A Polite Melody

You are enabling AI companies to become gatekeepers of knowledge and giving them the ability to censor whatever they don't want you to see. You are abandoning your ability to find information independently and giving a corporation the power to decide what is worth knowing.

Oh cool so the CDC is just doing a media blitz to lie the groundwork for weed becoming illegal again in many places huh okay

I have never had these problems, as a chronic cannabis user, I literally ingested mould that was growing in my guts…..

But the doctors ALL blamed it on my cannabis use.

I got pamphlets and guides on how to curb my 'addiction', and they stressed real hard it doesn't matter if I used it for medical reasons, if I wanted it at all when I wasn't on it, it must mean I am addicted and need to stop.

I am 100% certain that my INGESTING MOULD issue was written down as "Cannabis Emesis Syndrome" and would get wrapped up in the data to suggest that emergency room visits among cannabis users for cannabis use is becoming higher.

Like... it's fucking biased reporting that is going to fuck a lot of us over.

Despite having an active infection, not having even used cannabis in a month or two because I was actively recovering from a surgery, I was told that it was likely CES (even though all the pamphlets they gave me said CES would ease if you didn't use again "for a few days to a week"). And my only advice when I was discharged (after staying the night, being flooded with antibiotics and hydrated via salin drip), was to cut out the cannabis. I ingested a fuck ton of mould spores that made me sick, but because I also am a chronic cannabis user because of my debilitating nerve pain and PTSD, it will have been listed in the records as CES because that is what the doctors decided to focus on. Because it's the big new scary thing.

Fuck, the surgery I was talking about before that I was recovering from was gallbladder removal - and before that my own doctor tried to blame CES for what was in fact a very inflamed gallbladder. Once I got over the rough recovery from that, the symptoms my doctor wanted to associate with CES *went away* because it wasn't CES it was an actively inflamed gallbladder that was causing the problems.

Like, people talk about fad health trends in pop culture readily enough but I think we should also turn this focus towards doctors themselves because holy shit this was a fringe theory that everyone latched on to and started reporting cases of - regardless of whether or not they fit the description.

There also aren't traditional addiction pathways for cannabis in our brains, just habitual feedback-loop ones. Cannabis can be misused, same as any substance, but it's very safe and not at all causing a plague of illnesses. Using cannabis regularly, in a normal manner, is not unsafe and only needs to be charted by a doctor for the safety of specific medications or procedures. It's supposed to be treated the same way as disclosing you drink or smoke tobacco.

They very much are trying to claim a rise in cannabis related emergency room visits here as well.

I don't remember the % they quoted on the pamphlets I was given but it was similar to the CDC's number here.

And I'm not saying CES doesn't exist - though I was flippant about it as I didn't realize that post would get as much traction as it did - and frankly I would like more studies on the long term effects of cannabis for chronic users because that data would be really helpful to be able to use this in a safe manner! Hell, I would join such a study if I could.

And I will even concede that, perhaps, an inflamed gallbladder could be partially caused by cannabis consumption, and perhaps these things are related. Maybe cannabis affects the gallbladder and what we are calling CES, is actually the results of an inflamed gallbladder partly because of cannabis use. I don't think we know enough about how these things affect each other to rule it out entirely. So I will concede that it could be related! But when I ingested mould after a surgery touching my gastro system and had bad complications because of it... and they call it CES... I don't have a lot of faith the uptick in "cannabis related" incidents isn't just because it is an easy correlation to point to.

What I see happening on the ground level as a patient, is that doctors are extremely quick to cry it must be CES even despite other relevant factors and that isn't very reassuring.

But it's like, girl, they don't have a reason to be homophobic around you, because you're not queer. Just because they're not preaching their homophobia from the rooftops, that they're not out on the street with signs, does not mean they're not full of insidious and dangerous bigotry.

Sometimes it takes being confronted with the object of their disdain directly to bring their hatred about that target out into the open.

If there's not a gay person around, if we don't come up in conversation, then they get to live in the perfect little reality where they can pretend we don't exist. But I get the full time experience of being that unpleasant reminder that we do in every interaction with them. They have opinions about that, and they take actions that have actively hurt me in reaction to that.

So if you're wondering what it's like, maybe ask the people who experience it?? Instead of gauging my reality on your own personal encounters.

If you genuinely believe in the existence of a “transmanosphere” and the concept of trans men and mascs having male privilege, you need to block me.

That essay was the most bloated (with useless contextualizing, youtube video essay style), condescending bullshit that I’ve read in a while. The amount of times that the author established a criteria for her bullshit presumption that makes it non-falsifiable is absolutely ridiculous. All the talk about how trans men are just in echo chambers, or are “immunizing themselves” against self reflection — all of that serves the function of establishing that she can never be argued with.

She couldn’t possibly be wrong about believing that trans men hold male privilege — you’re just a vulnerable stupid wo- they- tboy who’s fallen for predatory echo chambers.

She couldn’t possibly be the one sharing inflammatory, aggressive statements that directly target trans men — you’re just unable to understand “lukewarm intersectionality” (nevermind the fact that she shows a clear ignorance of what intersectionality is).

She couldn’t possibly have seen/contributed to the antagonism levied against trans men, transmascs, nonbinary people, and intersex people — you’re just incapable of self reflection. Self reflection in this case meaning blind agreement with whatever she says.

And of course, drowning all of this in mind-numbing exposition about the history of the internet, so that your eyes glaze over and you don’t notice the moment where she doesn’t even bother explaining how trans men and mascs speaking on their own oppression is in any way comparable to the likes of andrew tate. She just says that it’s “just like the manosphere”, except… It’s not. People not letting her be transphobic is not the same as what even she outlines about the manosphere in her essay (and yes, of course, no one should be receiving death threats like some of what she shows in the screenshots. Both can be true). But she says it’s the same, and if you don’t agree with her you simply must not be a good transfeminist.

Because if you’re not a transmisogynistic, vulnerable but also somehow violent, trans man that is too stupid to self-flagellate at every single point of his existence - then you’re just a cis woman that’s she’s very disappointed in, because surely you should have known better.

Do you see it? Everyone that disagrees with her is already preemptively discredited (yes this is me telling you to watch “Suspend your disbelief: or how to ruin everything in 7 steps” again, because at this point you NEED TO), and they can’t possibly be listened to properly.

So yeah, tldr: transandrophobia is real, so is transmisogyny, so is exorsexism, so is intersexism. It’s kinda why we gotta stick together. The “transmanosphere” is NOT real and if you think it is you need to block me.

the science direct article FULL STUDY. there is so much in this article that I don't even know where to start in pulling out highlights because the entire thing feels like it's made up of them.

So instead i'll just drop the "what did we learn?" portion of the summary that was released by the PRIDEStudy research. (links to the summary/press releases for all the pridestudy research since 2019. i suggest ctrl-f)

What Did We Learn?

Participants most often discussed these topics as most important to them:

pelvic pain,

genital atrophy (thinning and dryness of genital tissue), and

repeat infections, such as urinary tract infections and yeast infections.

Many participants had doctors who didn't know how to help them because they were on testosterone. As one participant's doctor put it plainly: "I don't know how to treat you."

We found six connected patterns in what people told us:

1. Erasure – Healthcare systems, research, and providers often failed to recognize or account for transmasculine bodies and identities. This included:

experiences with systems not built for transmasculine patients,

a lack of research and provider training, and

providers making incorrect assumptions about participants' body parts or identity.

2. Authority of knowledge – Providers trusted test results over what patients knew about their own bodies. This left many participants feeling dismissed even when they had clear symptoms.

3. Navigating uncertainty – Confusion, for both patients and providers, about whether symptoms were caused by testosterone. There was also a lack of guidance on long-term effects of using testosterone.

4. Prolonged and fragmented care – Being sent through repeated referrals and rounds of testing, sometimes for years, without ever getting a clear diagnosis or explanation.

5. Cumulative exposure – The toll of these experiences built up over time and led to exhaustion, medical trauma, and, for some, avoiding care altogether.

6. Resistance and agency – Participants proactively used different approaches to try to receive good care, including:

advocating for themselves,

using community networks for trustworthy information, and

trying non-medical treatments.

Participants found real relief, validation, and joy when they did get good care.

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