Send Monkeys

1. Progesterone: not for everyone, but for many people it may increase sex drive and WILL make your boobs bigger. Also effects mood in ways that many find positive (but some find negative). Most doctors won’t prescribe this to you unless you ask. Most trans girls I know swear by it.

2. Injectible estrogen: is more effective than pill or patch form. Get on it if you can bear needles bc you will see more effects more quickly.

3. Estradiol Cypionate: There is currently a shortage of injectible estradiol valerate. There is no shortage of estradiol cypionate. Functionally they do the same shit.

The concerns surrounding venous thromboembolic events as a side-effect of hormone replacement therapy can mostly be traced back to one particular study known as the Women’s Health Initiative. This study was an enormous undertaking which, unfortunately, demonstrated significant adverse effects of the hormone therapies studied. As a result of this the use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal cis women was dramatically reduced as the medical community began to question whether or not the therapy caused more harm than good.

Naturally, trans women have been suffering from this fall-out ever since.

What physicians seem to fail to recognize is that the study examined a very specific hormone regimen which was, arguably, outmoded at the time the study was conducted: It examined the use of conjugated equine estrogen (Premarin) with or without the use of medroxyprogesterone acetate. Neither of these drugs is regularly used for the treatment of transgender women.

The estrogen most commonly used to treat transgender women nowadays is 17β-estradiol either in pill form or in the form of a sticky patch that you apply to your skin. Esters of estrogen (e.g. estradiol valerate) are also sometimes used either in a pill form or as an intramuscular injection.

Transdermal estradiol patches are the gold standard when it comes to treating women who are at high risk of a venous thromboembolic event. It simply does not increase the risk of developing a venous thromboembolism. The only thing you should keep in mind is that patches are not always well tolerated because of the lifestyle changes required to keep them from falling off and the fact that they tend to irritate the skin.

Fortunately, oral 17β-estradiol appears to be safe, regardless of the increased risk. At least one large study has shown that the use of oral estradiol in trans women is not associated with venous thromboembolic events. An individual woman’s risk would need to be substantial in order to contraindicate the use of oral estradiol.

For those who have significant risk of venous thromboembolism because they have had a previous thromboembolic event, because they are paralyzed, or because of some other factor it is good to know the relative risk between oral and transdermal estrogen. The latest research indicates that the use of transdermal estrogen lowers your risk of a thromboembolism to 80% of what your risk would be using oral estrogens.

It’s difficult to find hard numbers regarding the relative risk of venous thromboembolic events with regards to hypertension. The best I could find after an hour or so of searching was this study regarding VTE in lung cancer patients. Hypertension increased the risk by a factor of 1.8.

However, to put that into perspective being of African descent increases your relative risk for deep vein thrombosis by a factor of 1.3 when compared to Europeans. Europeans are, themselves, at increased risk when compared to Asians and Pacific Islanders by a considerable margin: a four-fold increase.

I should point out that being ‘male’ is also a risk factor for developing a thromboembolism and hormones are likely to be a contributing factor. Also, menopause is another serious risk factor. Given this information it is likely that the use of transdermal estradiol will lower your risk of thromboembolic events significantly.

As far as the anti-androgen is concerned: The primary use for spironolactone for cisgender people is as an antihypertensive.

Even if the risk of thromboembolism was truly significant with modern hormone replacement therapy it wouldn’t justify what your doctor is doing to you. The fact is that mortality in the transgender community from suicide–caused in part due to the lack of access to hormone therapy–is substantial. The quality of life lost when a trans woman is denied hormone therapy is substantial. The fact that your doctor does not appear to be taking this into consideration when they weigh the risk of thromboembolism against not receiving necessary medical care is deeply concerning.

I strongly recommend that you seek a doctor who is more sensitive to your medical needs as a transgender woman.

Is it ? Is it really ? Let me break down the everyday economy in Gaza in the simplest terms I can for you:

Everyone wants to get out of Gaza. This is the primary thing you need to understand. Everyone needs money so they can pay predatory Egyptian border guards to be let through. But since the border is currently completely closed, they mostly need money to buy everyday things and provide for their families.

This is where Gaza's record inflation comes in. Everyone wants to get out as soon as possible so everyone wants to accumulate enough money as soon as possible, including vendors who are selling supplies and food in the first place.

Our current society makes us blind to the relation between product and producer but understand this: almost every vendor in Gaza is Gazan themselves and they have families who they need to take care of as well. This requires money.

@iyadsobhegaza and @rubashsblog (who this commenter was accusing) can't just wait till they've reached their final goal to withdraw the money. They need to withdraw whatever ammount they need every couple of days so they can continue buying supplies. Their campaign has been going for several months and they've been withdrawing from it based on what they need for all those months.

Say they raise $100 one day and know that the next day, they will need to buy medicine and vegetables. A box of meds costs $50 and a couple of vegetables together also cost around $50. So when they withdraw the $100 they raise that day, that means it's been used up.

This combined with the inflation means that money gets used up really fast. Furthermore, the ammount that the p*yp*l shows they have raised does not reflect the ammount they have saved up. It is simply the ammount that has been donated so far.

They have raised exactly $24 USD in the past day.

That's $1 per hour. The minimum wage in the US is $7 per hour. That is already very little, so why are you making them have to go by with even less ? They haven't raised anything even close to $100 for the past several days.

Eman, their organiser who is in Egypt (since p*yp*l doesn't work in Palestine), can't send them these meager amounts because p*yp*l and predatory banks have high transfer fees which will eat up everything if she tries to send it.

They literally have no money.

Now that that's over, I won't take up even more of your time. Here's the current most important points:

Both Iyad and Ruba have gotten their previous GFMs fucked over and lost $38k in total.

Ruba recently got a terrible stomach injury during displacement

Iyad has diabetes and fluctuating blood pressure which impacts his mobility. He needs meds for this.

Winter has come to Gaza and Iyad has several small children who he needs to keep warm and healthy.

They literally just got displaced a few days ago and had to spend all their savings on re-buying their tents and supplies

Yes, they're vetted. (No. 90 and 173 on the spreadsheet)

They announced this on October 7th.

They've already lost both their previous fundraisers. They can't go anywhere else. Everyone in the world is against Palestinians and I don't know what to do anymore.

Iyad informed me that last night that during their most recent transfer, they lost almost $200 in cuts from PayPal and banks. PayPal is already being deeply predatory towards Palestinians, and now they are being deeply blatant about it.

We need to help them reach their full goal by Jan 12th before PayPal deletes their campaign. Please donate. We NEED to reach 14k today.

We can't let their families down like this! I understand the situation is rough for everyone right now but they have no one else to depend on but us! We owe them as much after a whole year of no one doing a single thing to stop this genocide!

Please, PLEASE don't let them wait in vain in a place where everything but their loved and caring ones is against them. It becomes more dire and urgent with passing time, they will never reach the final goal if we keep it up like this!! PLEASE donate!!

$217 left until $15.5k!!!

use tools

Can be taught to speak (like parrots)

Have huge brains for birds

like seriously their brain-to-body size ratio is equal to that of a chimpanzee

They vocalize anger, sadness, or happiness in response to things

they are scary smart at solving puzzles

some crows stay with their mates until one of them dies

they can remember faces

SIDENOTE HERE BECAUSE HOLY SHIT.  They did an experiment where these guys wore masks and some of them fucked with crows.  Pretty soon the crows recognized the masks = douchebag.  But the nice guys with masks they left alone.  THEN, OH WE’RE NOT DONE, NO SIR crows that WEREN’T EVEN IN THE EXPERIMENT AND NEVER SAW THE MASK BEFORE knew about mask-dudes and attacked them on sight.  THEY PASSED ON THE FUCKING INFORMATION TO THEIR CROW BUDDIES.

They remember places where crows were killed by farmers and change their migration patterns.

Every day, I would watch Buck from my window until one day I opened it and started talking to him. He was small and gangly and he couldn’t caw right. His feathers were all over the place and I felt a kinship. So I made a deal with him. I told him that if he could do it, if he could fly, then I could find the strength to get up. Well… near the end of the season, after talking with him every day, I finally saw him get out of the nest. He went to the edge of his branch, braced himself, and jumped… and just before he hit the ground, he soared back up into the sky. I cheered harder than I ever had before.

That winter, Buck left the area. I was crestfallen. I felt like I’d lost a friend. But I was so damn proud of him. 

Cut to the next spring? I’m walking up the driveway one day when suddenly I hear a sound… a broken caw. I look up, and Buck is sitting in a tree above my head. He stared at me and puffed his feathers, then hopped down in front of me and cawed again. I was so damn thrilled, and I told him how proud I was of him. He ruffled his feathers and then soared off into his old tree. 

That summer? I heard two broken caws. One from Buck… and one from his chick.

i tried to get close and take a better look and one of them dived super low and tried to attack me. so i went back in the house and chopped some sliced raw meat and tossed it at him from a distance.

a few more times later, very soon after, they could tell i was trying to help, and did not attack me. i was “allowed” to walk up close and pick him up, he couldn’t drink water properly so i had to dip my finger in a bowl and stick it in his mouth.

i did this few times a day and it went on for about a week before he disappeared, i thought he recovered and left, but he came back the next day and lands on me, and i see him around the block quite often, and he would come sit on my shoulder for a few minutes and then fly away again. i feel like i’ve adopted a son.

As a side note, I volunteered at a rehab (Hope for Wildlife), where they were rehabbing a crow with a broken wing–who was named Russell Crow. He kept pulling his bandage off so a sleeve was cut off some old clothing and put on him like a little sweater.