the tree is dreaming itself

And no matter how gently this is pointed out, the newbie will often initially feel instinctively defensive towards what they perceive as scolding. Which means that when another community member comes along and says "Don't worry about the language police 🙄, many of us think AGAB language is fine, it's a useful way to refer to the kind of formative experiences you had as a child," the newbie will latch on to them like a life raft.

And yes, we live in a transphobic society, a lot of people coming into the trans community will have uninterrogated transphobic views, but that just makes them more vulnerable when there is always someone in the community willing to tell them "no, your transphobic views are fine actually, and in fact here are some more you might not have thought of!"

It means a sizeable chunk of newly-out NBs are swiftly radicalised into increasingly extreme transphobia and transmisogyny simply as a defense mechanism against having their own comments criticised. One day they're just happy to join a community where people supposedly don't judge you on your birth sex, and the next they're talking about the importance of "AGAB socialisation".

The answer is: the uterus isn't what causes your period, it is effected by your period. What causes your period and what causes trans women's periods is the same thing: the endocrine system.

HRT changes the sex of your endocrine system. Feminizing HRT makes it a female endocrine system, giving us a 28-day hormone cycle just like cis women. At the end of that cycle, the hypothalamus floods the body with prostaglandins. Those are what cause all but one of the period symptoms, because they make muscles inflame and contract. They are what make the uterus shed its lining, they are what cause intestinal cramps, they are what cause body aches, they are what cause headaches and migraines. The only period symptom not causes by the release of prostaglandins throughout the body is depression, and that is caused by your endocrine system simply not processing as much estrogen and from simply feeling like shit.

So, the only symptoms trans women don't get every 28 days is menstrual cramps, because yes we do not menstruate since we don't have uteruses. But migraines, depression, body aches, intestinal cramps, and the infamous "period shits" don't exactly add up to us having any better of a time. Except we have to pretend that we're fine and nothing is different because no one believes that we get periods, not even cis women.

cupid blues

The Mistake

daniel's a crap investigative journalist--he didn't expose armand, raglan and the talamasca did; and they've been pulling his strings ever since like the ventriloquized stooge he is, mr. i don't like being rewritten.

daniel was a soulless vampire even before loumand sank their teeth into him. and now that he's a vampire it's just amplified all of his worst and most parasitic traits: more interested in exploiting content fodder than actually getting to the empathetic heart of the story. more invested in breaking things down & dismantling things rather than building anything up in its wake. he uses research and sources as a gotcha!, with zero nuance or sensitivity; he just flattens/strips everything down to the most basic parts--which is great when it comes to sniffing out inconsistencies, but is useless when he has to actually parse even a shred of cultural relativism. he's not giving a voice to the silent/silenced; he's the audience surrogate pronouncing judgement on everyone caught in his recorder/camera; no better than the guigonettes slobbering at that racist AF Trial that got louis & claudia LYNCHED. he goes into every interview with preconceived biases and extreme prejudice: automatically assuming the absolute worst about louis in s1, armand in s2, and now lestat in s3. he IS the meta; he's been the meta this whole time--

--OH! but when the evil bipocs louis & armand clapped back against daniel in s1 & s2 they were raked across the coals by the fandom; how dare they mistreat poor daniel like that~! 😭😩 but now that lestat's schooling TF out of daniel, now people wanna wring their hands hat in hand finally admitting what a p.o.s. this guy's been the whole time? when we BEEN said that he was a p.o.s. for going behind louis' back to publish the book & violating louis' explicit consent? but ofc these are the same morons who blamed louis for "leaving daniel alone in the penthouse~!", when actually it was a whole month & some change after daniel had already left dubai when armand turned him?! louis had eff all to do with it--but y'all wanna always blame louis for everything wrong in the world, huh? CLOWNS. y'all wanna blame louis for paying to TALK to miss lily, when y'all had eff all to say about tom anderson having sex with all of his girls WITHOUT paying any of them one red cent--but LOUIS was "exploiting" miss lily?! HOW? by paying her to TALK to him? TALKING is a crime worse than DEATH--that LESTAT delivered to her?! oh, but let's not talk about lestat walking all over nola with one of tom anderson's blue books--no sir~! ❌🙅