I forgot that it’s my mega week so no big info dump this time. Instead I bring a question: how do you practice gender self-care? Do you have any activities or rituals that make you feel more comfortable in your gender? Painting my nails and taking care of my hair are the most consistent ones. These shouldn’t even be considered gendered activities by society, but I missed out on having long hair and painted nails when I was younger because of my assigned gender, so doing them now feels validating and gives me confidence.

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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It’s for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.

Here is a screenshot of where to find the spoiler button.

spoiler

  • gaystyleJoker [she/her]@hexbear.netMEnglish
    4·
    9 days ago

    HELLO THIS IS THE MEGA SIGN UP POST/LIST POST

    if you have a preferred week please tell me

    Alisu* (6/15 - 6/21)
peanutbuttercupola* (6/22 - 6/28)
Disaster_of_Passion* (6/29 - 7/5)
Eco* (7/6 - 7/12)
nemmybun* (7/13 - 7/19)
Shaleesh* (7/20 - 7/26)
SwitchyandWitchy* (7/27 - 8/2)
Busgirl* (8/3 - 8/9)
GayTuckerCarlson* (8/10 - 8/16)

    ​ * after name denotes someone who has posted before and will be skipped by first-time posters

  • SerialExperimentsGay [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    26·
    13 days ago

    Honestly, demanding of trans women to assume good faith from men instead of thinly veiled transmisogynist hatred is, in itself, a form of structural transmisogyny. To request that we remain civil and polite and keep smiling in a world that wants us dead is violence.

  • tithonis [she/her]@hexbear.net
    25·
    13 days ago

    It took two years but I have a job again. Hell yeah.

    Gender self care for me has been learning about transfeminism and refusing to tolerate disrespect. I’m done being treated like I’m less than. People love to tell women to shut up, they especially love to tell trans women to shut up. Especially people who wouldn’t tell other women to shut up. We all deserve better than that.

  • EstraDoll [she/her, he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    10 days ago

    funny side effect of being trans woman: After decades of my life spent not being a girl and living in total jealously of women, I routinely cannot believe misogyny is a real thing. Like, logically I know that many people genuinely hate women, but emotionally I actually struggle to believe it’s true. I can hear people say explicitly misogynist things and all I can think is “there’s no way he actually thinks that, right? that’s just a bold statement for attention, he can’t genuinely believe that” and no matter how many times I tell myself “no they genuinely think that” I just emotionally don’t believe it. Women are obviously so much better than men, right? those are just sour grapes 🙄

  • GayTuckerCarlson [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    21·
    13 days ago
    harassment from men

    Men who go to bars should have a bomb implanted at the base of their skulls and every non male patron given the detonator

    Nothing makes my skin crawl like some gross old man fucking grabbing my shoulder while walking past

    “Have a good night”

    DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIEDIE

  • BountifulEggnog [it/its, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    20·
    12 days ago

    I’m feeling a lot better about my body. I still don’t really love the overall picture but, there are a lot more features that are good then I thought/noticed.

    Also took a picture last night and my tits look fucking huge.

    • SerialExperimentsGay [she/her, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      18·
      13 days ago

      You’re not being dramatic, people who obsess over our genitals are a plague. Honestly doesn’t matter which way, but after half of my friend group got bottom surgery and i’ve seen over and over again how many gatekeeping hoops we had to jump through, how much work friends of mine who went for vaginoplasty instead of an orchi still put into recovering, how much relief the entire thing brings them and how little cissies understand any of that, i have a particular soft spot for the girls who’ve gotten their soft spot. Not to discount the struggles of any woman with a dick, i’m one myself, i have to worry way too much about that, but i’ll fight tooth and nail for my friends who fought for their right to have a pussy. It’s just nobody’s business what’s in our pants. Even people who want to date us hands-down don’t get to ask anything besides “do i have to keep bottom dysphoria in mind or not”. That’s literally all that matters when somebody wants to go down on a trans girl and if they wonder about anything else they do not deserve to breathe the same air as us.

      • rando895 [she/her]@lemmygrad.ml
        16·
        14 days ago

        Ngl after being sexually harassed and sexually obsessed over, getting bottom surgery is going to bring me a level of peace I didn’t expect from it.

  • nemmybun [she/her, sae/saer]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    10 days ago

    I really need to stop playing incremental games, it’s adhd bait. Something about the combination of numbers go up and extreme micromanaging short circuits my brain

  • XiaCobolt [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    17·
    11 days ago

    I got my Estrogen implant this morning!

    So Australia is a bit odd when it comes to feminizing HRT. We have all the tablets, gels and patches that are used in menopause treatment for cis women. But we don’t have easily available injections. This is because no pharmaceutical has bothered to get Therapeutic Goods approval in Australia because the market of trans women is presumably too small. So many trans femmes do DIY injections if they want them. Or they can be made by a compounding chemist (who crunches tablets and blends them into an oil suspension), but that’s expensive with a poor shelf life (taking away two really good things about injections).

    But our endocrinologists fucking love implants for trans women. Which is weird because implant are considered a bit niche the rest of the world. It’s probably in part because we had a trans woman who was an endocrinologist in the 1980s (which is wild) who advocated them heavily. They’ve fallen out of vogue for Cis Women in menopause too. But this means I got a GP to put an implant in my butt today.

    I have been on progynova sublingually for 15mths. Most doctors won’t do an implant until you’ve been on a year. Ostensibly this is make sure you tolerate the estrogen, I think it’s because Cis people are squeamish about less reversible forms of HRT. Because it’s not easily reversible. It would need to be fished out under surgery instead of just being stopped. Which is super cool.

    I got 200mg put in (2x100mg implants) which I paid about 200 Australian dollars from a compounding pharmacy. It cost 280 AUD for the GP to put it in my butt. They gave me local anaesthetic. Made a 1cm cut. Pushed them in with a device, then put a single dissolvable stitch. On the surface this is a lot of money. But with two implants I’m probably going to have high levels of estrogen for 12-18months straight! The doctor said I shouldn’t check my levels for 3-6 months because I’m going to be at pregnancy levels for a little while!

    Right now I’m sitting a little sorely, I kind of feel great, but it’s probably also placebo.

  • BountifulEggnog [it/its, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    9 days ago

    BountifulEggnog’s hot take of the day:

    ALL trans people should be required to take a 4 week course in endocrinology specializing in sex hormones OR listen to an autist yap about the subject for 6 hours. Sick of trans people I love getting fucked over because they didn’t know better.

    BountifulEggnog’s COLD take of the day:

    All endos should face the wall

    Slightly hyperbolic

  • MeetMeAtTheMovies [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    16·
    14 days ago

    I have a friend who has come out to me as trans several times but he insists on just ignoring it and not doing anything about it. Any time I discuss anything serious with him he tends to stop responding or change the subject. I’m not sure there’s anything I can do and it hurts.

    • BountifulEggnog [it/its, she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      14·
      14 days ago

      I definitely understand why you’d repress, and it took me a solid year before getting on hrt because I’m a coward. But at the same time knowing how much worse things will get if you do is what broke me out of it and now I feel way better.

      Definitely sucks to see someone do that, one of the most self destructive things you can do TBH

          • MeetMeAtTheMovies [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
            10·
            14 days ago

            I was in a situation where I wasn’t transitioning “to spare my partner” is what I would tell myself. Rapid fire 6 months of the most effective therapy I’ve ever participated in:

            1. I can’t control how people react to me
            2. Trying to please my partner all the time was denying them the chance to meet and know authentic parts of me
            3. Avoiding transition “for their sake” was denying them a chance to authentically react to my situation and process those feelings
            4. Acceptance that their reaction may go the other way is distinct from pessimism that their reaction would go poorly

            And then in retrospect, despite some initial bumpiness and thanks to some consequent couples therapy, any initial negativity has been replaced by genuine acceptance and enthusiasm. And I found that despite that, I still had the hesitancy to put effort into my transition. The hesitancy I think for me comes from a place of internalized transphobia more than anything.

            I’m not saying any of this is a one-to-one fit for you but’s it’s my experience and what you said reminded me of it.

          • tithonis [she/her]@hexbear.net
            7·
            13 days ago

            I gotta say, having spent far too long in a relationship with someone who didn’t respect me for who I am, and speaking on behalf of everyone I know who has escaped a similar situation:

            Whatever the consequences are, staying in the closet/tolerating the abuse any longer than you absolutely have to is so, so, so much worse than you think it might be. ::: spoiler abuse It took me a year to escape once I had my mind made up for good. I’d known on some level I needed to get out for a few years before that but I was isolated from my friends and family. I tried to proceed in secret, things blew up anyways, and now a year out on the other side of it I finally have a life worth living. :::

            Do whatever you have to do, for you. Transitioning will show you really quick who your friends really are and aren’t. Someone who loves you won’t demand you stay in the closet for them.

          • peanutbuttercupola [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
            7·
            14 days ago

            It sounds like waiting 6 years has not been an effective strategy for you - maybe you should try making some small changes and see how you feel about them. A month of HRT, for example. Some makeup to make your face more masculine or feminine. New name and pronouns. Things of this nature.

            • MeetMeAtTheMovies [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              8·
              14 days ago

              Some of the most life changing advise I got was that the effects of estrogen are reversible for months, but you’ll start to feel psychological effects within weeks. I felt them within days, easily. Like just the idea that HRT was something you could experiment with rather than something that had the finality of a definite decision.

              • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@reddthat.com
                7·
                13 days ago

                That was an important part of it for me trying it out and I had similar experience with knowing it was for me way before any physical changes happened. Still knowing I would eventually take it to experiment was long separated from actually taking it because I was still worried about work and thought I’d save up for a couple more years just in case. Fortunately, some other stuff came up and I decided I’d be starting very soon.

    • WalrusDragonOnABike [they/them]@reddthat.com
      9·
      14 days ago

      That’s how I was for about 2 years (and to some extent still have been for the last two years other than hrt). Not sure there would have been much anyone could do. The only times I would really do something remotely resembling doing something was events where costumes were a thing and I could get sometime nudging me along.