hello pals!!! school is tough, life in general is tough + we all need a break sometimes. remember to take a day off at least once a week or take frequent breaks + take time to care for yourself because you deserve it!! this is a masterpost to help you out if you’re stuck + don’t know what to do <3
for your ears
calm songs that make me feel warm inside
for relaxing + taking your mind off things
tranquilising coffee shop sounds
rainy sounds
nature sounds
the infinite jukebox
for your body, hair + face
head-to-toe self care
helpful makeup tips!!!
eye makeup stuff
braid your hair like the ladies in game of thrones
winged eyeliner
makeup/hair/perfume post
for your eyes
marvel movies masterpost!!!
movies for angsty teens
movie night masterpost
classic chick flicks
indie films
childhood movies
spooky movies
a bunch of series!!!
giant panda cam
puppy cam!!!
kitten cam!!!
for your tummy
microwave mug cake
vegan smoothies
vegetable burgers
recipes for students
bake really nice stuff!!!
layered ice cream pops
rainbow cheesecake
food hacks
myfridgefood [make something with stuff you have in your fridge!!]
spice up your hot chocolate
what tea you should take according to how you feel
for your mind
put your thoughts in this box
free online therapy
a website that compliments you
who’s the cutest?
weave silk
do nothing for two minutes
make stuff with sand [this is really calming i love it!!!]
the dawn room
the thoughts room
make everything okay
mental health masterpost
other stuff
a sleep calculator
photoshop downloads
photoshop for beginners
art links!!
what you should do when you’re stressed
my positivity tag
+ my masterposts
notes, studying, and self-study resources
self-study resources
supplies
igcse resources
improving your handwriting
how to studyblr
literature masterpost
organisation
aesthetically pleasing notes
annotating
studying a foreign language
really great apps
math
college + uni
motivation
biology
space!!!!
chemistry
physics
summary writing
the discursive/argumentative essay
the narrative essay + the descriptive essay
the ultimate english masterpost!!
+ more
hope this helps you guys be stress-free for a while!!! take care of yourself, i love you <3
An alarming number of girls are trying to reverse their decision to live as the opposite sex
“I wanted to come as close as possible to having a male body even though I knew inside I would never actually get one. I wanted to get rid of the female aspects of myself.”
Livia, 23, has lived as a trans man for five years. When she was 20, she underwent a double mastectomy, a hysterectomy and an oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries). And she now regrets it. She is one of a panel of seven young women discussing their feelings about transitioning at the very first meeting of the Detransitioner Advocacy Network (DAN) earlier this month.
Since its formation, in October, more than 300 women who regret transitioning from female to (trans) male have come forward for support and advice. It’s an extraordinary number. Perhaps not so surprising when you see that in the past ten years there has been a 3,200% rise in children who believe they are transgender in the UK, three-quarters of whom are girls. A quick search of the crowdfunding site GoFundMe shows more than 26,000 girls and women are seeking money to have “top surgery” (an elective double mastectomy) in order to appear more masculine.
When she was 15, Livia was diagnosed with severe anorexia. “It’s so scary to realise that my anorexic thoughts were about [hating] my female body,” she tells a stunned room. “I really wish someone had been there to tell me not to get that body castrated at 21.”
It would seem that Livia had body dysmorphia, a disorder which leads people to believe their body is flawed, something which is becoming increasingly prevalent because of pressure on women to conform to feminine stereotypes. But she was led to believe she had gender dysphoria, where people think it’s their biological sex that’s wrong, which leads to the desire to have irreversible surgery, often at a young and impressionable age.
Livia is one of a devastating number of girls who are presenting at gender clinics and being prescribed ‘puberty blockers’. These drugs halt the natural development of a person’s sexual characteristics and increase the likelihood that a child will remain on a medical pathway and progress to cross-sex hormones. But, shockingly, there is no research on the long-term effects of this medication, described by various senior clinicians at the DAN launch as “highly toxic and potentially dangerous”. Nonetheless, the NHS recently changed its policy to allow the NHS Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) to prescribe them to children under 12 who are in established puberty.
There is, though, a growing number of concerned clinicians and mental health practitioners who are willing to speak out about the problem. These professionals are deeply worried about the massive increase in and normalisation of transgendering children and said as much — even though our current climate means that to even question transgender ideology is to be labelled transphobic and to have jobs and livelihoods threatened. Everyone attending the Detransitioning Conference was taking a risk.
DAN was set up by Charlie Evans, a 28-year-old science writer who was born female but identified as a trans man for a decade. Last year, Evans decided to detransition and go public about her reasons. Evans’ life trajectory is similar to that of many detransitioned females. Coming out as a lesbian aged 11, Evans felt uncomfortable about the negative response from boys and girls at school. She endured their cruelty and homophobic remarks for several years and then, at the age of 14, discovered that many in her group of friends were transitioning from female to male. It was compelling, she said.
“I got pulled along by it,” Evans tells me. “I like other girls and I like guns and trucks and mud and I don’t like having long hair and I’m really messy and my room looks like a boy’s room, therefore I must be a boy.”
Evans, who is autistic, started binding her breasts and shaved off all her hair when she was 16. “I said to my parents, ‘Your daughter is dead, and I don’t want you to treat me like your daughter anymore. If you buy clothing for me, I want boys clothing, not girls’.” She had bought in to the idea that transitioning was magically going to solve her problems.
Many detransitioning women have taken testosterone and had irreversible surgery, such as double mastectomy, hysterectomies, and the construction of a fake penis known as phalloplasty. But Evans never went that far. She changed her name and her pronouns and lived as her chosen sex, but didn’t go through with the gender reassignment operation.
And then a number of things led her to reassess her decision — including the slow realisation that transitioning wasn’t the cure-all she had hoped it would be for her particular ills. She now lives as a bisexual woman with a profound concern for the growing demographic of children whose confusion over their sex and gender is being mismanaged by gender identity clinics.
Although there are a number of male to female transsexuals that have spoken out about regretting their transition, Evans prioritises those young lesbians who have been, “caught up in the cult that convinces them they are boys”, because this is the group currently at risk of “being groomed by the extreme transgender ideology”.
It was this group that interested me in particular, too. As a feminist campaigner, I assumed that part of the reason so many girls are attracted this ideology is to escape their femaleness, especially with the current rise in misogyny. So I wanted to know how much those psychiatrists who were making a diagnosis of ‘gender dysphoria’ and those surgeons who were removing breasts and wombs really knew about the underlying issues.
The detransitioners’ stories were harrowing. A lament for what has been taken from them. It was hard to listen to the succession of young women standing on stage, expressing such regret.
Kira is 22 and has taken testosterone. In her deep, masculine voice, she tells us how, after starting secondary school, she became unsociable, severely depressed and alienated, and believed that being attracted to other girls made her ‘unnatural’. At 14, Kira’s mother asked her if she wanted to be a boy.
“I thought I finally had an answer and began to obsess over the process,” Kira told the audience. “Two years later I was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder and from the age of 16 I went through the process of hormone blockers and testosterone and eventually a double mastectomy at 20.”
“I’ve now accepted who I really am — a gender non-conforming woman. I don’t believe I should have taken medical transition to get to this point.”
Max is 29 and has a full beard — but no longer takes testosterone. She transitioned in order to escape the confines of being a woman in a misogynistic society. “Pretty much every person born female is policed by appearance and forced to bend over backwards to look feminine,” she said. “Transitioning gave me an opportunity to avoid that.”
Many of the delegates were angry. As we heard the survivors talk about the surgery and hormonal treatment they had endured, one shouted out that the surgeons who carry out operations to remove healthy body parts should be, “in prison”.
The only NHS facility for transgender young people in the UK is the Tavistock and Portman Trust. Since 2015, 35 staff have resigned from the Gender Identity Development service citing the lack of credible research into gender dysphoria and treatment and why there has been such an increase in cases. As one doctor at the conference told me:
“As demand surged for under 18-year-olds, it became clear that these young girls, in particular, had some very serious psychological problems, but were almost instantly affirmed as being ‘gender dysphoric’. That diagnosis is all that is needed to be rubber-stamped for testosterone, and subsequent surgery. Many of us that resigned over this are very worried indeed where it is leading.”
But few dare speak out. Dr David Bell, consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock, described why it’s so difficult for those services which deal with trans identity to accept the detransition movement. “Detransitioners are a threat to an ideology that has acquired an almost totalitarian quality and cannot be challenged,” he says. “It is extraordinary the way in which, without any evidence at all, trans ideology has had the ears of politicians up to the highest level.”
A number of the clinicians I speak to echo those fears of being labelled ‘transphobic’. They worry about the rigid mindset defines much treatment and intervention, creating a ‘You are either with us or you are against us’ approach to the issue. This attitude is resulting in the over-medicalisation of these young women. It certainly seems extraordinary to me, and many at the conference, that so many girls are being fast-tracked down this path of life-long medical treatment, including radical surgery, before being offered alternatives such as therapy.
Dr Victoria Rose is a consultant plastic surgeon at the London Clinic. She is aware of the rise in numbers of clinicians offering hormones and referring young women for surgery. “We know there is abuse of the system,” she says. “We know there are people who set themselves up as gender GPs who dole out hormones and refer patients who haven’t gone through the pathway. At the moment there’s long discussions about the younger population and how they’re treated.”
Part of the problem, she says, is that “this generation is very impressionable”.
It’s true there is more cultural pressure and online influence on youngsters than ever before. Why, then, weren’t these “impressionable” girls given more help along the way? Why weren’t they offered expert therapy before the drastic action of puberty blockers is prescribed?
The British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines suggest that clinicians affirm the young person’s gender identity, meaning that it would be considered to be ‘bad practice’ to offer therapy and other non-medical interventions rather than hormones and surgery. In other words, if mental health professionals suggest to a child that they could perhaps give them help and support to feel good about living in their bodies without having to change it with major surgery and lifelong hormonal treatment, they would be considered transphobic.
The trouble is, as Dr Bell explained, “The body isn’t like a video recorder that you can put on pause. It’s more complex than that. When you’re a young person, you think the way you feel now is the way you’ll always feel.”
I left the conference with fewer answers than I had hoped for. Just a litany of stories of young lives disrupted and young bodies distorted. I did find out that cultural attitudes and the reinforcing of gender stereotypes — what a female should look like (body dysmorphia) and how she should behave (gender affirmation) — are very much a part of the problem.
What is crystal clear is that the trans lobby’s determination to shut down dissent and discussion isn’t helping these women and girls. It’s an approach which promises them liberation without determining what they want to be free from. We were once making incredible progress on breaking down the gender binary and encouraging freedom of expression.
Now the power of the supposedly progressive trans lobby means we can’t question it when a girl chooses to mutilate her ‘wrong body’. It’s time to stop listening to the lobby and start listening more carefully to people like Max. We certainly were in Manchester, when she said to a roomful of people: “It’s highly possible that if I had got expert therapy I may never have transitioned.”
There are 2 catagories for dysphoria and clothing.
1: Association with womanhood/femininity
2: It highlights qualities you're dysphoric about.
The first one is ultimately a social construct and emotionally you can work through it. I high recommend talk therapy with a therapist if you can. Even if you cant get treatment for your dysphoria medically things that are socially created can be talked through with a therapist. If this isn't a option I highly recommend you do your own personal searching. Ask yourself why you feel dysphoric about something beyond just I feel wrong/weird/not male. Question everything with your dysphoris but especially things that are in the 1st category social constructs. If something is just a social construct why do you feel dysphoric? Know that there are feminine men and masculine women. Use this to your advantage and battle your own dysphoria using logic and reassurance.
The medical community is failing dysphoric people.
We’re not told that there are treatment options other than surgery and (what is by all means still experimental) hormone therapy. I had no idea when I first started transitioning that some people found relief by unpacking internalized misogyny, lesbophobia and ableism. I didn’t know that some people found exercise and mindfulness immensely helpful or that dysphoria could be caused or exacerbated by trauma. HRT ended up not being what I needed but even if it had been I still would have deserved to know. I still would have deserved informed consent.
And they’re not researching us or the effects of the treatments they give us. We don’t know what dysphoria is or what causes it. We don’t know what percentage of people desist from transition. We don’t even really know what hormone replacement therapy does to trans people’s bodies. You’ll hear all the time that doctors are divided on when or even if trans men need hysterectomies after being on testosterone. That’s because they don’t know. The medical world doesn’t even care enough about us enough to have spent the money and energy into figuring out if a drug they’re prescribing and selling to us will make a hysterectomy a medical necessity or not.
This is shit people should be mad about. This is shit people should be really mad about.
I'm posting alot of detrans stuff RN and like honestly all trans people should be fighting for a better medical system for people with gender dysphoria
I think that when you’ve just always had dysphoria about something it’s really, really hard to imagine that you can ever beat it or that it could not be natural. I never wanted to grow breasts. When I did I was distressed. I wanted them gone. They didn’t seem like they were supposed to be there. I’d imagine peeling them off and revealing my “real” flat chest underneath. I remember telling my mom I was just so glad they were at least small and her telling me I wouldn’t always feel that way but I always did. I remember feeling, near constantly, trapped by my own body.
But last night I caught myself thinking to myself, “I love my boobs.” It wasn’t in the way people ever wanted me to love them. It wasn’t as some symbol of sexuality or femininity or potential maternity. It was more like, “what a cute, funny feature of the strange sort of animal that I am.”
Anyway, what I’m trying to say here is just that it’s possible. You can make it here. You can find peace with your body even if your distress feels intrinsic and even if everyone else is insisting you can’t. You don’t have to change.
Being isolated from others who have complicated feelings about their transition and being unaware of alternative ways to handle the feelings that led me to transition seemed to be the main factors that kept me from exploring negative feelings about this stuff. Without access to those, I think I would have continued transitioning indefinitely. It didn’t feel like a choice. I have a major beef with that- the idea that transition isn’t a choice.
I felt I had no choice but transition for a long time, and the reason I felt that way was because other choices were not offered to me. I didn’t know anyone who had survived feelings like mine without transition, and I didn’t have any ideas about how someone might do that. That’s a problem! How can someone give informed consent to transition when they believe the only alternative is a miserable life eventually cut short by suicide? People who transition believing it’s absolutely the only way they can ever experience any relief are people whose community and healthcare professionals have failed them.
No doctor told me that getting a troubled shelter dog and training her as a psychiatric service dog, or being in a loving and supportive relationship, or having a bunch of friends with similar experiences, might provide enough relief that I wouldn’t have to live as a man in order to feel okay. They totally did, though. That definitely happened to me.
The fact that a lot of people see advice for coping with distress that doesn’t involve medication or surgery as inherently invalidating is pretty messed up. I’ve seen it expressed that anyone whose drive to transition can be addressed without actually transitioning (or continuing to transition) can’t possibly be experiencing as much pain as someone who’s really trans. Within this model, you aren’t even really suffering unless you believe they’re the only ones who can help. Believing that puts so much power in the hands of for-profit institutions.
The tools used by the medical industrial complex can help people, for sure, and everyone is entitled to decide for herself what approaches to try. But it’s just not true that, for someone’s distress to be valid, it has to be unresponsive to everything except pharmaceuticals or surgery. Finding substantial relief outside a doctor’s office does not inherently mean that the condition was any less serious.
A woman I know once said something along the lines of, if the top priority of all providers of transgender healthcare services was really to help people feel their best, they’d be banging down the doors of all these women talking about alternative strategies for coping with feelings currently or formerly diagnosable as gender dysphoria. I think this is entirely accurate, and I think it’s telling that it hasn’t happened.
To all my UK trans ppl i do not recommend watching the BBC 2 documentary on transgender kids it’s entirely biased with an anti trans agenda and also used people’s youtube videos without asking for any permission first
I’d especially avoid it if you have been concerned with “what if I regret it” type of feelings because they do not frame transition as anything other than regret causing
To UK trans people: seriously, watch that documentary. You need to know every point of view on transitioning and not be trapped in an echo chamber which allows no critical thinking whatsoever.
The documentary is neutral and shows several points of view - what transactivists think, what detransitioned people think, what transgender children think, what their parents think and what medical professionals think. You can watch this documentary and absorb every point of view, ultimately deciding for yourself what you thought about it all. Being exposed to different viewpoints encourages you to make your own decisions instead of following one opinion that all of your peers think.
I can’t stress enough how important it is that you think rationally and consider everyone else’s views - epecially those of qualified medical professionals and neuroscientists. 60 - 80% of trans children eventually lose their dysphoria/ desist with transition. This is a cold hard fact that you can’t keep ignoring. Don’t potentially make the mistake of transitioning and then realising you’re not trans like I almost did.
I’m sorry if the quality is shitty, but my PDF app on my phone wasn’t working properly. I’ll scan these as soon as I get the chance and create a downloadable PDF which I’ll edit into this post, but I wanted to get the images up quickly since I had so many requests for this, both publicly and privately.
If anyone is interested in the book itself, it’s called Healing the Trauma of Abuse: A Women’s Workbook by Mary Ellen Copeland and Maxine Harris. It’s a fabulous workbook overall, but this section may be really helpful to people who are suffering from dysphoria in any stage of their lives.
Hi Carey,
I am a transgender identifying teen who feels caught between the ultra-affirming trans culture and transphobia. I’m terrified by stories of detransition, and want to make sure I don’t make the wrong choice to transition, however the need to transition is very compelling. I guess I’m looking for any advice you would give to a young trans person on avoiding having to detransition.
If this sounds like a question you might have, oh boy, do I have a Medium post for you to read.
2. It’s okay to be stealth or want to be someday :)
3. It’s okay if you aren’t or don’t want to be stealth someday :)
4. It’s okay if you don’t pass yet :)
5. It’s okay if you’re unable to transition :)
6. It’s okay if you present as the wrong gender because you’re not out of the closet :)
7. It’s okay if you present as the wrong gender because your family or environment is unsupportive even though you’re out of the closet :)
8. It’s okay if you’re not able to come out :)
9. It’s okay if you’re trans and also gender nonconforming :)
10. It’s okay if you don’t have bottom surgery because the technology isn’t advanced enough or the procedure is something you’re not comfortable with :)
11. It’s okay if you have bottom surgery because the technology is advanced enough and you’re comfortable with the procedure :)
12. It’s okay if you can’t transition because it’s too expensive :)
13. It’s okay if you’re not comfortable talking openly about being trans, or your transition :)
14. It’s okay if you’re comfortable talking openly about being trans, or your transition :)
15. It’s okay if your dysphoria isn’t always crippling or severe :)
16. It’s okay if your dysphoria is always severe :) (it was hard to put a smiley on that one cause it really sucks :( )
You’re great and I wish you lots of luck for the future, and hopefully things turn out good :) Have a nice night and try to take good care of yourself, even if dysphoria makes it hard :)
Okay so my abuser is currently on the verge of losing most of his targets which means soon he’ll be looking for more
If you are a trans person in your early 20s living in the Dallas/Garland area
If you meet a trans man named Emmett Orton or stumble upon the blog trans/ash/ketchum (Without the dashes)
Avoid him at all cost
This man is a serial abuser and a sexual predator who targets vulnerable trans people
He’s had 5 abuse victims so far
2 of which he sexually assaulted
You may find him offering housing to trans people in crisis, this is part of his trap. He is a dangerous person and he will try to use your situation to control and manipulate you
On tumblr he tends to drift around trans and fat positivity circles. Keep an eye out
Your parents might not accept you yet but they can still love you
So my parents were very very unaccepting the first year and the words still hurt sometimes but honestly my dad has over time gotten more and more leniant especially after knowing this is somthing that causes me great emotional pain
Anyways its story time...
So my dad checked up to make sure I was washing my binder(he doesn't know it as a binder because he's misinformed that binding means like with ace bandages but he's ok with chest compression) and then later on he offered to buy me one and honestly I still cry thinking about it ...like he cares about my safety and loves me so much
I got home from camp and the package had come and it had a paper saying I love you on it
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