[lelif]

on survival

-// @aridante // @orivu // @buzzkillgirls // ? // ? // richard siken// @cemeterything // moomin, tove jansson// @disenchanted-killjoy // isn't that enough, shawn mendes// @ prettytheyswag on twitter// @ coletyumuch on twitter// ? // ? // bird by bird, anne lamott// undertale// @strawberrycircuits

[koepek]

new job

[demilypyro]

me about my shitty poor neighborhood

[phthonus-bitch]

[jingerpi]

every time

[demilypyro]

Making your dense cis friend understand that you've transitioned

[elf-hollow]

I'm tired of pretending it's not literally fucking fine to read a character as transfem because they are feminine. why are transfem headcanons the only ones that require a burden of proof to you? don't worry, you don't have to tell me. I already know why.

[noname-human-being]

Everyone should headcanon more characters as transfem because being transfem is fucking awesome and you don't owe an explanation ever

[tgirl-gaming-thoughts]

Reclaiming your “femboy” character by depicting her 6 months on estrogen. She’s mine now.

[dragonfly-and-hurricanes]

And she's happy now

[tgirl-gaming-thoughts]

And she's happy now

[halpheltsgallery]

Open wide

[pavizi]

pavizi dcau harlivy art. these ones got a little weird

[jan-meloti]

[meggriffin24]

men be like “apparently hating women makes u a misogynist 😂😂”

[demilypyro]

I remember after I had my surgery I had to wear pads for some time in case of bleeding or discharge. I think my dad felt weird about having menstrual products in the bathroom for the first time in the like 10 years since my mom divorced him. He never raised a fuss about it though

[getrealprim]

Supreme Court: *Prohibits trans women from women’s sports*

The greatest, queerest allies in town:

Like I’m sorry but this is a clear attack on trans women and some people’s first reaction is to complain trans men weren’t included? Fun fact, trans men were included in deliberations! Conservative lawyers explicitly argued that trans men being allowed in men’s sports was proof that this ruling was not transphobia. Your ability to participate in sports with your own gender was actually used against trans women to ban us.

But sorry you weren’t explicitly named in the ruling

[mousidy]

someone who told me they hope my bottom surgery is botched is a "jax is just a feminine guy" truther. which could mean nothing

[isuggestlandback]

If you ever wondered why they call tattoos and piercings "unprofessional" and "unsophisticated"

Source: Lainey Molnar

[headspace-hotel]

literally. Cesare Lombroso "father of criminology" and disgusting racist and eugenicist had a whole thing about hating tattoos, and he even explicitly said that tattoos were something that """savages""" did and that criminals got tattoos because their brains were similar to """savages"""

dont obey the racist bullshit

[bloodypawprint]

My favorite

[zybilna]

[sophie-frm-mars]

Bathtub estrogen

This is a harm reduction post about DIY

I've seen some people recently using the term "bathtub estrogen" as a little joke about the production of DIY estradiols. This is fine by me as a joking term, I get that people are 1) trying to evoke a DIY punkish or prohibition moonshine sort of image and 2) communicating that we are having to turn to much less carefully prepared forms of medicine than cis people can access when we use DIY. However I recently saw a trans woman with a large platform make the joke and then when asked about it sort of waffle around the topic for a bit and then shruggingly say she does think that some estrogen is made in a bathtub in a way that made it pretty clear she doesn't actually know much about the production side of DIY. She also gestured to a global south DIY producer as being the one who was doing this, which I think is just clumsily labelling people overseas as a bit dumb and less clean.

I've been researching the production of DIY HRT for a few years as I think that the overseas supplies of DIY will be the next thing to be cracked down on by the government after all legally prescribed forms of HRT for trans people are shut down. My aim in researching it is to spread the relevant information to reduce harm for DIY users without making anyone's operations obvious to malicious parties. I can't entirely rule out the possiblity that someone very dumb and reckless is producing DIY in a place that is not sufficiently sterile, and this is part of the inherent risk of DIYing. I can however say that anyone who could afford to get the ingredients to produce DIY estradiols categorically has the money to use a professional-grade lab for it.

I would like to be clear here: bathtub estrogen does not exist

The cheapest way for someone to make estradiol is the individual-use case described by Lena from Kiev, mixing a single vial typically for the person who is making it. It is time consuming and inefficient but very cheap, and so people who care less about lab-level standards will likely resort to this method. This method is also the easiest to sterilise, as it's actually surprisingly easy to create a relatively dust-free and sterile environment for an operation this small. The primary risks with this method are from people being quite lazy about cleaning, skipping terminal sterlisation (heating the vial after mixing to kill bacteria) or neglecting to use a filter and introducing some dust, which may cause a granuloma and in the worst case chronic pain in the injection site.

If someone were scaling up from that model, the most effective methods for properly mixing all involve lab equipment, and if we were talking about a quantity of estrogen big enough to fit in a bathtub, the most effective thing to get it properly mixed would still involve transferring the carrier oil, powder and preserving agents into smaller containers for mixing and then using syringes to fill vials. Ideally all of that is done inside of a lamina flow hood or at least still air box setup and if it isn't then basically what is produced at the end is dangerous garbage. I haven't encountered anyone so far who is operating at that quantity who is not using at least a still air box, but realistically anyone who can afford the ingredients for a bathtub full of estrogen can afford a brand new container of a significant size that comes pre-sterilised or new unsterilised containers and the equipment necessary to sterilise them.

Even if someone were to make estrogen in a bathtub "for the bit" they would need to buy a brand new tub (which again would be inexpensive compared to the rest of the setup

Sterilisation is an ongoing struggle for DIY producers. For example anyone who isn't using a professional chemistry lab is probably not using depyrogenated equipment, which requires much higher temperature sterilisation to achieve. However this struggle is one that DIY producers are very deeply invested in and trying to overcome, because DIY hormone producers are trying very hard not to kill the people they make hormones for and suggesting otherwise is harmful to people's overall access.

I am not immune to transfem shitposting, I love the image of us in our long stripey socks cackling away stirring a big cauldron of secret witches' brew, but I would like for people with platforms to be careful not to communicate to the world that this is what is actually happening. I just want people to be a smidge better informed about this to avoid spreading misinformation in the community. All of the major suppliers of DIY that people order from online are either supplying hormones manufactured by pharma companies or has been tested by transharmreduction dot org, a great resource to check out if you want reassurance. Their tests found no contaminants in the majority of vials tested from all sources, and you can read the full breakdown on their website.

It is worth communicating to users of DIY about the real risks involved, of which sterilisation is one, but another that is commonly overlooked is allergy. Pharmaceutical companies use ingredients that generally have the lowest chances of setting off an allergic reaction, and while nobody is allergic to estrogen, the carrier oil which makes up the majority of the actual finished product can sometimes be made from coconut, seed or nut based oils that some people have allergies to. Another important risk for people to look at is safe injection, which is why I and many other organisers are working to normalise trans-focused needle exchanges where information about HRT is available as well as phsyical resources to ensure people are taking their hormones safely.

Soon hopefully there will be more resources available to lots of us so that we can be maximally informed about what is out there, how it's being made and for those interested how to make it safely ourselves. For now the best we can do is avoid saying careless things that could scare people into hopelessness