He/him. Dave. Discourse blog. Adult content. I'm ADHD, autistic, and queer as hell. Header made by @vaporwavelich. "god help any physician who has the misfortune to encounter you"
You guys need to recognize that the push to treat ace and aro discourse as stupid infighting that never left tumblr is indeed a manifestation of the continued erasure and devaluing of asexuality, aromanticism, and and ace and aro lives in an effort to pretend that the people who did it weren't part of a reactionary hate movement that completely decimated two entire marginalized communities both on and offline.
Like I try to be nice about this but I have seen SO many fucking people being like "lol yeah ace/aro discourse was one thing" and that is deliberate erasure of real and important queer history in service of dodging blame on the parties that did this who, for the most part, never fucking apologized or owned up to it, or, in the case of a few blogs I still see going around, clearly still stand by all of it and just hope you don't point that out, and ofc, no one ever fucking does.
Stop downplaying the absolute fucking devastation the queer community did to ace and aro people and our communities. If owning it makes you uncomfortable, good, go make it right, and start by not fucking lying about what happened, thanks.
I do want to say if you got caught up in this I don't hate you, especially if you learned and changed, because like most reactionary hate movements ace/aro discourse was always presented as righteous and fun, and also it was EVERYWHERE and the people stirring shit were very well articulated. A lot of us were teenagers joining queer spaces for the first time ever and we wanted to belong and sometimes that means hating who the people who already belong tell you to hate. I get why people fell for it, I came close a few times myself when I was at my lowest and most desperate to feel like I belonged again. I get it.
I can't offer forgiveness or absolution to everyone, but you don't need me to forgive you to forgive yourself and move on, and I do think most of the people who got caught up in it have more than earned moving on.
However, what I want is for everyone to stop downplaying it. Don't call it stupid infighting, don't go "ace stuff was one thing but this with trans men is too far" don't claim it didn't leave tumblr or the internet, own how bad it was. If you were there you know, and your history is valuable, so even when it sucks please be honest about what happened. This part of queer history should not be forgotten, and especially not for the people who never really changed and have an interest in making sure everyone thinks this was just some silly infighting.
That's what I ask, do right by us, don't let us be erased again.
Especially because when you forget, when you downplay it, you downplay what's happened with truscum shit, with biphobia, and now with trans masc exclusion. You downplay it and you disguise that it's the same people saying the same things about a new group. I found out about the rise in trans man/masc exclusion because I saw someone saying that trans men are collateral damage secondary to the real targets of transphobia, trans women, and I immediately knew the person saying it was a shithead I should NEVER trust because that is exactly what they said about bi and ace and aro people. Word for word.
You do those who were hurt a disservice when you downplay what happened, but you also make our spaces less safe because if we pretend what happened didn't we can't stop it when it starts again.
Because testosterone is already a controlled substance and thus the posession of it as DIY HRT is already illegal. Trans men and transmascs have been talking about this for literal years. This is such a bizarre kneejerk, because instead of simply talking about how horrible the attempt to criminalize DIY estrogen is OP here immedeatly decides to make this about trans men and transmascs being less opressed.
so do people know that multiple trans people across the US have reported that their pharmacists have arbitrarily denied them testosterone prescriptions, either because "you need authorization" or "company policy" or, in states where its legal, because they don't feel comfortable giving it to them.
i wouldn't be surprised if its also common for this to happen with estrogen, i found one news story on a trans woman experiencing this, but looking it up there seems to be a LOT of cases of this happening with testosterone. which makes me suspect people feel empowered to do this with T in particular because of its criminalized status. regardless, i do not see this brought up much! and i think we should discuss it more, at the very least to prepare people in case they experience this, so they know how to handle the situation.
examples below the cut for length:
Walgreens says pharmacist was uncomfortable with injection method
For Tristan Martin, a 34-year-old trans man living in North Austin, that fear became a reality last week when a Walgreens pharmacist refused to fill his testosterone prescription.
Martin says his pharmacist’s explanation for not filling his prescription was that she was uncomfortable with the doctor’s instruction that the medicine be administered subcutaneously, meaning as a shallow injection under the skin. But, as Martin explained to the pharmacist, he’s taken the same meds for four years, with the same method, and never heard such an objection. Plus, Martin said that the pharmacist was only being asked to provide the testosterone itself, not the equipment necessary to administer it. He later attempted to reach Walgreens’ pharmacy department and store manager to ask about the situation but wasn’t able to reach anyone and never got any calls back.
A store employee told the Chronicle they could not address the dispute. Tristan’s wife, Hayden Martin, said she received an apology from a Walgreens regional healthcare supervisor, after the supervisor contacted her on May 23. “He said there was absolutely wrongdoing and that it’s going to get figured out,” Hayden said. “He said he was going to reach out to the higher-ups and he’s going to let me know by Friday what happens.”
Hayden Martin told us she was able to contact the pharmacist in question two days after the refusal to fill the prescription. “She would not give a reason as to why she felt the doctor was wrong,” Hayden said. “And she said, ‘I’m not comfortable filling it for ‘her.’ So automatically the assumption is that it’s just an issue of her not being comfortable with the fact that it’s testosterone for a trans man. So I, of course, asked her if this was the reason – because he’s a trans man – and she got very defensive and denied it. And then I tried asking for her name and her license number and she said, ‘Well, that’s not important information.’”
Walgreens Pharmacist Denies Gender Affirming Meds, But Other Options Exist
Recently, one of our readers, who wishes to go unnamed, sent us the following email:
On the 24th when I went to pick up my testosterone prescription at the Walgreens on Lomas & Carlisle, I was asked by the pharmacist why I took it, and when I told him it was gender affirming, he told me he wouldn’t fill it going forward… I want other trans+ folks in our neighborhood to know that this is not a safe pharmacy (I don’t regret reacting by sobbing loudly in the middle of a Walgreens, but I don’t want anyone else to have to go through that), and I want all our cis neighbors to know that this is a thing that is happening.
We reached out to the Walgreens location, and the person who answered (and who we will keep anonymous) confirmed that there is a pharmacist on staff who refuses to fill prescriptions for gender affirming medication due to their beliefs. However, they clarified that other pharmacists at the location would fill a gender affirming prescription if they were on duty, or the prescription could be filled at other Walgreens locations. Unfortunately, they were not able to provide further information as to the pharmacist’s name or when their shifts might be.
A year after KC investigation, another trans customer turned away from Costco pharmacy
The city’s Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity Department launched an investigation in October 2022 after a Star report about five transgender and nonbinary people who said they were denied their prescribed testosterone at the pharmacy. Costco denied the allegations. [...]
Dave, whose name has been changed in this story to protect his identity as a transgender man, was grocery shopping at the Linwood Boulevard Costco on Monday when he decided to pick up some syringes.
Dave has used insulin syringes for years to take his prescribed testosterone — their thin needles make his regular injections less painful.
These small syringes don’t require a prescription, making them easy to obtain — and Costco offers a bulk pack of 100 at a nice discount compared to other pharmacies.
At first, the transaction was painless: Dave asked for a pack of syringes and an employee asked him his preferred size and gauge. But when he mentioned that he uses them to inject testosterone, the tone of the conversation shifted abruptly.
“They got weird about it,” Dave said. “The pharmacist, I guess, overheard and she came out and she’s like, this won’t work for testosterone.”
Dave explained that he has used these syringes for his testosterone injections for years — and has even bought the same syringes at that Costco pharmacy before for the same purpose.
Insulin syringes are regularly used to inject low doses of testosterone. But despite being an over-the-counter product, the pharmacist insisted that Dave needed a prescription before she would sell them to him.
“She’s like, well, we won’t sell it to you unless you have your doctor call it in,” Dave recalled. He stepped aside to call his doctor’s office, but they were closed for Monday’s holiday. “I didn’t feel like arguing (with the pharmacist). So I just left.”
An assistant general manager at the Linwood Costco said Wednesday that he was not aware of the incident and couldn’t comment on it.
A pharmacy employee said that she and her coworkers are not authorized to speak to the media. A request for comment from Costco’s corporate office was not immediately answered.
Dave called the Missouri Pharmacy Board Tuesday and was told that syringes only require a prescription if they bear the label “for Rx only,” which his syringes didn’t.
Beyond that, he said he was told that the state gives pharmacists discretion over what they choose to dispense, as long as they don’t violate federal anti-discrimination laws.
On a Saturday night two years ago, Stann Fransisco was driving back home to New Mexico after visiting their parents ...
“Criminalization has made it easy for pharmacists to deny my [testosterone] prescription, which has happened to me many times,” Artemis McGettigan, a trans student in Dearborn, Michigan, told Filter. “[Pharmacists] have told me in the past that ‘It’s corporate policy, they’re not allowed to fill that type of prescription … but I knew that was false because other CVS locations, for example, were able to fill it.” A CVS media representative told Filter that its policies “do not prohibit our pharmacies from filling testosterone prescriptions.”
CVS Pharmacist refused to fill my T
I have been on T for coming up on 3 years. I’ve never had any problems with any pharmacy I’ve gone to. I recently had to switch pharmacies and for over two weeks this pharmacist at CVS has given me the run around. “I need to talk with your doctor about why you need it” (which I’ve never had happen before). And then the next day would say “I need prior auth”. It’s been so long without my T that my period came back today and I am freaking out. So I sent a very frantic message to my doctors office. They called me about an hour later telling me the pharmacist sounded fishy and said “I’m not comfortable filling this prescription.” Ok? Your job isn’t to judge my prescription your job is to give me the medication my doctor decided I needed. The doctors office was nice enough to transfer everything to a different CVS close by and even apologized for not getting the pharmacists name. We did call to get his name. My partner is very nice and called corporate to file a complaint and the corporate pharmacist on the phone said that they do have grounds to deny a prescription only if there is not enough info or it’s fake. So they reported it as discrimination. Unfortunately I can’t take legal action or I would. Sorry this is more of a rant than anything. This should be illegal and nobody should work in healthcare if they’re going to gate-keep health. I truly hope this man gets fired. I’m trying to file a report to the state board of pharmacists because he can have his license revoked for discrimination. Thanks for listening.
My pharmacy tried to deny me my testosterone
So I called in my prescription on the 2nd and they told me that it would be ready on the 5th. It’s the 8th today so I called and asked if it was ready yet and the pharmacist told me I needed prior authorization and that my insurance wouldn’t cover it. Thing is, my insurance has covered it for the past two months, which is when I first started T. The pharmacist told me to call my doctor and get the authorization so I did and my doctor said that there’s no issues on her end, no authorization needed, and that my insurance still covers my prescription so she’s not sure why he would say that. I end up calling them back and end up speaking to the lady who took my original prescription and she was like “Oh my god. I don’t know why he said that to you. I’m seeing a refill request but nothing that requires an authorization. I’m gonna send this in today and it should be ready by Friday”. I think it’s hilarious too that when I told him my name, he was like “oh you’re (my grandparent’s names) granddaughter!”
part of the problem with amatonormativity is that if you aren't interested in a long-term monogamous relationship people assume you will be a miserable empty incomplete shell of a person so you have to insist on your ability to be genuinely fulfilled by things other than marriage/monogamy/romance/etc. but at the same time society is shaped in a way where not being interested in those things can easily make you alienated, between marriage and reproduction being depicted as natural life stages that everyone needs to go through to be a fulfilled adult and it being considered standard to prioritize your romantic relationships over your platonic ones. and if you ever express loneliness or anxiety or guilt over this experience then people take that as proof that you just need to Find The One to make you realize that all your feelings and desires were actually just immaturity/fear of commitment/trauma this whole time and the societal norm IS the only way for you to be truly happy!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Decades-long campaign powered by patient perspectives results in switch from PCOS – a name that caused confusion and undue suffering – to PM
a health policy paper has been published saying the name is officially updated to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS)
polyendocrine= multiple endocrine factors
metabolic = affecting/affected by metabolism
ovarian = from the ovaries
essentially, instead of using the symptomatic term (many people with PMOS do not develop cysts) the new term widens the diagnostic area and makes it easier to diagnose, treat, and do research on people with PMOS (even atypical types, such as no cysts).
it may seem like a waste of time to change a name instead of focusing on research, but for a lot of medical professionals a name can be associated with a hard set collection of symptoms, so the name needs to change to acknowledge that the disorder is not well understood and has a broader, subtler, and often missed set of symptoms. for example ADD is considered an antiquated/unused term, and now comes under the ADHD umbrella. in healthcare names and terminology changes all the time, and this is a positive change. your local healthcare professional may not know about this unless theyre really up on the news though!
in case you want to read about the name change process that was published in the Lancet (one of the most impactful and well respected medical journals):
Polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS), previously named polycystic ovary
syndrome (PCOS), affects one in eight women. However, the
The more I’m inundated with stupid discourse, the more I realize that anti-transmasculine people legitimately think that male privilege is a random cis man being a little nicer to you on the street and not institutional power and favor.
I think the harm of denying people the right to control their own bodies is so, so much worse than the risk of people regretting the decisions they make. Regretting something you decided to do is a much healthier pain than the pain of regretting that you didn't get to have a choice.
wrt the criminalisation of estrogen, like yes they're currently trying to do that because they're targeting transfems, and t is already criminalised but not because of targeting transmascs, but because of sport.
But, like, that's just a convenience for them now. If that hadn't happened 36 years ago already, they would also be doing it now, specifically to target trans people. And you bet they would be using the bullshit ROGD study and "Irreversible Damage" narratives.
They just don't have to.
And none of that means that we should therefore ignore the struggles transmascs have had for those 36 years and onward, just because it wasn't initially targeting us.
We all know for a fact that the people most affected by it were transmascs getting HRT anyway, not cis male athletes, not gym bros, not old guys with ED. We know this. And yet y'all fucking refuse to talk about it.
We can and should absolutely talk about the ways that criminalising estrogen is going to be awful and negatively affect people. What we don't do is say "so that means trans men have it easier, because even though they've been dealing with this exact issue for decades which we conveniently never talk about, it wasn't TARGETING them and we all know that means they're privileged because what matters most in oppression is peoples intentions, not the material outcome of actions".
the "transfeminist" discourse on this website is so like... white trans women need to be more aware of the fact that asians assigned male at birth are often perceived as more feminine than their white counterparts. if you're black, it's the opposite. they speak like everyone starts out the same, but that's just not true. you, as a white person, are far more free to explore femininity/masculinity than people of color are.
they also don't seem to understand the ways in which cis women of color are forced to interact with western ideas of gender. the darker your skin is, the more masculine you're often thought of being. i said this the other day, but not all cis women get to enjoy the cliche soft femininity filled with flowers and rainbows. darker-skinned women are not handed femininity on a silver platter. maybe take that into consideration the next time you try to pull some theory out of your ass
this. another reason why the TMA/TME binary doesn't work. cis black women are far more likely to be transvestigated, but I'm supposed to believe they're exempt from experiencing transmisogyny? no, that's fucking bullshit. everyone can be affected by transmisogyny, or transandrophobia, or just transphobia period. even perisex cis people.
this is something i see missed a lot in white transfeminist spaces and that i'm grateful for the chance to hear folks discuss. i think the tma/tme binary also fails to support our two-spirit and transgender native relatives whose genders and gender presentations are violently policed and managed by colonialist gender standards.
and it abandons ALL native people who experience this gender-coercive violence. a cisgender lakota man whose gender is wičháša is cisgender and yet also white colonial violence will be done against him on the basis of his gender expression. he will be policed on his hair and sacred braids, he experiences increased risk of violence and sexual assault, he lives with the effects of trauma and their relatives alcoholism and addiction and suicidality, and ultimately has a far higher likelihood to attempt suicide. or be murdered.
Indigenous people continue to honor the Mniconju actor and call for justice
this is not a hypothetical lakota man. justice for Cole Brings Plenty now, and remember that your campaign to guarantee freedom from medicalized coercive assignment of sex and gender needs to also defend the gender expression of native peoples.
the crisis of MMIW and MMIP directly reflects how limiting and violent white colonial expectations of gender and sex are for First Nations, pueblos originarios, indigenous, native, and American Indian people.
These people really have no soul, the most beautiful future they can imagine is just brands. it's sickening. they want to control the world and make it all exactly the same as the cultural wasteland that is the USA. [link]
i think there is a phenomenon where sometimes a trans person will go “hmm. i am treated as a man when it is convenient for others, and a woman when it is convenient for others, and often as a freakish third thing excluded from the advantages of both. surely, because of the gender binary, the Other Type of trans person experiences the opposite: they reap the benefits of maleness and femaleness at once.” like babes no they can do it twice
your teens are for repeatedly not killing yourself. your 20s are for having intellectual pretensions. your 30s are for making a reallyyyyy good cup of chai masala
Every time I have an extra day off I always just think to myself 'wow look how much I can get done if I don't have to sacrifice 8.5 hours of my day to work' and like that applies to every day of my life that I spend shuffling numbers around on the computer.
Like I actually enjoy number shuffling, I'm weird like that. But I drilled a hook rail into a door and built a vegetable trug and set up a squirrel feeder (so they will hopefully stop targeting my bird feeders) today and that was about 20x more enjoyable and useful than my standard workday.
So. You know. 4 day work week or universal income or whatever the fuck.
Like call me crazy but maybe everyone should have free time whenever they want to do whatever they like actually, and that would be a net good for society
