lol, I borderline worry I shouldn’t talk to you because I think we have some similar afflictions and perspectives, and usually I steer things right into “yeah, why even be alive” territory … that’s not gone so well with some other folks so I try to be more ethical and aware about that potential now.

so yeaah, didn’t expect happy - but I might have been trying to steer myself away from the dark places I typically would have gone, and it seems you got what I meant - the things that keep you alive. 😅

Music can be great, I taught myself the electric bass a couple years ago - that can be fun 😁

hey, thanks for your comment, but this community is intended for women only to comment and post. Hope you understand 💜

😩😩😩

I had to look up dysthymia, but it sounds awful, I’m so sorry 🫂

I don’t have PDD, but I do have a variety of mental health symptoms that overlap with the symptoms of PDD, and while I’m doing a lot better these days, I have previously suffered decades of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation that I wouldn’t want anyone else to go through. 😅

If not celebration, what are ways that you cope or find joy?

I remember through those times rewarding / tasty food became a bit like a lifeline. I do not know your depression, but my depression was very anhedonic, so as a baseline everything was less enjoyable.

So I had a lot of “craving” behavior, seeking easy and quick rewards because I couldn’t motivate myself to do much else and nothing was enjoyable anyway.

Cooking for others became a major coping strategy, as cooking for others triggered my sense of responsibility, which helped with the depressive / motivation issues.

Basically I could leverage stress to animate my unwilling flesh (even though it was, you know, stressful and awful), and getting good enough at cooking then setup a reliable pattern of rewards.

Eventually I noticed if I ate at restaurants too much or outsourced my cooking to something like prepared or frozen meals to save time, I became much more miserable and sank more into my depression - honestly cooking kept me alive in multiple senses.

Anyway, I wonder if you have something like that, not necessarily celebratory - but like a spring bubbling up from the ground that sustains you.

chocolate is very important, lol

in fact, my main account may have been unconsciously named that way

thanks for your supportive comment! Unfortunately this is a women-only community, however. Hope you understand! 💛

yea, admittedly I don’t see transfems wanting to hang around mens-only spaces the same way some trans men have trouble moving on from a butch lesbian identity, for example.

The closest I could think of is the way some transfems end up stuck in femboy or sissy cultures and they have trouble moving on from that even when they’re dysphoric and suffering for it, but I still think that’s a different experience.

That said, I don’t know if you’ve seen Will & Harper (incidentally I hated this film and thought it did a terrible job at both trans representation and modeling cis allyship), but the film is about Harper, a woman who transitioned in her 60s, and she goes on a roadtrip with her friend Will Ferrell.

Part of the film is about Harper attempting to recreate the experiences she had as a man traveling freely through small towns and going to sketchy bars, and that felt a bit like the analogous experience to the trans man who feels connection to women community. Harper longed for a kind of belonging to a particular space that was largely male-coded … not unlike the way Sylvia Plath, a cis woman, yearned for that nomadic adventurous freedom, “to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night”, which was not accessible to her as a woman.

no worries that’s very common, and thanks for being so understanding 💕

hi there, thanks for your humorous comment, but this community is for women only. Hope you understand 🧡

thanks for your comment, but this is a womens-only community, hope you understand 💛

thanks for your comment, but only women are permitted to comment or post in this community, hope you understand 💛

thanks for your response, but in this community only women are permitted to comment or post. Hope you understand 🧡

thanks for your contribution, but this community is for women only to comment and post in. Hope you understand 💛

Yes, and being a man is very alienating and lonely … that aspect of transitioning to be a man can be a bit of a shock I’ve heard.

I think the rule should allow those people to decide to what extent they belong in a womens-only community, and that gives them the space to make that decision … there is also the fact that in my mind a big reason for a womens space is to provide a space where people who have been oppressed as women can talk away from the oppressors, and trans men typically have a history of living as a woman and thus having had the experiences of that social oppression (despite being men).

Either way, allowing people to self-identify and choose themselves whether they belong in a women-only community (rather than gatekeeping others identities) seems like the right approach to me.

It should be clarified: this is a womens-only community that allows trans & intersex folks (including non-women and trans men) to decide for themselves whether they feel they belong in a womens-only community. We technically allow cis men to disclose whether they’re women or not, too - when we don’t know, we just ask! It’s not that different for a trans man, we just might have extra language of “you decide whether you feel you belong here”.

But that’s not why you belong here, you belong because you’re a woman, silly 😝

I mean, I don’t know - I still debate this with myself tbh, it makes me feel a bit ill to include trans men in womens spaces because it’s just so transphobic on the face of it, it reminds me of womens spaces like the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival which famously excluded trans women from attending or performing, but allowed fully transitioned trans men not only to attend but to perform …

There is some implicit notion that when a woman becomes more masculine it is good, and trans men somehow embody the ultimate apotheosis of a woman (i.e. a woman who achieves manhood), it all just reeks of misogyny and transphobia to me. This thinking seems to hate femininity and it negates the male gender identity of trans men.

But being trans is so difficult even for the trans individual to come to terms with or understand that it’s not uncommon for trans folks to have complicated relationships to gender. A lot of us fall are not strictly binary, and we fall somewhere between men or women.

Some of us are binary enough but have been so pressured by society to fit in one box even after we realize we don’t fix that box we don’t feel we can move to the other box.

So I guess the “even trans men” is a way to just leave wiggle room for people to decide for themselves, and to prioritize self-identity, even though that is admittedly messy. And yes, it is to avoid someone feeling wronged by being excluded from a space where they feel they belong.

Thanks for your comment, but unfortunately this community is for women only. Hope you understand 🧡

Trans men are men and I believe the trans-affirming position is to exclude them, but if you’ve read Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues you already know it can be quite complicated - so we let trans men decide whether they belong in a womens-only community.

Some trans men have a butch lesbian identity before they transition that they continue to have a connection to, and it can be hard for some trans men to lose their connection to a community of women. Some trans men are not passing and continue to move through the world perceived as a woman despite having a gender identity that makes them a man.

Either way, I have understood the trans rule as allowing any trans individuals decide whether they feel they belong here or not. My understanding might be wrong, or we might need to revise the rule or my understanding of it.

We’re open even to non-women who feel they belong here or wish to participate, e.g. agender, non-binary, bigender, and even trans men (if they choose).

I’m not sure - I would probably want to look at what is well evidenced, i.e. what actually demonstrates reduced gender bias. Bias might be really hard to actually measure, so we might want to be specific about what we care about, e.g.

• salary gap between men and women
• % of workforce that is men vs women

and so on …

Policies that I’ve seen and come to mind (but may be flawed still, I haven’t thought much about this):

• provide childcare at the workplace, have somewhere your kids can be safe and taken care of while you’re at work
• seek out new hires, interns, and other candidates from all-women’s universities and colleges in addition to ivy leagues, major state schools, etc.
• have strong maternity and paternity leave