i agree that kids deserve and need more access to HRT earlier in life should they desire to transition but i really hate that the main argument in favor of it is "we need to have people transition earlier before PERMANENT IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE makes it so they can NEVER EVER look like their desired gender and they'll be FOREVER UGLY AND CLOCKY"
It is. There is nothing wrong with watching people have sex. The morality of it depends on the context (buying porn from sex workers to watch is good, revenge porn is bad, for example), but watching people fuck? That's morally neutral. It's just watching some activities.
Almost all porn is abuse, you know that right? Most women in porn are drugged and then raped.
Even if she were paid, it would still be coercive, similarly to prostitution. You cannot buy women, or their consent. That immediately creates a coercive force that makes the consent invalid.
Ok so first of all you're lying. That is not how most porn works at all.
Regarding economic coercion, that's called having a job. But also I promise you there is a world of difference between trying to buy a person (for the love of fuck will you people ever aknowledge its not only women in porn and work conditions are a concern for EVERYONE involved) and someone making a career in porn.
Also re read what I said because you have said nothing that argues against what im saying AT ALL.
The way these people talk about sex workers genuinely makes me sick. Sex workers are not being bought, they are not owned by people paying them. They are compensated for their services or performance, like every other worker. They own themselves no matter what. They deserve dignity and respect and their work not being described in such horrible fucking ways.
And it's genuinely fucked up to tell people what they can and cannot consent to tbh? You don't get to choose that for others and then try to say you genuinely care about consent. You just want to control people.
Absolutely right. We are people, we own ourselves, we decide what we do and don't want to do. Honestly if I attach the criteria of pay and a camera to my consent, denying me that is no less fucked up than forcing that on me.
Puritanical christians/radfems and rapists/traffickers are two sides of the same coin and all ultimately working towards the goal of ruining people's lives for their own benefit.
Also, it needs to be repeated again that stigmatization of sex work leaves trafficking victims trapped. They are now in an even more socioeconomically disadvantaged position than before because no one will want to help an "icky porn star" who is being exploited.
To help trafficked and coerced sex workers we necessarily must end the demonization of sex work or else you are giving traffickers the literal tools to force unwilling people into it!
One of my family members was sex trafficked. Her case became a part of state legal precedent because her trafficker's conviction resulted in an expanded definition of one of the terms used to define trafficking (kept vague for the sake of my family's anonymity.) You know what one of the biggest barriers was to her getting help?
The fact that everyone she reached out to saw her as a stupid meth head "whore" and not a person who was fucking afraid for her life.
If society had shown sex workers some basic amount of decency, she might have had the social standing to get help sooner.
I got to see a change in the criminal law, in real time, that shifted the window on how sex workers are treated in my state. Agencies that tended to treat them as perpetrators, even when they were victims, had their behavior changed the most. But even the more progressive police departments, and of course any number of labor- and benefit-related agencies, also got a few notches more understanding and accepting.
TL;DR: sex workers are people, sex work is work, and the road to utopia is paved with extremely boring legislation and administrative decisions.
this is such a simple point but god it needs to be repeated. i keep seeing even young, progressive people say "porn rots peoples brain" no!! misoginy rots peoples brains!! a video of people having sex consensually is literally fine!!
and not to become wokezilla but it has me sat the way bigotry and all of bad things a person can do continue to be Explained Away by speculating the bigot must have brain damage it be from porn or whatever, its not that bigotry benefits the bigot in society, it couldnt be that, otherwise everybody (including me!) could become a bigot, and im Morally Pure and Leftist, so bigots must have some immutable Sick In The Head quality that actually makes them act this way, it be from birth or from consumption of media that I Personally find immoral
people who arent transfem love to push potentially transfem individuals back into the closet and people who are transfem love to be like "how dare you do this to Her, She is a Beautiful Feminine Girl-Sister whether She knows it or not" and it's like, hey could we all take a few deep breaths and just start asking people how they identify, I feel like that would be pretty easy
i think a lot of the people who say that warning posts are useless drama-starters that only exist to further harass marginalized/vulnerable people would have more plausible deniability if those type of posts didnt spring up literally every single time a black user pointed out that a white user is racist
Black tumblr user: this user is racist, here is proof, and i would prefer it if those who willingly interact with this person after knowing this to keep their distance from me
dashboard for the next 4 days: when you make a callout post for someone you have murdered them. it is the same thing. it is the exact same thing as taking a life. you have killed them forever and you have blood on your hands.
a small reminder with all the "trans womens blogs getting deleted is Literally social murder" going on that white trans women harassed and mass reported a Black trans womans blog that she used for fundraising to the point of termination all because the Black trans woman said she didn't rock with pedophiles and racists.
It's wild to watch the phrase "tumblr sexyman" morph into "man that tumblr thinks is sexy," because when I first saw the phrase come into use, I always saw it used in reference to the phenomenon of "when presented with a wide array of fictional characters, tumblr will always pick the skinny white man to obsess over, and if the fan-favorite character has no canonical human appearance, the fandom will inevitably create a popular fanon of the character as as a skinny white man."
When I hear "tumblr sexyman," I think of Cecil Night Vale being constantly depicted as a skinny white man instead of literally anything else. I think of the background character white men who get elevated over protagonists that are women, people of color, or otherwise not the white man power fantasy.
"Tumblr sexyman" is, like. An insult. I DON'T want any of my blorbos to win a "tumblr sexyman" poll. "Tumblr sexyman" is the exact opposite of what I want my own OCs to be. If any of my characters ever get called "tumblr sexyman," I will have to immediately re-evaluate myself and the art I'm making.
Oncelercest, because if there aren't two skinny white men to ship, tumblr fandom will start shipping the skinny white man with himself.
Bill Cipher inexplicably being fanon'd as a white twink despite being a fucking triangle.
Everyone fawning over Marvel Loki while shoving every woman and Black person in the MCU aside.
The way nearly every single character in Hazbin Hotel has the same "tall and skinny" body type, along with all the criticisms Black audience members have made about the issues with Alastor's design.
The way tumblr got obsessed with the white man villain in Sinners.
A frustrating externality of transphobes having as much of a microphone as they do is that it makes having an actual nuanced and balanced discussion of certain trans topics insanely difficult without someone assuming you've already bought into transphobic talking points. Like it drives me crazy that TERFs stuck their flag in "male socialization". It should not be controversial to talk about how children are raised and socially conditioned differently based on their assigned gender at birth (with wide variance within that conditioning based on a wide variety of other factors) and how this impacts trans people after coming out without this being shorthand for the TERF version of this concept which is basically just "once a man always a man". Similarly, anyone who has spent any amount of time hanging out with groups of trans women can tell you that straight trans girls and lesbian trans girls tend to run in different circles with relatively distinct cultures, but broaching that subject summons the ghost of Ray Blanchard to loom over any observation you make
A lot of people treat gender as a real thing by defining behavior as gender itself and not that gender is a prism through which feelings and impulses are projected. This gives us an extremely shitty, shallow understanding of gender.
Probably more medical detail than opsec calls for, but there's practically zero research on nonbinary chemical gender transition — so I'm throwing my trip report into the collective 'net.
I am nearly 29, knew I was trans since 17 and I have been on HRT (estrogen) on and off for the past 18 months with testosterone for the last 6. Currently: 8mg Estradiol Enanthate weekly, plus 25mg testosterone weekly.
The hypothesis: The body auto-converts excess T→E and excess E→T, so it can handle high levels of both without much trouble. Women regularly take testosterone during menopause — this should be doable.
My theory: Take high E to block natural T production, then supplement a tiny bit of T to compensate. Should keep everything contextually balanced.
Six months in, and I just got my labs back. My doctor (not amused by this experiment) is shocked: I'm healthier than I've ever been across every metabolic marker. Dead center on every single metric. Blood pressure normal (first time ever). Weight stable. I have some breast growth starting, but no solidified nodules — so with raloxifene I could revert 90%+ if I wanted (TBD). They are very sensitive, for better or worse.
I have noticed my body becoming more feminine (appreciated), which is saying something since I am naturally broad and muscular. Think of a very masc blacksmith-NPC-character-model kind of build. I have curves now. Skin is overall softer. Body hair is much thinner (previously was bold, black, and gnarly). Face is smoother, jawline more defined, but the face itself is a bit rounder, especially in the cheeks.
Mental state is solid. Making real progress on projects, feeling hopeful, taking more risks and actually being comfortable with it. More open, more outgoing. Before this was quite depressed, anxious, paranoid, unable to make decisions, and just felt worthless, now its the exact opposite - I have tried every anti-depressant around, and had great luck with LSD, but this has been by far the most 'calm', happy, and level-headed I have ever been. That said, on pure estrogen, my mental clarity is certainly sharper. The combo is still clear enough though.
I understand why most queer people hate these kinds of reports and this kind of experimentation, trust me my friends make that very clear. And sure, I'm probably still denying plenty of things to myself. But , from a research perspective, this has always fascinated me, and the literature is so thin that I might as well add a small, informal case study to the mix.
Q: Why do queer people hate these kinds of reports? I'm unfamiliar
I am writing this here because the tumblr reply system is purposefully built for extremely short-form communication and this is a longer answer.
This is a mixed answer, all people have different hangups, some are around natural arguments, some are perversions of inclusivity philosophy, some are residual myopic views on gender, and some are just plain worried about what it means for them, or the time sunk cost falacy that maybe they went down the wrong path. I don't have anything against these people, many of them are very dear friends that I would give my life for, but this is the way I read it and have noticed in discussions (and analyzing my own gender woes and hangups).
This is a bit longer, so stay tuned after the break:
Welcome back! - let's get into it.
Some worry that researching alternative hormone regimens could societaly delegitimize being trans, invalidate their own path, regret through the 'possibility of alternatives', and more.
Even in queer spaces, gender is often still treated as a binary. You can switch sides, but you can't exist outside them. That men are men, women are women, and while you can switch between them, you shouldn't, wouldn't, and couldn't be anything outside of that binary. Some hold this philosophically; others fear that expanding the binary will make society hate us more for complicating the conversation. Why fight the system when you can just work to redefine it from within?
There are quite a few otherwise progressive people who will accept non-binary as a category, but it becomes clear in conversation that they see it as a subset of the primary dualities of 'femme|female|woman|girl' and 'masc|male|men|boy' . You can be nonbinary [masc.nb] or nonbinary [femme.nb] but "nonbinary" itself isn't a category you're allowed to be. The same people who notably and righteously reject gender hierarchies often still treat masc lesbians as closer to men than to women, or trans men as closer to women than men — even if they hold that trans women are women (or the inverse). They may argue that sapphic or gay spaces should only include femme and masc primary archetypes, and ignore anything that goes beyond those labels. But I digress....
There is also a strange, yet marginally understandable, bio-essentialist reframing of "You can't be both. Your body runs on one primary hormone, synthetic or not." It masquerades as natural fact but often traces back to just plain unexamined essentialist thinking.
Now, part of the reason for the natural naturalistic fallacy argument is that non-binary transition paths are radically understudied, even by the scant standards of trans and gender research. We know the 'standard' approach works for transition, and we just build off that through replication of studies and more, but frontier science is nearly nonexistent. So we default to "your body has one primary hormone, don't fuck with nature, god mother nature knows all" and take it at face value.
Another view: any affirmative research into this could be weaponized by anti-trans evangelists to argue that "transition isn't worth it," because it breaks apart the coupled concepts of social transition and chemical transition—the idea that if you're perceived as masc or femme, your chemical makeup can't be at odds with that perception. If the social view doesn't have to match, and you can "solve" being trans chemically, then appearance doesn't matter. And that threatens preconceived notions of what is and isn't natural, biological, expected, or scientific.
You can hear echoes of the same argument from others in the community "You can't and shouldn't boymode, even if you genuinely enjoy it, because the real goal is to be yourself, inside and out. Anything else is just fear keeping you in your comfort zone." You should be free to be yourself. I won't argue against it. But some people would be understandably fine being perceived as a jacked masc dude while running on primarily estrogen.
Here's a hypothetical, and uncomfortable thought experiment: If a pill existed that eliminated dysphoria (you don't need dysphoria to be trans!), depression, and all of the mental and physical desires to transition, trans activists would call it "medical conversion therapy" and oppose it; while anti-trans evangelists would celebrate it as medical conversion therapy and demand it become mandatory. Both sides would find common ground, then eat each other's faces.
If non-binary transition or balanced hormone levels proved effective for people like me, it'd be weaponized by both camps, each treating non-binary as a subcategory of the binary, not an expansion of gender itself. And that terrifies people who may not realize they believe society should forever be bound by a dual gender hierarchy, a two-party system. They'll say they understand non-binary people exist, but still see them as part of the binary. As if the name on the tin isn't literally non and binary - to be not of the binary, and not just used as a collective new superior monolithic third category just as no woman is an island, nonbinary is not a monolith.
There's a lot of nuance and straw-manning here, but after countless discussions: with myself, with others, in circles, with people who get it and people who don't, I'm sure I'm still missing some arguments. But, it mostly boils down to these issues.
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