Klara

Ten days after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, officials discovered a new, potentially greater threat: a massive pool of water had collected beneath the melting core of Reactor 4. If the molten fuel (corium) reached this water, it could have triggered a massive steam explosion. Experts feared this second blast would have been powerful enough to destroy the remaining three reactors and render much of Europe uninhabitable.

The men seen suiting up in the photo were not professional divers, but power plant employees who knew the facility's layout: Alexei Ananenko, a mechanical engineer who knew where the release valves were located; Valeri Bespalov, a senior engineer who assisted in the search; Boris Baranov, the shift supervisor whose job was to provide light for the others.

When asked, Ananenko’s response was simple: “How could I refuse, when I was the only person on shift who knew where the valves were located?”

Equipped with basic respirators, wetsuits, and flashlights, they waded through knee-to-waist-high radioactive water in the dark to manually drain the chambers. Despite their lights failing during the mission, they successfully located the valves by touch, following a main pipe until they reached the sluice gates.

I am a trans woman with dysphoria and I've begun to question if I may actually be a transmedicalist based on my experiences with some people.

If you are not comfortable answering, it's alright I will find someone else 😊 I just thought it would be better to ask someone around my age first

I am pro medicalisation, I believe transsexualism should be seen as a medical condition that is treated with HRT and sex reassignment surgery. The overwhelming majority of non dysphorics using terms like trans to refer to themselves whilst pushing the idea that HRT and sex reassignment surgery are not necessary treatments for our condition make it harder for actual transsexuals to get the treatment they need. I don’t generally support the idea of there being other genders aside from the binary male and female but I do make an exception for Agender people who feel a total disconnect from either gender as long as they do not call themselves trans.

If you have a linear black and white idea of what male and female should be you obviously aren’t going to identify with either because you place those terms into a box where anything that differs from your definition of them means you aren’t them. Which is why so many people identify outside of the gender binary. While they think they are crushing gender roles they only serve to enhance them by enforcing the idea that female means 100% feminine all the time and male likewise. There is no feeling to male or female, you do not feel a certain gender, you are or you aren’t.

I have also seen a lot of people pushing the idea that euphoria is enough to call yourself trans which only makes a mockery of a debilitating condition. Then they throw the 41% stat around as if that 41% didn’t take their lives because of dysphoria.

ive worked in hospitals for a long time, and years ago i saw a patient very frequently. he came in once every month or so, inpatient. one day he told me what he kept coming in for. he had a knee replacement, but it kept rejecting. so the hospital would take it out, keep him, and then put it back in. he told me that he was fighting to just have it amputated. he said he was in his 70s and he just didnt have enough time anymore to spend it all in the hospital. he said that he felt he could live a better and more fulfilling life for the years he had left if they just took the leg off. he could get a prosthetic and just not have to go to the hospital all the time. he said that the doctors were fighting him on it but that was what he wanted. i said that i understood, and that i hoped he could get that amputation

anyway, some time passed, and i saw him again. i asked whats up, he was beaming and said, "i got it done! they took the leg off!" i was like, "hell yeah man, how are you feeling?" and he said "well it hurts right now but im not gonna have to come here all the time anymore." he left the hospital some time later, and i never saw him again, which is all you can hope for when you work in a hospital

he also had an elective surgery, a "voluntary" surgery. he chose to have an amputation because he was suffering with the limb intact. and thats really what we're doing too. yes, transition surgeries are elective, but that doesnt mean that theyre not necessary to improve the quality of our lives