Smooth Butch Workaholic

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I love you being trans I love you trans women i love you gender exploration I love you self discovery

[link to the Reddit post]

[ID: two screenshots of a reddit post on r/offmychest by user awaythrowjessie, titled "My girlfriend made me realize I'd be happier as a woman". it reads as follows:

I am 33, born male, and have had major self image issues my entire life. I hated seeing myself in mirrors, pictures, you name it. I honestly thought it was kinda normal so I just accepted it.

Now about 3 weeks ago I was at my girlfriends house, we have been dating a little over a year now, and have plans to move in together soon. Now recently she has shaved her head to support of her friends with cancer (side note thenl treatments for that friend are going very well). She had since bought some wigs to wear while her hair grows back out. We were joking around as I have male pattern baldness, and when she went to the bathroom I jokingly threw a wig on and waited. She came our, saw me we laughed for a bit and she said "you know I think you'd make a pretty girl" we laughed some more but those words triggered something in me.

Cut to a few night's ago she asked why I've been acting weird lately and I just told her how i was feeling. She said "alright let's do this " and when I asked what she told me she was going to give me a bit of a makeover and put me in one of her dresses and if i liked it then good. I was nervous and asked what if I did like it would she still be attracted to me. She just responded with "Baby you know I'm bi, guy or girl you're still mine." Her words reassured me honestly i love her so much.

Anyways she finished the make up, fitted a wig on me perfectly and got me in a dress and even helped me put a bra on and stuff in a little so i could see what breasts would kinda look like on me. Now I expected to see myself in the mirror, laugh this off and move on right, but I didn't. She did an unbelievable job, like I looked like I had been born a woman, and when I saw myself in the mirror for the first time in my entire life, I liked what I saw. I probably stared at myself for a good 10 minutes before she finally asked me something. She asked what I wanted to be called. After a few seconds I said Jessie, I always like the name Jessie. She whispered in my ear "well Jessie, you look beautiful." And that was it, I knew this was who i wanted to be.

I'm nervous now though, my friends will accept it but my family are, well let's just say not very progressive. But this is what I want.

[link]

[ID: A screenshot of a Reddit post from r/offmychest by user awaythrowjessie, titled “I went out as Jessie for the first time and I was honestly surprised”. The screenshot reads: Hello everyone, this is an official follow up to my previous post that went viral and caught me off guard.

So me and my girlfriend, (Who has officially agreed to disclose her name lol) Emily, had gone shopping for me to get me outfits and the like. Earlier today i put on one of those outfits and officially faced the world as Jessie for the first time.

To say I was nervous would be an understatement. We went to our local mall and I was almost shaking, thankfully Emily calmed me down and said if anyone said anything mean to me she'd handle it, then playfully threw up her hands like a boxer lol. We stepped inside and started walking around going in stores and I noticed something, no one was staring. Like at all. I live in an area that still has issues with LGBTQ people so I was afraid of staring or aggressive people. But none of that happened. People greeted me, the store workers were kind and nobody looked at me like I was weird. I felt comfortable, and Emily even said she saw someone check me put, though i doubt that.

This was unbelievable to me and honestly I felt like myself. I feels nice that I can go out without worrying about Judging eyes.

"One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression; but as the years go by it seems now often forgotten that to be caught in youth by 1914 was no less hideous an experience than to be involved in 1939 and the following years. By 1918, all but one of my close friends were dead."

So, for example, Pilgrim's Progress is an allegory of Christian salvation. It's sort of a novel? There are characters who do stuff? but also they are very one-dimensional. The main character is a guy named Christian--yes, really!--who is journeying from his hometown ("the city of destruction") to the Celestial City (heaven). There is not much subtlety to it. It is pretty much what it is. There is no slippage, no playing around with the theme, no places where the symbolism is ambiguous. John Bunyan, the author, is hitting you over the head every step of the way with the Meaning That You Are Supposed To Be Getting From The Story.

Not all allegories are that crude or simplistic; the Narnia books are also allegory for Christianity. They have a lot more subtlety to them and a lot more nuance, and there's a lot of stuff in there that isn't allegorical, but on the crucial matters there is still a 1:1 correspondence. Aslan is Jesus. He's not like Jesus, he's not a character that has some similarities to Jesus or takes themes from the stories of Jesus, he is Jesus.

Tolkien is not doing allegory. Tolkien is taking the material of his life--his faith, his experiences in WWI, his linguistic and historical knowledge, his favorite books--and using them as the building blocks of his story. The themes and imagery and symbols draw heavily from all of that, the characters and settings draw heavily from all of that, but they are too complex to be allegorical. There's a lot of symbolism! It's not allegory.

So, for example, let's take the Dead Marshes referenced above. Does the experience of walking through this muddy wasteland with corpses all around that are rotting but still look like people draw from Tolkien's WWI battlefield experience of dead bodies in the trenches? Of course it does! but there are also a lot of differences. These dead are not from the current war, they are from a previous one--they are a reminder of old conflicts, of the ways the systems and powers of the current war have not come out of nowhere, there is history here. There is meaning that is not drawn from the Somme. And they are also drawing from literary references Tolkien was familiar with--primarily William Morris. Modern readers don't get the references because we have generally not read The House of the Wolflings, but that doesn't mean that the references aren't there.

Something big happened that most of us could do very little about. The world became openly unstable in ways people could no longer politely ignore. Institutions failed. Safety nets frayed. The future got harder to imagine. So a lot of people started reaching for control wherever they could find it: morning routines, dopamine detoxes, habit stacks, sleep scores, screen-time limits, supplement protocols, productivity systems, “nervous system regulation,” whatever the app-store priesthood was selling that week.

I get it. I really do.

But I’m going to pull a phrase people love to use when they want to sound emotionally mature: trauma explains behavior; it does not excuse it.

Because at some point, “I am trying to regain a sense of agency in a chaotic world” turned into “everyone who doesn’t live like me is undisciplined, addicted, immature, morally weak, spiritually degraded, or secretly begging to be rescued from themselves.”

And that’s where I get off the ride.

I’m not saying optimization is bad for everyone. Some people genuinely benefit from tweaking parts of their lives. Some people like routines. Some people feel better with stricter sleep schedules or less social media or more deliberate habits. Great. Wonderful. I’m sincerely glad when people find something that makes their life easier.

The problem is the culture around it.

The culture is ableist because it treats “functioning” as a moral achievement and assumes everyone has the same body, brain, energy, pain level, sensory needs, executive function, and recovery capacity.

It is classist because so much of it quietly depends on flexible schedules, disposable income, safe housing, nutritious food access, leisure time, privacy, and the ability to refuse exploitative work conditions without immediately risking survival.

And it is Puritanical because underneath all the soft wellness language is the same old suspicion of pleasure: too much comfort will rot you, too much rest will weaken you, too much fun will corrupt you, too much convenience will make you less human. You are always supposed to be renouncing something. You are always supposed to be proving that you can suffer correctly.

That’s the part that bothers me.

Not “I tried changing this habit and it helped me.”

Not “I personally feel better when I do less of that.”

But the constant creep from personal preference into moral hierarchy. The assumption that a “better” life is always a more controlled life. The belief that every impulse must be interrogated, every pleasure audited, every habit optimized, every moment made legible to some invisible performance review.

And honestly, I think a lot of people would rather accuse everyone else of being addicted, lazy, dysregulated, or broken than admit how scared they are of being alive in a world where control is often partial, fragile, and unevenly distributed.

"Oh no, thanks!"