Trans-Tech

Sam; 26; Trans-woman; HRT Date: 11/4/18; Married; Urban Explorer

[lambda010-blog]

Bicalutamide Update

(copied from my PillowFort, sorry for any formatting issues as a result)

I realized it's been a while since I posted about my hrt experience.

Since I know there's a lot of interest in bicalutamide as an alternative to spironolactone, I wanted to document my experiences with it so that there's more info out there about it for anyone who's looking.

Check below the break for my update.

Current Doses:

Estrodiol (pill): 6mg per day (going to 8 in March and may switch to injections)

Progesterone: 100mg per day

Bicalutamide: (I can't remember my dose, I'll update this later.)

I take 4mg of estrogen in the morning, then 2mg in the evening along with my progesterone and Bic.

Energy Levels:

I've noticed that I don't get as sleepy now after my evening doses which is nice. The first few weeks the knocked me flat out. But now I don't really notice it.

My overall energy level has climbed back up to a good level, though I do tend to sleep more now if given the chance. That may also be because I'm overall healthier than I used to be so I can sleep more soundly. Hard to say for sure.

That said, I'm pretty dependant now, so if I miss my morning dose of Estrogen I spend the day very tired and miserable. I even get hot flashes. Bleh.

Physical Changes:

Alright, the first of the fun stuff. I do have breasts now, I'm three months in and have a defined curve on my sides and firm breast tissue. They're of course still very small but growing pretty damn quick. I think the progesterone is playing a big part here. The fat started to move there even before I was able to detect a breast bud. I can feel the breast tissue there and the ducts are growing a bit but there's more fat there already than I think a lot of girls see at this stage due to (according to my doc) the progesterone.

My hips are more padded than they were before and my face has rounded a little bit.

Sex (Bow chica bow wow):

I still have plenty (some would say too much) sex drive. It is... different now though. The best way I can describe it is that it's not as 'sharp' as it was before. I'm pretty much always at least a little horny but if I don't get a chance to... deal with it, it's not a big deal. So I can go a couple days without and feel fine, but also, pretty much any time, I'm good to go.

As I think I've mentioned before I had (and still have) a very high sex drive before hrt so it makes sense that it's still pretty high.

As far as sex function, this is actually why I opted for Bic instead of spiro. I don't have bottom dysphoria and since I'm a top, I wanted to retain function. It's certainly worked out that way. I get very rare spontaneous erections and it takes a bit more warm up to get me to a place where I can get and hold a good erection for sex but honestly, it's a very slight change and plenty often I'm already 'ready to go' before our clothes are even off. So no issues there.

Orgasms feel either AMAZING or boring now, there's no in-between. They're either full-body affairs or I barely feel it. Again, no complaints, most of the time they're amazing and when they aren't, they're still satisfying and I feel the relaxation afterwards.

I hope this is helpful or at least interesting. If you have questions, feel free to message me. It should be obvious from all that, but I'm a pretty open book about this stuff.

[lambda010-blog]

My post announcing that I started HRT was flagged...

Seems like a good time to say that I'm Sam-Ra over on Pillowfort.io

[lambda010-blog]

I’m coming out to my in-laws tonight! They’re super supportive of trans-issues and have helped get scholarships to trans kids in the past, and things like that, so I have no doubt they’ll be on-board, but I’m still super nervous.

Wish me luck!

[lambda010-blog]

Hey! I’m setting up over on PillowFort. If you’re there or end up over there shoot me a message. My username is Sam-Ra.

I’m not killing my account here right now, but I love the PF community so far and it’s looking like a really solid alternative to tumblr.

[zombieland-userboxes]

This user is pro tits and anti nazi

[lambda010-blog]

Hey all, in an attempt to find a tumblr-alternative, I’m trying out pillowfort. It’s a paid site, which I’m all for since it gets us away from advertisers and other folks that are making it hard to be on sites like this.

Not planning to hard-quit tumblr yet but I want a good alternative. If you want to catch up on PF you can find me as Sam-Ra.

[prokopetz]

Here’s a little trick I’ve used in D&D games where the premise of your campaign calls for the party to have access to lots of Stuff, but you don’t want to do a whole bunch of bookkeeping: the Wagon.

In a nutshell, the party has a horse-drawn wagon that they use to get around between – and often during – adventures. This doesn’t come out of any individual player character’s starting budget; it’s just provided as part of the campaign premise.

Before setting out from a town or other place of rest, the party has to decide how many gold pieces they want to spend on supplies. These funds aren’t spent on anything in particular, and form a running total that represents how much Stuff is in the wagon.

Any time a player character needs something in the way of supplies during a journey or adventure, one of two things can happen:

1. If it’s something that any fool would have packed for the trip and it’s something that could reasonably have been obtained at one of the party’s recent stopovers (e.g., rations, spare clothing, fifty feet of rope, etc.), then the wagon contains as much of it as they reasonably need. Just deduct the Player’s Handbook list price for the item(s) in question from the wagon’s total.

2. If it’s something where having packed it would take some explaining, or if it’s something that’s unlikely to have been available for purchase at any of the party’s recent stopovers (e.g., a telescope, a barrel of fine wine, a book of dwarven erotic poetry, etc.), the player in need makes a retroactive Intelligence or Wisdom check, versus a DC set by the GM, to see if they somehow anticipated the need for the item(s) in question. Proficiency may apply to this check, depending on what’s needed. The results are read as follows:

Success: You find what you’re looking for, more or less. If the group is amenable, you can narrate a brief flashback explaining the circumstances of its acquisition. Deduct its list price (or a price set by the GM, if it’s not on the list) from the wagon’s total.

Failure by 5 points or less: You find something sort of close to what you’re looking for. The GM decides exactly what; it won’t ever be useless for the purpose at hand, but depending on her current level of whimsy, it may simply be a lesser version of what you were looking for, or it may be something creatively off the mark. Deduct and optionally flash back as above.

Failure by more than 5 points: You come up empty-handed, and can’t try again for that item or anything closely resembling it until after your next stopover.

As an incidental benefit, all the junk the wagon is carrying acts as a sort of ablative armour. If the wagon or its horses would ever take damage, instead subtract a number of gold pieces from its total equal to the number of hit points of damage it would have suffered. The GM is encouraged to describe what’s been destroyed in lurid detail.

[basalt-dnd]

This type of method makes it *way* easier to keep track of items, and… it’s pretty darn funny when the players succeed a roll to see if they backed something outrageously stupid. Trust me, the flash backs are hilarious. Never skip out on them.

[anakintrashblog]

[skankplisskenmoved]

[science-fiction-is-real]

[callousisms-blog]

[charlottec21]

[quetzalpali]

[watergirl1996]

LAST TIME I REBLOGGED THIS THE LAST COMPARISON WASNT ON THERE

[klubbhead]

[above-average-gravy-deactivated]

This is the best thing I have ever seen

[klubbhead]

[unaffiliatedpangolin]

@klubbhead You used a cinnamon roll for Rey and not Leia?

[klubbhead]

[sculptingsuccess]

Dam it it got better

[klubbhead]

[nunyabizni]

S T O P

[uhnkass-blog]

@klubbhead

Do Darth Maul next!

[klubbhead]

[rebeccafultz-blog]

This is why I love Tumblr. Do Yoda next please or Boba Fett.

[klubbhead]

Oh god. I can’t even think of something for them lol

[thej-key]

Yoda gotta be raisin bread.

[nexar-k]

[tht-lesbian-fangirl]

ENOUGH

[klubbhead]

NO

😬

[friendly-neighborhood-ehrhardt]

do grand moff tarkin.

[klubbhead]

[maskofprime-moved-3-18-2018]

[bubble-within-time-deactivated2]

Every time I reblog this, it’s longer…

[lambda010-blog]

Sometimes a song is written so well there’s not much else to say about it. It says everything it needs to and says it better than anyone else could.

John Prine - That’s How Every Empire Falls

The bells ring out on Sunday morning Like echoes from another time All our innocence and yearning and sense of wonder left behind Oh gentle hearts remember What was that story? Is it lost? For when religion loses vision That's how every empire falls.

Padlock the door and board the windows Put the people in the street "It's just my job," he says "I'm sorry." And draws a check, goes home to eat But at night he tells his woman "I know I hide behind the laws." She says, "You're only taking orders." That's how every empire falls.

A bitter wind blows through the country A hard rain falls on the sea If terror comes without a warning There must be something we don't see What fire begets this fire? Like torches thrown into the straw If no one asks, then no one answers That's how every empire falls.

[suedescripture]

The only way any other social site we fans migrate to is going to work is for it to be fully, entirely funded through donations from us, the users. Like AO3, which does not and will never sell out to a megacorp, which does not and will not fund itself through advertising, which does not have investors to placate, which has an entire team of lawyers in place to protect our rights as artists and creators, and which runs its donation plea once a year for this specific reason. This is why. This exact thing that happened this week is why they ask us all to spare a few bucks if we can.

I dunno about all of you, but I’m going to have some questions for Pillowfort when they come back online. I want to know if they have a plan already in place for inevitable bot activity, for people who post hate speech and nazi propaganda, and if they are going to have a team in place whose sole job is to keep this shit from poisoning their site like it does every single other site we fans try to take refuge on as a safe space.

I’ve been through literally all of LJ’s bullshit, and now it’s the same thing here. It’s going to be the same anywhere we go, unless we, the fans, are the sole investors in whichever website we use. This shit ain’t free.

[ato-the-bean]

I’ve been looking at the options and having the exact same thoughts.  I don’t at all mind paying a few bucks a year for this service… It’s a lot less than what I pay for Netflix and I use it a lot more.  That said, the main reason social media is, well, social, is that there’s a critical mass of people with the same interests.   At this point, I have two or three fandoms I really care about, and one of those is already small and shrinking and fragmenting.  So I’ll be balancing the need to go where we own our own content and contribute to the platform with seeing where others in my community go. Not sure where I’ll end up, but Pillowfort is on the short list.  

[seepunkrun]

Today I learned:

“Per registry regulations, no .io domain may be used, directly or indirectly, for any purpose that is sexual or pornographic in nature, or violates the statutory laws of any nation.“ 

Pillowfort is registered on .io

[suedescripture]

Explain this to me like I’m dumb though. Does this mean it won’t allow the bots (hopefully), it won’t allow sex workers to do their thing (probably), and/or it won’t allow fan writers and artists to do our thing (??????), or all of it? How are they going to regulate that when privacy/friends-only settings exist on the platform?

[seepunkrun]

Here’s the whole thing:

“No .IO domain may be used, directly or indirectly, for any purpose that is sexual or pornographic or that is against the statutory laws of any Nation. In the event of the Registry being advised by any party that a specific site breaches this condition then the Registry reserves the right to immediately deactivate the offending registration.”

I’m no internet scholar, but it seems to me all it’ll take is the registry getting wind of any of these breaches of contract and terminating Pillowfort’s domain registration, or Pillowfort themselves getting nervous about being in breach of contract and terminating user accounts or putting restrictions on usage of the site. With the way this is worded that breach could include anything from child pornography to written erotica.

Historically, this means a site will ignore sexual or pornographic materials right up until they get into trouble for it, and then they crack down. As far as privacy locks go, I don’t know. The prohibited data is still associated with the domain, but I don’t know what kind of access to it they’d have, or if Pillowfort differentiates between public and private posts. They haven’t made their TOS easily available.

[ato-the-bean]

Thanks Punk… this is going to require more research.  There was at least one other option on my shortlist… when I find the post that mentioned it I’ll share here so we can all be aware.

[semperama]

FWIW, @suedescripture, Pillowfort’s Terms of Service explicitly forbids hate speech/hate group recruiting, as well as harassment, doxxing, call out posts, and other “anti”-type activity that’s poisoned tumblr. They also don’t plan to ever use advertising and instead by funded by offering a paid option to users (similar to Livejournal’s paid option that had some extra features).

But the domain thing is concerning. I wonder why they chose to go with a .IO domain in that case.

[suedescripture]

Hmmmmmm.

[cardassiansunrise]

I just saw this on their twitter. I don’t know if it’s come up in this conversation yet, but it’s definitely relevant

[lambda010-blog]

It happened! A clerk at a clothing store called me “ma’am” for the first time this weekend!

She offered me a bag to carry the clothes around while I was shopping and I had to spend a minute in the aisle composing myself afterward so I didn’t start crying in the sweater section.

I have no idea who she was but I hope she knows she brightened my entire week with that little act of kindness!

[kreuzader]

[teddybearis-blog]

Anyone want to go? Let’s go. I’m driving. @lambda010 do ya know where this is? X3

[lambda010-blog]

Of course I assume you mean you’re going for the Hutchinson County Museum, so make sure to check out the geology wing where they have a lovely display of the local flint.

[lambda010-blog]

HRT (Bicalutamide update)

As promised I wanted to make sure I post my experience with HRT, specifically with Bicalutamide (Bic) instead of Spironolatone (Spiro) as my anti-androgen.

It’s only been a couple weeks now but I seem to have gotten used to Bic pretty well. I was worried it would be a while till I adjusted, but a couple weeks in and I seem much better. I can safely drive now after taking my evening dose, I don’t feel anywhere near as drowsy. Best guess, this is because the first few days the Estrodiol (half-life of 16 hours) hadn’t built up in my system so I didn’t have very much estrogen yet and was then also missing most of my testosterone.

Now, as long as I remember all my pills I’m ok. My energy level is still lower than it was pre-hrt but it’s on the rise now so in a few weeks I’m hoping to be back to where I was an if not, well that’s ok too.

Since sex-drive and function were my main motivation for Bic instead of Spiro, I assume other people are curious. I have no issues with either at this point. If anything my drive is up from where it was (I would say from low-high I’m at very-high) and I’ve had no issues with getting or maintaining an erection.

Again, I’m on Bic, Estradiol (pill form) and Progesterone.

My next doctor’s appointment is late December so I’ll post after that if nothing changes between now and then.

If you have questions or want more detail, just DM me.

[lambda010-blog]

Holy forking shirt. Do not miss a dose of Estrogen. I'm having fucking hot flashes over here.

[stunningpicture]

So proud of my mother for doing her own research after I sent her that meme. A sign she hung in her car window.

[jettestblack-deactivated2017080]

Stay woke

[pual1010-deactivated20150723]

Is this true?

[mallninjacode-deactivated201812]

Not only is it true, it gets worse. The Susan G Komen For The Cure Foundation has actually successfully sued “competing” charities, because (paraphrasing) their “message or branding was infringing.”

You read that correctly: they took money that people had donated to cure cancer, and hired attorneys with it, to sue ANOTHER group of people trying to find a cure for cancer, who, in turn, had to us their donated money to hire their own legal counsel to defend themselves.

[redbloodedamerica]

[spacemohawks]

Yeah signal boost because not enough people know about this and seriously FUCK SUSAN G. KOMEN THEY ARE THE ACTUAL WORST

[beanmom]

Some links…

http://thinkbeforeyoupink.org/

http://www.somethingawful.com/feature-articles/for-the-cure/

http://thestir.cafemom.com/in_the_news/132728/susan_g_komen_foundation_has

(reblogged in honor of my mother, who died of breast cancer, 11/13/97)

[hello-missvixy-deactivated20160]

Reblog every time I see it. Roughly once a month.

[blockmind]

Also please never forget the pink fracking drill bit

that’s right fracking you know, a process using chemicals known to cause cancer that leech into the water supply

http://www.triplepundit.com/2014/10/baker-hughes-fights-breast-cancer-pink-fracking-drill-bits/

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/cancer/pink-drill-bits-bring-complaints-komen-tie-fracking-n223166

[alexithymia42]

It’s that time of year again, please remember Komen is the actual worst

[sofia-ciel]

Komen For The Cure is pretty much awful.

[imaginarycircus]

My mother died in 1996 from breast cancer. Most cancer charities are scams, in that people throw fancy parties and get rich off them and very little money goes into research or support for patients. Here are some vetted cancer charities that get good scores on Charity Navigator and pay medical expenses or fund research:

Breast Cancer Research Foundation

Cancer Research Institute

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

63 four star rated cancer charities on charity navigator

[spacey-sandwich]

Signal boosting this

[emmalily]

Reblogging from myself because it’s October now

[colleen-in-bloom-deactivated202]

Voice training advice

Can’t remember where I read this but thought it was brilliant.  Went something like this:

You know that voice in your head, the one that is the ongoing inner monologue?

It’s probably the gendered voice you’ve grown up with and have used out loud all your life.

Change it.

Not the voice you speak with, but the voice in your head.  Change it to the voice you think is really yours.  Whenever you hear the male version of yourself bouncing around between your ears, change it.

Now imagine hearing that voice inside your head, always.  It’s yours, after all, isn’t it?  Just one you haven’t given a chance to speak.  Let it speak, and let that flow through naturally to the rest of you.  Maybe voice training is as much mental as anything else.

[lambda010-blog]

Holy shit. I'd literally never noticed that. Thank you! This is so much better!!!💜💛💚💙

[wetslug]

when it starts getting colder + dryer my hair opts for quantity over quality like oh your curl pattern sucks now but at least ur head is Four Feet in Circumference