yeah, for context I’m a trans woman, this is my community - I personally know trans women who have conceived of themselves as just femboys, and I’ve struggled myself for decades with that kind of denial.

Regardless, I consider it a matter of harm-reduction to protect their right to HRT which does require clinicians acknowledging those people are trans. Denying they are trans and are really cis men does undermine the legitimacy of their access to HRT, since it requires a diagnosis and prescription. The way we conceptualize them can have consequences in healthcare contexts.

Furthermore I think we should be prioritizing supporting people embracing what they are and working past that denial (which clearly comes the socially oppressive conditions we find ourselves in, especially the hermeneutical injustice trans people experience and the pressure from transphobic stigma to remain closeted).

Just like the way the gay community tries to help people who are closeted without just forcing them to come-out (just like “men who have sex with men” I pointed out above), we should be clear-headed about the reality that this is closeted behavior while being polite, patient, and supportive as they work through that denial.

Meanwhile, insisting femboys on HRT can only be cis men because that’s how they identify comes across to me as particularly ignorant of the reality of how we as trans people struggle to conceptualize themselves and what that process commonly looks like. There is a lot of variety in trans experience, but there are also patterns and trends that emerge, and this greentext captures a very common story of how trans women conceptualize themselves.

I appreciate that you are so sensitive that you are defending the way someone is identifying, that is definitely the right way to go. My point is not to force a perspective on someone, but to clue you into the larger trans context of the greentext which your comments made me think you were oblivious to. Maybe I should have approached that educational moment in a better way, so I apologize for being so glib.

Hope you take care as well - thank you for your response and for being so considerate, it would be nice if more people were like you.

Hey, I get this might be well intended but the context is a likely fictional greentext that whether by coincidence or design describes and captures a common trans experience. If that femboy was someone I was talking to or interacting with, of course I would respect his pronouns and so on, but it is important in lots of contexts to be able to read between the lines.

Taking a literal or dogmatic approach to the idea that people are only what they claim to be causes for example transmedicalists to argue that transmaxxers seeking HRT should be denied hormones - whereas I think it’s much easier to see that transmaxxers are more likely to be trans people having a hard time accepting they are trans, that is denial here is clearly more likely than fraudulence.

This is the same argument transmedicalists will make about femboys on HRT, and again I think we should read between the lines and reject the gatekeeping and moral panic about cis men stealing trans healthcare and recognize that if a self-identified “man” is on estrogen for their feminizing effects, they are probably a trans woman in denial and of course should be given access to hormones. Cis men tend to become depressed and anxious when on estrogen (see: David Reimer, Alan Turing, cis men who have used estrogen to treat prostate cancer, etc.).

(The same thing happens in the gay community around “men who have sex with men” refusing to acknowledge they are gay. I don’t have to disrespect those people by calling them gay to their face, but obviously we need to think of them as “gay” in some contexts.)

Of course reading between the lines shouldn’t result in being rude to someone by denying their prima facie identity to their face, but that’s not what I’m doing here by commenting on a greentext and pointing out the larger context for you.

She’s obviously trans, a guy doesn’t enjoy taking estrogen.

a lot of trans folks live in extreme denial, it’s very hard to accept

That does assume the kid has the time and resources to hang together a costume even if homemade. I was maybe a preteen when this happened, so that may have played into some adults’ hesitancy to give me candy, but also looking back I just think the people in the neighborhood I was in had bad values. I also had zero time for a costume, I wasn’t planning on trick-or-treating at all, and it was only because my friends were kind enough to invite me anyway.

But I would give candy to teens, adults, or kids regardless of whether they have a costume or not. :-)

Are you, in your estimation, intelligent?

No. Particularly I get the impression other people get things faster than me, and I seem to have to do more cognitive labor than my peers. I guess I would ask what “intelligence” is, that seems like a difficult thing to quantify or answer.

Are you wise in the way you apply that intelligence? (interpretation yours)

No, I generally consider myself unwise. (It takes me a long time to learn from my mistakes or change self-destructive behaviors, etc. - it often feels like I have trouble “adulting”.)

Do you view yourself as unique and individual, or as a data point on the spectrum of humanity?

Both, how else could it be? (We are both subjects and objects, unique but usually only slight variations of a theme.)

The only time I went without a costume as a kid was because I lived in a dysfunctional household and I was super stressed and didn’t have enough time or support to plan a costume - so I threw on an oversized coat and went with my friends; some adults tried to give me trouble and refused me candy, and that was a bummer because I felt like I had failed … anyway - I guess my point is that maybe some kids are being lazy or something, but you don’t really know.

I personally would definitely give kids candy regardless, but I wish people would actually trick-or-treat where I live, it makes me so sad that nobody does.

Oh, I love that - greyscale as a warning.

For a while I had my whole phone on greyscale, but I don’t have trouble with spending time on my phone - it’s really the laptop that I have an issue with.

Maybe I should write software to conditionally greyscale my desktop/laptop screen!

Thanks for the link and details, so helpful!

Yeah, I like to get distracted and sucked into things, esp. on the computer. When I get that way I don’t get hungry or thirsty, I don’t realize I need to use the restroom, etc. - just completely ignoring the body (which is nice for me). I’m pretty sure it ruins my posture and creates muscular-skeletal problems, too.

Either way, interesting idea about listening to sounds or music - maybe that would increase enjoyment, but I worry it would reduce the usefulness of the resting (part of what I think helps is that I seclude my senses and I usually lie down in a quiet and dark place). Still, something to explore and see if it wouldn’t make it easier to motivate me to do it instead of rotting on the screen.

hey thanks!

One thing I have noticed is that I sometimes turn to this impulsive behavior when I feel really tired and I just need to rest, and I think of scrolling social media as an enjoyable kind of mental and physical break. So I’ve tried a few times to just set a timer on my phone and lay down and close my eyes for a bit instead, which makes me feel much more rested and works better as a break for my mind and body than scrolling social media.

However, this requires the awareness in the moment that the motivation for the social media impulsivity is that I’m tired and that I need a break, and I need the additional will-power to choose the better and admittedly less fun sounding alternative of actually resting - so as you can imagine establishing that new behavior has been a losing battle.

Anyway - I appreciate your positivity, thanks for your question and comments!!

What timer do you use, and does it lock access after a set time or does it just notify you when the alarm goes off?

EDIT: I found this app: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/mind-the-time/

It keeps track of how much time you spend on different websites (so not so much an intervention / reminder as a time tracker).

That is good advice, but I don’t have any apps and I don’t tend to spend much time on my phone. I find the mobile UI annoying, so it’s really desperation when I turn to a phone to browse a place like Reddit. Usually I do it when I have a burning question that I want to explore and I’m not otherwise able to use my desktop or laptop.

I’m trying to find a way to nudge myself away from this impulsivity on desktop, which the redirecting helped do. I keep thinking maybe I could write some javascript and use greasemonkey to load it and do what I need.

1. I prefer to feel in control, and when I notice impulsivity and difficulty stopping or changing the behavior, it’s a red flag for me
2. the amount of time spent is too much and I find it wasteful, the time could be better utilized, even if on a different down-time or recreational activity which leaves me feeling better or is more enriching
3. Lemmy / Reddit / whatever social media usually has some content that is useful or good in some way, but I would say most of the content I consume when engaging impulsively ends up not supporting my mental health (e.g. doomscrolling is a more common outcome from this impulsive behavior than, for example, engaging with community or other reasons that I seek these places in the first place).

Other addicts are exactly the people to ask.

It’s from Ted Danson’s podcast, this part starts around 1:18: https://youtu.be/VRWvN7jDYC8?si=ODThZBvRKqHzQMAp&t=78

There has been plenty of research into the etiology of gender dysphoria, but the current science considers gender identity as fixed and biological, which makes sense of why conversion therapies have been so unsuccessful (otherwise the conservative medical establishment would be more likely to recommend conversion therapy to solve the “problem” of trans people, as talk therapy is much less intervention, much cheaper, and much more socially acceptable than medical transition).

Here is a relatively accessible paper on the topic by esteemed endocrinologist Joshua Safer: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31027542/

It’s behind a paywall, but that can be circumvented if you know how.

More interesting than whether mental illness is more common in trans people because of how they are treated by society (which seems almost obvious, though worth confirming empirically) is whether mental illness might be more common for trans people because of the biology, such as from having the “wrong” sex hormones in their body.

Gay men who were forced to take estrogen in the UK experienced symptoms like depression and suicidal ideation, and lots of the same things trans people report (there is speculation whether Alan Turing being forced to take estrogen may have contributed to his suicide).

There is also the famous case of David Reimer whose penis was accidentally amputated during circumcision as a baby. Under the direction of the psychologist John Money, who believed gender was entirely determined by environment / social programming, was raised as a girl. Reimer consistently struggled being raised as a girl, eventually decided he was a man, and struggled immensely with mental health struggles before his suicide.

Suicide seems to be a common thread among those suffering from gender dysphoria, with over 40% of trans people reporting having previously attempted suicide and over 80% having considered attempting suicide (source), and it’s not surprising cis people when forced to take cross-sex hormones also seem more likely to commit suicide (though we don’t have as much evidence about this in particular, so take that as speculation on my part).

All this to say, religious trauma and sexual abuse certainly can and do complicate someone trying to figure out whether they are suffering symptoms of gender dysphoria or not, but the current evidence points to gender dysphoria not being caused by environmental factors (like sexual abuse) and likewise not being reversible with any kind of known treatment other than transitioning.

Furthermore, there have been autopsies of trans and cis brains that have found parts of the hypothalamus in trans women match cis women’s, even if not taking hormones. Here is a relatively accessible overview by neuro-endocrinologist Robert Sapolsky about those autopsy studies which were high quality and confirmed with follow up studies several times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QScpDGqwsQ

Being trans cannot be adequately theorized in merely biological terms, so please don’t mistake me for implying there are no social aspects to being trans, but I do think there is sufficient evidence that gender identity and dysphoria have biological components that aren’t influenced by environment.

Regarding trans women and plastic surgery: many trans women transition before puberty and thus look and sound pretty much like cis women, i.e. they develop as cis women would. Obviously even in those cases some trans women opt for surgeries, and while neo-vaginas have some differences, they are more like natal vaginas than most people realize (both in look and function).

In that sense, it doesn’t sound like being trans is what you don’t like in a woman, but rather certain body features that might be more common in trans women who have transitioned as adults (breast augmentation, facial feminization surgeries, narrow hips, etc. are more common in trans women who went through male puberty). But there is a huge variety of trans women, even those who transition as adults don’t necessarily get breast augmentation or facial feminization surgery, though narrow hips are obviously more common still.

Perhaps this seems like nitpicking or like I am making an irrelevant or theoretical distinction, after all if most trans women you know look a certain way, is it that wrong to generalize this way. The problems of stereotyping aside, part of the problem is that trans people in general are under a lot of pressure to conform to cis-sexual norms, and those who can go “stealth” typically do. That means, a bit like sexual minorities, it can be an invisible identity, but where a subset of adult trans folks especially early transition are more likely to stand out as trans. What we think of as a paradigmatic “trans woman” is someone who doesn’t conform that much to our cis-normative notions of a “woman”, and that is because of that unintentional sampling bias.

I acknowledge this is a lot, so let me stop here and see what you think so far.

Interesting. Well, first - thanks for being an ally!!

It does seem like trans folks have a pretty rough road in most societies, and predictably that leads to poor mental health outcomes. The statistics about how well a trans person does post-transition has a lot to do with whether they are accepted by their family and friends. (Mental health issues are also common before transition while closeted, or not-yet aware of being trans, which might have biological as well as social / psychological reasons behind it.)

It also makes sense you might not personally know trans women you are attracted to as there are far fewer trans folks compared to cis folks; though, it sounds like you were even able to list a trans woman you do find attractive.

Digging into that more, if there were someone who had the right personality and looked like Jaime Clayton, would being trans be a deal-breaker for pursuing a relationship with that person? I guess I wonder if it’s really being trans that is the problem for you, or if this is just a short-hand for a bunch of other traits that in practice just make you less likely to be attracted.

I ask because at this point it sounds like you would be pretty open to dating trans women who you find attractive (personality and looks wise), but that it is more practical reality that you just aren’t attracted to most trans women (probably for a variety of reasons).

Does that seem right, or am I off base here?

Lots of classic films are not English, e.g. Seventh Seal.

I second Extraordinary Attorney Woo, what a wholesome and heart-warming show!!

Most classrooms already have policies about not using your mobile phone, as in general students are supposed to be paying attention to lectures. Students are already sneaking their phone usage during class. I don’t see the connection between mobile phone use and violence, though. I don’t think the Trump or Uvalde shootings have anything to do with phones, social media, etc.

I think it makes sense to cancel subscriptions to NYT and to likewise boycott Twitter, but I think that’s just about being a critical consumer in general. It requires collective action and mass movements to make a difference with something like that.

Alienation is a problem in the U.S. and maybe the West in general. Obviously junkies, the unhoused, and refugees are not inferior people, they are merely unfortunate people. Our society does stigmatize and dehumanize them, however. Random and unprovoked violence against all three of those groups are more common. But this is also true for women, racial minorities, sexual minorities, etc. Did you have thoughts on how to repair the alienation, dehumanization, etc.?