If you have ever attempted to change your name you know it is way more annoying to change your name than accept someone else’s change of name. The amount of admin it takes to make that update in your social circle even before you try and make it legal is a test of social fortitude and willpower.

Remember when someone is changing their name they are very aware of the imposition of the mental load they are placing on you. Grace goes a long way.

The word in trans communities for this is “ew-phoria”. Calling it a fetish is also kind of… Not great. Fetishes are tied into sexual gratification and gender euphoria /dysphoria is an independent mechanism that ties more closely with identity. It doesn’t make trans people horny and the idea that that’s what is what is happening is used often to trivialize trans experiences.

Think of the typical nature of being cis as (mostly) ascribing no value to sexually dimorphic physical features. Like you can have feelings about whether those things are attractive and the validation you receive for meeting a social standard but that’s an external reinforcement system working its way inward.

Being trans is the opposite. Every sexual characteristic is not value neutral. Perceiving sex characteristics in relation to yourself either makes you feel amazing like someone has shot dopamine directly into your soul or bad like you are not actually a human. All forms of perception of these characteristics causes this effect and it is automatic and instant. Logically even if you believe these things should be valueless, obtainable by all genders if you have this feedback system you don’t get to decide on how or what these things make you feel or in what proportion. The source of the feedback is entirely internal which is why it is often is at complete odds with external systems of validation and if you tried to logically explain it or lessen these feelings with logic you often just can’t. The heart doesn’t only want what the heart wants the heart has a shock collar on you.

In the case of facial hair particularly because it’s not something you have to experience with your eyes to know it’s there touch is fundamentally important. Remember dysphoria is more than being strictly about being perceived by others it is about being perceived by yourself. Other people looking at you and using your pronouns is just another way of perception of yourself. Like other people performing the job of being a mirror. Experiencing your own body however is in things like how you move, what bits of your body bump into things, your height, your weight distribution. Imagine if everytime you touch your face the slight scratch of the existence of thicker hair caused your neurological system to fire depression meds directly into your system. That’s what’s happening. Touch perception.

Sometimes this internal reward systems finds things about a social portion of experience that people that sucks really bad but because it equates to other people reacting to your body’s sexually dimorphic characteristics when it happens to them it hits the same feel good button of other positive external recognition by a third party of having those sex characteristics.

So even while you experience the massive illogical dopamine hit from the internal reward system you can recognize logically at the same time that the phenomenon causing the reaction is a societal problem that is bad and should not exist.

Hence Ew-phoria.

Okay. Can we take a minute to just acknowledge that this comment has a little neurotypical ableism and regional bias? Some people literally need more context than others do to understand the tone of a text. Just because you do not need that assistance with context clues in play doesn’t mean everyone also doesn’t need that.

Kindness and extending a little help costs us so little.

Look beyond the meme my friend. When you exclusively start talking about the science of the matter or taking it to mean that the responsibility should be exclusively shifted to men you are ignoring a generation ls deep frustration pregnancy capable people have been experiencing on this subject. You end up implying through negative space that this is a responsibility that should stay in the camp of women- and women have been more under attack for their reproductive choices.

Women’s frustration with the attitudes of men wanting to control their bodies is valid. What this person is doing is returning a little of that. What other women in these comments are seeing is men react like you are here and that sends an unconscious message that the underlying problem is not one that is going to be addressed because unless the problems they are routinely subjected to specifically targets men, men won’t care.

Just because someone gives you a certain energy doesn’t mean you should add to it or return it. Intended or not you start making yourself look like an enemy. Sometimes you have to see beyond the conversation being had and realize to what use your commentary is being put. You are falling into the hands of the poster by being made to look like the worst sort of man.

Okay… so? We’re supposed to feed into this premise by making seem like how women’s birth control is more nessisary and softly validate the idea that men don’t care and can’t be bothered? There’s not an unfair stereotype out there that there’s a lot of men being very callous about not wanting to take any measure to protect their partner if it inconveniences them too much while female hormonal birth control is known to have a bunch of horrible side effects that their relationships just expect them to take on so both partners can have fun.

Under those conditions it does not to me feel unreasonable that women get embittered by having to behave like all the unfair sacrifice for making sex safe enough to participate in is falling on female shoulders at present. Feelings don’t care about facts and strictly debating the scientific difficulty of the task is missing the point where the feelings that create this sort of post are coming from.

Barrier protections are great - but have one of the highest perfect use condition failure rates against pregnancy. If you used them under perfect condition correctly every time there’s still a 2% chance of failure every time…

Typical use however like, people hurrying, using bad technique of application or removal, improper sizing, not inspecting them before use or using expired product or other sundry defects of the condoms themselves means condom’s real life failure rate condition is about 18%.

Not to knock the condom but it’s not foolproof. Even paired up with the pill which has a decent track record when under perfect use conditions but one of the highest rates of imperfect use because of missed or improperly timed doses you still are rolling the dice.

Let’s lay some ttrpgs here. Everytime you have sex under that pairing it’s like you are rolling two individual dice. Let’s take the typical use of condoms and the pill. Roll a six sided die to represent the condom and a 10 sided die for the pill. If both die show up with a 1 then you get a pregnancy. Not bad odds until you realize this is repeated every time you have sex.

Adding another die to the equation in the form of a hormonal birth control for the other partner alters the chances to be more airtight. Also sometimes you as the male partner might want assurance because you generally don’t know of your partner is taking their pills right.

Counterpoint to your counterpoint- no form of birth control has a zero percent failure rate under perfect use conditions and not all women respond to all forms of birth control well meaning pregnancy capable people cannot take perfect control of their family planning choices without the extreme surgical intervention of a hysterectomy as even getting medically sterilized in other ways can potentially undo itself. Doubling up from both sides means a much lower chance of failure rate resulting in life changing or difficult consequences and distress on behalf of the partner who faces higher risk outcomes.

Doing your part in a relationship’s reproductive planning is good partner behavior. This shouldn’t be a game where just one person is on the hook and the other is just along for the ride. Male and Female birth control do not exist as a one or the other dichotomy. Stoking division of the sexes over which one is more nessisary is counter to the real point. These are tools couples can use together to be safer.

Hey, non-binary person in one of the most trans places on the planet. I have in the past 8 years of Pride events and non-binary meetups met only about three people who ever attempted to use a neo-pronoun and only one memorable person who wanted to be called “puppy”. They were like 16 and by the time they were 20 they’d cringe at their past behaviour.

Some people are weird. Particularly when they are on the internet. They are usually young and most of them would make it through maybe an irl day being called “dragon rider” before the effort it takes to keep that up would wear them down.

I imagine the closest we are gunna get modern wise is Ostrich meat which tastes like the midway point between chicken and beef.

As part of the trans community in Canada it’s devastating watching our American kinfolk suffer. Because of the Safe Third Country Agreement American citizens cannot claim refugee status here. I have been writing to every politician I can to try and punch out an exception. The minute I can I am opening up my home to as many folk as I can.

I feel validated in an opinion I have had for ages : that in all the talk about 2nd Amendment rights Americans do guns are nothing but a security blanket they clutch to make them feel like Democracy will be saved or be maintained as long as they clutch their emotional support weapon. They will watch rights be stripped from them, their neighbours carted off in wagons and none of them will shoot even if they have the weapon on their person while this is happening. They will protest, they will write and verbalize their dissent and they will appeal to authority and band together democratically but the ownership of the weapons themselves are useless. Realistically if someone from the government comes for them they will likely go quietly because no one is coming to save them. At that point it’s basically over. The system is too big to fight.

The real resistance is in numbers not armaments. It doesn’t matter what you are wielding if you have solidarity and organization and the bravery to misbehave. Resistance can be in attacking the gears that make things run by not doing your job or doing it poorly. Refusing to comply in a multitude of ways like sending things to the wrong place or making ‘mistakes’ that cost time and effort to fix. A government can only force compliance so much and at the end of the day runs on good faith. Guns are a distraction to jingle in your face so you stay isolated. Building walls between you and other humans with dreams you will defend your own little fort against the tides of tyranny.

The person who is ridiculed because they are different, disowned from their families because they can’t meet the demands of pretending to be someone they are not, denied the social accommodation that makes their lives comfortable, refused housing because of how they look, denied the health care that helps them feel centered because it creeps out the people who do not have their condition… How can their mind be still?

Trans health is dependent on the people around us the same way your health is dependent on the people around you. Trans joy is as possible as trans suffering. The difference is in other people allowing it to happen.

Sad part is it doesn’t matter if they retract the news statement people are already thinking the guy is some kind of trans avenger or something. The trans people are enemies part gets screamed. The “it was a mormon cis guy who has the parlance of the average 22 year old internet troll” gets whispered real quiet.

The issue here is that on Monica’s side the punishment was disproportionate. She isn’t some rich, powerful person who could withdraw to her ivory tower. She was 22 and made the kind of mistake 22 year olds make and that is what she gets to be known for forever. Think about a 22 year old in your life and the resources they have at their disposal. She went back to her parents place, buried herself away from the world and tried not to commit suicide as all of media took turns making jokes about her being an easy slut. Her day to day life for decades was virtually destroyed with her being barely able to form a career or new relationships. She stopped being a person and endured a prison without a cage.

Clinton got a formalized process and quietly withdrew into absurd wealth while the media by turns gave him largely a pass for being a dog once the process of getting him out of office was done.

Whatever Gods or Devils punished Lewinski they’ve exacted their due ages ago and kicking people who have already hit the floor hard isn’t morally healthy. Nobody needs to continue to hold Lewinski accountable anymore. She served her time.

Why is the assumption by these people that there is a sexual component required in the explanation? Age appropriate explanations are easy.

“Know how some families have one mommy and one daddy? Some families have two mommies or two daddies instead.”

If the kids ask about the actual mechanics of procreation they are old enough to hear something like:

“Some couples adopt or they find someone to have a baby with who helps them make a family.”

Was there any need to mention surrogacy or donors? No. Kids don’t need to oversexualize queer people. Adults don’t need to over sexualize queer people! When people are sheltered from our existence until they are in their early teens they tend to think of gay couples as explicitly just sexual relationships rather than romantic or family building ones that are as dynamic as straight relationships because they were introduced to them as a sexual mechanics first kind of way. It’s dehumanizing.

The “right” shy of outright fascists are neoliberals. The term was coined in the eighties and describes a system that like Liberalism classic works primarily off of an idea of a protected class of citizen (as opposed to lesser protected classes of non-citizen) with a series of fundemental “rights” to basic protected freedoms from government interference and choice of “style of life” based around a personal property centric system.

Where Neo-liberalism differs is it detests the welfare state, seeks widespread government deregulation as they see it as an economic deficit, practice widespread government austerity in public programs and seeks to privatize swaths of government services to create new market sectors.

Neo doesn’t mean new in a “of the minute” kind of way. The people who came up with the distinction between liberal branches were describing the likes of Ronald Regan and Margret Thatcher.

Mostly realizing that masculinity really is what you make of it. It doesn’t need to be aspirational and probably shouldn’t be. You are a man regardless of whether you fit anyone’s expectations of that or not and the more people you find to become friends with who accept this radical fact the more comfortable you are to express masculinity without boundaries. Being able to be fully real without pretending to like or hate anything because you are “supposed to”. Being able to express a full range of emotion without fear and talk about it occasionally. Not being held to a standard of sacrifice of the self for meaningless prizes which hold no lasting value.

Secondly - sometimes comfort is a trap. We seek comfort as a natural instinct and to have it sometimes is a good thing… But to find it and expect to live in it all the time makes your world smaller. Over time you lose the functionality that allows you to make changes and do the things that you need or want to. Pushing out little by little into the uncomfortable slowly expands the space and duration in which you can be functional and comfortable. Doing things you don’t like, make you self conscious or put you temporarily in an environment that tires you out is training your mind to be tougher and more resilient. Go without comfort sometimes, treat it as exercise or nessisary medicine. Self-care is one thing but self-coddle will make whatever you tell yourself about not being able to handle things true. It is a sedentary lifestyle of the mind. Find a medium between points of comfort and vistas of discomfort to venture into and you will find less things hold you back, more stories you will have to tell and the more life you will feel like you have lived and the more rewarding your times of comfort become.