I only wrote this down to make you press rewind

I've been on testosterone for 3 years, and frequently people have made comments about how it must be hard because now I can never have children. And for a long time, I would say that yes, it is hard to know that, because my sole regret about going on testosterone was how I'd never be able to get pregnant (as my doctor told me). But now I know that's not true-- transgender men, including those who have been on testosterone for many years, are capable of having healthy, happy babies. I see many posts on here talking about how testosterone should not be used as a contraceptive (true!) and resources for seeking an abortion when you're transmasculine, but I don't see anyone encouraging or providing information to those who may have medically transitioned but still want to pursue pregnancy.

Here is a Guide to Transmasculine Fertility, complete with several "lesson" sections on various topics such as assisted reproduction options and aging fertility rates, written by verified physicians and Trystan Reese, a transgender man who has pregnancy experience. This is an excellent and thorough resource, and not the only article that the site has on transgender pregnancy and parenting. In my opinion, this is the best resource on the list, so it's first.

Here are personal accounts of transmasculine pregnancies from Evan Hempel, Jason Barker, Thomas Beatie, Trevor MacDonald, and there are so, so many more just a Google search away.

Here is a Heathline article that discusses the issue of social stigma around transmasculine pregnancies, and how to combat it.

Here is a (short) NYT article about a reproductive endocrinologist's (supportive) perspective on transgender pregnancies.

Here is a list of resources that covers much of the above, and more.

Many of us are told when we begin testosterone that it can impact fertility, destroy our reproductive organs, etc. and not only is that blatantly untrue, but it's wildly harmful to those of us who want to be pregnant. We deserve this information, we deserve to know our options, we deserve to decide for ourselves what we want to do with our bodies. Yes, transgender men who want to be pregnant are certainly in the minority. But too many of us think we're infertile or are told that we are by doctors who don't know enough about transgender healthcare, leading to irreversible decisions that do render us infertile (such as hysterectomies). While this is aimed at transgender men, it is also worth mentioning that this applies to anyone and everyone who engages in HRT, mastectomy, etc. including nonbinary people, butches, genderfluid people and so on.

It feels like every time I open up a +18 tag or go into an adult fandom space, there's all these actual kids running around, telling people they're minors.

I could be wanting to read a smut fic and I'll see a bunch of posts with the text "minor writing smut, don't like, DNI" or something like that.

How fucking stupid are you? Genuine question. Are your grades okay? Do you need to talk to the school counselor? Take a common sense test? Because I certainly think so.

Why are you entering and actively taking part in adult spaces and then using the "umm I'm a minor, so if you do or say anything, then I'm the victim and you need to get away from me, you creep" card when you get called out on your bullshit?

These adult spaces are not for you, GET THE FUCK OUT! Go sit in the corner and think about what you've done!

Teens will teen. They'll find adult material one way or another, I am fully aware of that. Hell, I'm guilty of reading smut when I was a teen. But when I did, I never told a soul.

I've had accounts run by minors as young as 13-14 interacting with my NSFW posts. And they're somehow bragging about this. Of course, I block them immediately, but I am shocked at how brazen these kids are, to have the gall to do this and think it's okay because "they're mature enough."

No. You're not. I promise you.

Becoming an adult isn't about reaching some arbitrary number. It's about learning to take responsibility for your actions. So take this advice and GET THE FUCK OUT OF ADULT SPACES! YOU'RE NOT WELCOME!

I'm a sixteen year old aspiring writer with ADHD and anxiety. My writing patterns are horrible. I go months without writing then spit out a hundred pages. I've been writing since I was eight and I've never finished a story longer than a few thousand words because I physically cannot force myself to write in order, though I can eventually fill in the gaps (if I'm given a few months).

I'm trying my best, but it feels like my best isn't good enough for the world. Do you (or any other successful writers you know) have similar problems? Or is this something you overcome with time? Basically wondering if there's hope of me being successful despite these traits. Thanks!

You're sixteen. The reason why the world isn't filled with successful sixteen year old novelists is we were all (or most of us) trying to figure out how to do the writing thing in bursts and spurts and with dozens of beginnings and not a lot of endings, and we have some characters over here and some story over there and we can't work out how to make them align and work together. And so on and so forth.

You are not a failure if you haven't published a Hugo-award winning trilogy by the time you're twenty. You're an egg that hasn't even finished hatching.

Scammers are targeting Monterey Bay Aquarium visitors with these fake ticket offers online. 

The only place to purchase official Aquarium tickets is through our website. As a nonprofit organization, proceeds from legitimate ticket sales allow us to continue our mission of inspiring conservation of the ocean. Find out more here: https://mbayaq.co/3vlcRpi

But the thing is, these don’t stop. There’s always some new unprecedented horror. We need to be able to respond and then keep responding, today, tomorrow, a year from now, the rest of our lives. There will never come a point when justice has been accomplished and we can rest. That’s a fantasy. But we have to rest. So in the meantime, we need to carve out space to exist, to be happy, in a world that has been trying to eradicate whole peoples since long before either of us were born.

The Palestinian genocide is the worst horror I can remember in my lifetime. It needs to stop. What can I, personally, do? What power do I have alone? How do I integrate caring about this genocide into the life I’ve built where I’m an activist for different things? If I were to slit my wrists today, as one Internet rando suggested, what happens to the patients for whom I provide gender care and abortions? You’re free to dislike me, but do you hate me so much you’re willing to sacrifice my patients’ access to gender-affirming care in a county where I was the first out primary care provider ever? How do I balance the demands of activism against my need to live a life with room for emotional regeneration?

If we separate doing something from feeling something, we can construct that space. Your morality is not about developing superpowers in a rigged system. It is not about devoting every waking moment to misery. That is not sustainable, and you need to be able to sustain activism over the long haul, because the atrocities don’t stop. They never stop. We play Whack-a-Mole with them, and hopefully some lives are saved in the meantime.

If a friend messages you apologising because someone "with a similar username to you" tried to deceive them so they reported your account as hacked, and sends an image of a discord email, your friend is the one who has been hacked.

It's hard to read in the screenshot (sorry!) but it looks like the "advice" is something like "file a friend request with our CORPORATE HEAD OF SECURITY to open your case. You have 12 hours to do so or we might suspend your account."

I've been told that if you do contact that user, they try to get you to "prove" you own the account by making a "100% refundable transaction" to them. Which is so scummy.

Scammers catch people out by imposing a time limit and dramatic consequences of not acting fast enough. In that moment of panic, you might not figure out it's suspicious, especially when the email looks so real (it will have your screen-name in it to make it seem legit, but the request code will likely be identical to the one in this post, #40557035) and you're worried about both an impersonator AND losing your account.

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

just to watch that all fall apart in the last year or so and especially the last two weeks