💗textk4kira💗

After a couple months of research and personal testimony, we are very pleased to finally publish this extremely extensive guide on testosterone hormone replacement therapy!

The process of getting and taking testosterone is often daunting. The outside hateful rhetoric from bigots doesn't help either. This guide is aimed for anyone interested in hormone replacement therapy, from newcomers to those already on their HRT journey.

Lou Sullivan- FTM Pioneer in the US

Louis Sullivan (June 16, 1951) was a Milwaukee-born author and activist known for his work on behalf of trans men and the gay community generally. He is credited as one of the first transgender men to publicly identify as gay and is largely responsible for the modern understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity as distinct concepts. Sullivan moved to San Francisco in 1975 in hopes of finding community and medical support, although he was repeatedly denied hormones/surgery because of an expectation that transgender people should be heterosexual in order to ‘correctly’ transition. This contributed to Sullivan’s life work of bringing attention to the existence and needs of both straight and gay trans men.

Sullivan was a pioneer of the female-to-male (FTM) movement and was instrumental in helping individuals obtain peer-support, counseling, endocrinological services and reconstructive surgery outside of gender dysphoria clinics. Sullivan wrote Information for the Female to Male Crossdresser and Transsexual for this purpose. The second edition, printed in 1985, serves as a guidebook for trans men, providing definitions of identities, tips and tricks for gender presentation, and a list of print and film sources for further study. The selections shown here comprise the history of trans men that Sullivan pieced together and interspersed throughout the guidebook.  

Sullivan was diagnosed HIV positive in 1986 and died from AIDS related complications on March 2nd, 1991. Even after his passing, Lou continues to make a significant impact on the contemporary queer community. His papers can be found at the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society.

This book can be found in the Eldon Murray UWM Manuscript Collection 256, in the UWM Special Collections, and in UWM’s Digital Collections. 

- Julia, Archives Graduate Intern

dead or detransitioned.

they were killed by their families. by their partners. by random strangers.

they killed themselves because they weren't treated with respect.

they never got out of the closet because they live in a part of the world where people seen as women don't have any autonomy.

they detransitioned because they had no support, because they were pushed out of community and safe queer spaces.

they're so stealth nobody in their lives knows they're trans, because they get treated with less respect when people know.

people still use the term transsexual, transsexual is a term steeped in trans history and trans liberation because transness is not just about the gender binary but also about the sex binary. for many people transness is inherently related to their sex and they are trying to change their sex. sex is not an irrefutable, immutable fact and the sooner people accept that the sooner trans, nonbinary and intersex liberation becomes a possibility. I hate the sentiment that gender is a changeable social construct and sex is a biological fact because sex is also a changeable social construct.

all of these things are correct, but it's all many people will ever say, people will derail entire conversations with this, at this point they feel like empty words.

it's an easy way for people to do the barest of minimums and not have to learn more about exorsexism, let alone unlearn their own. they said "nonbinary doesn't have to look like anything" and pat themselves on the back.

roblox rolls out their age group system, and you can no longer talk to any adults on the platform. you can only talk to people in person, i.e. your parents, who are horrid. now you're back at square one, being helplessly abused. to make it worse, you're homeschooled, as I was. you can't reach out to anyone at school for support either.

or maybe you're not homeschooled, and you ask your pronouns to be used at school. it goes well for a while, and you feel some relief.

then your state passes a bill that requires forced outing. your teachers report to your parents that you've been trying out a different name and pronouns.

they pull you from school, send you to boarding school or conversion therapy, and force you to attend private schools in the future that match their values.

you are entirely under their control. you could've made connections with other adults, ones willing to help you out. to treat you like a human, give you access to life saving care. and it's stripped away, you're alone, and everything feels hopeless.