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https://cash.app/$adriandeveaux23

Hello everyone. My name is Adrian, I’m a 21 yo gay trans guy and I need help.

For the past three months I’ve been DIYing a very low dose of T while attending college away from my parents. After I graduated and returned home, I also scheduled a top surgery consultation using my parents’ health insurance plan, because I (incorrectly) assumed that HIPAA would prevent me from being outed. This was not the case. Somehow my mother became aware of the appointment. My parents both cornered me and basically made me tell them I was transitioning.

Now my life is in complete shambles. They’ve given me an ultimatum: either stop HRT and my top surgery plans or I am estranged from the family.

I now have 5 days to pack all my belongings and leave here without a car. I have not signed a lease anywhere yet, I do not know what to do. I have been saving for peri since I was 17 and now it has to go towards my survival fund. I am devastated.

If anyone would like to help me get back on my feet, I’ve linked my cashapp. Thank you so much.

Schools Are Banning My Book. But Queer Teens Need Queer Stories, by Maia Kobabe. Washington Post, October 29, 2021.  Maia Kobabe discusses this column in more detail on James Hohmann’s podcast, “Please, Go On.” Listen now.

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i think people underestimate how pervasive this attitude is to the point where progressive minded people talk as if all trans men automatically have male privilege and seamlessly assimilate into manhood, while being a trans woman means enduring endless suffering as a “freak.” this not only results in trans men being cast as the “oppressor” and minimizing their struggles but it also further stigmatizes the experiences of trans women to the point that many remain in the closet for the fear of “never passing” or being “ugly”

You’re right. At the same time transfeminine people face a hard limit that transmasculine people do not: one can’t shrink one’s skeleton. 

Also testosterone kind of wreaks havoc on transfem bodies to the point where they’re pretty wrecked by the time they transition. It’s an uphill battle that transmascs do not face.

This is accidentally demonstrating the exact point OP is making.

There are transmascs whose bodies are so wrecked by estrogen that they can’t pass no matter what they do, because of their hips being wide and their skeleton being small etc. One can’t grow one’s skeleton either, except in absurd corner cases or getting HRT as a teenager (which is also beneficial to transfems when it happens, because it can reduce their final height). It may be less common to be clocked for these features, but that doesn’t make it impossible, and there’s a hard limit for transmasculine bodies too that’s much closer than most people think.

Part of why it’s less common for transmascs to be clocked for our unchangeable features is that people aren’t trained to look for transmascs like they are transfems – which has nothing to do with the effects of hormones. Cis men are also allowed to have more body diversity than cis women are in the media (though both are still quite narrow), so transmascs have a bit more social leeway than transfems do. An example of this is voice, both in the myth that the voice doesn’t break during estrogen-based puberty (it does; adult cis women don’t sound like children) and in the way that cis women with lower voices have been systematically pushed out of music and the media over the last few decades. As such, much of the uphill battle for transfems is dictated by heavier scrutiny and social standards than exist for transmascs, which isn’t caused by transfeminine bodies or transitions. In a less scrutinising society, transfems would have an easier time passing even if they had the exact same bodies they do now.

For me, it’s like… my vocal range is lower, but I didn’t lose much of my upper range when my voice dropped in the first place. I’m still obviously balding (oh by the way, hair loss can also happen to cis women for various reasons but is very rarely talked about). I still have more and darker body and facial hair (though there’s less and it’s lighter now than when I was still taking T). And finally there’s the uh “downstairs growth.” That’s it for the obvious stuff.

My body and face shape changed a lot more and faster than I thought they would. I’ve gotten ma'am’d recently when I wasn’t wearing makeup or a wig, wasn’t dressed particularly feminine, and just spoke in my regular voice. Totally took me by surprise. I’d assumed that I would continue to pass as a man by default. Now I realize I’ll need to make an effort to Definitely Pass as either a woman or a man. I honestly wasn’t expecting this and it’s going to make my life more difficult in a lot of ways.