A Random Encounter

TL;DW: panel of TME's saying that "trans women closet during college and so are more socially mobile", and insulting us, calling us crossies and transsexuals [derogatory] within ten minutes. by a PhD. a doctorate-holding trans man is lecturing us about class mobility by calling us fucking crossies

"Black, Latina, poor, working-class, and sex worker trans women actually try to pass"

...as opposed to whom, exactly?

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translation: "you see, trans women transition male-to-faggot, and i wish i could transition into a faggot in the same way they do. i am a gay trans man now but i dont want to be, i want to be a transfeminine faggot. i wish we lived in the timeline where transfems were in gay male spaces (read: where i still had access to them sexually as males). gay male spaces which are not, somehow, as ive criticized elsewhere, not white-dominated"

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> translation: "trans lesbians actually hadnt existed until at least 1980-whatever"

nevermind that Transsexual Empire was responding to a preexisting phenomenon of trans lesbians that cisbian radfems felt at threat from

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translation: "trans lesbians don't actually live transfeminine lives, don't actually live as women. instead, as above, to really live transfeminine lives and live as women, they need to be attracted to men. coincidentally this has No Bearing Whatsoever on my assertion elsewhere that transfeminine ppl should be in primarily gay male spaces, as a subset of gay males, and that those are more legitimately transfeminine, and who i can maintain sexual access to"

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translation: "lesbian trans women arent actually oppressed

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translation: "the most important part of actually being a trans woman is to internally recognize yourself as an internal girl, as opposed to a "social" or "material" girl. but actually, im gonna contradict myself literally the next sentence, and say that the most important isnt just seeing yourself as a girl but embodying a girl, which im not actually gonna define how that works, and thats because trans lesbians all have unilaterally good jobs or whatever.

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author's note: the section under 7:30 is a quote from Denise D'Anne's autobiography, in which she specifies that she didnt start transitioning until age 36. the section under 7:41 is from the speaker, "Dr." Amin, whom i have been dragging. Additionally, it says "Dan" in reference to D'Anne, but this is just a youtube transcription typo

I missed this watching it originally but the bit at 19:41 is insane, the implication here is that being in the closet means you're not actually living a transfeminine life which is a crazy assertion to make. the part at 12:26 is similarly ignorant, it's really clear that Amin thinks closeted trans women & transfems basically live identical lives to cis men, otherwise I don't know how you could argue that their material conditions are identical

The bit at 19:52 similarly is just a really silly thing to say, like I promise you any trans woman choosing to come out of the closet is weighing many different things in her mind and if she chooses to stay in the closet because of how she's evaluated job prospects, how she'll be accepted socially, personal safety concerns etc that does not place her in a privileged position

*cools ur dashboard down*

When it released, Apple refused to list the game on the app store and refused to reverse the decision until severe public outcry

I think it got scrubbed from the site when @maidslime got nuked :( brief moment of angry silence for all the good and wonderful things we lost in that wipe.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Getting Stabbed

Almost everybody is scared of needles, to some degree, it's just very normal to not want any kind of puncture wound no matter how small. It is also very common for people to have had childhood experiences that intensify the fear. I found it very helpful to keep in mind that so, so many people have had to face their fear in the exact way we're going to. we're in this shit together!

Getting over a fear is not a matter of overpowering it, that is in fact a great way to exacerbate the problem. Fear is your friend, it wants nothing but to keep you safe. Honor it, love it, allow it to be here. Our goal here is to replace the fearful associations with positive ones.

Make The Needle Your Friend

When you get your injection supplies ready, the part that starts your heart really racing is (probably) seeing the needle. That's our handhold, we're gonna get a grip on our fear with it.

Starting on a day that you're not doing an injection, carry a syringe with a (capped) needle around with you as much as possible. I kept mine tucked behind my ear. Every so often, take it out and just look at it. Hold it in your hands, touch every part of it. We're teaching your subconscious mind that this object is familiar and safe.

if you often set things down, forget where they are, and then have to find them, great. "Oh shit, I don't have my needle, I need to have that" is a fantastic thought to have here, yeah?

There's Levels To This Shit

We've got a grip on it now, let's apply some (gentle) pressure and turn that first step forward into a cycle. It goes like this:

Be afraid

Become acclimated to the fear until it feels like something you can manage.

Make it a little scarier

Repeat

A good first escalation is poking at yourself with a capped needle. As you do this, pay attention to what you're feeling. The goal here is not to overpower your fear, but to render it into something familiar and (ideally) comfortable. This is your time to get to know it.

Each escalation should be small and done slowly, you are allowed and encourage to go back down a step if you feel like you need to. Rushing yourself is counterproductive, be patient with yourself like you would be with a small child or nervous dog.

No escalation is too small, simply taking the cap off and looking at it is enough to count. Be careful re-capping it but, if you do accidentally poke your finger, that can be an opportunity to engage with the fear.

Play Around With It

When you're comfortable and can't think of any other escalation that doesn't involve touching yourself with the needle, it is time to touch yourself (with the needle). Crucially, we are still not injecting ourselves.

Just very little pokes and touches. It's essentially impossible to do any actual harm to yourself with it, the goal is to teach that to your body. For me, this culminated in lightly scratching my skin with the needle to see what would happen. It felt like exactly nothing, but the tip of a needle is astonishingly sharp. Here's a picture of what that looked like when I demonstrated it to a friend:

(the bracelet says "Gock in My Rari", good pun)

Okay Time For Stabbing

Well, almost. Keeping in mind that our goal is to create a sense of comfort and safety to replace the fear, think about your injection routine.

Play your favorite soothing music. Do it in the coziest part of your house. Get yourself a little treat to have afterwards as a reward. Kiss your partner. Just do anything and everything you can to make the experience as positive as possible.

And, of course, remember: The fear isn't in charge of you, but it is your friend and loyal adviser. Allow it to be in the moment with you and it won't fight you so hard.

this is fantastic advice, I always forget about auto-injectors!! I always always always recommend trying to work through it, I want you to have the same "FUCK YOU I WIN" experience that I did defeating my fear, but if you truly just can't then they're a great option.

side note: aspiration is 100% unnecessary as long as you're injecting into the proper place, even for IM. medical providers still recommend it for the same reason that they recommend IM: it used to be the best-practice, later research demonstrated that it's totally unnecessary, they just haven't kept up with the research.

there are no large blood vessels in the muscles we inject into, so it's just unnecessary pain/tissue damage with no real benefit. what you're attempting to avoid is a POME or pulmonary oil microembolism, I'm delighted to report that I actually have a study to cite for this one

During the 4.3-year period, 90,092 doses of intramuscular testosterone undecanoate were distributed via an Aveed Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy program to health-care professionals for patient treatment. Of 633 individual case safety reports in the Endo Pharmaceuticals Inc safety database, 28 spontaneously reported adverse events were classified as POME, for a yearly spontaneously reported adverse event per-injection rate of <0.1%. Most (21/22) events resolved, and of those with a resolution time reported, most (13/17) resolved in ≤30 minutes. More than 60% (13/21) of patients required no medical intervention (ie, the POME event resolved spontaneously). One fatality was reported 18 months after a documented POME event and appeared unrelated to the reported testosterone undecanoate injection or subsequent injections after the POME event. In 3 out of 4 POME cases with symptoms serious enough to require an emergency room visit, issues with injection technique or dosing were identified as a potential contributing factor.

(emphasis mine. keep in mind that injection volumes here are 3-30x larger than is typical for transfem HRT, so our risk is even smaller)

to put those numbers into context, tylenol (paracetamol, acetaminophen) is orders of magnitude more dangerous

practice. being gracious about your mistakes is easier when you trust that you will not be punished for small mistakes, trust takes time to build. be gentle with yourself

the more you give, the more you get. if you are consistently kind to people, people will be consistently kind to you. not everyone, of course, consistency is different from perfection, but most people will.

a better way of saying this might be that, pretty much universally, everyone wants to be helpful, so try to give people ways to help you when you need help.

if you are afraid, say, "I am afraid about xyz thing, can you please reassure me?". don't just stop at expressing the fear.

generally, if people are concerned that they might do more harm than good, they will believe that not reaching out is the least-harmful thing to do. it's tempting to interpret this as selfishness, and I really do think a lot of people could stand to be willing to take more risks in this regard (inaction is in fact an action), but I don't really think of it that way. "I wish I knew how to help" is a very common feeling.

personally, I tend to respond to social anxiety with playful teasing. it's my way of acknowledging your anxiety and refuting it at the same time, I'm basically saying, "I know you feel this way and I understand why, but I think it's silly so I'm going to make fun of it."

it's a way of asking you to trust me, to trust that I'm making fun of the anxiety and not making fun of you. that's a subtle distinction and often gets misinterpreted, but I have plenty of patience for that. in those moments, my advice would be to try to disregard all the times you've been hurt and trust me.

that's a lot of why this question is so hard to answer: you have good reasons for being the way you are, it's not like you chose to be afraid. so much relies on other people treating you well enough that you can meet them in the middle, it's not something you can just do on your own.

that's really sweet and I like the way you added to the post. honestly I'm writing with a bit of reverse-psychology. in my life, being afraid of people - for very good reasons - did tend to drive away people who probably were safe because safe people leave you alone if you're really scared. basically, if you think you're too hard to love, the problem is fear itself. it drives away good people and draws in sharks, which is why (to people who have only experienced violence) the "trusting people is the answer" is literally counterfactual. the advice that is actually possible to internalize is that you should use your survival instincts. don't show fear. it's not a permanent solution, but some people need to get the first foot on the first rung of the ladder and false confidence is the first run past fear. at least it was for me.

it was for me, too. I really like framing it as survival instincts, there's a world of difference between being asked to disregard what keeps you safe and being asked to harness it. fear makes a terrible master and all.

as a person who is very motivated to help exactly because I've been (and, in many ways, still am) there, no matter how much I hate it I still have to pick my battles. I find myself stuck at, "please work with me" a lot, I can only hope that the other person chooses to take the grace I'm trying to offer.

just as a radically different example, a lot of the time I find blunt hostility to be more encouraging than someone just lamenting their woes. "I am being mean to her and she isn't being mean back" is a very different situation than "I'm complaining and she's being nice to me", you know? it can't stay like that, of course, but it rarely does.