What if I said the sudden hate and vitriol towards zutara in recent years is linked to the rise in conservatism… stay with me now… I can’t help but notice it because of the arguments I see such as “Water Tribe & Fire Nation can never be together… it’s way better that Mai & Zuko are married as they are both Fire Nation” or “It’s fine that Katara is a stay at home mom & healer… it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t play a pivotal role, go on to do anything great after the war…”
A Statement on Being Anti-Harassment and Pro-Tolerance in the ATLA Fandom
I think everyone in the Zutara community is aware that there was recently some very targeted harassment directed at shippers on Twitter and Tumblr by an account that has now been exposed as racist—if the behavior prior to that wasn't enough to indicate they were not an individual to be supported in any way, shape, or means. The account in question built a following on quote-tweeting, harassing, and serial stalking accounts of people who’d already blocked her to screenshot their tweets out of context for dogpiling purposes. The following is the final line being crossed: a KKK "joke" next to a Black Power GIF...
There are some that are shocked that such an account could ever think weaponizing the KKK as "slander material" was permissible, to which I think we need to be frank and honest.
Can we agree that she thought racism and anti-Blackness was permissible because her echo chamber had defended and downplayed every other form of bullying/bigotry until now?
DON’T ENABLE HARASSMENT. DON'T DEFEND HARASSMENT. CALL OUT BAD BEHAVIOR. DON'T BE A BYSTANDER.
It is very good to see that people are correctly denouncing her now that she has shown herself to also be anti-Black, but this was a clear pattern of escalating dangerous behavior enabled by a negative feedback loop of support. This didn't happen in a vacuum.
If these statements don’t apply to you, let them fly. All KAs are not a monolith and should not be generalized as such. But there was a sizable amount that were vocally and enthusiastically supportive, and that enabled an environment of monitoring -> screenshotting -> dogpiling -> rinse and repeat. Various tweets that were screenshots/quotes of my moots’ tweets (despite them having the anti blocked) garnered thousands of likes and a sizable amount of retweets, in addition to the many accounts who not only commented in support of the anti’s actions but also sought out the original tweet to directly harass the original poster. This is not a case of just one "bad apple".
"BUT the KKK thing is "too far" like the bar was ever supposed to be "Don't invoke a terrorist organization that still kills Black people." That's not a high bar. That's a floor. And it still had to be spelled out."
Very well said, @kore-dani!
This is the sort of environment the anti built/encouraged and many others eagerly took part in until an undeniable line was crossed. It is horrible that explicit anti-Blackness was what it took for people to see the situation clearly: a negative blight with no place in fandom spaces.
An environment of vitriol and toxicity is something that should be impermissible in every fandom. Harassment, hate, and the constant violation of boundaries stand in direct contradiction to the spirit of fandom itself: a community built by fans for fans to come together to create transformative works such as fanart, fanfiction, fan edits, etc.
Aligning with others based on harassment is NOT camaraderie. It is not community. It is not fandom. Rather, it is emulating this meme in real life:
Ingroups, Outgroups, and How We Become Polarized Because of Tribalistic Mindsets
I'd like to use this as a jumping off point to introduce the idea of how important practicing TOLERANCE is. This situation is a clear instance of Ingroup/Outgroup, us vs. them thinking. The following is quoted from EBSCO's "Research Starters" page on Ingroups and Outgroups:
"Ingroups and outgroups are sociological concepts that describe the dynamics between groups of individuals based on identity and social interaction. An ingroup refers to a group that individuals identify with and feel an emotional attachment to, often contrasted with an outgroup, which is the group that ingroup members oppose or view with resistance. This binary categorization fosters an "us versus them" mentality, leading to loyalty among ingroup members while simultaneously creating misunderstandings and stereotypes about outgroup members. The existence of outgroups enhances ingroup cohesion, as members often define themselves in opposition to others. Social Identity Theory posits that individuals derive a portion of their self-concept from their group memberships, influencing how they perceive themselves and their own group compared to others. Ingroup bias is a common phenomenon, where individuals favor their own group over others, which can manifest in positive self-image for ingroup members and negative stereotypes of the outgroup. Political and social contexts can exacerbate these biases, potentially leading to conflict. Understanding ingroups and outgroups is crucial for addressing issues of prejudice and fostering intergroup relations in diverse societies."
The sections on Ingroup Bias, Moral Authority, and Perceived Threat Among Groups are of particular interest, as well as the mention of Gordon Allport's Intergroup Contact Theory.
From The Nature of Prejudice, a work commonly touted as "probably the most read volume in the history of social psychology", Allport's contact hypothesis essentially states that "tensions between two groups can be reduced if members of one group have positive contact with members of the other." Reading through this study published on PubMed, a database maintained by the United States' NIH, is quite fascinating. The findings are in line with Allport's original claim, and they even discuss how this theory relates to online interactions.
TOLERANCE plays a critical role in successful social contact between different groups. That is further explored here if you're interested. Lest I get more verbose than I already plan to, let's refocus on the topic at hand. Put a pin in the ideas of tolerance and ingroups and outgroups.
Apologizing retroactively for the impact is fine and all, and please hear me clearly when I say I do think many people are being sincere in their denouncement. But we cannot ignore the ill-intent behind the anti's actions including but not limited to serial stalking, harassing, and repeated crossing of boundaries. A situation like this did not just happen out of the blue; it was expected by everyone who knows how to spot bullying and dogpiling behaviors in action.
Quoted from a moot:
“From the very start, the intent behind that account was already nasty but they kept hyping that account up. now suddenly they are denouncing them as if they weren't enabling them in the first place. IDK it doesn’t come off as a sincere reflection on their end. It sounds like they simply got concerned that this is gonna affect their image considering how some of them are saying “We now look as bad as ZKs”. And it shouldn’t have taken this long to call out the bullying.”
Again, I'd like to make an effort to say again that I am not generalizing KAs as one hive-mind that all supported this. But escalation to the point that happened the other day was certainly expected by those of us who watched as people defended her as she emphatically doubled down on justifying her harassment of an Iranian Zutara shipper who'd tweeted about a headcanon over perceived inactivity. This Zutara shipper has "Persian" in her bio. Her display name contains a popular Iranian political rallying cry: زن زندگی ازادی. It's not hard to make the connection that perhaps an Iranian individual might be offline for...BEING IN AN ACTIVE WARZONE? People went to bat defending the anti for this, by the way, which consequently emboldened her.
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
It was this constant positive reinforcement from those who actively supported and downplayed the vitriol she was spewing daily that empowered her to decide that the invocation of the something with the historical magnitude of the KKK was even remotely permissible. Others have covered how the anti's defense of "not knowing" what the KKK was does not check out when taking into account the context of its invocation was as "slander material"(their words, not mine)...
For anyone who does the reasonable thing and looks up supposedly unknown words before using them, here's the second result after the KKK Wikipedia page when Googling "KKK":
This series details the work of the FBI to protect the American people—especially minorities—from the evils of the modern-day Klan.
More resources are linked at the end of that FBI article for those not fully educated on the KKK's role in systematically discriminating against and perpetuating abhorrent and inhumane levels of violence toward Black Americans for the "crime" of existing with different skin tones than the people doing harm unto them.
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
Not so fun fact, but lynching was JUST made a US federal hate crime in 2022. There were over 4,000 confirmed lynchings between 1877 and 1950. Over 200 previous attempts to outlaw lynching had failed. Nothing about the KKK should ever be weaponized in any manner of supposed “levity”. EVER.
There is a clear aggressor AND clear enabling behaviors on display here that led to a line being crossed that should have never been approached in the first place. I do not want to hear anything about “both sides” in this situation. This is real life and real harmful rhetoric was being spread and propagated all over which two fictional characters from a 2000s cartoon two groups would prefer together...
Whatever business Zutara shippers were getting up to on AvatarSpirit.net back in 2008 does not justify harassment in 2026 of people who had no part in that.
Just as KAs are not a monolith, Zutara shippers are not a monolith either.
I certainly do not condone personal/ad hominem attacks directed toward real people over fictional material. Real people matter more than pixels. Period.
Not a soul is asking you to “convert” to ZK over any of this—just that you call out racism/harassment when you see it. Even IF the person in the wrong is someone who ships something you ship: CALL THEM OUT WHEN THEY CROSS A LINE. Never be scared to stand against bullying, harassment, and targeting of real people in the name of…pixels. By being a bystander or even worse, an active participant, you are doing real harm to real people in the name of pixels that inherently can feel no harm by any perceived “slander” (usually just critique regarding a character’s writing or functional role in a story). At this point, I will reiterate the importance of tolerance and respecting people's individual preferences.
Critiquing a fictional character does not warrant personal attacks in retaliation. One person's opinion of your favorite character doesn't diminish your enjoyment of your favorite character. You're still allowed to like them. No one is taking your enjoyment away from you by holding a different opinion.
More on Critiquing Writing Choices and People Falsely Perceiving That as a Personal "Attack" to Themselves Later...
But calling real people SLURS over pixels, attempting to claim that a real genocide is somehow on the same level of importance as a fictional genocide, and generally trivializing concepts like colonization, imperialism, racism, genocide, misogyny, etc. to feel as if you can get a leg up in a silly ship war? I just have to ask—how do people genuinely put pixels over people? That type of thinking reaches a level of disconnection from reality that is hard to wrap my head around.
A Singular Example of the Dogpiling Behaviors Displayed by the Anti and Her Followers: A Case Study in Mob Mentality
Read from left to right, top to bottom. This is just one example of how the anti and her followers were moving DAILY on multiple tweets on multiple accounts. I feel the need to call back to this cycle I already delineated:
"But there was a sizable amount that were vocally and enthusiastically supportive, and that enabled an environment of monitoring -> screenshotting -> dogpiling -> rinse and repeat. Various tweets that were screenshots/quotes of my moots’ tweets (despite them having the anti blocked) garnered thousands of likes and a sizable amount of retweets, in addition to the many accounts who not only commented in support of the anti’s actions but also sought out the original tweet to directly harass the original poster."
Observe that cycle in action here:
Notwithstanding the very casual and unprompted mocking of Zuko's facial difference/disability from the individual in the second row, let's count how many ad hominem attacks Clarissa was dealt by "mariah" all to defend poor Aang (not a real person who can't feel harm, by the way) from a bald joke. 1 + 2 = 5 for some it appears. Or at least five wrongs make a good argument? Yeah...
"Not really??? There's no way you're this ret*rded and you're racist like"
"The airbender culture is very much a real thing? You're playing slow on purpose and yes I'm gonna call you a t*rd because that's exactly what the fuck you are"
No need to commentate on those. I think they speak for themselves. Let's continue on. The number continues to climb.
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
I'm going to ask you to put another pin in the idea of being able to differentiate between fiction and reality, in addition to understanding fictional characters are just pixels. We are getting to that, I promise.
Who Is the Other Dogpiler? The Switch-Up!
Are you wondering "Where did this account with the red profile picture come from? They came in swinging for the fences with the whole "cracker" and "misogynistic" attacks LOCKED and LOADED! What does this account tweet about in their space?”
Duh...duh...duh...
They're all up in the anti's comments.
But not to fear. As quick as that account was to dogpile and insult a stranger on the order of the ringleader, they were just as quick to turn on the deposed ringleader. On the left are tweets of support left as recent as four days ago. Two days later, it's a completely different story.
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
I do not wish any ill-will to this individual. They were just the first account that showed up under the original thread that presented as a prime example of why I mentioned this at the beginning of this post:
Aligning with others based on harassment is NOT camaraderie. It is not community. It is not fandom.
A "friendship" is only as strong as the foundation it was created upon.
REAL PEOPLE Matter More Than Pixels
As to why it is dangerous to treat fictional characters as more important than real people...Grab that pin now and buckle in.
If the insensitive obduracy behind attempting to morally grandstand on serious, impactful, real life concepts for the purpose of fighting other people online over pixels isn’t already evident, let’s put this into perspective using another real life atrocity that the anti and her followers have weaponized. A real, ongoing, decades-long genocide that everyone around the world is witnessing and has bared witness to since Resolution 181 was adopted in 1947.
More than 73,000 Palestinians have been murdered since October 2023, with 922 having been killed since the "ceasefire" was announced last October. Hundreds of thousands are wounded, and countless more are trapped "in an endless cycle of suffering". Almost two million Palestinians have been displaced in the Gaza Strip, in addition to around 40,000 more people in the West Bank. As of 2024, approximately 134,000 Palestinians and Arabs had been killed both inside and outside Palestine since 1948.
In no world will I care more about pixels than the horrors that real people are being subjected to in Gaza 24/7 for the "crime" of existing with different religious beliefs than the people doing harm unto them.
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
Some very broad generalizations are being made here considering Zutara shippers span pretty much every demographic you can conceive of. Indicators that the line between fiction and reality doesn't exist for some of these individuals are on display too. Perhaps they need to check back in like Peeta Mellark post-hijacking on what’s real and what’s not real. Let's see...Peeta says "Fictional characters are NOT REAL."
Fictional Characters are NOT REAL
If you disagree, respectfully get offline and reconnect with real life. Touch grass. Go to a political demonstration, pick up a picket, and put your money where your mouth proclaims to be online. Real life will always take precedence because REAL PEOPLE CAN BE HARMED. Pixels cannot. Real people come first and prioritising real people has no correlation to being allegedly "insensitive to him [Aang] being a victim of genocide too." No one is denying Aang is a genocide survivor, my goodness. These whataboutisms to deflect from any critique about how Aang was written in the story are just about ridiculous.
And really, all of this over some random stranger tweeting about a personal headcanon, a normal fandom activity...You, another random stranger, don't have to like it or support their headcanon, but to call into question a whole group of people's right to live over a cheating headcanon? Get real. Touch grass. Play Peeta's Real/Not Real game.
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
Just going to leave this here...
Let's Be Clear, I Don't Hate Aang
I like Aang. I think Bryke dropped the ball with his arc in Book 3. Critiquing how the Deus Ex Rockina to end all Deus Ex Machinas is a weak writing choice that undercuts Aang's character arc and strips Aang's narrative agency from him isn't "hating" or "attacking" Aang.
Just another reminder, Aang is not real. Everything Aang does in the story is dictated for him by real people making deliberate choices. Aang is a pixelated puppet/vehicle/a plot device that the ATLA writing team utilized to craft a story. Just as every other ATLA character was/is.
Say it with me. Critiquing writing choices is not an "attack" on a fictional character, nor does my opinion diminish your enjoyment.
ALSO, SHIPPING IS NOT ACTIVISM
Stop tying your real life morality to which fictional characters you like and dislike. Stop acting as if your ship of choice means that you are somehow "ethically good" compared to the dastardly, evil, and corrupt "others". I'd ask you now to recall the tribal meme from earlier.
Do you see the Ingroup/Outgroup thinking in this circumstance?
You lot are starting to sound like Javert from Les Misérables. You lot would've HATED Jean Valjean with the way some of you hold such a rigid, black-and-white worldview and moralize every single fanfic, fanart, headcanon, etc. in fandom spaces. ALL NORMAL FANDOM ACTIVITIES IN CASE YOU ARE NEW. The Javerification of fandom spaces. Never thought I would see the day, but I shouldn't be surprised.
Javert would be so proud of us buying into the concept of the social panopticon. Some of you lot are out here policing yourselves and others over thought crimes (aka headcanons). It's absurd to think you can control other people like that. You all make Javert's job easy. SIGH.
Ultimately...
To reiterate, the biggest lesson to be learned from all of this is TOLERANCE. It must be accepted and acknowledged that everyone has their own individual preferences, and that we should respect their freedom to do so even if they are polar opposite of your individual preferences. Don’t yuck on other people’s yum in their clear eyesight. Don't try to police their preferences. Keep it pushing and focus on yourself. And understand that critiquing the writing choices behind a popular, published work in the public mainstream is not at all equivalent to the targeted tearing down of the output of individual fans in fandom spaces. Don't like a fanart? Scroll. Don't like a fanfic? Close the tab. Don't like an edit? Move on. Don't like someone in a fandom? Block and ignore. Don't want to see a certain topic in your feed? Hit "Not Interested" or block the tag.
A lovely meme made by a lovely moot:
Scroll and block if you don’t like something in order to curate your space to your preferences. And utilize Tumblr’s wonderful tagging system. I hope that we can all move forward without constant scrutiny and without approaching one another with an attack-first, consider others as real people with feelings-second mindset. I hope that tolerance can be the word from now on. Happy shipping! :)
One last thing while you're here...
Make sure to drop a like, leave a comment, and support this modern masterpiece of a Zutara art! Truly one of the most beautiful fanarts I've ever seen.
I wanted to do a little compilation of my pride buddies! You can find them on my Redbubble and Teepublic! If you like dragons, gryphons, unicorns or DnD you can find something cute in my pride collections!
If you have a question about a flag not shown please read this before commenting! I appreciate it.
I’m not kidding. This is the time to act. Yes I know it’s short notice , but so is Netflix trying to remove Rise without any heads up. Spread this! Repost it! Everywhere. And I mean, everywhere. TikTok, twitter, Reddit, insta, Facebook. Stream the show/movie all day tomorrow and Saturday. Let’s flash mob this!
We’re going full on guerrilla streaming. Do. Not. Let. Them. Win! Reblog. Share. Fight. Protect the art you love.
the weird thing about being a leftist is the government calling you a radical extremist and your family believing that youre a radical extremist and the whole times your main political beliefs are shit like "we live in a world where we could very easily end world hunger, homelessness, most disease, poverty, ect. and the people in power are choosing not to, and thats evil and should change" and that bigotry is bad
i left a comment under a post saying but i felt like that wasn’t enough to get this out of my chest so i’m repeat it now: those men do NOT give a fuck about women, let alone indigenous women.
no, them fighting for kataang to be endgame over zutara (what people love to deny even though the writers had talked about that many times) has NOTHING to do with them making an statement on indigenous people not getting paired with their oppressors or to frame this beautiful love story between these two genocide survivors or whatever the lies this fandom likes to spread to pretend bryan and mike are better people than they actually are.
they have reiterated with the new movie they do not care about katara being a genocide survivor, i dare to say they don’t even perceive her as such; in lok and the comics there this big emphasis on rebuilding of the air nomads but zero attention to the southern water tribe because — i can’t stress enough — they do not care about katara, they do not care about survivors and they do not care about indigenous culture or people.
yue, another one of the few indigenous women on the og cartoon wasn’t even on the original plans and she’s killed off just after being introduced.
hama, another survivor of the swt genocide is completely demonized by the writing, there’s no deeper discussions about the times she endured pushing her to creating bloodbending or the possible usages of a technique like that but nooo, she’s just evil.
ozai, the main villain on the cartoon is treated with more grace than her, even mai and ty lee are never showed regretting and reflecting on their acts, they just suddenly with good guys and that’s it (and before someone says “oh they’re just teenagers” well, so was zuko), iroh (who’s a war criminal btw, i like him, everyone likes him but he is) is already redeemed by the beginning of the story, zuko’s arc is all about redemption but none of this grace for hama though, yet i’m suppose to believe these two white men in mid 2000s had this deeply understanding about being a genocide survivor and their opposition of zutara was motivated by that.
the thing is, bryan and mike are very open about why they prefer kataang and dislike zutara, the reason being: because kataang fits their fantasy.
this is literally what they had to say about katara and aang’s dynamic:
the older and more mature girl who finally comes to see the hero not only as a hero, but as a grown up like her, her love being the validation for his maturity (usually without presenting real development), her interest on him being the confirmation he grew from a boy to a man.
them saying they wanted the """nice guy""" to get the girl over the """bad boy""" has nothing to do with morals and everything to do with the incel rhetoric women go for men who treat them badly, their literally claimed on that stupid and immature video zutara shippers (mostly kids and tweens at the time may i add) will end up in disfuncional relationships, this is their vision on women.
katara for them is a prompt, she serves to set a message about aang and when he’s out of the picture, she doesn’t serve them anymore, that wouldn’t be the case if they really cared about indigenous women like people on the internet try to pretend they do, they wouldn’t dismiss her feelings about her mother’s death and act like aang was tHe aNgEl oN sHoUlDeR or whatever that bullshit was, they wouldn’t have aang scream to her face she doesn’t understand what is to be on his position in the new movie if they cared about genocide survivors.
stop using indigenous women as token, especially if you’re going to turn around and attack women of color you’re pretending to care about oven an orientalist kids cartoon you swear is the pinnacle of writing.
The art here is rushed, but I’m happy of how it looks so far. I know i just started & I think the whole situation has died down but I’m really having fun doing this. So I might keep going until I burn out honestly.
You think Bryke are insecure about so many of the original female fans (a lot of the original fans in general) preferring Zutara and disliking Ka/taa//ng because it destroys the fantasy they're trying to create to heal the psychological wound they still carry from the time the taller older girl they had a crush on turned them down and started dating a slightly older sensitive broody bad boy archetype who was taller and more attractive than them? (Not saying Zuko is a Bad Boy, I think that's a mischaracterization.)
Like they see how many girls and women look at Ka/taa/n/g and say "she would not fucking do that" and it breaks their fantasy because it's a bunch of girls the same age as the girls they got rejected by reminding them that they're delusional and that 14 year old girls are not attracted to prepubescent 12 year old boys who force kisses on them?
And every time they have to think about the popularity of Zutara it is another gut punch to their inner 12 year old boy who is still not over their unrequited childhood crush? Like it just keeps reminding them that in no situation would 14 year old Stacy from next door have wanted to date a 12 year old them no matter how mature she realized they had become? And that she'd still be picking Brad the 16 year old emo boy every time? Even if they had superpowers?
Like they're very aware of the fact that they're two middle aged men saying "And then the pretty 14 year old girl fell in love with the short 12 year old," and that every 14 year old girl is collectively telling them that that would never happen and they're weird for thinking it would, and that's gotta have been dealing significant psychic damage on them over all these years.
From the ATLA dvd commentary, “The Southern Raiders” episode, Book 3, episode 16.
Ew, angel on her shoulder I STG.
Like how backwards is it that the commentary on this episode (THE episode for Katara personal development, and the friendship between her and Zuko), that these guys make it about Aang?
They talk about Aang’s idealistic personal beliefs and how his preaching of them to her is paternal??? And no, he doesn’t tell her to do what she has to do, he makes an assumption of what she’s going to do and tells her what she should do. He doesn’t hear her out and totally ignores Katara’s need for closure. He gives her no credit to make her own decisions here.
That doesn’t mean that Aang’s words were wrong, and Zuko and Katara accepted that.
But it’s the way Aang put it on her that seems icky, like he didn’t trust her to make the right decision. And if she had killed Yon Rha (which I don’t think was ever on the table), Aang would never have forgiven her. Full stop.
This is another (obvious) reason why Zutara shippers cite the shit out of this episode. Zuko makes it clear that he will accept Katara regardless of her choice. He literallyy watched her bloodbend and never mentioned it again, and didn’t question her decision at the end. He was simply there for her. No platitudes, no lecture, no grandstanding or assumptions. He understood she needed to face the man that killed her mother and he trusted her to decide what to do from there.
At the end of the day, this commentary shows that Bryke and Ramanos also gave Katara no credit. They didn’t trust this character (that they spent the last 2.5 seasons building up), to make a good choice.
The most crappiest explanation of how souls work in my rewrite/au thing burning passions
So burning passions is basically a world rich with so much storytelling within the universe itself so there's so many stories to really focus on but the main thing me and my friends really had fun with is the world building itself and how so many afterlives are involved however were just focusing on the main three Wich is heaven, purgatory and hell, Wich the souls are known as saints the damned and sinners
Quick explanation on why the souls in purgatory are called the dammed instead of the sinners having that title is for lore implications but I can explain that leaving purgatory is actually a lot more complicated- (basically heaven close it's doors and will only open if the damned find some way to get a human to bless them to heaven even though most souls don't follow that religion)
Hello my name is Aylool and I live in Gaza. I turned 1 in September and that's where my name comes from.
I love to play like taking my mom's lipstick, getting stuck in my milk carton or annoying my sister by taking whatever she has, I'm only small 🙃
Hello my name is Aylool and I live in Gaza. I turned 1 in September and that's where my name comes from.
I live with my mom, dad and big sister who is 2.5 but life is very hard for us here. We are living in a tent which gets so cold at night-time, wet in the rain and full of insects.💔🙏🏾
Because we have no proper hygiene, Me and sham keep getting sick with bacterial infections in our stomachs, lungs and skin. Every time we get sick our mom builds up debt trying to get the right medicine for us and it us very stressful.
I hope you can help us with whatever you can, just to try and keep us healthy and safe. Our mom worries about keeping food in our bellies and clothes to keep us warm and your help would make such a difference to our lives.
Please, I desperately need it, no matter how small.
TRANS WOMEN: HERE'S SOME SHIT YOUR DOCTOR WONT TELL YOU ABOUT HRT
1. Progesterone: not for everyone, but for many people it may increase sex drive and WILL make your boobs bigger. Also effects mood in ways that many find positive (but some find negative). Most doctors won’t prescribe this to you unless you ask. Most trans girls I know swear by it.
2. Injectible estrogen: is more effective than pill or patch form. Get on it if you can bear needles bc you will see more effects more quickly.
3. Estradiol Cypionate: There is currently a shortage of injectible estradiol valerate. There is no shortage of estradiol cypionate. Functionally they do the same shit.
4. Bicalutamide: This is an anti-androgen that has almost none of the side-effects of spironolactone or finasteride. The girls I know who are on it are evangelical about it.
Are there HRT medications that don’t increase blood clot risk? I’m already at risk because of my blood pressure, and my doctor won’t prescribe HRT that increases clot risk while I’m on the medication - and I may never not be on the medication.
The concerns surrounding venous thromboembolic events as a side-effect of hormone replacement therapy can mostly be traced back to one particular study known as the Women’s Health Initiative. This study was an enormous undertaking which, unfortunately, demonstrated significant adverse effects of the hormone therapies studied. As a result of this the use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal cis women was dramatically reduced as the medical community began to question whether or not the therapy caused more harm than good.
Naturally, trans women have been suffering from this fall-out ever since.
What physicians seem to fail to recognize is that the study examined a very specific hormone regimen which was, arguably, outmoded at the time the study was conducted: It examined the use of conjugated equine estrogen (Premarin) with or without the use of medroxyprogesterone acetate. Neither of these drugs is regularly used for the treatment of transgender women.
The estrogen most commonly used to treat transgender women nowadays is 17β-estradiol either in pill form or in the form of a sticky patch that you apply to your skin. Esters of estrogen (e.g. estradiol valerate) are also sometimes used either in a pill form or as an intramuscular injection.
Transdermal estradiol patches are the gold standard when it comes to treating women who are at high risk of a venous thromboembolic event. It simply does not increase the risk of developing a venous thromboembolism. The only thing you should keep in mind is that patches are not always well tolerated because of the lifestyle changes required to keep them from falling off and the fact that they tend to irritate the skin.
Fortunately, oral 17β-estradiol appears to be safe, regardless of the increased risk. At least one large study has shown that the use of oral estradiol in trans women is not associated with venous thromboembolic events. An individual woman’s risk would need to be substantial in order to contraindicate the use of oral estradiol.
For those who have significant risk of venous thromboembolism because they have had a previous thromboembolic event, because they are paralyzed, or because of some other factor it is good to know the relative risk between oral and transdermal estrogen. The latest research indicates that the use of transdermal estrogen lowers your risk of a thromboembolism to 80% of what your risk would be using oral estrogens.
It’s difficult to find hard numbers regarding the relative risk of venous thromboembolic events with regards to hypertension. The best I could find after an hour or so of searching was this study regarding VTE in lung cancer patients. Hypertension increased the risk by a factor of 1.8.
However, to put that into perspective being of African descent increases your relative risk for deep vein thrombosis by a factor of 1.3 when compared to Europeans. Europeans are, themselves, at increased risk when compared to Asians and Pacific Islanders by a considerable margin: a four-fold increase.
I should point out that being ‘male’ is also a risk factor for developing a thromboembolism and hormones are likely to be a contributing factor. Also, menopause is another serious risk factor. Given this information it is likely that the use of transdermal estradiol will lower your risk of thromboembolic events significantly.
As far as the anti-androgen is concerned: The primary use for spironolactone for cisgender people is as an antihypertensive.
Even if the risk of thromboembolism was truly significant with modern hormone replacement therapy it wouldn’t justify what your doctor is doing to you. The fact is that mortality in the transgender community from suicide–caused in part due to the lack of access to hormone therapy–is substantial. The quality of life lost when a trans woman is denied hormone therapy is substantial. The fact that your doctor does not appear to be taking this into consideration when they weigh the risk of thromboembolism against not receiving necessary medical care is deeply concerning.
I strongly recommend that you seek a doctor who is more sensitive to your medical needs as a transgender woman.
I could never hate Caine because I know what it’s like to have existed for years, trapped within an unhealthy environment and to be burdened by dysfunctional relationships.
I could never hate Caine when I too was in the position of seeking validation from those around me in order to feel that I had worth.
I could never hate Caine because I too know what it feels like to experience abandonment and neglect, and to be slowed in my neural development.
I could never hate Caine, because I too have been mislabeled, misjudged, and presumed to be terrible things by those who didn’t understand me.
I could never hate Caine… because I relate to him with every fiber of my being.
I could never hate Caine because I know what it’s like to be told something, and forget it multiple times.
I could never hate Caine because I know what it’s like to run afoul of rules you didn’t even know existed.
I could never hate Caine because people assuming you don’t care about them when you actually do, you just can’t, or have a hard time doing it in the particular way they want you to, is a really shitty experience.
I could never hate Caine because being very assured for years that your life is “supposed” to go one way, then finding out you’re ill-suited for it SUCKS.
But most of all, I can’t hate Caine because CANONICALLY HE WAS LOVE-STARVED OF EVEN FRIENDSHIP FOR TWO DECADES.
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