#>misogyny leads to ftm transition | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

human-person · 20 days

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The reason why gender dysphoria is treated with hormones and surgery and body dysmorphia not is because they work differently ("you'll find another insecurity to fixate on within a week" points to BDD even if she didn't name it).

Gender affirming surgery like mastectomies and SRS all have extremely low regret rates and positive results, that is why it is seen as a solution to gender dysphoria. (1, 2, 3, 4) That is why just about every medical institution in the world approves of them as treatment.

Medical intervention for BDD has very low improvement rate, (5) even for minimally invasive procedures (6).

And this is one route that can lead TERFs to conspiracism.

Either they admit gender dysphoria is effectively treated by gender affirming surgeries (which undermines the narrative of insecurity, mutilation and manipulation),

or they come up with some reason why researchers would lie about gender surgery specifically, but not about more widly seeked procedures. Something like "the medical/research establishment is corrupt by genderists/TRAs/degenerates".

But they probably don't care about how effective it is. They can explain that, in an ideal world, no one would transition because there would be no gender or misogyny (impossible to prove), and so, doing SRS or related surgeries now is bad (regardless if it helps people and harms no one in the actual world). Which is ridiculous if you just think about it for two seconds.

Below are the links with the relevant excerpts.

(1) "The subjects proclaimed an overall positive change in their family and social life. None of them showed any regrets about the SRS"

(2) "Results indicate that testosterone treatment in FTMs is associated with a positive effect on mental health on measures of depression, anxiety, and anger, while CRS appears to be more important for the alleviation of body dissatisfaction" (CRS = Chest reconstructive surgery)

(3) "Incidence and prevalence of applications in Sweden for legal and surgical sex reassignment were examined over a 50-year period (1960–2010), including the legal and surgical reversal applications. A total of 767 people (289 natal females and 478 natal males) applied for legal and surgical sex reassignment. [...] There were 15 (5 MF and 10 MF) regret applications corresponding to a 2.2 % regret rate for both sexes. There was a significant decline of regrets over the time period."

(4) "At follow-up, 32 patients had completed sex reassignment surgery, five were still in process, and five—following their own decision—had abstained from genital surgery. No one regretted their reassignment"

(5) "Dermatological treatment was most frequently sought and received (most often, topical acne agents), followed by surgery (most often, rhinoplasty). Twelve percent of the subjects received isotretinoin. Such treatment rarely improved body dysmorphic disorder."

(6) "Surgical/MI treatments were more likely than other cosmetic procedures to decrease preoccupation with the treated body part; however, overall BDD severity improved with only 2.3% of treatments. Cost and physician refusal were the most common reasons requested treatment was not received."

#transphobia #TERFism #SRS #Gender dysphoria #transsexuality #transgender

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boytouya · 3 years

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Hello can I request Mirio x ftm reader where the reader is jus having a day and is having thoughts about wether he’s faking being trans or not so Mirio is there to make him feel all better!! Thank you so much I really enjoy your writing!!!

𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐀 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐎𝐟 𝐑𝐚𝐢𝐧

Warnings: heavy talk of dysphoria, slight panic attack

a/n: thank you!! i hope this doesn’t offend anyone, it’s kind of hard to write out what dysphoria feels like, but i tried my best! if this offends anyone please let me know so i can change it! it’s kinda short so i may end up editing it to make it longer in the future, i apologize

Sometimes you wondered if it was worth it. There were days where your comfort clothes weren’t comforting, where no matter how hard you tried you were stuck with the idea that you didn’t pass. If you used makeup because you simply liked the way it made you look you felt like a fake, if it was used to make yourself look more masculine, you felt like a phony. If you hated it with all your heart you thought it was just internalized misogyny. What if you were faking it?

But surely that can’t be right. You felt as though nothing about you was right. You try so hard, so hard it hurts, but it feels like no matter what you’re just dragging yourself down. Why can’t you just be? You know this feeling is common. Other men like you experience it too, but when it’s happening you feel so lonely. Like you were put on this Earth to never be happy. Why can’t you be happy? Why can’t you live without thinking about what a “real man” (even though you are one) would do, why can’t you live without questioning your validity?

You find your binder both tighter than usual but simultaneously much too lose. You’re hyperventilating, but the numbness in your body doesn’t register it. As more rushed breaths escape your body, there’s a soft knock on the bathroom door.

“What’s up, buttercup? You okay in there?” Mirio, your boyfriend of almost two years could walk straight through the door if he wanted, but you could tell he was being cautious. Unable to give a verbal response, you open the door with shaking hands and allow strong arms to embrace you.

“I could hear you through the door,” Mirio speaks into your hair, his grip never wavering. He’s still in his hero costume, and there's a bit of grime on his cheek from whatever it was that he did today. You imagine the way his tongue pokes from his lips as he smiles at children whilst saving him. He truly was your guardian angel, your everything, and as Amajiki put it, your Sun. “Do you wanna talk about it? If you don’t want to that’s okay too.”

You don’t respond right away, instead you focus on Mirio’s heartbeat syncing with yours. It’s hard to muster up the courage to say exactly what you’re thinking. Even to Mirio, who’s someone you trust with your entire life.

“What if...I’m faking it?” Your voice is barely above a whisper, and for once it seems like Mirio doesn’t know what to say. Not until he pulls away with pursed lips. His large hands cup your face and wipe your tears (internally you scold yourself for crying), he needs a moment to gather what he wants to say.

“You’re whoever you want to be. There’s no such thing as ‘faking it.’ No matter what you’ll always be you. I see the way you light up when someone calls your name, there’s no faking that. And there’s no right way to just....be yourself, yknow? There’s no need to confine yourself,” He nods slowly as if satisfied with what he was trying to say, studying your face. “To me you’ll always be (Name). Perfect as always.”

And...he’s right. Although he’ll never understand what it’s like, he manages to break down some of your problems. It would take some getting used to, the idea that there’s no right way to transition, no right way to present yourself. It’s easier said than done, and you wonder if you’ll ever be free from the mental exhaustion of dysphoria and confinement based on it, but you do know that you’re valid. There’s no correct way to be yourself, as you’re already perfect. All you needed was Mirio by your side to be the happiest man in the world. By your side he would stay.

“On my way home I picked up some donuts. A sweet for my sweet?” Mirio jokes, incredibly happy with himself when you huff out a laugh at his pun. You nod with a tired smile. Grabbing your hand, Mirio leads you out the bathroom, away from the bone rattling grasp of dysphoria.

#🥞.mirio #mirio x male reader #mirio x y/n #mirio x you #x ftm reader #mha x male reader #bnha x male reader #bnha x you #x male reader #anime x male reader

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fox-steward · 4 years

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hi, not sure if this blog is active bc im on mobile but you seem v knowledgeable so i hope you are. i have a question if thats ok. ive been id'ing as ftm trans/nb for about 6 years now but havent rlly been able to come out to many ppl or transition at all so im still largely presenting as female. i wouldnt rlly call myself gender critical or anything like that, but i know transitioning is a long & difficult process and im wondering if there is a way to alleviate my dysphoria without going (1/2)

“thru all that. i dont want to transition only to realize that i dont feel better and there was an easier way. in other words, id like to rule out any possibility that im not trans before medically investing in being trans. any chance you have any advice for me? (2/2)”

hey there—still active, if sporadic.

when it comes to healing from dysphoria, there’s no cure-all, no hidden path to healing that you’ve simply yet to uncover. just as there’s no way to guarantee transition will make you happy, there’s no opposite guarantee either. i can only share some of the stuff that has worked for me and some of the hardships i uncovered about living as trans, which i hope you find helpful.

what helps me?

get clear with yourself about what you believe about gender, ideologically. i personally feel, if my beliefs do not stand up to critical thought, if they cannot be supported by rational arguments, then those beliefs are not worth holding on to and i need to let them go. this is what happened to me WRT transness, gender, and all that.

start small—what is gender? is gender innate? do we have gendered souls? how could we have gendered souls if gender is a social construct? okay, so we can’t have gendered souls, so what is gender, if not innate? is gender the social expectations and norms attached to the two sexes? is it possible to break those roles and expectations? does breaking those roles and expectations change anyone’s sex? no—males can behave in typically feminine ways and females in typically masculine ways and that does nothing to change their sex. so what would conceivably make someone (or myself) trans? inhabiting the social roles and expectations of the gender associated with the opposite sex. since we already established that gender isn’t innate and we don’t have gendered souls, there’s no merit in the “born in the wrong body” narrative; it is not possible to be born in the wrong body. we each get one body, no matter how we change it. but if i wasn’t born in the wrong body, why do i feel so uncomfortable with mine, especially with the sexed aspects of it? if you’re female, the likely culprit is misogyny. you don’t actually have to hate women on a conscious level to be suffering from internalized misogyny. we live in a misogynistic world, it saturates everything. if you’re female, it affects almost every factor of how you move through this world—how people treat you, what opportunities you’re given, which behaviors are encouraged for you and which are discouraged, etc. if you are inclined to prefer masculinity—for whatever reason—society will encourage this in males and discourage it in females. having your way of being subtly discouraged all the time can easily lead to feeling disconnected from your body, perhaps even hating it, especially since you know that your way of being would be ENCOURAGED if only your body were male. and that’s when many of us encounter trans ideology that tells us we CAN be male—in fact, we actually were all along! all we have to do is change our bodies drastically with lifelong medication and surgery, all we have to do is trade money and time and health to convincingly imitate the opposite sex—THEN society will finally recognize that our way of being is okay—because we were actually masculine MEN all along, it was simply our female bodies obscuring that. does this feel like a good or healthy trade to you? it doesn’t to me, but i can’t make these decisions for you.

there IS an important caveat, a shortcut that bypasses this bad trade entirely—and that’s realizing that your way of being is ALREADY okay. masculine females and feminine males are healthy and good. it’s not always easy to comfortably BE that way in a society that does not embrace masculinity in women and femininity in men, but the solution is not to change your self, it’s to change the society. and the only way you can do that is by carving out that path—BE a masculine female/woman and you’ll show little girls today that there’s a place for them in this world.

i did try out the trade for myself, however, and i learned a few things you might find useful—maybe these lessons i learned can save you the time and money and pain i’ve already spent.

1) you never actually change sex. you’re always chasing the aesthetic imitation of the opposite sex with transition, but never becoming the opposite sex. in this and so many other ways, transition never ends.

2) passing is conditional. when your sense of self is predicated upon others seeing you a certain way, it can be taken from you in a second. i could be treated like one of the guys for a year, until one of them finds out i was born female. now that he knows, he cannot unknow. now my experience is tied to how he sees me—does he see me as a woman now that he knows? is he comfortable with me in the locker room? it was stressful and uncomfortable for others to have this level of control over my experience of the world and of myself. it’s also out of my control whether he decides to lend manhood to me now—will he use male pronouns with me? will he call me a woman? will he out me to the others? will he sexualize me or sexually assault me based on my female body?

3) as stated above, transition never ends. no matter how well you pass, transition always requires maintenance. you’ll need bloodwork as long as you’re on hormones—that’s time and money you wouldn’t have otherwise spent. you’ll need supplies for your hormone shots—time and money you wouldn’t have spent. there will be instances where you need to disclose your trans status, thus repeating the coming out process infinitely—doctors or EMTs, new intimate partners, friends. this process is exhausting and othering, it’s an ever-present reminder of the fact that you’re trans.

4) medical transition is expensive in terms of money and heath. taking hormones is always a risk. there’s potential for: cardiovascular risk associated with testosterone, vaginal atrophy and sexual side effects, changes to mood (some for the better, some worse), not liking how hormones change your body. then there’s the financial aspect. in the USA at least, this costs money—money for doctor’s visits, money for the hormones themselves, money for the supplies to administer them. there’s risk in any surgery—risk of death or serious complication, loss of function and sensation, improper healing, chronic pain. and of course, the monetary cost associated with surgery. removing the uterus can have lifelong consequences—early onset dimentia, lifelong need for synthetic hormones, osteoporosis.

5) there is no “actually trans.” there’s no meaningful distinction between “true trans” people and others. trans people transition and identify as trans. their dysphoria isn’t any different than mine was. there’s no method for parsing “real dysphoria” from something else. transness is an ideology. i liken it to religion. there are no “real christians” and fake christians, there are only people who believe and those who don’t. that’s the salient difference between myself (detransitioner) and trans people—belief. and if something requires me to believe in it to be real...well that’s a good indication it probably isn’t.

good luck out there. these are heavy questions and weighty struggles. there’s no harm in focusing on other aspects of your life when you’re having trouble answering Big Gender Questions. rooting for you.

#detrans #detransition #radfem #radical feminism #transgender #ftm #non binary #just talkin #gender #asked #answered #anon

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iknowthismuchistrue2017 · 7 years

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My FTM Detransition

This is the story of my own transition and detransition. This is my experience only. I’m not speaking for anyone else.

I’m in my midlife now, and up until about six months ago I knew I was trans. My top surgery and hysterectomy were done almost two decades ago. My name change was legal almost a decade ago.

I’ll start at the beginning. I was born in the sixties in a conservative town at a time when gender roles for men and women were extremely rigid. I know these roles are still rigid, but believe it or not they are less extreme than they were. Growing up it was apparent to me even as a child that I was less than just for being born female. Fathers were proud of their son’s in a way no one was of their daughter’s. When son’s were born it was celebrated, when daughter’s were born it was just another day. Additionally sons had power, they were allowed to be vocal and have opinions. Daughters were seen and not heard.

My mother wanted nothing more than a girl when she had me. She’s told me that by 3 years old she could no longer keep me in dresses, that she would put me in a dress and within minutes she would find me stripped down and dressing myself in my fathers clothing. This was the beginning of the clothing wars with my mother, and I give her a lot of credit for finally letting me win that war to a large extent. She did eventually allow me to wear t-shirts, jeans and sneakers most of the time, though I still had to wear dresses for holidays and events. Those days involved a lot of screaming fights and crying. I was not allowed to cut my hair short until high school, which was another battle and a huge relief when the day finally came.

My friends were all boys. I liked their toys, their games, and playing sports. I felt like one of them, but I couldn’t understand why I didn’t have a penis. So every night I would ask god to please let me wake up with a penis. I don’t recall how long I made this request, but I remember waking up disappointed for a significant period of time. I never had any interest in girls, their toys, or their games. And I found their conversations boring.

Over and over I heard the same things from the adults around me, even some I didn’t know:

“Girls don’t do that”

“Why are you wearing boys clothes?”

“Why are you wearing boys shoes?”

“You’re a girl you know”

And later, “Why do you have a boys haircut?”

Looking back I can see the beginnings of my internalized misogyny. And why would I want to be a girl? Girls didn’t get to wear comfortable clothing or shoes. Girls didn’t have any of the freedoms afforded boys. Boy Scouts went camping while Girl Scouts sold cookies and did what I considered to be boring, and in a skirt! A girl’s future involved getting married and having children, which I had no interest in. Girls didn’t grow up to have careers, they grew up to be housewives doing laundry and making meals and I had no interest in that either. There was no room for me in any of this, so from the beginning I was separating myself from girls and identifying with boys.

At 11 when I got my first period I honestly felt like my life was over. I became very distressed, and cried every month for years, begging my mother for a way to make it stop. My mother would try to comfort me telling me that this was something all girls/women went through, and that just made it worse for me. All I could think was that 12 times a year, for what seemed like the rest of my life I would be bleeding from my vagina. And while I never liked my vagina to begin with because I felt I should have a penis, I now despised it, and it was the start of intense dysphoria which would last for many years. To make things worse my breasts started noticeably developing quite suddenly and my mother decided it was time for me to wear bra’s. My periods were distressing but I would at least get a 3 week break from them. Bra’s were everyday. From the very beginning I felt encumbered bra’s. They felt like a harness around my body, and I longed for the freedom I had when my skin felt free under my t-shirts before I had breasts.

Once I started puberty I was around boys less because I was isolating, due largely to the distress of a changing body and the realization that I was trapped in a body that did not feel like mine and that I did not want. I was not comfortable in my own skin, and I had a lot of self-hatred because of my body.

I also discovered the love I had for women was here to stay. When I was younger I had crushes on girls, but I didn’t give them too much thought because my friends were boys who also had crushes on girls. The only talk of gay men, or lesbians (shims as they were called in my town) I ever heard growing up was mocking and negative, so I kept this secret to myself. In high school I was determined to make peace with my body and spent my junior year wearing make-up and dressing like a girl. I had no friends because I had already be judged a freak by my peers and I became more depressed than I already had been. In my senior year I went back to dressing in a way that felt right to me, back to men’s clothing, with big button shirts over t-shirts to hide my breasts. I had learned to wear sports bra’s in a smaller size to flatten myself.

After high school I went away to college in a major city and for whatever reason ended up quickly becoming friends with lesbians and the lesbian friendly women, without even being aware that this is who they were initially. Then for the first time I began dating woman. I enjoyed this new group of friends, and girlfriends too. I got a fake ID and began going to gay and lesbian bars and a new world was opening up to me. I had transformed into a butch lesbian and it felt like maybe I was coming into my own, sort of.

I did begin to notice not long after was that I still didn’t feel right in my own skin. I was with a group of friends I loved, and had a girlfriend that I loved and yet I didn’t feel a part-of within the lesbian community. I was with women, who were proud of being women. But my body still felt foreign to me. I still had dysphoria. I still felt distress with every single period I had, not only that my periods were heavy, and painful, and a full week long. And I still wore tight sports bra’s to hid my breasts.

It’s important to remember that this was the mid 80’s, long before the internet, and long before the word transexual was used to mean anything other than a pejorative. The only time I heard the word “trans” was in reference to transvestites and prostitutes at that time, and it was used in the most derogatory way.

After 4 years of college in a major city where being a butch lesbian was largely accepted (in the right parts of the city), I moved to another major city. This new city was a big wake up call for me because while there was a large lesbian community, it did not include butch lesbians. I had a buzz cut and wore jeans, t-shirts, Doc Marten’s, and a black leather motorcycle jacket and I was not welcome within this lesbian community. I’m sure somewhere in this new city there must have been butch lesbians, but with no internet I never found them. I tried for a couple of years to make friends within this group and no matter what I did I couldn’t make friends, and couldn’t find a girlfriend for quite a long time either.

I decided to throw myself into my work and became a workaholic. I worked long hours, and 95% of the people I worked with were straight. Once again I became more comfortable with the men I worked with, and generally talked only to the women I had crushes on, some of which I had relationships with. I still had dysphoria, still hated being in my body, and still did not identify with being female. I began distancing myself from being female even more, my internalized misogyny came crashing back, and I was incredibly depressed. Life went on like this for years.

Eventually the word trans became part of the vernacular, and when I was about 35 I had top surgery. This was one of the happiest days of my life. It was the beginning of a journey that was going to help make me comfortable in my own skin. Within a couple of years I had a hysterectomy. The hysterectomy was for medical reasons and not related to my being trans, but that was the other happiest day of my life. Now life was really looking hopeful for me. I still had some bottom dysphoria, but without breasts and periods my life instantly became easier to deal with. I very much wanted to start T, but at the time I had a great job in a somewhat conservative industry that I wasn’t willing to lose at that time. I had already been passing well enough to use men’s rooms and get called “sir” pretty consistently without T, provided I didn’t talk much. But I was leading a double life for years as a female at work and male outside of work, and I was getting tired of that.

In 2012 I started a low dose a T because I was still concerned about losing my job. When my voice started to change I decided to come out to my boss. I lost my job about a month later. A couple months after that I started getting a lot of cystic acne and I was seeing my dermatologist 2 to 3 times a week to have cysts drained. The longer I was on T the more acne I had, and I still was not at a full dose. Other than the severe cystic acne, the other changes I was getting were relatively minor as I already looked fairly male, though I did love the big energy bump I got from it. After another few months both my dermatologist and endocrinologist said as long as I continued taking T, I would continue to have cystic acne. Cystic acne had plagued me through my teenage years and there was no way I could live with it in my 40’s and beyond. I stopped T.

While it was incredibly disappointing at the time to have to stop T, at the same time I felt relief. I can’t exactly pinpoint why because I still didn’t feel or identify as female, but I wasn’t going to actually be 100 percent male even with T. Something didn’t feel right about it.

It’s been 5 years since I stopped taking T, and in most of that time I still considered myself trans until my thinking slowly started to shift without me being completely aware of it. The more I thought about what my identity is, the more I felt like I’m just me. Sure, I was born female, but I’m still just me, and that me is gender non-conforming. Then about 6 months ago I was on YouTube, and I discovered there were other people who had people who had transitioned, but had then detransitioned. And on Tumblr I found more people who had detransitioned. And none of us detransitioned for the same reasons, we are all unique.

And here’s something else, all my life I considered myself a feminist but I wasn’t, I was a misogynist for decades until the pieces started coming together. I was unknowingly lying every time I called myself a feminist. How could I distance myself from being female in every way possible and not be a misogynist?? Wouldn’t it make more sense to be a different kind of woman? I didn’t and don’t have to buy into this antiquated patriarchal system of what is male and female. For me, by transitioning I was buying into that system and I don’t want to perpetuate that rigid binary model. And more importantly, for me that is, is that had I understood at a young age that is was possible to be whatever kind of female/girl/woman, and that I didn’t have to follow the narrow path I was presented with. Maybe I could have been spared a lot of discomfort, anxiety and stress I felt about being born female. It’s not to say I still wouldn’t have been distressed over my breasts because I did feel entirely confined and trapped by bra’s. But it is hard to quantify whether my periods would have caused so much distress for decades because they were abnormally heavy from the start, and I had excruciating cramps from my first one until the last one. And by my mid 30’s before my hysterectomy I was having extremely painful periods twice a month. Just maybe if I had had a normal cycle I would have outgrown the distress, but I’ll never know. And as for my bottom dysphoria it’s possible that had I not felt so trapped by my gender, had I known there was more than one way to be female, had I had more access to sports and parents who wholeheartedly accepted me as different, maybe that would have eased that dysphoria.

This is what I’ve come to take away from my experience. Gender roles are bullshit. Yes I was born female, but I can be anyone I want to be. I don’t have to fit into any kind of rigid role I don’t want to. And I don’t have to take T to try to turn myself into something I will never be. I also don’t regret my top surgery, because who says I can’t modify my body in any way I want to. I can do whatever I want to my own body. And here’s something else that happened on it’s own, somewhere between the ages of 40 and 45 I woke up one day and realized I no longer had bottom dysphoria. I wasn’t working on it, and the only thing I can think of is I just didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care in the same way I don’t care how people read me. I know who I am, and it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.

Maybe all of us who are AFAB could start to embrace our differences and build a better community for ourselves. If we work together and accept each other, we could begin to close the gap in the difference between the way men and women are treated in society. We could stand up for each other and not tolerate being “less than”, and we can demand the respect we deserve.

I’d like to add that I am NOT part of the right wing Christian movement. I am not a republican. I am not against people transitioning because we are free to do whatever we want with our own bodies. This post is my own experience and nothing more.

#detransition #gnc #detransitioning #lesbian

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