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in reply to Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•

THERE ARE THINGS YOU CAN DO TO GET ROUND GOVERNMENTS TRYING TO KEEP TRANSITION MEDS AWAY FROM YOU.

WE USED TO DO IT ALL THE TIME.

TALK TO TRANS ELDERS. WE KNOW THIS STUFF.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Llwynog
Llwynog
• •
what about self-medding for trans men? Are there any options at all? I can't find much online.
in reply to Llwynog

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•
@Llwynog Testosterone is a controlled substance. Makes things somewhat more complicated.
@Llwynog
in reply to Llwynog

legumancer Davy
legumancer Davy
• •
@llwynog it depends on where you're based - and possibly if you're open to moving or very very cautiously picking up some mail in another country. (I see the EU flag in your profile, that gives you options re: moving.) In Ireland it's not a controlled substance, and when I was checking the list of sellers on HRT Cafe for E patches I saw some that had injectable testosterone. Anecdotally, I pass much more easily in Ireland, I think because short and soft spoken men aren't out of the ordinary here.
@Llwynog
in reply to Sarah Brown

Kevin Karhan :verified:
Kevin Karhan :verified:
• •
also a lot of people do #DIYHRT all the time, even when it's theoretically possible to get meds in their juristiction simply because of #privacy being compromized and other risks ...
#Privacy #diyhrt
in reply to Sarah Brown

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
• •

My feeling is that the Cass report has given politicians in the “centre ground”, the ones that we knew we couldn’t trust, a cover story to move away from supporting trans people on this. The Wes Streetings who were phoning in their allyship all along.

I’d be happy to be corrected, but nobody who seriously campaigns for better trans healthcare is happy about the proposed ban, it’s the chancers who don’t stand for anything that have abandoned us.

in reply to Katie Fenn

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
• •

That said, I do agree that DIYing has been somewhat pushed underground. Having made the decision to switch to the NHS in the mid-2000s (I was transitioning at university and broke), I’ve always got my prescriptions from an NHS GP.

I wouldn’t even know where to start with DIY, which is playing on my mind, I admit.

in reply to Katie Fenn

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
• •

Oh, and also, with more and more trans people coming out when young, and with full support of their parents, the demographic has somewhat changed.

There’s a new cohort of people who were hoping to have the support of the state, who have been completely abandoned. I know the community has always had my back on this, but I can’t help but feel for those people who are now feeling absolutely lost.

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Katie Fenn

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•

@Katie Fenn anyone wanting to know this stuff should find a trans woman who transitioned in the 2000s or 1990s and ask. We will at the very least provide signposting.

Meanwhile I’ve got a lifetime ban from r/transgenderUK for simply stating that self medication happened. Wasn’t even advocating it. Just speaking about it existing is sufficient for other trans people to want to shut me up.

Our social media used to have entire communities dedicated to it.

@Katie Fenn
in reply to Sarah Brown

Cyberspice
Cyberspice
• •
@katiefenn oh I know that self medication happened. I remember buying them…
@Katie Fenn
in reply to Sarah Brown

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
• •
That’s fucked up. I know they’ve had to tighten up their moderation because the Mail et al has been crawling Reddit, but there’s no justification for that.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Natomic
Natomic
• •

trans reddit is a shithole it's really sad

in my generation at least DIY is kinda underground but we still have knowledgeable people you just have to find them scattered across discord servers and DMs

This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Sarah Brown

geekylou :transgender_flag:
geekylou :transgender_flag:
• •
@katiefenn I wonder if it's more just a side-effect of corporate social media than the community. The ones I know who know about DIY and transitioned around 2020 tend to hang around more on private discord groups or fedi rather than Reddit.
@Katie Fenn
in reply to geekylou :transgender_flag:

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•
@geekylou :transgender_flag: @Katie Fenn I think that’s a huge factor. In the 2000s, the de facto online UK trans community was LiveJournal where nobody gave a shit if you talked about grey market HRT. Now its places like Reddit and Facebook groups, where central moderation will nuke your whole group for it.
@geekylou :transgender_flag: @Katie Fenn

Cy reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Astryr the Cyber-Swynwraig
Astryr the Cyber-Swynwraig
• •
(u know this already but just in case - the chance of hepatotoxicity of cypro reduces as the dose lowers, while the anti-androgen effects actually increase with lower doses,)
in reply to Astryr the Cyber-Swynwraig

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•
@Astryr the Cyber-Swynwraig This is good info. I was never on the stuff because I was able to get goserelin. My GP just prescribed it. Can you imagine that today?
@Astryr the Cyber-Swynwraig
in reply to Sarah Brown

Joy Aliza Denebeim
Joy Aliza Denebeim
• •

@alexandria I started diy because I had no interest in socially transitioning and that wasn't an option.

Anyway when I did go to my gp she said "I assume you won't quit if I tell you to" yup. Here's a prescription, being monitored by a Dr is way more healthy than doing it yourself. I'll read up on the subject, come see me in 3 months

@Astryr the Cyber-Swynwraig
Unknown parent

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•

@Ghost of Hope We’ve been through “asking your cis friends for birth control” before.

Of course, this time they’re going after birth control as well.

@Ghost of Hope
in reply to Sarah Brown

Charlotte
Charlotte
• •

If it helps, I went from zero to knowing about these things in the last 18 months or so (🐣). The knowledge is extremely accessible today, but perhaps because various things have got a lot easier many people are less inclined to initially go "well I better learn what a 5-alpha reductase is then" as they have not had any learning forced upon them. Given how things are going though I suspect/hope that situation will correct itself very quickly.

obligatory: Also fuck the tories.

Sarah Brown reshared this.

in reply to Charlotte

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•

@Charlotte There’s a lot that can be done with relatively few resources and effort even.

Googling, “how to boost aromatase levels” for example. It’s not much, but it’s something.

@Charlotte
in reply to Sarah Brown

blan©k.
blan©k.
• •
as recently as 2016 my trans ex was essentially compiling her own HRT regimen based on internet forums and WPATH
in reply to blan©k.

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•
@blan©k. 2016 was 8 years ago. A different world! There were TV programmes in which we were portrayed as human beings and everything.
@blan©k.
in reply to Sarah Brown

blan©k.
blan©k.
• •
at least it's not '90s-level yet, unless there are planned remakes of Silence of the Lambs or Ace Ventura...
in reply to Sarah Brown

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •

for the record, we don't think it's been lost, but it's definitely not talked about as much

the thing to keep in mind is this is ORAL HISTORY. getting lost is the default thing that happens to oral history. the way to preserve things is to write them down!

in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
allow us also to recommend writing down politically contentious things like this in, like, a text file - it's self contained and anyone can download it and share it with their friends, no matter what happens to the place you get it. not like a website, which can go down.
in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
there's a lot of problems of this nature because the queer community, you know, lost a generation recently and that means we need to rebuild all the cultural institutions that preserve knowledge and so on. like there has been some effort but there still needs to be more.
in reply to Irenes (many)

CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
• •
what we need is some form of decentralized documentation of trans knowledge, with dates to show outdated information. The only form that can take at the moment without censorship is through a strong community that shares advice well. However, I fear that there is a limit to how much information can be shared that way, without first lowering the stigma surrounding queer communities through effective protest/politics.
in reply to levampyre

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •

so like personally we're checks calendar 43

there are very few living queer people older than us, because of the AIDS pandemic. growing up, there was nobody we could learn from.

in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
(there's this phenomenon where if you're looking at an exponential curve, any point on it that you pay attention to feels like it's the shoulder. people ten years younger and older than us report the same phenomenon, and they're also correct.)
in reply to Irenes (many)

levampyre
levampyre
• •
@ireneista Oh, we're the same generation then and you were indeed referring to the AIDS epidemic, as I assumed, but wasn't sure. Thanks.
@goatsarah
@Sarah Brown @Irenes (many)
in reply to Irenes (many)

Amber
Amber
• •
not just oral history but "generational history". One of the biggest pet peeves I have is when someone goes the step to write down a description but assumes that in the future you will understand slang, words that have fallen out of use. I forget the actual link to that, where I read it. Said something along the lines of "we all know what a horse is so we don't write that down. it's a common idea we all share, but in a thousand years if horses were to go extinct all that would be left is this word that nobody really understands the idea behind"
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
this is so funny because this happens all the god damn time trying to look at any computer history. a lot of older terms have fallen out of use and it's hard to get context when the documents are missing. I mean, anyone who has tried to do things with DEC terminals can tell you that... "what did DEC mean by this" I read the field guide and it's like "ok to diagnose this you just do these steps if that doesn't work and you're unable to fix it that way order a new display from us". DEC you assumed that you would be manufacturing these displays, or even around, or you know that the people working on this would keep a lot of those weird design limitations in their memory.
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
sitting there looking at old documentation trying to decipher things, feels like reverse engineering would be easier half the time because some of it they didn't really understand what we do now... I mean let's look at the name CRT for existence, Cathode Ray Tube? wrong. it's not the cathode ray effect it's an electron gun. Yet we still call them CRTs... so could you imagine a 100 years ago from now? "why were these things called cathode ray tubes lol these are clearly operating as an electron gun" because there was not that common understanding of "oh we found out the actual science behind it, just easier to use the old terminology because that's what stuck socially."
in reply to Amber

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
can we just say we adore the notion of queer history and computer history being closely related 😁 it's just a fun thing to us to see in combination, since we care about both
in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •

they certainly have come together now, in this century, as like 90% of our mutuals could attest

and there were important threads earlier (Alan Turing! online dating when being gay was more illegal! all that stuff)

but also until the 80s computers were a strictly white-collar thing

in reply to Irenes (many)

CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
• •
the same s;ort of information loss happens when links die. I've come across it while trying to fix errors with my linux installation... some old forum post will describe exactly my issue and link to a solution - but the link is dead, that information is gone...
in reply to CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:

Amber
Amber
• •
Yes, I get it all the time and this is why the SEO stuff google is doing is so detrimental to my field. A lot of those old "i tried this command with this specific syntax and it worked", it's super hard for certain commands... Ideally I would not want to recreate udev rules trial by fire if I can have a known working udev rule to tinker with and refine if it doesn't work as good as advertised...
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •

Content warning: politics

in reply to Amber

CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
• •

Content warning: politics

in reply to Amber

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •

Content warning: politics

in reply to CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
absolutely. we uh... personally we have a good map of the primary sources for old microcomputer information in our head so we've found we're often able to turn up stuff our younger friends can't, simply because the connective tissue that isn't there anymore still exists in our head
in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
which is definitely not a good state of affairs, because we only have one head and it won't last forever
in reply to Irenes (many)

Amber
Amber
• •
it's why I admire the internet archive despite the fact there's definitely a lot of people near that space who are outwardly hostile towards people like us... (datahoarders are very uh not pleasant to say the least often times doing a lot of not so friendly scraping of websites that brings servers to a crawl). The internet archive itself as an organization is fine. I really respect the work gone into looking at formats that don't change over time by the datahoarding crowd. https://georgiasouthern.libguides.com/c.php?g=833713&p=5953146 things like this, you can find a lot of effort has been put into picking file formats that don't have backwards incompatibility.

Library Guides: Data Management Services: Recommended File Formats for Long-Term Data Curation

Jeffrey Mortimore
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
A lot of digital stuff is great, of course I love the idea behind having 1 of every book in the internet archive for physical artifacts. I really like how cheap storage is to make your own personal archive of things. I store a lot of misc stuff that's "gray" area such as ESXi isos for specific versions... windows server isos that have been disappeared from MSDN and it's so nice having an archive to play with old computer operating systems and so forth. not to mention that it's super easy to get something like a prebuilt nas to make a small archive.
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
Like, I love how much storage is just over the top with the ability to have terabytes of storage at a whim. All of those documents and everything that you can store in a tiny box compared to having a large physical artifact collection. A big library like my grandfather used to have a giant room full of books is not something the average person can afford. I mean I love libraries and physical books but it's not accessible to people who are living in smaller spaces or who cannot afford the books themselves. It's really nice being in the "datahoarder" space as long as you are respectful
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Irenes (many)

Amber
Amber
• •
There is a lot of specific tools people make for this kind of thing but it really doesn't have to be that complicated. can be as simple as copying the text from a web page if you don't want to preserve the entire site with a tool such as https://archivebox.io/. I just tried to keep it vague since there's various formats as well such as .epub for books and so on that make it easier to read them 😀

ArchiveBox

🗃 Open source self-hosted web archiving. Takes URLs/browser history/bookmarks/Pocket/Pinboard/etc., saves HTML, JS, PDFs, media, and more…
ArchiveBox
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
Also it was a typo i meant "storage" not store... thanks mind lol
in reply to Amber

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •

yeah absolutely

sigh... the library people are pretty good about understanding the needs in our experience, it's the anarcho-capitalists who are a problem. or at least it feels that way to us personally, from what we've seen

in reply to Irenes (many)

Amber
Amber
• •

HEAD - HTTP | MDN

The HTTP HEAD method requests the headers that would be returned if the HEAD request's URL was instead requested with the HTTP GET method.
MDN Web Docs
in reply to Amber

easrng
easrng
• •
@puppygirlhornypost @ireneista @awedp you can’t you head to index a site tho, it doesn’t send the body so there’s no way to get a page’s links
@Amber @Irenes (many) @CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
in reply to Amber

Seirdy
Seirdy
• •

@puppygirlhornypost @ireneista @awedp This is part of why I like the Common Crawl. It massively reduces the amount of compute/energy/time wasted to index the Web. It’s not just used for LLMs.

The LLM problem is better addressed by something like the W3C’s work-in-progress TDM Reservation Protocol, which is a sort of evolution of robots meta-tags and doesn’t hijack robots.txt (which is ideal for managing robot traffic load).

@Amber @Irenes (many) @CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
in reply to Irenes (many)

Amber
Amber
• •
Alan Turing is my idol and someone I look up to. Not only the horrific treatment of him but the fact he genuinely helped so much in the war effort. He was brilliant and it's unfortunate his life was cut short. Knowing that he was gay and knowing that without this gay man computer science as a theoretical field (back then at least) and computer science as a practical field probably would not be the same. I did a college essay on him, 3+ pages regarding the turing machine, the way he broke the enigma machine. I got a 100% on that, it was a final which was one of the best compliments since I have never gotten a 100% for an essay before in my life. I genuinely think that without him a lot of computer science would just not exist today.
This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to Amber

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
absolutely, on all counts. it's hard to imagine anyone else inventing all that theory - if there'd been more people with that passion and creativity, there wouldn't be so much stuff with his name on it
in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
btw we hope Alan Turing's life makes it clear that even if you literally save the world, the boring everyday bigotry of the system will come for you. there is no exemption from legally enshrined hatred just because you're a famous hero. so like, do keep that in mind in your career choices.
in reply to Irenes (many)

Amber
Amber
• •
doing that college essay regarding Alan Turning was the final straw in the coffin for my prospects of going into DoD... when he literally fought people persecuting him and his government ended up just persecuting him... I can't imagine what that'd feel like when you think the enemy is overseas, you assist your government and they just reveal themselves to be hostile to you and using you as a tool...
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
Yeah the pay is great, yeah there's a lot of interesting challenges but the Alan Turing thing alone not to mention the fact that I as a person could not sleep at night knowing that things of my creation were being used to harm other people on the scale of mass tragedies.
in reply to Irenes (many)

dibi58
dibi58
• •
certainly, thats why kkkristian wasp trash plague is worse than cancer ...
in reply to Amber

Hrefna (DHC)
Hrefna (DHC)
• •

@puppygirlhornypost

I was just doing research on a particular poem and in one of the scant sources we have for it the author didn't write down anything about it because "everyone knows that one."

@ireneista @goatsarah

@Sarah Brown @Amber @Irenes (many)
in reply to Amber

Hrefna (DHC)
Hrefna (DHC)
• •

@puppygirlhornypost

I think it is worth underscoring here the difference in age groups and access levels we're talking about as well

When I first looked into these questions in the US I was in my _twenties_ and to get spiro + fin required a song and a dance through multiple providers and generally a RLE test.

What's happening now is targeting a much younger population that is more aware, working in a more directly hostile environment, with much more limited resources.

@ireneista @goatsarah

@Sarah Brown @Amber @Irenes (many)
in reply to Hrefna (DHC)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
yeah when we personally started transition, a lot of resources assumed the biggest barrier was you wouldn't want anyone who sees you to figure out you're trans or be able to trace that to your legal identity
in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
we went through this whole multi-year emotional THING about it personally, before deciding those are non-goals for us
in reply to Irenes (many)

Amber
Amber
• •
it's sad I've heard cases of transfems stunting breast growth in order to not be ousted while having the benefits of hrt... all of the things like that they go through just to feel a bit more in line with their gender because they live in too hostile of an environment to feel safe or comfortable doing social transitioning... now a lot of it is more focused on "well these chemicals are known precursors, we cannot tell you how to make this because every method we give out is going to be promptly blocked by law enforcement" reminds me a lot of the DEA... I find it so dystopian we are "just all okay" with the DEA monitoring benign objects such as round bottom flasks... it just makes it a pain to go through and prove that you are using it for a genuine purpose while the people trying to use it illicitly go more towards improvised things often getting themselves hurt... or they get it from other countries with laxer regulations anyway and it shatters the illusion...
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
I still to this day am horrified that every god damn crocpot (or other pressurized cooking apparatus) is monitored strictly by Uncle Sam after that one incident... Like, can you stop wasting our tax dollars on that?
in reply to Amber

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
we don't know which incident you mean, do you have more details?
in reply to Irenes (many)

dr2chase
dr2chase
• •
@ireneista @puppygirlhornypost @hrefna Likely the Boston Marathon bombing, accomplished with pressure cookers. They used a good brand, too, we bought one later because as everyone knows, the only way to stop a bad guy with a pressure cooker....
@Hrefna (DHC) @Amber @Irenes (many)
in reply to Amber

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•

@Amber @Hrefna (DHC) @Irenes (many) Meanwhile, Portuguese DIY barns literally have entire sections that are best described as “explosives and chemical warfare ingredients”

It’s glorious!

@Hrefna (DHC) @Amber @Irenes (many)
in reply to Hrefna (DHC)

Hrefna (DHC)
Hrefna (DHC)
• •

@puppygirlhornypost

It's probably also worth noting that dutasteride and finasteride have the same challenge as a lot of other drugs in this space: not readily prescribed to people under the age of 18 due to "lack of testing" in the young age group.

Meaning you need a source for it that is willing to take significant chances for you if you are under 18, in a way that can easily be caught by a government probe.

So the knowledge is helpful, but the doors keep closing

@ireneista @goatsarah

@Sarah Brown @Amber @Irenes (many)
in reply to Hrefna (DHC)

Amber
Amber
• •
they always cite the "lack of data" as a reason to not prescribe it but then when you go "wait a second don't normal prescriptions have off-label usage that then turns into medical data to help support youth studies" they're oddly silent. I should know, as a kid I was prescribed a lot of anti psychotics with the recommendation not to prescribe them to children of my age unless there was a reason to believe they'd be effective and to just monitor the reported side effects...
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
not enough data on youth, how should we fix it? oh let's just outlaw its usage for youth so that we can't collect more data. This is a sound argument and is not a deliberate attempt to cut off that sort of study from taking place because it would be illegal to do so. ​:thumbsup:​ we just wanna protect the children who experience side effects so severe I can't list them without a content warning, feeling their lives are utterly unbearable to live in due to dysphoria... etc. You know because unlike ADHD meds or any of the common medication given out of their official use for some reason there needs not to be the discretion of "this is a lesser evil, with less risk compared to letting this person go without". You know like how I have my hypothyroidism medication that has been prescribed to me for a long time because without it the harm that thyroid dis-regulation would cause to my body and my body's development... you know I accepted that risk of whatever side effects because going without heavily outweighed whatever potential risks.
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
in reply to Amber

Amber
Amber
• •
We really want to make sure that you have hypothyroidism so you're going to need to talk to 2+ different doctors, run thousands of lab results while you wait literal years through this process as your body continues to deteriorate, your moods are unregulated... If that does not sound realistic to tell someone with my disorder, why does that change suddenly when it comes to HRT? "I just don't believe you have hypothyroidism it's a phase" like no...? It's important to remember we have an entire medical field dedicated to seeing how psychological disorders negatively impact or worsen existing medical conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosomatic_medicine so, when we know all of this why is it so unbelievable that the mood swings, everything else is just another thing that can be addressed with modern medicine?

interdisciplinary medical field exploring the relationships among social, psychological, and behavioral factors on bodily processes and quality of life in humans and animals

Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)
in reply to Irenes (many)

CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
• •

Content warning: CW: uk pol + transphobic cass review

in reply to CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •

Content warning: CW: uk pol + transphobic cass review

in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •

Content warning: CW: uk pol + transphobic cass review

in reply to Irenes (many)

CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
CharlotteTheNerdy :trans_verify: :aroace_verify:
• •

Content warning: CW: uk pol + transphobic cass review

in reply to Amber

Lea (gay edition) :neocat_floof_happy: :gay_sex:
Lea (gay edition) :neocat_floof_happy: :gay_sex:
• •

@ireneista@adhd.irenes.space my endo prescribes cypro as antiandrogen (at a safe level but as far as i know it's still bleh long term) and refused to prescribe my friend bicalutamide instead even though she's been getting depression symptoms as a side effect from cypro, refusing to acknowledge that that's indeed a known side effect.
he's widely recommended here in my local community but even he doesn't really know much about what he's doing. he also wouldn't give me progesterone until just about a month ago because "my levels aren't low enough" (it's been on a steady downward trend already but that shouldn't even be relevant either way)

i also didnt get a response when i asked him if its a bad thing that my prolactin is way above the recommended range shown on my blood test results, and im not gonna wait another 6 weeks for an appointment to ask in person

with some things i just trust myself more than medical professionals, but DIY is miles more inconvenient and expensive than getting it prescribed and almost fully covered by health insurance

@ireneista@adhd.irenes.space
in reply to Lea (gay edition) :neocat_floof_happy: :gay_sex:

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
•
@Lea :neocat_floof_happy: :v_trans: :v_lesbian: @Hrefna (DHC) @Amber my partner has a pituitary prolactinoma and hers is off scale high without medication. It’s one of those things where a problem tends to be signified by a couple of orders of magnitude above the normal range.
@Hrefna (DHC) @Lea (gay edition) :neocat_floof_happy: :gay_sex: @Amber
in reply to Amber

Li ~ Crystal System
Li ~ Crystal System
• •
@puppygirlhornypost @hrefna @ireneista and then the "lack of data" is just 'so there's all this data and we ignored it because insert some bs reason here'
@Hrefna (DHC) @Amber @Irenes (many)
in reply to Hrefna (DHC)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
• •
yeah knowledge provides the necessary foundation for action, so it still matters, but the institutional power being brought to bear right now is quite something
in reply to Irenes (many)

Alexandra Magin 🏳️‍🌈
Alexandra Magin 🏳️‍🌈
• •
@ireneista One of the frustrating things about twitter-era social media is that it's added almost no durability to oral history.
@Irenes (many)
in reply to Alexandra Magin 🏳️‍🌈

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
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yes, agreed. very upsetting.
in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
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it's also the case that when stuff is written in the form of a microblog post or even a longer post meant to go on a time-based feed (we're count facebook in that), it's quite hard to find the interesting stuff after the fact, or reconstruct the context in which it was said
in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
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every topic becomes spread out across thousands of small interactions across a period of months

mind, we do stay aware of this and use it consciously (good damn luck to anyone assigned to keep track of what we say for hostile purposes), but it's still a tragic loss

in reply to Sarah Brown

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
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there's also a medium-is-the-message problem with social media

things said there tend to be very bound to a specific moment in time, not just in the sense of how they're navigated, but in that they rely on context from whenever they were said, which can be challenging to reconstruct

in reply to Irenes (many)

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
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so the core "message" of social media is - live in the moment, don't look back, don't build larger stories out of your experiences

like yes that's an overly grandiose way to put it, and there are plenty of exceptions

in reply to Irenes (many)

R
R
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@ireneista our own experience has been basically... entirely contrary to everything described here?

we first discovered that transition was possible at all by meeting some people (most of whom were physical-body-age younger than us) in "the European hacker scene" who firstly gave us the concept of bodily autonomy (as something we could name) but secondly knew about... every HRT detail mentioned in OP, and also much more

@Irenes (many)
in reply to R

R
R
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@ireneista
when we finally did (DIY) HRT ourselves, we mostly had to do our own research anyways because the body we wanted (at the time) was contrary to what most other people seemed to want, and we did most of this by just... reading through mechanisms of action on Wikipedia while also referencing published care guidelines. sure, the community has been doing a lot of work editing the relevant wiki articles, but that's not so much "oral history"?
@Irenes (many)
in reply to R

R
R
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@ireneista however, we *have* noticed that the vibe of "interesting" experimentation *has* changed, but we don't know why.
@Irenes (many)
in reply to R

Irenes (many)
Irenes (many)
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well - our point is that how people experience that depends heavily on which cliques they're in! the connective tissue, the story around the information and how to find it, is something that has to be picked up socially, though you can follow it on your own after. or at least that's how it looks to us; does that fit your experience?
in reply to Irenes (many)

R
R
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@ireneista hmm, that's kinda complicated for us to answer? the very initial seed indeed came from social connections, but the bulk of "the actual mechanics of transitioning" came through one-sided lurking and other solo information gathering, especially since we had unusual and unpopular(?) desires
@Irenes (many)
in reply to R

R
R
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@ireneista
but now that we've powered through the bulk of "actual mechanics of transitioning", we seem to be coming back to needing(?) social connections? however, we seem to be rather isolated as a result of our allegedly "extremely ND" approach to transitioning, so we don't really have a "positive" view of the idea of compiling oral history
@Irenes (many)
in reply to Sarah Brown

⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
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⚡️because in the past a lot of people transitioning right now would not have transitioned at all because this knowledge would have been inaccessible to them.

It’s not that we were better in the past, it’s that in the past only the people able to access this kind of information were *able* to transition. I started hrt in 2011 abd I had to get lucky and encounter a few other, older trans people to even know hrt was a thing I could do successfully. I spent months scouring obscure websites and forums educating myself about it, how it worked, what was involved, what the consequences were, how to handle it legally, how to deal with medical gatekeepers. And I still didn’t know half of what I needed to.

Not to mention how many people ended up homeless or destitute or murdered or suicided who tried it and then lost all their social support.

It’s survivorship bias.

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in reply to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻

⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
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This entry was edited (1 month ago)
in reply to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻

⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
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like, the kind of person who is smart or savy enough to out doctor trained medical professionals, wealthy enough to afford the dozens of medical appointments it took to find one who’d stick their neck out, psychologically resilient enough to keep doing this very hard thing while their entire life fell apart around them, and bold or secure enough to talk about it openly so we actually know what they knew, is a vanishingly small subset of trans people.

That’s why the % of people who transition jumped a full order of magnitude the moment this process became standardized and legit. Only 1 out of 10 trans people were able to make it that far.

in reply to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@🪭The Notorious Kyo 🦊⛓️‍💥 NB: the “wealthy” bit is very US centric. Elsewhere that is a much less significant factor. I knew people back in the day on unemployment benefits in the UK who were still able to access transition medicine even with private practitioners, because most places do not have anything close to the financial barrier to accessing healthcare, even privately, that the US has.
@⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
in reply to Sarah Brown

⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻
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yeah I mean, all I know is that back in 2015 bottom surgery was $20k out of pocket, whether you stayed in the US or went to Thailand. Estrogen was always cheap, but the only cheap anti-androgen here is spiro. Doctors here won’t even prescribe Cyproterone because the FDA considered too risky, and Finasteride is really expensive.
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Unknown parent

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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@AntiThesisToRule a lot of this comes down to centralisation of social media moderation and systemic imposition of US puritanism. We used to be able to talk about this in spaces where we were left to moderate our own affairs.

And then we all ended up on Twitter and Facebook and Reddit, and were told by “corporate” that we can’t talk about this stuff any more.

This is why I have hope for the fediverse. It has the potential for those sort of spaces to develop again, but so far they don’t seem to have critical mass.

@AntiThesisToRule

Cy reshared this.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Llwynog
Llwynog
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It's possible to genetically modify gonads IN ADULTS so they produce desired levels of T or O. It's not even that difficult (for trans men, it would involve a one-off tamoxifen injection directly into the ovaries). As soon as the trans community figures out how to use genetic engineering, governments will find it nearly impossible to stop us: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/bies.200900193
in reply to Sarah Brown

Becca Royal-Gordon :transbian:
Becca Royal-Gordon :transbian:
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What makes you think it’s lost? My egg cracked in 2020, and within a couple of weeks I’d learned basically all of this info from an introductory article on https://transfemscience.org.

Trans people can and do become amateur endocrinologists so we can DIY if we have to. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t scream about it when the cis ineffectually try to cut off our access by restricting medicalized channels.


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Transfeminine Science is a site for information on hormone therapy for transfeminine people.
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in reply to Sarah Brown

Val Packett 🧉
Val Packett 🧉
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umm.. but like we're in the age of diyhrt.wiki and transfemscience?
in reply to Sarah Brown

legumancer Davy
legumancer Davy
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in Ireland it's very hard to get a prescription for any HRT, public has a 10 year waitlist and will tell your GP they're at risk of losing their license if they prescribe HRT (this is a lie), so most of us were relying on UK-based GenderGP, which is now imploding. The website "HRT Cafe" and this dosing chart https://transfemscience.org/articles/e2-equivalent-doses/ have been a godsend for a newly hatched trans girl I know. I just count myself lucky that I've gotten what I needed from testosterone and my body's stock hormones are good enough for me going forward.

Approximate Comparable Dosages of Estradiol by Different Routes

Approximate Comparable Dosages of Estradiol by Different Routes by Aly
Transfeminine Science
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