this is so true, I had always thought of transition as impossible, but now I regret waiting so long - what I would give to have transitioned 5 or 10 years earlier …

That’s wonderful!

Even if you’re closeted and unable to transition, have you considered taking DHT blockers like finasteride to stop the hair loss?

Hang in there, I hope your conditions change so you are able to transition soon 💛

I’m so sorry 🫂

That’s such a tough story - especially that the surgeon made it worse. Was the vaginismus like involuntary contractions that created too much resistance for the dilator?

And I assume the surgeon might have had some solution for you if covid hadn’t happened?

This is just heart-breaking Ada. But I’m impressed by your healthy and adaptive mindset about it.

Has there been any thought about seeing the surgeon again or looking into rehabilitation, or is it easier to have moved on?

<groan>

Lemmy can’t resist a good bean joke, can they?

ah, I could easily see that happening to me; every day the largest dilator is just so uncomfortable and it takes so much time and pain for it to stretch everything out, and doing that every day multiple times a day could be quite a burden.

I completely understand getting exhausted with that task and not prioritizing it - that’s fair. This was a concern I had for myself, I even considered a shallow-depth / vulvaplasty for this reason (and I mean, there are so many reasons to do it - fewer risks, faster recovery, etc.). I’ve had struggles with executive dysfunction, so I was really concerned.

I’ll just have to see how it goes - but I’ve also been told that maintaining width is really up to the individual. There’s no imperative to maintain a given width, and I’ve heard of people slowly stretching and getting width back after they paused dilation for a long time.

I’m not sure how you feel about giving up on dilation, but it seems like it might be less of a big deal than some people make it out to be, at least.

Either way, thank you for sharing your experiences - I’m so lucky to be able to learn from you. ❤️

I’m so sorry to hear that Ada :-(

Do you remember when the scarring became evident, and what that timeline was like? I’ve heard tightening and scarring can happen after, and to expect to lose depth as a result - just not sure when to expect that. I’ve been using the smallest diameter dilator (Purple, 1 1/8 inch or ~2.8 cm) for the first 5 minutes to open up the canal and maintain the max depth I can (so far that’s up to the 5th dot).

It’s hard for me to tell with my own situation - there is certainly a significant tightness down there, especially with the Orange dilator (it’s my first full week with that size). It can take me maybe 10 - 20 minutes sometimes to get the orange dilator as far as it will go (which is usually with the 4th dot as far as the inner labia, and the 5th dot as far as the outer labia and the 3rd dot no longer visible).

Stretching a piercing doesn’t sound entirely outside what I experience - tense and uncomfortable describe some of my experience, I just don’t think it’s half as painful as, for example, anal sex has been for me. I was surprised by that I guess, maybe I built up dilation to be not just a day-long exhausting chore, but an intensely painful one as well.

I’m so glad you were able to get the surgery, you have mentioned it was a long term desire. Honestly it feels like a complete fantasy that this is even possible. This surgery has been one of the most difficult challenges in my life, yet I agree that it’s life-changing and entirely worth all the suffering and effort.

Alan Moore agrees:

https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/watchmen-creator-alan-moore-hates-superhero-movies-1234591751/

“I haven’t seen a superhero movie since the first Tim Burton ‘Batman’ film. They have blighted cinema, and also blighted culture to a degree,” Moore said. “Several years ago I said I thought it was a really worrying sign, that hundreds of thousands of adults were queuing up to see characters that were created 50 years ago to entertain 12-year-old boys. That seemed to speak to some kind of longing to escape from the complexities of the modern world, and go back to a nostalgic, remembered childhood. That seemed dangerous, it was infantilizing the population.”

they might try to rationalize their discrimination, and they might attempt to make it logical for application in law and other contexts - it’s important to show the irrationality, not because I expect the bigotry and discrimination to be rational, but because so many others might think it is rationally defensible and not see the contradictions. Not that hypocrisy dunking is always effective, but it’s at least worth pointing out.

“They confirmed that I need to wear a female swimming costume despite having to compete with the men, which ‘outs’ me as a woman who is transgender,” Coombes told the Reading Chronicle. “I explained to the person on the phone that they are not allowed to do that, and he didn’t have an answer.”

so she’s a woman enough to be required to wear a women’s swimsuit, but not woman enough to be allowed to swim in the women’s competitions?

it is a fairly complex topic, I think McBride sides with the moderate and centrist Democrats and aligns with political pragmatism that tends to be business friendly and puts ideology aside in favor of deal-making.

On the one hand pragmatism makes sense because politics is about outcomes, and without deal making and compromises nothing happens.

On the other hand, being fundamentally pragmatic means being willing to compromise on anything and a dynamic can arise that allows for a race to the bottom such that the outcomes that are achieved are too far away from what is acceptable, and what is sacrificed is too much.

Furthermore, McBride has an extra burden as a trans woman to signal her loyalty to the pragmatic, more conservative Democratic leadership so she isn’t left out on the assumption her identity aligns with the Progressive Democrats who are more ideological in their commitments (and who are more vocally pro-trans than the rest of the party) and are thus more demanding and less interested in compromising (which can be used as a political strategy itself to influence the Overton window, etc. - but which can be politically risky if by not compromising you don’t get any of the outcomes you needed).

… was that a drag pun? well done. 👏

yes, she sees herself as a kind of martyr and victim of a witch-hunt, which does change how she responds to the cultural backlash she receives for her behavior.

Telling someone there is something wrong with them because they are trans, when their experience of gender is perfectly normal, will not support their mental health.

The only tension here is that even if we lived in a fully trans-accepting society, people with gender dysphoria (unlike being gay) would still requires medical treatment (much like any other endocrine disorder).

It’s great to recognize trans folks as a part of the natural biodiversity of humans, but there are limits to that claim.

This article’s main concern is how the RNZ article handled reporting trans issues, from OP’s link:

The RNZ article is peppered with subtle and overt suggestions that being trans is a problem, reflecting an outdated treatment of trans people within Western medical science.

As far as I can tell the RNZ article does not directly depict being trans as a problem or pathology as much as they tell a story that indicates the teen’s trans identity was not authentic or legitimate, quoting from the RNZ article:

Their only child was able to keep them at a distance on the grounds they did not accept the teen was transgender - an identity the parents say the teen later abandoned.

However, the couple allege that while attentive to their child’s gender identity, various care professionals failed to adequately respond to the threat from a long-standing eating disorder.

…

At high school, she was also introduced to the concept of gender diversity and at some point in 2021 became non-binary.

Vanessa adopted a gender neutral name (“V”) and pronouns, which were used by staff and students.

However, Catherine said immediately after a messy break-up with the boyfriend, Vanessa started identifying as a boy.

At home, the arguments were now about gender identity as well as food, with Vanessa/V accusing the parents of being transphobic.

“She tried to ‘educate’ us by sharing influencer videos. She said she must be right because all the health professionals and online articles agreed with her.”

Some clinicians quickly affirmed V’s boy identity.

However, Catherine said the teen’s long-term psychiatrist was sceptical.

"The psychiatrist advised us that Vanessa was using the transgender identity as a mask for her continuing anorexia - that Vanessa was saying the reason she didn’t want a curvy, female body was not because she was suffering from anorexia, but because she was really a boy.

“The psychiatrist recommended not affirming Vanessa’s transgender identity.”

…

However, her parents said subsequently, Vanessa phoned her father and then her mother to say she was “seriously questioning the ‘gender identity thing’” and wanted them to know she was indeed their daughter.

…

Catherine said it appeared there was “wilful blindness” on the part of those professionals, who were so focused on affirming Vanessa’s gender identity, but did not pay the same attention to the eating disorder which would kill her.

Mostly the article comes across as conveying the skepticism around the trans identity, highlighting that before V died they reversed their trans identity and reaffirmed their assigned gender.

I think the RNZ article does come across as dismissive, but not necessarily as pathologizing, unless I’m missing something. A charitable read is that they are highlighting the need for clinicians to better parse gender dysphoria from other psychological issues, and to take those seriously, but I tend to think articles like this are not being written about the way people are getting misdiagnosed one way or another and not given adequate psychological treatment - autism mistaken as OCD or ADHD and so on - so reading between the lines I see an attempt to write something that can be used to credibly stoke moral panic about and undermine trans identities with the public - using the death of a single individual and making the argument that this was caused by too much focus on gender identity allows audiences to easily draw their own transphobic conclusions.

With the gay rights movement, didn’t the gains of activism consistently stay ahead of public opinion? It seems like public opinion lagged behind the changes, it wasn’t until the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage that it seemed like there was a cultural shift.

I think “inclusive” in the context of a women-only community means it’s a women’s space that doesn’t exclude lesbians and trans women (or other LGBT+ folks who feel they belong in a women-only space, like some enbies and so on).