OK good it’s a relief you have that contingency in place. it sounds like you have a really good support system in place and i’m really glad to hear it

so i guess i’ll leave you with my best advice for getting through the time until you start HRT:

really sit and internalize that you are a woman. you might think of it as, the way you look right now, on the outside, is not very much like a woman. in a way, it’s the least you’ll ever look like a woman. but regardless, you must internalize that you are a woman

which means confronting all of the internal biases you have about what a woman looks like. about facial structure, about facial hair, about your facial hair, if you have it. the way your body looks

you are a woman.

it’s hard and it’s painful to confront these things. but it’s important, not even every cis woman looks how they want to, or might look manlier than they want. but they are still women, and so are you

obviously, you shouldn’t come out anywhere you feel uncomfortable or unsafe. but, in the places you feel safe, you should be open about your identity. it’s nice to be affirmed. if you can find community irl, that would be helpful, too

you’ll probably have to work through a lot of internalized transphobia. i know i did, it took me a long time, and i’m probably still working through things

but it’s so so so so SO important to internalize that you are a woman regardless of how you look

it is the antidote to the kind of mind poison that comes from scrolling transition timelines and comparing yourself to faceapp

so many trans girls i know look amazing and beautiful and still see a man in the mirror

start seeing a woman in the mirror NOW, so when you start HRT, you can truly appreciate all of the little changes it bring. or if you get surgery or whatever

you can only see a woman in the mirror when you start telling yourself the person in the mirror is a woman

when you feel that bite and sting of dysphoria, remind yourself that you are a woman

you are a woman. now, before the HRT, before you look how you want to look, before everything - you are a woman

godspeed, i hope everything works out for you

i mean, if it’s really that important to you to have kids, that’s cool. it’s a tough spot to be in, but it probably is simpler, in some ways, to wait it out for a couple of years and bang out the kids and then transition

but, if you’re already feeling this strongly after a month, i think you should really assess how realistic it is for you to make it through several years. yeah, it sucks for you to give up your life goals, and it sucks for your wife too, but sometimes we wake up and discover we’re trans and that’s life. you can transition and adopt, or not actually have kids… these are still options that you should at least consider on the table

i think, ideally, IVF would be the route you take. maybe you could take out a medical loan for it? idk if they make non-predatory medical loans, maybe it’s something you can look into. and you can just accept if it doesn’t work, natural pregnancy might also not work, there’s testing you can do for that too

anyways, obviously you’re not gonna sort this out in one post, and you gotta sort it out with your wife, too. like i said, really tough situation. just remember, you need to survive it for it to be a viable option. you getting one or two kids in and CENSORED’ing yourself is a non-starter. be honest with yourself and what you can handle

(when you start using language like “i feel trapped in this body”, it’s very concerning for thoss kinds of feelings)

are you actually OK with putting off your transition to (presumably) have kids? a lot of people have commented about faceapp being bad, and they’re right, but this seems like it’s indicative of deeper dissatisfaction to me

the person who mentioned freezing sperm has a good point, it might get you where you want to be sooner

while i can appreciate that you’re at least respecting that medication choices are between a doctor and a patient, i would love for this myth that ADHD meds are meth to die.

it’s incredibly frustrating to see this sort of misinformation perpetuated. it is not difficult to search “differences between adderal and meth”, here’s one such link if you’d like: https://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/how-do-adderall-and-meth-methamphetamine-differ#differences

there is only technically ONE ADHD medication which is meth, which is… methamphetamine, and as i understand it, it is prescribed very rarely and is quite different from illegal meth

adderal, ritalin, and other less frequently used stimulants are not called meth because they are not meth

this misinformation is harmful because it perpetuates the idea that illegal drugs are the same shit that people are taking for treatment, often for necessary functioning or quality of life, and also perpetuates the judgement of those people for taking those important medications. these associations or judgements can make. people reluctant to get diagnosed or treated, which can prevent them from living their lives to the fullest

on its 50th anniversary, let’s all remember that microsoft has been profiting massively off the genocide in palestine and has recently been targeted by BDS: https://noescapevg.com/xbox-has-been-added-to-the-bds-list-so-what-now/

kinda more like all the fingers merged into one innit?

posts picture of hand with all the fingers merging into one big finger

i think that they probably had some sort of choice, but i imagine they also needed to work to live, right? very few places in the world let you have food and shelter for free, so i think there’s at least some of an argument that doing this stuff is forced in some way or another. plus, it might (have been sold as) paying better or being safer than the conditions they had previously

they’re hardly the only ones to work in unethical (or downright criminal, depending on how you view it) fields. and i’m not sure holding them in crowded, filthy conditions like this, where they’re spreading disease among each other and sharing something like one toilet to 80 people, makes amends for what they’ve done, or even makes the world a better place

i just think we can wish for justice while still acknowledging that people are deserving of some basic amenities for being people

… can a brother get a source on this??

it… works but it doesn’t work nearly as well as discord for gaming screen sharing, at least with the bit of testing i’ve done with mh wilds

i need to get like this echidna

so you would rather be perceived as a gay man than a straight woman?

yeah i’ve decided to leave this community based on essentially the same thing you’ve described. i mean i know people are shitters on the wider fediverse, but i figured the places beehaw federated with were at least decent

i guess not

also, the whole thing of “bot is obviously a drag alt” smacks of the same prejudiced “only one person could have a weird gender identity, it must be the same person”

could y’all please stick to talking about how someone behaves, not how they identify? it’s not that fucking hard

when ppl pretend to be a gender online because of comfort, it seems to me that they feel more comfortable as that gender

i would do some real reflection about this. you talk about gender dysphoria but you don’t make any mention of gender euphoria. do you know what that is? it’s the other set of traits to look for when considering if you’re trans. one of those is feeling more comfortable in a given gender than your assigned gender at birth. another is feeling a sense of wholeness or happiness when picturing yourself with different sexual characteristics. sometimes that also presents as feeling sexually aroused when picturing yourself with those traits

why did you want to avoid being straight so badly?

i think online spaces are good places for exploring your gender identity and i don’t really think it was wrong or disingenuous. you feel like it was, because it’s pretend for you, but it’s offering you a real sense of warmth and comfort, so i don’t see an issue. obviously, please treat the trust that other people may grant you, given that label, with care. be a good person with it, and if they become close to you, consider explaining your situation to them, before misunderstandings can happen

identities are free to take and wear as you please. you don’t owe anyone dysphoria or a desire to transition to be trans, or to be that identity everywhere at all times. it’s just seems to me that you identify as a man/demiboy/etc online, and that’s cool

oh my fucking god i’m so pissed on your behalf, that’s such bullshit!!!

(also a rant, on a related but separate topic) holy FUCK along the same lines, i really hate it when people lurk in the parking lot waiting for someone to leave so they can park there! like wow, yeah, impede the flow of traffic and pressure the person leaving to hurry so YOU can have that space

i hate it so much, it makes navigating an already-packed grocery store even worse. the ppl at costco are SO bad about this 💀💀💀 just go park further away, you already have a minute long walk to the store, another minute won’t kill you!!!

this is my personal bar for whether someone is a good person or not :)

(exception for anyone who legitimately needs the closer parking spots but cannot get the disability parking spots for whatever reason. but they are a TINY minority of people)

can we at least get a content warning on this shit

actually yk fuck it the mods here suck anyways, come join us at onehundrednintysix instead, i should have unsubbed here already

i’m (probably) not as old as you are (>5 years on T/in my thirties) but i cannot imagine stopping testosterone would help you at this point

the target is on, essentially, “people who look trans” (so, including non-passing trans people, as well as gnc cis folks or folks who tend towards androgeny in genetics or hormones). we have always existed, and there have always been, passing trans people. part of our survival has just been… passing, and only engaging in intimate relationships with trusted people

you would, in my opinion (without seeing you), more likely “fail to pass” as a woman instead of as a man. you didn’t really talk about this much in your post, beyond implying you’ve been on testosterone a long time, but if you pass consistently as it is…

holy fuck, NO, DON’T DE-TRANSITION!

presumably, you have facial hair, you might have top surgery, you probably have the muscular and fat distribution of a man! why would you spend probably two years, endangering yourself as you detransition, for something that will (hopefully) at least be tempered in four years?

if anything, my bigger concern is just staying supplied with testosterone until the end of the term. if i run out and start detransitioning, not only am i going to be depressed as fuck, but also i’ll likely be in much more danger that way, especially 6/12 months in

(and i don’t want to downplay the trouble that chenical dysphoria invites either, good mental state is absolutely a boon in surviving dangerous situations)

if anything, now is the time to figure out how to secure your testosterone supply. if your papers all have your updated gender, and your current supplier is on your side, see if they can adjust your diagnosis from gender dysphoria to hormone imbalance. at least on paper. otherwise, see about securing local sources of testosterone from your supportive community, or do some reading into crypto and finding an online source for it (which will always be around, albeit expensive)

i’ve also lived a hard life and i also would detransition if i had to, to survive. however, my assessment is that, given that i already pass completely, it would be a huge mistake to try to preemptively detransition. and honestly, i’m grateful for that. those of us who are earlier in their transition, or whose presentations lean more non-binary, have a much harder assessment to make

and, as fucked up as it is, we can use our powers as cis-passing men to speak up for those of us in more vulnerable positions. it does everyone good to have more of us in those positions of power

it’s good to have that additional context. it’s interesting to see how federation affects moderation and the issues that can present and how it aggravated the differences in moderation approaches

that said, even rescinding my argument about whether they were moderating, we’re still left with obvious ideological differences that would be bad to disastrous for the community in a place as active and ideologically unaligned as lemmy.world, nevermind the clear contempt that the mod team has shown for the community’s own preferences and safety

as an aside, thank you for the moderation work you do on this instance. while my interpretation that the c/196 mods were doing nothing was incorrect, it seems plain to me that your moderation style was still a good influence on the community (albeit at the cost of extra workload for you). it’s always good to see you around and i appreciate your presence and effort

thank you for providing the link to the source

it’s really incredible how the more i learn about the situation, the more the current mod team just seems like a complete mess

i’m from beehaw and i support our decision to defederate from lemmy.world, and honestly, i agree with ada’s moderating decisions. i don’t come to 196 to deal with people “just asking questions” or getting transphobic trolls coming in and CERTAINLY not cis people whining about how they don’t get their good boy ally points

especially if the post about you leaving 196 reports to languish unattended to is accurate (it’s from another user on this post who i can’t see while on beehaw, i’m guessing they’re from a defederated instance. they quoted ada, but i couldn’t find her comment as a source, so i don’t know if it’s real)

if that’s real, we barely know what your moderation style is, and i’ve been giving you false credit for ada’s good moderation

please see the comments for ada’s clarification about the moderation workload (tldr is that the mods are not native to blahaj.zone, so reports might be addressed on other instances but not blahaj.zone, frequently leaving ada to deal with them, aggravating their differences in moderation styles)

so we have reason to doubt where your moderating priorities are, you disagree with noted Good Judgement Admin ada, and you unilaterally decided both to move and where to move the community without consulting anyone first

from my vantage, you couldn’t even protect us on world if you wanted to, and it really doesn’t seem like you want to, either

i think the actual respectful thing to do at this point is to just step down. y’all have disrupted this community enough. there are mods who are interested in, and understand the values of, this community. values that you don’t seem to share

let them take over and have things return to normal. make a /c/196 on world if you want, it sounds like there won’t be a lot of content to moderate anyways