yender and tearning

But one day, I think it was August 2021, I flipped a coin. Thinking back, I think it might have been the first time in my life I'd ever flipped a coin. But we were deciding where to eat, me and my friends.

And then it happened. The coin landed on the table, heads... and also on the floor, tails. I tracked the coin with my eyes, but suddenly realized I was looking at two things at the same time. It was like crossing your eyes, and seeing things kinda overlaid on top of eachother, kinda mixing and fading in and out, but with four eyes instead of two.

It was such a weird experience. At first I just stood there kinda motionless, trying to figure out what was going on. Then my friend bent down and picked up the coin off the floor, and said "Hah! Tails! Pizza!" and also she just stood there and said "Damnit. Heads. Guess we're gonna get burgers after all."

And I looked down at her and up at her at the same time.

That's really when the desynch started. I reached for the coin on the table and held a fuzzy, half-there, transparent coin in my hand.

I began to feel kinda sick. We got in the car and things got more and more confusing. Thank goodness I wasn't driving that day. My friends were having two increasingly different conversations and I just sat there kinda dissociating. By the time we got to the two different restaurants I was nauseated and I had a bad headache. I stayed in the car in the parking lot at the pizza place for a few minutes until the other car going to the burger place parked. One of my friends was worried and stayed with me, so that was nice. But when I tried getting out of the car, everything went wrong.

One of my bodies walked right into another car and fell down on the ground, while the other stopped and froze in place. The completely different sense of proprioception completely broke me.

I was basically bedridden for a week. Slowly I relearned how to move, and walk, and talk. I had two bodies, in two timelines, connected by a single consciousness. My brain(s?) had to learn how to control two bodies at the same time.

It's like, pretty weird, but I'm used to it these days. My two sets of eyes no longer overlay on top of one another, they're kinda separate. It's hard to describe. I think my brain got better at multitasking too, I can walk in one timeline and draw in the other, for example.

Things kept getting more and more different, as much as I tried to enforce keeping things the same. Finally I started seeing my therapist again.

I had to convince her that what I was experiencing was real. So I asked her to think of her favorite food and her favorite color. Then in the "Burger" timeline I asked her to tell me her favorite food, and in the "Pizza" timelines I asked her to tell me her favorite color. And I told her her favorite color in the burger timeline and her favorite food in the pizza timeline (Spaghetti and Red, btw.)

She quizzed me on a few other things and sometimes her answers differed between the two timelines which was pretty frustrating, and I don't think she really believed me at first, but she was nice enough to play along at least. And like, not have me committed.

I ended up scheduling my therapy so that I have meetings on pizza tuesday and burger friday, so they're kinda spaced out more evenly. It also just makes the meetings a little less confusing. Ironically doing the same thing in both timelines is actually more distracting than doing different things.

In late 2022 I transitioned. I decided to come out in the burger timeline and stay in the closet in the pizza timeline, so if everything fell apart I'd still have one normal timeline. And like, my parents did not support me. Most of my friends did, but some of them drifted away. And I found that just made me resentful of my parents and those friends in the pizza timeline. And the dysphoria of being a guy in the pizza timeline while living as a woman in the burger timeline was killing me. So when I got on HRT in early 2023 I decided I couldn't take it anymore, I had to transition in both timelines. So I did. Ironically things went a little smoother in the pizza timeline, probably because I was already more confident about presenting female.

I ended up making some transfem friends in the burger timeline, and I sought them out in the pizza timeline too.

It's kind of a mixed bag, this phenomenon. You know like, pain is a lot worse. One week I had a bad tummy ache in the pizza timeline and a bad toothache in the burger timeline. Or like, if I have back pain in one timeline, not having back pain in the other timeline doesn't relieve the feeling at all.

It's such a cool thing, like. When I first started out I had all these conflicting signals in my limbs and body and stuff. But now it's just like. Yeah I have a pizza arm and a burger arm, just like I have a left arm and a right arm. They're the same, but different.

When I make a drawing in one timeline, I don't have access to it in the other timeline, which is really annoying because I keep wanting to show people art I made in the other timeline. One day I'll figure out some kind of interdimensional data transfer protocol. I mean I guess I could like, convert the file into hexadecimal text, and then manually type it out and hope I don't make any mistakes. I'd have to compress the hell out of the file though. Maybe I'll try that one of these days when I don't have anything to do in either timeline.

But I get to spend more time with my friends, because I can schedule hanging out on different days of the same week. Does get kinda confusing when I confuse things that happened in one timeline for another.

Because like, ever since that coin flip, the timelines have been steadily moving further apart. You'd be surprised how little the weather has changed. Like, sometimes there's a little rain shower in one timeline a few minutes earlier than in the other, but all the big storms and hurricanes and stuff are basically the same. I guess it's harder to influence these continent-scale systems than the butterfly effect predicts.

I get to see almost twice as much meteors during meteor showers because I can look in two directions at once. Meteors hit the atmosphere in exactly the same way at exactly the same time.

But it does affect a lot of other little things. Even when you don't realize it, you affect the lives of everyone you come into contact with in little ways, and that spreads. I know people with different jobs in each timeline, people who have different relationships. Even people I don't know that well.

I wasn't quick enough in the pizza timeline to keep my friend from. Well. To save my friend's life. But I rushed over to her house in the burger timeline and talked her down. It's so weird, grieving a person you still talk to every week. Because it ended up being this kind of abstract pain. Everyone else is missing her and you're standing there like. Yeah. I have plans to see a movie with her on burger tuesday. I went to her funeral just to make sure that I saw the dead body so I could really internalize that she was gone. And I still didn't cry. It made me feel like a terrible person.

My friends never really take me all that seriously when I talk about being split like this. They kinda play along but I can tell they think it's a joke. It's whatever. But my friend's girlfriend came into my DMs one night sobbing and cry-typing and begging me to let her talk to her gf one last time. I wasn't sure it was a good idea. But I relented, and made plans to have a sort of interdimensional seance.

I could tell my friend--we'll call her Elsie, and we'll call her girlfriend Robin. I could tell Elsie was pretty awkward about it. I think she felt guilty on behalf of her other, dead self. Robin kept saying stuff like "how could you kill yourself, how could you do this to me," and I would have to say that, and Elsie was just like "I'm sorry." And it was really hard to get Robin to understand that we weren't talking to Elsie's dead spirit, we were talking to her in another timeline. I told her she didn't have to apologize, and I told Robin that guilt tripping the dead was kind of rude.

After that things went a little more smoothly, Robin asked about how Elsie's life had gone, how their relationship had progressed you know like if they were still together, things like that. Elsie said some stuff that I wouldn't have known, and Robin was like. Wow you really are talking to Elsie aren't you?

And I was just like :| yep.

Ever since then my friends keep trying to get my help with stuff. Like they'll ask me what their other self is doing, like, ok, for instance, my friend, we'll call her Jane, she wanted to ask out her crush, and she was like ok. Can you ask the burger version of my crush if she likes me back. Which kinda throws the burger version of her under the bus doesn't it!

And another of my friends wanted to know if she'd regret quitting her job, so she told me to ask the other her to quit her job, and then if it went well she'd do the same. I did ask, and she said no, obviously.

again. i did not say you were not oppressed. this post is literally about how you are oppressed. it is a reminder that you are not the most oppressed person in the world, a way i've seen a lot of white transfems acting lately. maybe not even necessarily in a detrimental way, but in a way that definitely leans towards the "white is default" lane of thinking, which erases black suffering, which erases progress towards black safety. this, to me, is troubling, which is why i made this post. it's important when building solidarity within our community to understand who the most vulnerable of us are, because the safety of the most vulnerable of us will ultimately be the safety of all of us.

"weird! i wonder why!" she exclaimed, whitely.

I don’t see much about conditions effecting the urinary tract so i thought i’d make my own.

The basics: neurogenic bladder (aka; neurogenic lower urinary tract dysfunction) is a broad term for bladder and lower urinary tract dysfunction caused by neurological disorders

Types: there is 3 types of neurogenic bladder; overactive, under active, and mixed type

Overactive: a hyper active bladder, it will have involuntary contractions

Under active: a bladder that is not active enough and doesn’t contract enough and when needed

Mixed type: a mix of symptoms and features of both under active and over active bladder

Symptoms (not a full list)

Overactive bladder

Urinary hesitancy (difficulty urinating)

Urinary incontinence

Frequency

Urgency

Under-active bladder

Urinary retention

Urinary hesitancy

Overflow incontinence

Not being able to tell you have a full bladder

Causes: neurological disorders (a few examples; spina bifidia, stroke, CNS tumors, Parkinson’s, and much more)

Treatment (not a full list, it also depends on the symptoms and underlying cause)

Urine schedule

Medicine

Sacral nerve stimulation

Catheters

Certain surgeries

Stigma: theres a lot of stigma around urinary disorders and disabilities. Many with them are scared to talk about them. It’s often seen as “gross” and “unsanitary”. Those of us with urinary issues often get shut down in conversations even in disability spaces because people think our disorders and symptoms are taboo and shouldn’t be talked about. All of this not only makes it hard to live with by constantly hearing part of your daily life called gross and unsanitary, but it makes people afraid to talk about it, including to doctors, when they really need to.

Sources

https://www.urologyhealth.org/urology-a-z/n/neurogenic-bladder

Notice the little sleigh of hand there? Palestinians can't sell land to "Jews", it's a common tactic, it changes the meaning quite a lot and sweeps all Jews under the rug. It sure comes as extreme by default to anyone.

But that's not the case here, the responder did know that the death sentence (which barely happens) would be carried out against anyone selling land to Israelis, not Jews. But the premise here is unacceptable. Why is there such a law? Why are Palestinians discouraged from selling land to Israelis? Is there a historical precedence for this? Does this particular law apply to Palestinian Jews and other religious minorities? The answer is relatively simple, and I'm sure anyone with a brain cell can figure it out. But the responder obfuscated those facts. Why? To make the Palestinians seem like the irrational party here. Yes, Palestinians are simply fueled by jew-hatred. That's what a Zionist would lead you to believe. But yes, let's just ignore the material conditions of the Palestinian people.

The matter of land becomes an extremely sensitive topic when Palestinian land is being expropriated by bloodthirsty Jewish settlers, who keep harming Palestinians and destroying their livestock. Using any method possible to terrorize the Palestinians while the IOF protects them. Palestinians are living in dread and fear as they're constantly harassed by Jewish settler, and despite international scrutiny, the Israeli regime not only supports the expansion of Israeli settlements, but attempts to destroy any prospect of Palestinian statehood.. The responder refuses to contextualize these things in a bid to paint the Palestinians as antisemites. Anyone who has kept up with the genocide and settler violence in the west bank knows why such a law has been put to place. Why is the person only concerned with Palestinians refusing to sell land as opposed to the illegal settlements in Palestine and the terror they impose on Palestinians?

trans women are at lower risk to get breast cancer than ciswomen generally, but when we do have it, we're at much much higher risk of it being missed or not treated until too late

a huge principle of medical practice is that it is more likely for a common issue to have a weird symptom or presentation, rather than a rare issue or condition to have its most common symptom show up.

First off, the tumor I have is called a microedanoma. Its really small, less than 5mm wide, and it's pushing my on pituitary gland, causing it to produce more prolactin.

The way I found this out was through:

Spontaneously developing nipple discharge. Spontaneous is key here! As the posters above have mentioned, if you've recently changed medications, those should absolutely be investigated as a potential cause first. My doctor specifically asked if I'd started any new medications when I went to them with symptoms.

Physical exam. My doctor physically examined my chest, breast tissue, and glans. When they found no lumps, swelling, or anything else to suggest tumors or infection, cancer immediately became far less of a concern. This is an important step. If a doctor tries to send you for an MRI without doing even a cursory physical exam, push back on that immediately. Even if its not cancer, it could be a tumor in your breast tissue.

Blood test. My doctor sent me in for lab work, and my prolactin levels came back elevated while everything else was normal. Again, if your doctor tries to send you for an MRI before doing any blood work, PUSH BACK ON THAT. Bloodwork could also reveal any other issues or rule out certain causes. Mine was straightforward because only prolactin was raised, but if other hormones were present it could have been a lot of different things.

Breast ultrasound. My doctor was pretty sure I'd need an MRI at this point, based on symptoms and blood work, but as a final step I got a breast ultrasound done to definitively rule out cancer or infection. (As a side note, its also far more common for insurance to cover breast ultrasounds/mammograms than MRIs, so this is also a cost saving measure for the patient). No tumors or infections were found.

MRI. With a probable diagnosis and other avenues definitively cleared out (no medication changes, infections, or tumors elsewhere), I finally went in for an actual MRI. It was at this stage they found the microadenoma.

If you're like me and one of the very rare people who actually have this kind of tumor, dont worry! There's medication to both manage symptoms (nipple discharge) and manage tumor size, and they're less than 20 USD for 3 months supply. You will be okay.

If you're not like me, congrats! You don't have a tumor. That means you're likely having a weird symptom for something really common, and you should go down the list of steps described above to figure out the issue. I have a transfem friend who does not share my tumor condition but did experience nipple discharge, turned out she had an infection that wasn't discernible through physical exam but was identified through bloodwork. Bodies are weird!

Just some very literal "all lives matter" bullshit.

This isn't done to gay men, or cis lesbians, or TME bisexual people, it's not even done to transmasculine people. It is done exclusively to trans women and transfeminine non-binary people. We are being legally sex-trafficked by yhe government within the men's prison system. And this has been happening for generations!

This is not something that "effects all queer people." The only way it effects TME queer people is by making them a little sad when they have to read about it. We, trans women and transfeminine non-binary people, are the ones being fucking legally sex-trafficked by the state.

in 2019 the FDA approved a drug called trikafta (which is really three drugs in one) for cystic fibrosis treatment. what it essentially does is patch up the malfunctioning proteins that cause the extra sticky mucus. trikafta is effective on about 90% of cystic fibrosis patients.

people who had spent their entire lives in and out of hospitals, on and off of ventilators, suffering from pneumonia and sometimes treated through painful procedures like intubation took this drug, got out of bed, coughed up an entire lifetimes worth of mucus out of their lungs over the course of a few hours, breathed clearly for perhaps the first time in their lives, and now go on to live well into their seventies.

My ward is the respiratory ward - CF is one of the things we specialize in.

Since this med came out we haven't had a SINGLE CF admission to the ward

There used to always be a CF patient spending a couple of months with us at a time

There's a man who is 23 years old who I was sure would not survive his next admission (aim saturations 85% is end stage lung disease)

There's a set of the local frequent flyers that we all know so well

Except

No we don't

On the CF specialist ward (with reasonable staff turnover)

Half the staff have probably never even seen a CF patient

Additionally, it should be noted that metrics like life expectancy are in no way a guarantee of... Anything. There are significant outlier CF patients who are at an advanced age now despite the odds due to a variety of different factors, having lived the majority of their lives before the development of modulators.

That is per month with the most common coupon people are likely to use.

But don't worry, there's grants and patient assistance programs you can apply for. 🤞🫠 Most people in high income countries like the USA can get it "covered" through insurance for fewer thousands of dollars. Or even less if your insurance is good or the manufacturer likes how poor and/or on Medicaid you are! A good social worker will help you with the process, and make sure your yearly reapplications and PAs are done a little early so they have time to think about it before you run out. Jesus Christ.

honestly one of the top 3 best outcomes of my transition is that no one gives a shit about me anymore. I don’t get leered at in public (outside of clocking obviously), I don’t get sexually harassed by random men, I don’t get followed on the street or through malls by men, I don’t get called an ungrateful bitch for turning down a date, I don’t get sexually harassed at work or school, I don’t get random unsolicited nudes sent to me, I don’t get men being crybabies about me having a higher GPA than they do or making more money than they do, I don’t get disgusting comments about my body, I don’t get called a bitch or cunt or dyke. All the harassment and violence I have faced post-transition has always been because I’m transgender, not because I’m a man. Being invisible in public (RELATIVE TO THE WOMEN IN YOUR OWN DEMOGRAPHIC COHORTS) is an incredible privilege and I didn’t understand the sheer extent of that privilege until I transitioned. Men talk to me like a human being now! They ask for my opinion, they chat with me, they interact with me like a “normal person.” I became invisible in those interactions because I’m just treated like a person and not like a woman. If anything, transitioning made me hate men more, because it revealed to me how capable they are of talking to other people like human beings and not housemaids they can fuck and abuse.

Relax with Princess Luna 💙

If you asked me my favorite princess, I’d probably say Cadance, but I find myself drawing Luna the most out of all the alicorns. I love Cadance for her personality and colors, but Luna has a deeper appeal to her that draws at my emotional side.

When I think of Luna, I always think of her regret. She is a pony who wanted so dearly to be loved, that she acted out of hate and made everypony fear her instead. It was the opposite of her desire, but the inevitable outcome to her actions. Of course it would be the subject she turns over in her mind tirelessly.

Drawing Luna feels therapeutic to me. I get to step into her sparkly horseshoes and think about her emotions, and feel them myself. I don’t let myself feel guilt over my actions much, because I’m aware how debilitating it can become. I prefer to look forward and just do my best to be better every day. Still, there is a place for all emotions, and I think Luna helps me explore this subject matter within myself. Her flowing lines, dark colors, and twinkles are meditative to create while I walk around in my own mind.

So I don't believe in 'male socialisation' in the way it's used against trans women, but I also don't think it's wrong to say that children are treated and raised differently based on assigned gender at birth. As in, I was raised as a girl and was treated differently (in a sexist way) to my brother who was raised as a boy. I was belittled and told I couldn't do things he was praised and supported for, and it was entirely, explicitly related to gender.

This experience has nothing to do with transness of course, but as far as I knew, this was what 'socialisation' referred to? Is there a better word or term for what I'm describing because I don't think I should still be using socialisation for it nowadays, as that term now seems to mean something much crueller towards trans people in the usage I've seen in your reblogs. I don't want to accidentally be saying the wrong thing when talking about sexism in the way we raise children.

Sorry if anything I've said is unclear.

no, I agree with you. it's entirely true that people are treated differently depending on assigned (and/or perceived) sex, and the ways you are treated (far beyond how that treatment is gendered, I'll add) naturally have an influence on your behavior. my issue is not with these basic tenets of gendered socialization theory, but with its oversimplification, misapplication, and weaponization against trans women

many people like to assume a stock standard "boy" backstory for trans women and attribute all of our behaviors to it, without a care for our actual histories (which are often heavily influenced by our gender deviance being noticed and punished early on!), current material realities, or internal worlds, and often without batting an eye when cis women behave in the same ways

Growing up, your brother performed manhood correctly and was rewarded for doing so. Conversely, you were punished for doing the same things your brother did. That's gendered socialisation. Basically every trans woman I know consistently failed to perform manhood correctly, and was consistently punished for that failure. We did not receive the rewards that your brother did! We had a different experience from him!

You seem to be under the impression that you are "male socialised" if you had the theoretical opportunity to be rewarded for performing manhood correctly, irrespective of whether you took that opportunity or not. I think this is quite a contrived way of classifying childhoods, and it doesn't even refer to anything material.

I think it makes more sense to classify those people who were actually rewarded for performing manhood in one class, and those who were punished for failing to do so in another class. And you can do the same for womanhood too, and if you like you can roughly map these experiences onto cis men, transfems, cis women, and transmascs.

Please have a moment of silence for the people who were killed instead of freed when news of emancipation finally reached the furthest corners of the american south.

have another moment for the ledgers, catalogs, and records that were burned and the homes that were destroyed to hide the presence of very much alive and still enslaved people on dozens of plantations and homesteads across the south for decades after emancipation.

and have a third moment for those who were hunted and killed while fleeing the south to find safety across the border, overseas, in the north and to the west.

black people. light a candle, write a note to those who have passed telling them what you have achieved in spite of the racist and intolerant conditions of this world, feel the warmth of the flame under your hand, say a prayer of rememberance if you are religious, place the note under the candle, and then blow it out.

if you have children, sit them down and tell them anything you know about the life of oldest black person you've ever met. it doesn't have to be your own family. tell them what you know about what life was like for us in the days, years, decades after emancipation. if you don't know much, look it up and learn about it together.

This is Juneteenth.

"Maya angelou's family killed a pedophile that raped her, and that just traumatized her more. "I thought that I had caused the man’s death, because I had spoken his name. That was my seven-and-a-half-year logic. So I stopped talking for five years." Read I know why the caged bird sings."

and here is my comment:

the fantasy of killing a pedophile to defend your child is... an escape from reality. as with all fantasies where a single act of violence stands for a lifetime of effortful care. it lets us off the hook for the day to day labor of actually protecting the human beings around us. it gives us an excuse to look away from what abuse actually looks like.

it allows us to ignore that setting boundaries is a daily practice. it allows us to ignore the subtle ways in which we punish children for having boundaries. it allows us not to think about things we can do, the effort we can put in, in smaller repeated ways, to be kind and caring. to be safe to talk to.

it is a grand gesture that, were you to actually go through with it, would neither prevent the harm that you fear nor help your child to heal from it. it is an idea with no bearing on reality for 99.99% of people, while rape and abuse are a reality for a large fraction of people.

it is not useful to imagine killing a pedophile. it is not useful to claim you would kill a pedophile. it wouldn't be useful to actually attempt to kill a pedophile in almost any situation.

it is useful to think about how you can help your child know they can get help. they can say no. they can tell adults to stop. they deserve to be comfortable. they deserve to be informed.

the entire point of the post is that your child will not be saved by your imagined wrath. the entire point is that your day to day actions, and your attitude towards children as people, are more impactful to your child's well-being. far more realistic. more important.

not least because your child doesn't need you to be wrathful. they need your love. they need care. they need attention.

meanwhile, the public performance of wanting to kill child abusers doesn't do anything to child abusers. most child abusers believe they are doing the right thing for their children.

saying you want to kill abusers doesn't signal anything good to children, either. as others have said, it makes children more afraid to speak up and ask for help. that might be their mom, their coach, their troop leader. it gives those abusers leverage; the children cannot tell if they want things to be stable.

and it makes it harder for adults to BELIEVE children, too! because if their child was really abused, then they've staked their honor on committing that violence, even if it was against their brother or spouse or grandpa or pastor or neighbor or their other kid's favorite babysitter. and if they don't want to do that, well... then they must decide whether they believe completely their child, or whether their child's boundaries must really be respected, or... if maybe it's impossible to know.

how many abuse survivors have tried to disclose, only to be told that so-and-so wouldn't do that, or they didn't mean it, because so-and-so loves you and we all like so-and-so. this dichotomy goes both ways, psychologically. if a child abuser is entirely evil and has to be killed, then someone who's not entirely evil and i don't want to kill can't be a child abuser. this must be something else. there must be a mistake.