dandelion

that is a great diagram, though I can find it confusing and hard to read - it does quickly show how complex the situation can be. I found it helpful to have an expert walking through this diagram and showing its meaning, that's when it finally clicked for me.

Yes, such a great one - it's so hard to believe that gender dysphoria is real, people seem to want to think it's just delusions or trauma or anything but what it is.

It's incredible to me that the conservative medical establishment has endorsed gender affirming care and transition for trans youth and adults in this country, over centuries and decades trans healthcare has developed to this point while the culture at large continues to lag behind.

It is like the gradual process of (largely Christian) scientists ruling out creationism over a period of centuries and decades, but we're in a time still when the majority of people still believe in the religious explanation rather than the scientific one.

It makes me feel like I'm living in a kind of medieval era of sorts, when people are still largely uneducated and in the dark, a time when the gap between what humanity has discovered and what most people know is huge.

I still can barely believe it, lol

yeah, I get that. Taking estrogen will change the way you look - one neighbor of mine told me he thought I looked 20 years younger, this was after taking estrogen for 6 - 8 months, lol. So cis people may be more clueless than you think, but at some point it will be an issue - and it definitely would be best to trust your family and be able to transition openly with them.

Though I just realized - family could mean you are married and have kids, or it could mean you're young and haven't left home yet - and those are two different situations, much easier to leave your family if you're not the parent 😅

oh, Japan - interesting. Are the friends all Japanese, or are they ex-pats like you?

I live in a very conservative part of the U.S. where women do not seem to bring up boobs much - I've had some discussions with my sister about our boobs, and even pre-transition I've had discussions with a particularly open friend about boobs and nudism / naturism - but I've never had a woman ask to touch my boobs or offer for me to feel their boobs 😅

I'm pretty insecure about my boobs, they are small for my frame (though maybe larger than a lot of trans girls I know, women in my family tend to be large; a trans girl friend of mine has indicated she wishes she had more boobs after seeing me).

that is a great idea! Rent out a pool or field, provide a safe space for trans participation in sports - I love it!

yes, it wasn't until I transitioned and read all the studies about shared genetic causes of gender dysphoria and autism, and the high overlap between the two that I finally took seriously the feedback I had been getting my whole life that I might be autistic - so my own proprioception issues might also be linked to neurodivergence. Estrogen seemed to help a little bit with my proprioception, but I am still clumsy and my spouse has noted that it hasn't been fixed by transition.

I do feel like you that my body just feels too large, and I do think that's part of why I run into things - the hormones haven't fixed that, so maybe that's a life sentence, unfortunately. And "damned flesh prison" is pretty much how I would describe my body since I was maybe 15 - 17 years old? But hey, still cis tho.

just one step at a time, and just keep in the right direction - with persistent effort and action you will get there, in the meantime hang in there 🫂

Ohio isn't ideal, but it's totally possible to get on estrogen with DIY vials, and the right hormones can really make everything else easier, but I understand if it's complicated 😅

If anything I think my heat tolerance might have worsened, lol

yes, such a good point, even recognizing there is a choice of conforming or not is beyond some people's awareness (especially I think in more collective cultures, whereas individualism lends itself to people prioritizing their desires over social expectations).

I do think a lot of gender norms and roles are arbitrary (like blue for boys and pink for girls, or women only in the home and men only at work), but I suspect humans do have what we might categorize as hard-wired gendered behavior as well (though with considerable overlap, the idea of strict differences without overlap is just not evidenced).

Otherwise I'm not sure gender dysphoria makes much sense, since it seems to be a natural phenomenon rooted in the biology and found throughout human history and across cultures, and is even found to be genetic. That said, gender dysphoria is still worked out in a social and psychological context and is not pure biology either, so a lot of what you are saying here is relevant about how arbitrary social norms can be.

that's a good one, I like to send people the Nature article "Sex redefined", which talks about how binary sex is an outdated model.

I do just feel more comfortable, estrogen seemed to "fix" my temperature - no more sweating through my sheets and leaving a yellow stain on my bed 🤢 As I first started estrogen, I was shocked at how animal-like it seemed like I was on testosterone, the way my body stank, the excessive sweating, and so on. Becoming a woman was like becoming human, is the way it felt to me.