presenting less masculinely, and explored femininity, I felt more and more like myself. I eventually hit a kind of breaking point where I realized that I was trans, and I’ve never been happier with myself after committing to it! I don’t think of myself as agender anymore, but I related to your experience!