#and as it gets less important i get less and less dysphoria

[piracyandpumpturns]

every day i ask myself “am i genderqueer or do i simply not percieve gender in relation to myself”

#i have such little physical dysphoria #although i used to have way more #and sometimes i wonder if it’s because i simply dont naturally percieve physical features as associated with a certain identity #because back when i had a ton of dysphoria about my body i was still thinking of gender a concept everyone was a part of #and that i couldnt be exempt from; that i had to choose my place within the set layout instead of carve a place that fits me uniquely #rather than how i view it now #which is as an optional form of self-definition that just doesnt really apply to me #or like someone in the recording studio as a song is being made #not quite outside of it but not really a part of it in an important way #gender is something that exists that isn’t important in my life the way it used to be #and as it gets less important i get less and less dysphoria #still not none and i doubt it ever will be (without physical transition) #but very very little esp compared to when i was first discovering my gender identity #and another thing #and i cant figure out if my dysphoria is due to how i know my body is percieved #or if it’s actual personal feelings about my body that i would have regardless of society & gender expectations #THAT is my daily struggle #who am i and does the answer even matter anyway #gay kid posting gay shit #gender stuff

[binders-and-beanies]

Pondering bottom surgery in the tags I mf guess

#I’ve been. thinking abt bottom surgery again after having accepted for a while that I would probably never get it #for context early on in my transition I was dead set on phallo but then T and my other surgeries satisfied me enough to not need it #+ for phallo I would have had to keep an arm or leg free of tattoos and I just did not want to wait on that #not considering it would probably be at least a decade. tattoos were and are more important #+ the more I started to enjoy using what I have I was like. it is simply not medically necessary anymore #like would I like to have a **** yes. do I need one to live a happy life no #being bi complicates things for me too bc it depends a little bit who I marry #don’t want to tailor my body to a specific relationship esp if it doesn’t last forever but it does make a difference #current partner is nonbinary and wants phallo so that does not make things simpler lol #I want a body that allows the most affirming possible relationship w the person I intend to marry #I also don’t want to end up hindering things w future partners should that not happen #anyway I say all this to say. I had never considered meta as an option bc I didn’t think it would do much for me #lot of effort and money and healing for not as drastic a change. wouldn’t solve my biggest bottom dysphoria issues #however. starting to think it could be the middle ground I’m looking for as a gnc/genderfluid person #it would be less surgeries. less complicated n expensive. less changes to my current anatomy #esp if I don’t do everything you Can do w meta. I could do like half of all that or less #I don’t wanna risk giving up the things I can do now without knowing if I’ll enjoy the new possibilities #but this could be a way to just kinda feel more affirmed without it changing my life all that much #I think just the act of undergoing bottom surgery would be affirming. like I’ve done Everything I’m a binary male thru and thru. transexual #and I wouldn’t have to keep wondering if I’ll do it someday or if I should #not that I can any time soon I’m uninsured. insurance prob wouldn’t even cover it #but just. the more I look into it and think abt it + the more serious my relationship gets the more I lean towards it #my partner talking increasingly abt wanting bottom surgery asap is influencing me too ngl not even in a jealousy way #just. I can’t deal w the possibility of a partners phallo fucking up my relationship w my body Again. I would need to know what I want #man. I can’t even go to therapy to talk thru it. on account of being uninsured #mine #txt #personal

[ftmtftm]

Thinking a lot about how exclusionary/reactionary ideology is so incredibly easy to fall into and act upon because it preys on and weaponizes people's existing insecurities. It gets people saying things like:

"I'm deeply dysphoric can't even access HRT yet because of transphobic policy so why should someone without dysphoria have access to resources before me?"

or

"I'm targeted by transmisogyny regularly. It is the biggest issue in my life. Therefore other trans people's issues are secondary and are either less important than or just side effects of transmisogyny, so why should I ally with them?"

or

"Ace people don't have laws attacking the ways they have sex like other queers because they don't have sex, why should I have community with them at all?"

or

"All men benefit from systemic privilege, even marginalized men. Men have everything handed to them by the patriarchy so why should I care about finding common ground with them when they are the ones oppressing me?"

or

"The word queer is a slur and it makes me uncomfortable so no one should use it for themself."

All of those lines of thinking follow the same pattern: "I am hurting, I am oppressed, I am beaten down, so why should I care about other people that either make me uncomfortable or I deem as having more privileges than myself"

And it is okay to hurt. It is also, genuinely, okay to only really feel passionate about issues that impact yourself. Compassion fatigue is real. It's very easy to get so swept into caring for others you forget to care for yourself.

But you can't let your pain harden you so much you stop viewing others as complex human beings trying to live their lives and start seeing them all as adversaries to your existence by virtue of existing themselves. That's no way to live.

#transmedicalism #transandrophobia #aphobia #queerphobia #original post #it's almost like radical feminist separatists destroyed a decent corner of our sociological and philosophical theory

[drdemonprince]

I have finally learned that non-Autistic people only expect a very limited amount of information to be transferred to them at a time. If you try to explain something to them in too much detail or add too much background info, they get overwhelmed in processing it, and they don't know which details are important to parse, and so they get frustrated with you for bombarding them, or they don't listen and miss out on what's important. This isn't them being any less intelligent or caring than anyone else, by the way, it is just a processing difference. And so while it may feel unnatural at first, I have learned that if I want a non-Autistic-seeming person to understand me, I should give them less information and let them color in between the lines. It keeps their mind engaged and keeps them from becoming upset!

I just pick the most OBVIOUSLY important information ("pick me up at the drive thru"), without any of the background or the "why" behind it (the bus broke down and it was raining so i'm under the awning at the drive thru to stay dry) , and I don't worry whether they understand it fully, because they actually do not want all that extraneous information.

hilariously the place where i finally mastered this was on Grindr. I used to explain to people at length my preferences, dysphoria triggers, specifics of where and when we could meet and why my schedule was what it was...and I rapidly figured out that it's much more effective to just tell someone the bare minimum of what you are looking for and where you currently are. and only get into anything deeper if the situation warrants it.

When I talk to an Autistic, conversely, I let the information flow freely because I know it will be helpful to them, and because it's fun to get to be very didactic and precise, too

[txttletale]

about the "people are allowed to be cis" like i kind of get the optics & context but I do think it's important to recognize that a gender journey can end at the same place it started. Often-times it doesn't because the journey starts due to discomfort with one's gender but in my mind it's the same as questioning any other belief, it's good to do it even if you end up still holding that belief.

The 'problems' faced by cis people who have questioned their gender are not nearly as big as those experienced by trans people but it's still something that happens, particularly among people in trans communities. I think this idea also sort of intersects with the idea of people wanting representation, and the idea of somebody questioning their gender sort of implies they're going to be trans so then there can be disappointment.

Some of this is speculative, and i haven't seen the original post so maybe i'm missing something but your post really hit weird because it's not telling people they can be cis it's saying you can dip your foot in the pool of transgenderism and not go all the way in. Like obviously that's less urgent than people shooting at those in the pool but just dismissing it is kind of weird

people are told it is okay to be cis literally from the moment they are born. i dont want to be harsh but literally everything you're saying could be coming out of the mouth of a conversion therapist -- the current term used to sanitize conversion therapy in the UK is in fact "exploratory therapy". "well we shouldn't rush them into transness we should give them time to decide in case they're actually cis after all" is the #1 talking point undergirding the total annihilation of trans healthcare for young people in the UK. trans people are already told at every single step of the way that it's okay to change their minds and be cis. they are told this by parents and teachers and peers who say "it's just a phase". they are told this by media outlets panicking about """rapid-onset gender dysphoria""". they are told this over and over again by transohobic medical systems that tell them that they should think about whether maybe they're just autistic or gay or they need to have more sex. every single part of our brutally transphobic society is already screaming "IT'S OKAY TO JUST BE CIS" in everyone's ears every second they exist in it. there is never a need to add your voice to that chorus.

#tattletxt #nobody harass or yell at the asker here #im sure this was asked in good faith but im tired

[emma-needs-attention]

I don’t shave every day. It’s not that I don’t “need” to; I have very dark, dense facial hair that grows quickly and remains pretty visible after shaving. When I do shave, I don’t try to cover it with makeup (beyond some powder to reduce redness). In most other ways I present very feminine, but I always have fairly obvious facial hair.

And it makes me feel terrible.

I started electrolysis a couple months ago. It’s excruciatingly painful, expensive, and it takes forever. In an hour-long session, my electrologist is able to remove hair in only a small region (about 1 square inch). A few weeks later, much of that hair comes back. I am told that it will take two to three years of regular treatments to remove it entirely. On top of that, I apparently have a condition called Post Inflammatory Hyperpigmentation, which causes the skin in affected areas to darken after treatment. For nearly two months after completing a single pass over my upper lip, my mustache was more visible than it had ever been, despite having significantly less hair.

And it made me feel terrible.

I know this is the best way for me to permanently remove my facial hair, but I just canceled all of my upcoming sessions and at the moment I have no plans to begin again.

If I could pay to have my facial hair instantly and completely removed I would empty my savings account. I am intensely aware of it any time I go out in public. If it makes me so uncomfortable, why do I not do more to hide it?

I feel incredibly privileged for a trans woman. I have a loving, supportive family. I have a well-paying job. I live in a very accepting area. I have never had a single person say anything negative to me about my gender identity, which was certainly not what I was expecting when I came out. It is important to me that I be visibly queer, and in my privileged position I am able to do that without fear. A year ago I didn’t think I would ever transition; now I want people to know that I’m trans.

I am disappointed with myself for wanting to remove my facial hair, for changing my voice. I am determined not to have to do more work than a cis person does. Cis women don’t have to shave their face every day. Cis men don’t have to shave their face every day. Why should I? This is who I am, what my body does. Shouldn’t I be proud of that? Am I not supposed to love myself the way I am?

But by that logic, why am I even transitioning in the first place?

I am doing more work than a cis person does. Cis people don’t transition, and transitioning takes effort. I know that there are cis people, both men and women, who do shave every day. Am I lying to myself? I’m a trans woman; aren’t I supposed to want to get rid of my facial hair? Shouldn’t I be trying harder? Doesn’t this give me dysphoria? Am I pretending not to have dysphoria so I don’t have to put in the effort? Does the fact that I’m not trying harder make me… I don’t know, less trans? Non-binary? Is it ok for me to call myself a trans woman? Am I lying to myself?

As a woman who was a man until thirty, there are things about my body that I must accept, that I won’t be able to change no matter how much money I dump into my transition. I’m tall, I have broad shoulders, I have large hands. No amount of surgery or hormones will change these things.

But there are many things that I can change, and while none of them are requirements for being a woman, they may still be changes that I want to make. Where do I stop? Am I finished transitioning when I’ve done everything that is physically possible? My goal isn’t to “pass,” at least not in the way that word is generally used. In a time when cis women are being assaulted because people think they’re trans—because they don’t “pass” as women—the idea of what it means to pass becomes blurry. Often when we say that we want to pass, what we really mean is that we want to be conventionally beautiful.

I am a woman. Therefore, I look like a woman. My transition goal is to pass as myself. I’ve spent the last year trying to figure out who I am so I can look like her. I don’t care whether people see me and think “that’s a woman.” I want to be able to look in the mirror and think “that’s me.” But it can be extremely difficult to separate your own image of yourself from society’s idea of what you should look like. Am I self-conscious about the size of my body because it doesn’t feel like me, or because I’ve been told that women should be smaller? There are tall cis women, there are broad-shouldered cis women, there are cis women with large hands. Those traits don’t make them less womanly.

For the aspects of my body that I do have control over, I am stuck wondering whether I am changing things to become myself, or changing them because I have internalized that the way I am is wrong. At the moment, facial feminization surgery is something that I think I might like to do. But how do I know that I want to do it for the right reasons? I don’t hate my face, but when I catch a glimpse of myself from certain angles I can’t help but think that it isn’t feminine enough. What I should be asking is if it’s Emma enough, but how can I know that? How do I know who I’m supposed to be?

I feel like I was supposed to be a cis woman, but… why? Who am I to say that I wasn’t supposed to be trans? That I wasn’t supposed to transition at thirty, to have both a male puberty and a female one? Being trans has made me more self-aware, more open-minded, more empathetic. The totality of my experience is what makes me who I am. Maybe there’s a world in which I was assigned female, maybe there’s a world in which I was put on puberty blockers as a kid. But the girl in those worlds isn’t me.

Loving yourself and wanting to change are two feelings that can coexist. I tend to think of body positivity as simply accepting yourself as you are, but it is more nuanced than that. As a trans person, who I am inside is not the same as who I am outside. Which one am I supposed to love? I do love myself, but I also love who I could be. I’m transitioning so that someday they’ll be the same person.

Over the past year I have become both my biggest supporter and my biggest critic. I constantly tell myself how pretty I am, how brave I am, how fucking cool I am (hey, nobody else is saying it and it’s true). This forced positivity has been fantastic for me. I can confidently say that I truly love myself for the first time in my life. But I sometimes feel guilty that I don’t love myself more.

I can’t help but stare at myself in the mirror all the time now. I actually bought a new mirror so I didn’t have to walk as far to do so. I’ve taken more selfies than I did in my entire pre-transition life. After many months on HRT, I finally see myself in my reflection. But my eyes refuse to focus on my stubble. Sometimes I catch myself thinking “I’m going be so beautiful once I get rid of this facial hair,” and it feels like a betrayal. Fuck you Emma, I’m already gorgeous.

#trans #transfem #transgender #lgbtq #comics #essay #art #cw dysphoria

[spaghettioverdose]

I've never really talked on here about how I figured out my gender, and since this whole egg discourse is going on, I feel like I should.

I'm not one of the trans women who figured out their genders at age 4 and became fully confident of it. Up until around 16 I didn't even begin to consider that I may not be a cis guy and it took me up until almost 19 to fully realise I was a trans woman. Before this, at 18, after feeling particularly shitty for weeks (from what I later learned was definitely dysphoria), I attempted suicide.

I only really started to understand myself once I started hanging out with other trans people on discord servers. My perception of transness was the more mainstream-accepted version (at that time) of "I always confidently knew I was a woman basically from birth and I exhibited x, y and z feminine behaviours at all times etc." which I didn't fit in with, so I always thought "well I can't be a trans woman because that's not me". Being around other trans people, and especially having other trans women point out behaviours I had, and tell me "that's also how I thought before I realised I was trans" helped me immensely.

I didn't get any of the rigid online definitions and examples, nor did I get the perfectly sanitised videos from the handful of trans people who made it on youtube. None of that felt like me at the time. I didn't have any point of reference. I only really understood myself once I related to someone who used to be in the same position. If some trans girl didn't call me an egg, I might still be a completely miserable "cis" guy to this day still, or even dead.

I understand that others have had worse experiences when it comes to this, but we must recognise that the problem in these situations is outing or harassment. The porblem is abuse, and as with all things interpersonal, you can always turn it into abuse. As with all things interpersonal, you have to have some amount of tact and caution.

I don't think we should harass anyone into getting their egg cracked (and this happens vastly less often than people here seem to think but it does happen), but also we shouldn't be constantly agnostic about if someone is trans or not, because in the end not everyone is capable of coming to that conclusion by themselves, and by the time you've "let them figure it out" they might've spent several more years being miserable and not knowing why or they might be dead.

It is also very important to point out that this discourse is only really happening because there is a particular bias against trans women. This isn't a discussion of how to approach the subject, or a handful of people talking about their experiences with it, it's a discourse where one side is trying to problematize another aspect of the transfem community. Notice that people are arguing this when it comes to transfems and not cis gay people or even transmascs. Notice that this website always cycles back to attacking some aspect of the transfem community every couple of weeks.

Do you really think these arguments are being made in good faith? Do you really think it's worth adding to the sea of transmisogyny that is this website and most of the world?

As always, this post is meant for people who are genuinely well-meaning. The dipshits who keep jumping on any excuse they can to harass trans women can go fuck themselves.

#transmisogyny #long post

[copperbadge]

hi, i had a medium to big question. in your post about the adhd self-help book you mentioned people with adhd being conditioned to be nonconfrontational, but i've never once in my entire life connected the two? can you break down the connection for me so that i can once again (this week, even) have my understanding of my own condition blown wide open?

So, you are not the only person to ask about this, but that's on me for being unclear -- I wasn't trying to assert that kids with ADHD are automatically conditioned to be nonconfrontational, I was more trying to be like "Hey not everyone needs lessons in medical self-advocacy but a lot of nonconfrontational people do." And I think there is a higher population of people with neurodivergence who are deeply confrontation-averse, but I don't have like, numbers for that, it's just an assumption based on other knowledge.

It gets complicated; ADHD is a disease based heavily in acting impulsively against your best interests. But yeah I do think people with ADHD are often conditioned to avoid confrontation because of two main factors: rejection-sensitive dysphoria and executive dysfunction.

RSD, which I hate perhaps more than any other symptom or behavior associated with ADHD, automatically kicks our nervous system into high gear in social situations and encodes embarrassing moments in our memory with high-def clarity. Because RSD naturally causes a level of anxiety around socialization, it tends to make us nonconfrontational simply because a) we don't want to be yelled at, b) we don't want to embarrass ourselves by getting emotional about something that may not warrant it, and c) by the time we realize what's happening our body is already on high alert which means we are likely to go into fight-flight-freeze mode.

Me, I freeze, usually, but none of those three options are great for fast thinking during an argument. I used to lose arguments a lot simply because I couldn't think or react as fast as the neurotypical person I was fighting with, so I simply stopped having fights. Notably, I did not have this problem when fighting with my brother, who is also neurodivergent and has many of the same freeze reactions I do.

If people disagree with me, even when I know I'm right I also know I probably won't be able to vocalize it properly, so I back down. Usually it's trivial so it doesn't matter, and I've gotten strategic about how and when I argue about things that do matter; it's also a lot easier to do with strangers or professionals (like doctors) where I don't have to worry about long-term social repercussions. But yeah, our own nervous system tells us "hey maybe don't pick this fight" about every single fight and if we do pick that fight, it treats our opponent as a dangerous predator.

Executive dysfunction's interaction with nonconfrontation is something I have less problem with because while I do have poor executive function, I've spent a lot of time and energy training myself to cover the Important Stuff. I have mild ADHD so I'm capable of this; I'm not trying to say everyone with ADHD is, because lord knows it's exhausting for me and I've been doing it for roughly thirty years. But essentially, I cover where it counts: if someone needs me to do something I do it, I meet deadlines, I pay bills.

So with that disclaimer in place, a very common issue especially for children with undiagnosed ADHD is that they'll be told or asked to do something and simply be unable to begin or complete it, then when they're asked why they didn't do it they can't explain. Even if they try to explain that they simply couldn't, like they were incapable of doing it for reasons they don't understand, that usually doesn't hold water with a lot of parents and teachers.

"I couldn't bring myself to write this essay," is actually something I told myself a few times in college, but it's not something I'd bother trying to tell someone else, because if you think you're neurotypical that sounds very insane. So I'd lie and say I forgot, or I'd take the fail, or I'd simply drop out of the class. Crucially I would not fight with the authority figure who was questioning me about it, because I knew I wouldn't be able to explain myself, and I'd just end up getting in more trouble for longer.

Our culture is structured for neurotypicals, and it's not even structured for all neurotypicals. Behavior that deviates from Approved Neurotypical even when you think you are Approved Neurotypical is highly punishable. So if your options are passivity, even when passivity leads to pain, or confrontation, most people who aren't Approved Neurotypical will opt for passivity once they've had a taste of where confrontation leads. I know I do.

And the thing is, there's nothing actually wrong with that. It's a strategy calculated to minimize pain. Even when I'm firing on all cylinders on a fresh dose of Adderall, I still generally let fights go unless there will be actual real consequences, because it's just not worth it. But knowing we have ADHD and knowing we fall into this pattern, I think it is good to be aware that sometimes letting a fight go is really going to fuck you, and at that point even being bad at it is better than not engaging.

I'm pretty good at calculating those, but it's a lifelong process, knowing which hills to die on when you assume you will automatically die if you ever get above sea level.

#sam has adhd #jellydishes

[brooke2valley]

BROOKE

I HAVE A VERY IMPORTANT TRANS-RELATED QUESTION

Which species tailless of tailless whip scorpion is your favourite? :0

No okay real stuff though, I just wanna say I appreciate your work a lot. I'm only a bit less than 4 months into my medical transition (still eternally boymoding cause I'm silly like that) and yeah I just always look forward to you posting again. You were actually mainly why I ended up making a Tumblr account, back when you made the switch xD

Seeing you post a picture of yourself back then was also what finally gave me the confidence to do the same!!! It's hard sometimes but it really helped me get out of a bubble of dysphoria.

So yeah I know this is silly and like, very parasocial-weirdo of me, but I luv ya lots, keep doing what you're doing, you're great!🫶❤️

The Charinus acosta is cool lol

I'm glad youre making steps to feel more comfortable with yourself and be who you are.

Little known fact, i (for the most part) boymoded for the first 9 months of transition.

Didn't at work and with friends, cuz i trusted them but for strangers... It took me awhile to feel comfortable enough with myself to present to strangers.

Although to be clear, i was bad at it. I still used my fem voice and hoped to be gendered as a girl lol.

It will get better, i Believe in you

#trans #lgbtq #transgender #transgirl #lgbt

[mrghostrat]

hey happy trans day of visibility. i'll get visible why not

i'm nonbinary, specifically genderfluid. i identify with this label because idk, even though i look back at my childhood and spot signs of dysphoria and gender fuckery, i don't feel like i was ever masquerading as something i wasn't. i'm just different now. and i may be different again in the future. i was a little girl then, and i'm a little bilv now.

i'm AFAB and just passed my 2 year T anniversary. i'm loving it, and just like putting together a pinterest board of hair and fashion styles to figure out how i wanted to present my truest self, starting T to change my voice and body and facial hair was just another step in that. i love how i look now and love all the changes T has brought me.

at this point i plan to remain on T indefinitely, but knowing a friend who took T for four years then stopped because she got to where she wanted to be, i feel safe and comfortable enough to stop if i ever change my mind. this is why visibility is important 💕

i don't plan on having any surgery at this point. i thought about top surgery for a while, but considering my fluidity and how much i've enjoyed tits in the past, i think i want to keep them in case i ever want to focus on them again in the future. this is the only thing i "struggle" with; how much i would like to have a flat flat chest right now, but know i may not want that in future, and surgery is so definite. thankfully i'm happy with binders and am small enough to live in a comfy middle ground.

i'm so grateful for all the trans art in the good omens fandom, especially @chernozemm's explicit illustrations that highlight how fun and sexy tcocks are. i did look into phalloplasties and matoidioplasties once before, but never felt as strongly about it either way, which didn't seem like a good basis for such an intensive surgery. now i'm less ambivalent about my genitals and actively love them

(i also suffered from vaginismus my entire life, until about 2 or 3 years ago when i started engaging with more nsfw content and must have just? exposure therapy'd myself out of it?? it feels like i didn't do anything at all and it just went away on its own, which made me personify my vag a bit, bc i'm so fucking proud of her. now we're finally getting along, i'm taking her to my grave)

keep drawing, keep writing, keep sharing. every little thing you put out there helps people like me love ourselves more, and hearing other trans stories only helps solidify how real and genuine we are for feeling the way we do about ourselves. happy tdov

#ghost scribbles #tdov #trans day of visibility

[walkawaytall]

I really wish there was more interest in how to handle ADHD other than just addressing the symptoms that affect the people around us.

Like, the best pharmaceutical treatment we have right now is stimulants, and I agree that being on stimulants 24 hours a day, 365 days a year is probably not good for your body. Hell, I’m on a less-than-ideal dose of my medication from a concentration perspective because the ideal dose had my resting heart rate sitting at a cool 115BPM. I know taking med holidays is important. I know all of this.

But because ADHD isn’t just an attention problem (or may not actually be an attention problem at all at its core), it sucks that the only time period medical professionals seem to be concerned about treating are the “important” times: the length of a school or workday. Forget the fact that ADHD affects executive function, forget the fact that people with ADHD often experience chronic and unending anxiety and/or depression as a result of the ADHD, forget that there are important times that have nothing to do with an 8-hour school or work day, forget the rejection sensitivity dysphoria, the sensory issues that make things like clothing, food, and group situations a nightmare to try to navigate, the household stuff that has to be taken care of outside of the 8-hour school or work day. It feels like none of that matters because it doesn’t affect a group of fifteen or more people.

On top of ADHD, I have been plagued with anxiety-related issues for the majority of my life. I likely have a form of OCD and I have a history with a restrictive eating disorder; both of those conditions are very closely associated with high levels of anxiety. I’ve been on anxiety medications before. I was first given an as-needed medication that took the edge off but also made everything feel a little fuzzy, like there was a pane of glass between me and the rest of the world; I was put on an SSRI that somehow made my OCD-related intrusive thoughts about 50x worse than usual and had me wondering at one point if I should be hospitalized; and I’m currently on buspirone, which is doing what it’s supposed to do without the side effects of the others thankfully. But nothing, and I mean nothing, has reduced my anxiety as much as my ADHD medication.

Two hours after my first stimulant dosage, I just suddenly didn’t feel on-edge any more. I estimate that being on ADHD medication has reduced my anxiety by about 70% (buspirone’s for the other 30%). I started taking it in the summer of 2020 and I remember, in 2021, when I saw my boss in person for the first time since lockdown, he remarked on how much more confident I seemed, how I was more likely to speak up in meetings, etc. And I was like…yeah, man, it’s a wonder what not feeling anxious every second of every day will do for someone.

ADHD affects so much more of my life than just attention and anxiety, too. I have sensory issues with mine, which is pretty common, and they make eating — an already sometimes-complicated task due to the ED history — difficult at times because, while I can eat foods that I don’t particularly like, if something is what I call “the bad texture”, I will gag no matter how hard I work to overcome it (believe me, I’ve tried). And my brain sometimes decides that foods that were previously fine are now “the bad texture” and they may or may not shift back to being okay eventually; I don’t know.

The sensory issues affect me socially. My therapist and I have recently come to the conclusion that I’m probably not actually an introvert, but if I’m around larger groups, that means noise and movement and probably being touched, and too much of that causes my brain to either freak out or shut down. I used to always say, “I love people, but when I’m done, I’m done.” And that was likely because the overstimulation was building and building in the background, and at a certain point, my brain would just be like, “We gotta get outta here.” I was Queen of Irish Goodbyes for a very long time because of this.

And the executive dysfunction affects…well..everything? Not just work, not just school (but also those because if my environment is chaotic, my brain feels chaotic, and it is difficult to maintain a non-chaotic environment if you keep getting stuck on order of operations when picking up a room).

I’m not saying that I want to be on longer-lasting stimulants or that I want to be on the higher dose that I know helps my concentration more, cardiovascular system by damned. What I’m saying is, I wish treatment research had been more holistic rather than just figuring out what would give teachers and managers an easier time despite what the person with ADHD might be dealing with as soon as their meds wear off.

Maybe current research is working on it; I don’t know. I just know that, the older I get, the more frustrated I am with my brain and the more apparent the deficiencies I used to be able to counteract with pre-chronic-illness energy and crushing perfectionism become, and I wish there was an answer to this that actually helped me most of the time rather than forcing me to pick which parts of my day/week is “important” and making sure I’m medicated for those parts.

#adhd #adult adhd #adhd combined #adhd problems #actually adhd #adhd treatment

[gatheringbones]

[“The fact that my body has become a source of at least as much misery as pleasure has paradoxically made it easier for me to stop calling myself a lesbian and use the term bisexual instead. I just don’t have the energy any more to hold up facades. Back in 1971, I initially told people I was bisexual, but discovered this meant that straight people saw me as a heterosexual who occasionally dabbled in not-very-serious sex with “other girls,” while gay people saw me as a dyke who hadn’t come all the way out of the closet yet. Nobody trusted me, and nobody would dance with me. In 1980, when Sapphistry was about to be published and my first article about lesbian S/M appeared in The Advocate, I said in that article that if I had a choice between being marooned on a desert island with a vanilla dyke or a leather boy, I would take the boy. I got an extremely irate phone call from Barbara Grier, owner of Naiad, the company that was going to publish Sapphistry, informing me that they did not publish books by bisexual women, and if that was what I was, she would yank the book. Already in the midst of a firestorm about being public as a sadomasochist, I acquiesced, and delayed this coming out by another twenty years. I became “a lesbian who sometimes has sex with men.”

I still think this is a valid category, and remain unconvinced that the most important thing you can know about someone’s sexuality is the preferred gender of their partner. But today I’d rather not argue about it. I need to keep things as simple as possible. Bisexual people are still being excluded from the gay community’s cultural and political life. And I find myself being personally affected by that exclusion. It hurts me and makes me angry in a way that it would not, I think, if I were not on some level affiliated with bisexuals. I would rather stand with a group of people who don’t expect me to turn myself into a pretzel to explain what makes my dick get hard. This doesn’t mean I think it’s wrong or passé to be a Kinsey 6. But I do think a quest for purity of any sort is almost always morally dangerous.

Being more open about having sex with men has brought my own gender dysphoria to the fore. When I put my body up against a male body, what I notice is how hard it is for me to feel connected to my own flesh. Even more important has been the experience of loving someone who is a female-to-male transsexual (FTM), my domestic partner, Matt Rice. I knew Matt before he transitioned, and it has been such a positive change for him. By taking testosterone and getting chest surgery, he not only allowed himself to become and live as a man, he became a much better person—kinder, more patient, happier, sexier, sweeter. (Although he still won’t suffer fools gladly.) The fact that Matt has managed his transition with this degree of success gives me hope that I might be able to find a less distressing place for myself. I expect, like any other coming out, this will have its shitty aspects. But I think it will also create a greater sense of freedom and comfort.”]

pat califa, from layers of the onion, spokes of the wheel, from a woman like that: lesbian and bisexual writers tell their coming out stories, 2000

#pat califa #bi literature #lesbian literature #trans literature #gender stuff

[balioc]

I have a beard, of a particular slightly-distinctive style. I've had that same beard for the entirety of my adult life.

This is, obviously, the most contingent kind of fact about me. If I wanted to shave it off, or to style it differently, I could do so right now with zero difficulty. It's not a cultural signifier, or a marker of group belonging, or anything; even to me, it doesn't really mean anything other than "this is a symbol of me-the-person because it is associated with me because I have it." I started cultivating it in mid-adolescence for ephemeral irrelevant reasons, and kept it going basically out of inertia.

Nonetheless: it is really important to me. Like, really really important.

I basically cannot use character-creators or avatar-generators of any sort unless they have appropriate-enough beard options. When I contemplate getting rid of the beard...well, based on the way other people use the term, I think that the appropriate word for the feeling I get from that is dysphoria. During a brief period when I thought that I might have to get rid of the beard for medical reasons, I seriously considered wearing some kind of full-face leper mask whenever I left the house, because the thought of hiding my face from the world forever made me less unhappy than the thought of having people see me clean-shaven.

And, crucially, this affects my ability to Identify With People in literature and media. I am about 900% more likely to have an "it me" mental reflex if the character in question has a Beard Like Mine, regardless of whether there's any actual substantive commonality or grounds-for-sympathy there. I can control this with deliberate effort, but -- it takes deliberate effort. This phenomenon has probably had some measurable effect on my personality and philosophy, simply by causing me to identify or not-identify with potentially-high-impact characters in a subconscious (or conscious) way.

For example: I basically always see elves as Other and Not-Me, because elves are usually portrayed as the Beardless People, even if there are all sorts of obvious reasons to map myself onto a particular elvish character or elvish culture. Which there often are!

You might be inclined to say that this is, uh, stupid. I wouldn't blame you. It is, at the least, definitely very irrational; it's an aggressively hypertrophied bit of mental DNA, the sort of thing that you might fairly-if-uncharitably call a "psychic cancer." But of course it's never going to change, because the phenomenon operates deep down on the level of appreciative impulses and happy-buttons, which are mostly impervious to reason. (Assuming that you're inclined to try and alter them through reason, which is usually not worth the effort even when it can work.)

----------

It's not actually a problem for me that beard-related neurosis prevents me from identifying with elves. Not much of a problem, anyway. I guess I lose out on some cool Line of Feanor feels.

But I can imagine it being a problem. I can imagine the world in which the cool resonant myth that everyone cares about, the thing around which you want to build big chunks of your identity, has only elves with whom to identify. I can imagine the world in which all the cool smart people I want to be my friends are endlessly talking about their elfsonas.

And, y'know, in that hypothetical world, there's a few different ways I could react. I could say "fuck you, fantasy myth is for losers." I could be a mythic entrepreneur, and aggressively push my own homegrown stories featuring dwarves and ogres and other beardy folk. I could try to [shudder] map myself onto a beardless elf in my mind, and let that image occupy space in my fantasies, and hope that the revulsion and dissonance don't tear me apart. I could just be kinda sad about it all.

Or I could say: Hey, guys, could we maybe just agree that elves can have beards? Since they're made up and all, and their beardlessness doesn't even really matter to the myth anyway?

If I were so inclined, I could even follow that up with: Look, this is a really big deal for me. I'm pretty sure it's a much bigger deal for me than it is for any of you. That would be 100% honest.

And I imagine that many people would respond: What? No. Ew. The elf stories have clear lore and a well-defined aesthetic, and you're proposing to shit all over them with your weird beard nonsense. You don't get to do that; you don't get to make the akashic commons worse for your own private benefit; it doesn't matter what your reasons are. Play by the rules, or go play another game.

I would have a lot of sympathy for those people.

----------

(Yes, yes, I know, Cirdan the Shipwright, don't @ me.)

----------

There are, of course, lessons in this. Perhaps I will spell them out in another post, soon, if I find myself feeling less tired and cranky. But for now: he who has ears to hear, let him hear.

#conceptual vagueblogging #media analysis

[sillygeeseys]

Hey! Quieter/closeted LGBTQ+ people, I made a post for the loud + out folks, and you guys deserve one too that's just a tad gentler, I feel like y'all don't get enough recognition y'know?

Some encouragement under the cut 💛💛

(Exclusionists/any of that bullshit DNI I will block/delete, this is MY hype post)

Hey, it's ok to stay quiet/closeted. If this is how you feel the safest, I completely understand and support that

It's normal for the closet to be an awful place, no matter how safe it makes you. I hope that one day you can come out, no matter how far that feels, and are met with love

I hope that anyone keeping down a big voice gets to be just as loud as everyone else is one day, you deserve it after all this time

If you feel safe, and happy just the way things are with you, then I'm so proud. I'm so proud that you got to figure out just what you needed.

You're struggles aren't any less important just because you're in the closet. You're dysphoria is just as bad, the things people in your life may say can hurt just as much, and not having anyone to go too is never ideal. You're not crazy, you're not faking anything, it's not any less valid.

You're not in the wrong for being quieter, sometimes the community gets really angry at people for not getting loud, but sometimes you just physically can't do it. You don't need to feel guilty at all for that regardless of what people say.

You don't owe anyone your identity, ever.

#gay #lesbian #non bianry #nonbinary #aroallo #aromantic #aroace #asexual #agender #transgender #bisexual #panromantic #biromantic #please tell me if I'm missing any #it's 2am #encouraging words #gay encouragement #closeted #introvert

[queerism1969]

What are some semi-harsh truths you have for people who are new to transitioning?

I don’t mean sharing depressing statistics that they’re likely already aware of. I mean things that might be difficult to internalize but are important to know for the most stable experience possible.

 Your transition will cause disappointment. Not of yourself, but of people you had hoped were better. Those are ‘them’ problems, not ‘you’ problems. You will most likely have to outgrow people.

Hormones helped with the emotional aspects of depression and anxiety, but you still have all the bad habits and thought patterns that are associated. It takes work to fully heal

Dysphoria does lessen overall but that can make some sources of it feel worse

You don't know what all your dysphorias are, or how strong they are. Dysphoria is a type of pain, and the brain is only able to perceive so much pain at a time. When you clear out the biggest problem, you'll be able to see the next. It may come as a hell of a surprise.

If you require a medical transition, SERIOUSLY DO YOUR RESEARCH ON SURGEONS. While there are some great surgeons out there, there are DEFINITELY bad ones too. There are extremely dangerous "medical providers" who falsely advertise their expertise. THOROUGHLY read the wiki page in /Transgender_Surgeries

There are a whole bunch of places you can't really go to anymore. And I don't just mean Russia or Saudi, I mean many suburbs, rural areas, or any neighborhoods that aren't already quite progressive.

Just because someone's trans doesn't mean they aren't transphobic, get to know people before you come out to them 

You will lose friends, some might be openly against it others might just drift away just be prepared to lose some of your friends not all but some.

Transition is not a cure-all for all your problems, it might help with something like depression and certainly dysphoria. But there are some problems that will still be there

Take lots of pictures even if you feel ugly. You'll want those later just as a boost to see how far you have come. 

For my trans-women friends, it is dangerous to be alone with a man who you don't know, even in public.

Carry pepper spray, carry a firearm, learn how to throw a punch, stay with your group, and never go home with a stranger.

Throwing other trans people under the bus, especially less "acceptable" or "palatable" trans people, in order to make cis people respect you is bullshit.

Do not be afraid to switch therapists and doctors if one doesn't feel right.

Most people don't know shit about being trans or how transitioning works. Get ready for the most disgustingly intrusive questions you can imagine.

Never read the comments. There's no point in getting into battles, I know you want to, but LGBT education is EXHAUSTING, people are hostile for no reason. They are scared of you and hate you because they don't know you. Remember: it doesn't have to be your job to educate people.

Trans people are a really easy target for hate politics because we strongly depend on other people (doctors who prescribe our meds, surgeons, government for name change stuff) and it's very easy to take them away from you. 

Cis people will tell you that you'll "regret transitioning" or that you're making a mistake because they cannot even comprehend something like dysphoria, their greatest fear is having their sex permanently altered, which would be dysphoric for them, and they think everyone else is like that.

#transgender #lgbtq community #lesbian #nonbinary #lgbt pride #lgbtqia #sapphic #nonbinary lesbian #gay girls #lgbtq #queer #transfem #trans girl #trans positivity #transfemme #trans #mtf #transexual #transgirl #trans woman #pre op mtf #mtf positivity #girlslikeus #mtf detrans kink #forced detrans #ftm detransition #detrans woman #detrans female #detransitioners #detransitioning

[gynandromorph]

so i'm writing a scene where jessie writes the entire story herself (the irony is not lost on me), and, it's supposed to be the most perfect world she can think of. it's impossible NOT to compare her decisions to ones that i've thought about drake making, their solutions to the same problems side-by-side. for example, jessie assumes that she cannot get around death being a necessity with life. obviously, the planet would overpopulate. people would get tired of being alive. she decides instead that death should be more like getting tired and going to sleep forever one day, without the aging or sickness. drake would never settle for allowing death. i've spent a lot of time idly trying to figure out how xe would change... well, with omnipotence, anything, everything, in order to accommodate this demand -- and there are many different ways, which can be flawed when interacting with other problems. but the important part is that drake wouldn't settle for death. drake makes a mandatory end result, takes the current reality, and works until the beginning and end goal meet. jessie doesn't challenge reality's initial stipulations or the basic arguments about the logistics of non-death, even with unlimited power. we know that jessie is more authority-oriented in her basic value system; it's obvious when she's a child, and it's obvious when she's a god. she had good parents and a happy childhood; the authority figures in her life provided what she needed if she listened (and if she didn't). it was in her best interest to develop a worldview where authority was Good; she had no need to question them. reality says there are limited resources, and we will fix it by making people and creatures die and become resources, and jessie said "okay, got it boss." drake didn't have terrible parents, but nonetheless had experiences of authority's failure that were deeply formative for xem. even if xyr parents had been perfect, the body dysphoria would have always meant the reality that was provided was not enough. if xyr body, arguably the most fundamental reality xe will ever know, trapped in it regardless of all other factors, doomed to die when it dies, was something xe had to question to find any happiness, it must be very easy to apply this mentality to other dissatisfactions with reality. drake's rigid and often extreme moral beliefs, while they may seem more like they should produce a ruthless dictator than jessie's emotionally-driven decision-making style, are intrinsically linked to suffering and a desire for relief from it. ironically, both of these characters deal with similar themes -- a desire for impossible realities, and a hatred for the world they live in with all of its imperfections. jessie's impossible desire may simply be the freedom from desire altogether; to finally for once not feel an emptiness radiating Want. drake's impossible desire is more straightforward and less easily described -- paradoxical self-actualization and ego death. their similarities make them fun to compare, because they really could not be more different. any which way, i wanted to write down these thoughts about the characters -- jessie in particular -- before they Disintegrated Into The Ether

#idletry spoilers