So after a decade on HRT I'm trying progesterone for the first time

calamity_pig · 3 days

Was the weight loss caused by progesterone?

I don't really know for certain. I know I changed my caloric intake in the last three weeks to try to make up for some of what was lost. I'm closer to where I should be, weight-wise, since changing my diet.

The body is supposed to produce its own progesterone. It is a hormone that helps with tasks related to the ordinary functioning of the body. In my body, it cannot, because I don't produce it (I lack gonads). Hence the imperative for exogenous progesterone.

Your endocrinologist can harp all they want about this. They lack the empirical ground on which to stand, bordering on the unethical. Were progesterone hazardous, then maybe there might be a valid case against prescribing it.

There is no harm, no foul in being able to try progesterone for a trial. If your endocrinologist refuses, first present literature to them in a language an endocrinologist will bother reading. Build your case that there is no contraindications to be concerned about. Add that it's your money paying for the progesterone, not theirs. If they insist on more, agree that you can sign a release form — basically, informed consent — that the endocrinologist cannot be held responsible if adverse things happen (which, with progesterone, the risk is fairly low).

And if, say, after six months it's not doing anything for you, then at least you have the empirical knowledge of how it affects your body. Then you can stop.

calamity_pig · 1 month

Wrapping up cycle #2 in a couple of days. Some observations:

Acne broke out on my nose in two places (which for me to ever break out anywhere is unheard of these days/years). This cleared up after about 4–5 days. But whoa.
At the start of second cycle, there was an unmistakable up-tick in, quite frankly, wanting to hump nearly anything. TMI, I know, but my sex drive had been low for a long time.
On this, I conferred with a close friend, who affirmed it as quite likely: my metabolism spiked. I didn't change my diet or my physical activity. I have categorically dropped a dress size. This isn't all "yay", because I have happily been at the same size, if not a little above that size, for more than a dozen years. More weight on me than not is a plus. Snug, skinny jeans I bought in December now have nearly a two-inch give. So this is a little bit weird.
My energy level, which was the point of me trying again, is a bit higher.
Stress after cycle may also be up; then again, it's a stressful time right now with deadlines I'm obviously not working on so long as I type this update.
Skin feels a slight bit more elastic versus February.
Oh, and on this cycling, on the first 3–4 days, my chest became quite tender. It's subsided these last 2–3 days. If anything, my chest got a bit smaller with the cliff of weight loss. Again, a bit weird.

Another update when I can, I guess.

Tina_Rayne · 1 month

No campaign to announce "Die Trans Scum" is necessary.

It's been in de facto effect for as long as cis people have murdered, brutalized, raped, beaten, harassed, denied access to health care or social services, or categorically discriminated against trans people because of their being trans.

"Die Trans Scum" is the default we as trans people face each day when we walk outside. No matter how transparent to the cis world we might be; no matter how many years it's been since our transition, that very risk of being forcibly disclosed as trans (or even accidentally so) puts us in the crosshairs of those cis people who do want all people with bodies like ours eliminated, if not violently reprimanded.

The campaign is provocative. It's meant to be. As the "Die Cis Scum" discussion has been going on with Tumblr and Twitter for some time now, the consensus has been such: if you're cis, and you're not remotely offended by the campaign, it's because the campaign isn't about you or cis people like you at all. If it offends you as a cis person, however, then it means you probably should to look at your own cissexism, trans misogyny, and trans enmity toward trans people. The campaign, after all, is qualifying only the scum of cis people, not all of cis people. As a trans person, if it offends you to hear "die cis scum", you might have some internalized cissexism to unpack, if not also internalized transphobia.

tl;dr: As put better by someone else, "No cis person has ever been harmed of died from 'die cis scum,' but thousands of trans people have been killed or maimed by 'die trans scum.'"

tppign · 1 month

I'm not too surprised these newer redditors didn't have this bookmarked and referred to here.

1) Super-simple version

2) Step-by-step version

3) Simple breakdown explanation.

tl;dr: We all have two sexes, not one. For people like you, these are the same. For many trans people, they are not. Neurological (brain) sex is fixed for everybody at week 12 of gestation and cannot be changed (there's a reason why it's week 12, but for now I won't get into it). Morphological sex can be changed. This is what many trans people do with their bodies. Neither are about gender, which is a language we use to communicate ourselves to others. And none of these are about sexual attraction. That's a fourth matter entirely.

As far as social acceptance goes, a male can act as female as he likes without making people as uncomfortable as transgenderness(again because people perceive transgendered as being dishonest/false advertising)

No. That's putting the burden on trans people to make cis people like you to not have to deal with this reality that trans people are here. Find a way to get over it. No longer can you just say "people", because trans people are people just like cis people are people. And cis people like you don't want trans people like us to exist, ever. We get it, but you can't have it that way.

Also, while we're on this topic:

get it dumped out of your head that trans women are feminine only and nothing else. Seriously, I'm butch as fuck and no one questions that I'm a woman, that I have a female morphology, or that I was raised a boy. I don't "identify" as anything. I am a woman. I am female. I have a transsexual body. Women fuck me. I'm not pretty. I'm average. And still no one questions it. Trans women are not all beauty queens.
get it dumped out of your head that you're more important as a cis man than a trans woman or trans man is.
get it dumped out of your head that you "know" when you're looking at a trans person. I can more than guarantee you that for every trans person visible to you, three others are completely invisible to you. And yet, the world goes on and work gets done.
get it dumped out of your head that this is about trans women. It isn't. It's about trans men, too. You're obsessed with trans women at the cost of ignoring trans men, which says a lot about your hangups.
one last thing: most trans people are probably not attracted enough to you to ever want to fall for you or your, uh, charm. And if one does — don't count on it — then you sure as hell better be honoured that she chose you. Women — cis and trans alike — choose their partners. And if you have this world view, it really points to how well you really don't know yourself. A straight woman (cis or trans) like a straight man (cis or trans) who knows himself.

Best of luck.

Methofelis · 1 month

OK:

1) First, when you talk to your child, affirm them as a girl from now on — specifically, in talks you have with her in confidence (i.e., telephone/Skype call). You're doing this not only to affirm her existence as a girl as valid, but also to apply a balm against the abuse her father is exacting by imposing a cruelty on her psyche. This is a cruelty, and it is worth saying twice. It is child abuse, full-stop.

2) Time is of the essence for your child right now. For trans people, there are slightly different ways we understand our world. With puberty, for instance, we often call them "first puberty" and "second puberty". For a trans person who is made to experience both puberties, the first can and often is a specific act of violence for which the attacker lacks a face. That attacker is an endogenous (internal) endocrine (hormonal/glandular) system. People, however, can be accomplices in this violence. Your ex, who now has custody of your daughter, is acting as an accomplice by allowing first puberty to proceed against her will. Trans people who have had to survive first puberty against their consent or will frequently have post-trauma symptoms associated with this experience. A non-consensual puberty for a trans person is indeed violent — not just for the body, but more so for the brain's neurochemistry. It is why suicide attempts (and completions) spike for trans people starting around the age of 12.

The ultimate goal for trans people: to eliminate experiencing that violent first puberty so that we only experience one puberty which we do offer our consent. That's what is starting to happen with the clinical and social affirmation of trans people being children.

3) An extension of the previous, arm yourself with knowledge. Also, read this piece. It's somewhat dense and academic, but it places the previous into a clearer sense as to why pushing a non-consensual socialization (which won't stick, no matter how aggressively your ex attempts to drill this into your daughter^*) is part of a greater denial of trans people existing. Also, in that piece, the first link takes you to an important documentary on children just like your own girl.

^* ^[yeah, ^start ^getting ^used ^to ^this ^way ^of ^{understanding} ^and ^relating ^to ^her. ^It ^will ^recover ^her ^confidence ^a ^bit ^and ^instil ^that ^someone ^she ^loves ^believes ^and ^affirms ^her ^desolation.]

4) Trans people are created in the womb. We are not shaped like a lump of clay. And when I use "non-consensual", it's in the same meaning and spirit as any kind of action upon one's personhood or body without their express consent. That it is the same language used for describing rape and describing the denial of women's health access is not an accident.

5) I don't know the jurisdictions involved, and I am not in the legal sector. I am very closely connected to a select few legal people who will know much more than I will. I don't know what they'll say if you confront them, but conferring with them may be worth a shot. They might point you in the right direction. If you want to know more, private message me.

6) For now, the angle of claim for regaining full custody might be to argue the case that your ex's domestic environment is toxic and puts your child in direct danger of destroying her good mental health. Make it abundantly clear in your legal argument that you have a solid social and community support to raise your child healthily in a loving, nurturing setting and, optimally, the proper social, mental health, and medical care she will require. "It takes a village" is more than just a saying.

7) Through all of this, fighting as your daughter's first and most important advocate is invaluable beyond words. And further to this, you are doing the right thing by supporting your daughter and trying to get her to a safer, healthier environment. If ever you're feeling doubt or flagging confidence, re-read this bold statement. Print it out and tack it to the fridge.

Good luck, and you know where to find support online should you need it.

p.s., In an emerging fourth wave of feminism just now being birthed and explored — where this fourth wave affirms that girls and women can exist in more than one kind of container (that is, body) — we have a few pithy sayings possibly worth remembering and even sharing with your daughter. They are meant to inspire and empower. First, is "you do you", which simply means that what works best for you is what matters most. Second is "my body, my rules, my life." Third is trans people are "no less valid" than cis (non-trans) people because we happen to be trans. Lastly, writer Janet Mock, also a trans woman, has brought us together with her campaign called "girls like us" (and for trans guys, "guys like us"). This affirms that we come from every corner of the world, every walk of life, and that we are are meriting as people, even if we're not cis like most of the world is.

catamorphism · 1 month

It's likely they won't. But it's something we all need to understand about one another — very, very soon. Because if we don't, cis people will keep killing us. We will continue disproportionately being the walking wounded. They will not only keep killing us as "tr-ps", as "deceivers", as "men in dresses", as "rapist-by-birth", as somewhere between dogs and humans, but also in standing back as parents and guardians, whilst clearing the way to let that violent perpetrator of an endogenous endocrine system brutalize our bodies day after day for years, visibly scarring us with the very visible markers cis people like to use to remind us of our inferior place in their world. Cis people don't see the invisible, psychic scars. Their cruelty is in justifying these ends as a means to protect themselves from us.

p.s., Of the four cisnormative corridors, cis people don't want us to voice our will to transition through any of them, but they tend to be most "lax" about the last corridor. That's because the last (not "fourth") corridor is marked the easiest for cis people to either avoid or revile. They are marked visibly and institutionally through legal identification paperwork and social history amassed (which cannot be erased or undone). That's why they tend to let trans people in that last corridor slide: the most visible are the least threatening because they are either the most observed, the most cis-compliant, or both. This is no less violent to an Alexis Kaminsky and, quite frankly, even more cruel. Kaminsky, on the other hand, as a known girl from the first cisnormative corridor, horrifies all of us because we all see what's about to happen to her if no wise-minded cis person with decisive authority steps in very soon and stops the faceless perpetrator from brutalizing her body and her psyche. It's no less cruel than being forced to watch people standing around in a circle to watch as a rapist rapes a defenceless victim, quietly murmuring their approval for the rapist to carry on.

catamorphism · 1 month

Just remember that you cannot hold these cisnormative corridors against a trans person as a blame or failure/success of their character. You have to hold the blame against the cis very people who force you, me, and other trans people to vanish or die. Trans people are not the people you need to be judging or fighting right now. It's cis people. We didn't opt to be trans, but it's nothing we can undo either. It's not a failing. It just is.

[And if you could only understand how not-easy it was for me to write that — how many years and how much anger, frustration, and resentment which informed those words — then perhaps the gravity of what I said might actually mean something. I don't want to fight you.]

Until I read your comment history, I was all but certain that you were appreciably older than me, bitter for having transitioned only in your last cisnormative corridor and taking out your anger on another woman. For the record, I came out at 18, began transition at 19, started EEI around 20, and am now 38. When I asked Erica how old she was, turns out she's only a handful of years younger than me. This means we transitioned during the same years. Her narrative is different than mine; mine involved smuggling hormones across international boundaries as the only way I could assert agency over my body before the alternative: returning to trying to complete suicide once again, just as I'd tried and failed at 13 before shutting down for five years. It's also why I was institutionalized at 13: my parents had figured it out. Six days transpired between them figuring it out and having me admitted to an adolescent ward for almost two months. Never mind the clinical depression for which I'd been diagnosed at age 9 and a half, which was no doubt informed in part by my articulation of gender being "abnormal" for a boy and by the acute violences I experienced at home and at school. Still, Erica's experiences — those I know, at least — make my narrative seem a hundredth less horrid than hers.

When I read how you were around 20, it was even more disquieting to reflect on the acidity of your remarks throughout this thread (and, quite frankly, in how you superficially judge other trans and cis women in places like /r/TransPassing or /r/amiugly). You reserve a lot of internalized trans misogyny and internalized cissexism there. A lot. I know this because I've heard myself say much of the same of others in my own past.

All I can say is this: find a way to work through it, even if it takes another twenty years. Eventually this shit devours you from within. When that happens, it's not pretty.

[EDIT: finishing what happened to me before age 18, still paling to what Erica knew.]

catamorphism · 1 month

2nd Edit: It's really not fair for you or anyone else to drudge up those memories, got it? I'm only able to function on a daily basis by not looking back, and I don't need reminders.

Then you were welcome to stop reading the essay the moment the inklings of a first trigger began. Don't take that out on the author.

It's the reminder that I never had that chance that I resent.

Join the team. Seriously. I'm sure a healthy proportion of readers reading this discussion know exactly what that feels like. I don't see what makes your case any more exceptional for you to take this out on the author.

catamorphism · 1 month

Well, that's because until a bit of a eureka moment one month ago, no one had.

Then again, before a bit of a eureka moment in January, no one had ever thought that one's age of transition could ever possibly be due not to the trans person "waiting" or not, but due to the cis people who simply don't want trans people to exist.

catamorphism · 1 month

So yeah, it is privilege, and they have a responsibility to check it every they post about their experiences.

Perhaps this is the springboard for what I plan to write about in a coming posting on the Cisnormativity blog: discerning privileges from affordances. There is a difference, and it's long been collapsed into just "privilege". What you're describing in Erica's circumstance is not a privilege. No. It is, given her specific experiences, an affordance for what the situation permitted at the time when she transitioned. Yes. In one sense, it was fortuitous. But to shut down that confluence as bad ol' privilege? You erase what matters.

I suspect the "privilege versus affordance" essay will be another dense one, but it's a conversation both trans people and other marginalized minorities across every intersection need to start having.

catamorphism · 1 month

I'm honestly quite happy for those who are lucky enough to transition earlier than I have.

OK. How do I put this delicately? IT IS NOT LUCK. Knock that objectification off, because all it does is dehumanize people who don't deserve that.

And I've been made into that object quite a few times, too. It is a big reason why I began to have substantial trust issues early on with trans women who were unable to voice their transition well into the last cisnormative corridor. They resented what I signified and couldn't see me as a person. They couldn't see what barriers endemic to transitioning in the corridor I did were impeding (and yes, they were quite so, not that anyone ever asked me back when amidst their "you're so lucky" and "you're so pretty" and "you're so young" and the bitter, resentful back-tone behind their fawning; I heard it loudly and clearly).

But here I am now, and I'd rather set that aside and try to find a way to face our common adversary: a cisnormative social order which doesn't want to see trans people — and trans women particularly — transition at all, ever. And if cis people do allow it, then they tell us to avoid talking to one another forever (like, wait, aren't we social creatures?) lest we fail as trans people. They do that because when we speak together, we scare them. They kept us apart for decades. No longer.

Haven't we all had enough dehumanizing to avert having to do the same to one another?

catamorphism · 1 month

Look, a lot of us were in that placement, ok? First puberty on a trans person's body — for many trans people — is an serious act of violence for which there is no direct perpetrator (who has a face). The perp is EEI. And like you and unnumbered others, suicide was turned to as a remedy. Some completed; some did not.

It is really not fair to shut someone down, though, because of her circumstances permitting a mid-teens transition in her second cisnormative corridor (remember: cis people don't want us to transition in any of their cisnormative corridors). By that extension, is it safe to reason that you also feel similar resentment and embitterment to the 11-year-old kids and the 7-year-old kids who are transitioning in 2012?

If so, then that is your problem for which you need to find a way to come to peace. Lashing at Erica is not it. Seriously not it. It's sunk cost to wonder what could have been in your own life if only. And I'm sure we've all done this in our lives at some point. But we can only move forward and respect each other's experiences, not shut them down or blame the victim for the way she's been treated when she's braved facing the very trans people she knows resent her symbolically and even viscerally.

Don't unleash your bitterness on someone you resent. If you knew what it took to get her to transition then, then I think it would be an understatement to say that you'd be unable to find adequate words or even the sympathy deep enough to come to terms with her experiences.

tl;dr: if we as a community are going to heal, then we have to respect every narrative we hear as valid and learn from that narrative what we can, because cis people surely aren't going to do it for us. You do you.

catamorphism · 1 month

Sorry, but like catamorphism, I know this woman's narrative. I was the proofing editor for the piece.

All I will say up-front is this: every narrative is valid. She is no less valid because of it. If you don't like it, that's fine. But you're hearing an experience which is unfamiliar to your own. That experience comes with a few circumstances which virtually no one of her age cohort has ever dealt with — not even me (we're pretty close in age, but she came out during the second cisnormative corridor; me the third). And the people transitioning in 2012 at the same age she did? They won't know these experiences, either. It's a very isolating feeling. I have listened to her narrative for a long time. This was really her first time to finally speak to what she's known.

The least you could do is give her space to speak without berating her experiences or how it has shaped where she is now..

To this person, these things definitely happened. What I hear from you, by contrast, is someone who is more obsessed with the age at which she voiced herself as trans than what that placement in a time when it was next to unheard of. Because of this, it has produced a tangle of slammed doors because no one believes it to be possible. And yet, it was. It's the only thing she knows because she's lived it.

And yes, your assumptions about her experiences are unfair, out of line, and surprisingly dismissive. And I share that both as editor for the blog and as her friend and confidant. I wouldn't have vetted a piece if it was somehow out of line.

ratta_tata_tat · 1 month

Now look what you've started.

(hint: something good)

Seveness · 2 months

That there was next to no one my age who transitioned at that point (that next-to was Caroline Cossey); that they were much older and conservatively/clownishly feminine (or masculine, the handful of times I saw trans men); that trans people were to be spectacles on daytime talk show TV only; that they could never be friends; and that there were two kinds of transsexual people: the moulded trans person (made for daytime TV) or the horrifying/terrifying/revolting trans person (Frankenfurter).

calamity_pig · 2 months

Just started this yesterday. I'll keep you posted. I'm paying attention to how my fatigue is affected. At this point, it's way too early to deduce anything at all.

edit, day 5: Whatever this is might be placebo effect. My brain feels a slight bit less fuzzy than it has for quite a while, and after the fourth day (and now, here at the end of the fifth), my areolae are sore. Again, I'm not really concerned about my chest, though I'd prefer my breasts stay about where they are. I can't speak to anything else (skin, lung capacity, etc.), and as said, everything here is being factored as a placebo effect.

edit, day 12: Again, nothing much to mention, except that I felt more alert for those several days, falling a little each day since. At only 100mg/day, I know others take 200mg. I'll stick to 100mg until I learn more.

Epsilon_Eridani · 2 months

The thesis of this blog post is valid and understandable.

But it isn't exactly a normativity in the sense that it is institutionally, geographically, or legally hegemonic to some trans people (like the author) by non-trans people. It isn't. They're really arguing against narrative tropes which some trans people do use, sometimes presumptively, on other trans people. Those narrative tropes are typically a direct function of a cissexist gatekeeping regime — developed within a cisnormative context. This canned narrative to which the author does not subscribe would only allow trans people to have access to medical services if the narrative fit the trope.

Normativities are paradigmatic. It's a bit problematic, for instance, for a cis person to argue that they feel oppressed by cisnormativity when their very existence within a cisnormative social order gives them a space to exist without inquiry.

If there is a transnormativity to one day exist, it will probably be the geography of the internet itself. That's the only place where we as trans people can concentrate ourselves in sizeable numbers. It's also a terrain whose many functions were created, built, and maintained by trans people (compsci, anyone?).

SuperMse · 2 months

I describe it in terms of cis transparency, translucency, and opacity.

winterbed · 2 months

Pshaw. There were gay trans men in the mid-1990s and I'm sure going back much, much, much further than that. First trans man I ever met (and befriended) was a total raging homo (and as a dyke, I say that in the most loving way): hairy dude with black hair who once had it bleached and dyed hot pink for pride. He wore those black, horn-rimmed "dexter" frames popular in the '50s. He was a lot of fun.

chinesethrowaway · 2 months

Making the blanket statement that it doesn't make you less transsexual because you don't want to change anything about the body you exist in kind of leaves the door wide open for every single person in the world to say, "hey I'm transsexual too" or worse, have to wonder if they are.

What matters here — sort of the primary demarcation — is asserting morphological transition versus not. If not, then nothing changes your social-institutional-legal-medical-political placement as a cis person (even if neurology later indicated otherwise). Didn't, of all people, Pete Townshend say something along those lines once upon a time — that he was trans but would never do anything about it?

chinesethrowaway · 2 months

JulianMorrison and I mentioned nothing about desire [don't make me get all Lacanian on you ;) ]. And the two barriers you cited (different kinds of barriers, but still barriers) would not lessen that the person is transsexual, albeit latently so.

The downside for someone in that situation: few are liable to believe them until after death if brain pathology reveals supporting evidence of their contention during life. It means that during life, they are not socially, institutionally, or legally confronted with the conditions and barriers of a person who is transsexual and affirmed self-agency over their lives.

I think most of us know people who are frightened into immobility, but I don't think that fact rules out their desire.

Maybe it's that I've been undisclosed as trans in my social world for a long time, but I don't think I know anyone in this situation (though anecdotally here on /r/asktransgender, it's not too uncommon — toupée fallacy, I think they call it?). I raise this because I would be ready to advocate for someone if they shared that with me in confidence. I can't say when or how I might disclose to them, but at some point, I certainly would — ideally after I've encouraged them to move forward with confronting things and deciding what to do from there.

chinesethrowaway · 2 months

Worth also reading the comment I provided on this topic the other day.

chinesethrowaway · 2 months

Well, in the oft-cited lecture by Sapolsky, he noted that one of those studies included people who went to their death beds insisting they were transsexual (but did nothing about it). Donating their body for research, the researchers found that their BSTc was within parameters of those found in both cis women's brains and trans women's brains. So there may be something measurable in all that. More research, of course, which will require many more years.

And I positively concur with JulianMorrison here.

natasha_six · 2 months

Don't think you're old just because you're hitting thirty!

No no no. I'm ~~thirty-eight~~ ninety-one years old.

patienceinbee

TROPHY CASE

patienceinbee

TROPHY CASE

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