Not too long ago, my friend Bella came out as aromantic to me, and now I’ve got some things to say.
I was the one who told her what aromantic means, because I was explaining different sexual orientations to her. I remember saying, “Asexualiy is when you have romantic attraction, but no sexual attraction.”
Bella immedently, without missing a beat, asked, “Is there an opposite to that?”
I asked what she meant, and she asked if there was a term for sexual attraction but no romantic attraction. I told her about aromantics. She got weirdly quiet, then excused herself.
Not two weeks later I was heading to my boat. I was supposed to meet Bella and another one of our muteral friends there for a day of fishing.
As soon as I was in earshot, I saw Bella storming off the boat, and our other friend standing there like an idiot. Boi had no idea what was happening.
Anyway, Bella isn’t looking where she’s going and walks smack dab into me. That’s when I realized she was crying. Puffy red eyes, wet cheeks, the whole nine yards… And if you know anything about Bells, she does not cry. Ever.
She’s been through some serious crap in her life, and she does not cry. She’s tough as nails. Bella has a steel core. She does not not cry. I’ve seen her fall off a roof and break her arm before, not a single tear. I can’t stress this enough, Bella. Doesn’t. Cry.
So seeing her in tears shook me. I took her by the shoulders and escorted her somewhere more private where we could talk. We ended up in the women’s restroom, which was weird as fuck for me, because haven’t been in a woman’s rest room for years. Luckily it was empty, and I’m realistic, I know I don’t pass so well, so I don’t think anyone would have said anything anyway.
Before I can even ask her what’s wrong she hugs me around my middle and burys her face in my hoodie. Then, in a voice I can only describe as traumatized, she says, “I think I’m broken.”
I’ve never seen her in so much pain, and Bella and I are CLOSE. She’s one of my dearest friends. She’s like my little sister, but if she’s like my sister, our other muteral friend is like her twin. He and Bella have know each other WAY longer, they’re practically inseparable. They come as a pair. They’re a duo. They’re a package deal.
Appearently, said muteral friend asked Bella out and forcefully kissed her. She shoved him off, and told him she’s aromantic, which she only recently figured out. She wasn’t ready to be out, but this muteral friend left her no choice. She tried telling him no, and he didn’t listen. Bella saw no other option.
Quote on quote, this is what he said to Bella. “That’s okay. You just haven’t dated me yet. We’ve been like, unofficially together for years. You’re probably just freaked out that it’s finally going somewhere.”
After that I’m not 100% clear on what happened, but apparently Bella kept saying no Nd trying to explain herself, but he kept insisting he could ‘fix her.’
Eventudally she started crying and stormed away. That’s when I found her.
Keep in mind, this was her first experience coming out, and her best, closest friend insisted he could fix her and forcefully kissed her. I found out later he also implied corrective rape would ‘solve the problem.’
Bella was traumatized. She’s still traumatized. I tried to make her feel better by buying her an aro pride shirt, and taking her go a local LGBTQ+ hang out. I wanted her to be around like minded people, so she could see she wasn’t broken, and her identity deserved to be respected.
Instead of a warm, welcoming environment… The first thing someone said to her was, “This place is for REAL lgbt people. You don’t belong here.” He also implied she wasn’t human.
Just think about that for a minute. Her first experiences with being an out aromantic have been limited to;
A person she trusted more than anyone forcing himself upon her, claiming she was ill, and needed to be fixed. (Raped.)
Sobbing in my arms in the women’s restroom because she thought she was broken and defective.
Being told she wasn’t welcomed in LGBTQ+ spaces and called inhuman.
This isn’t what I want for her. Bella deserves better than this. She needs a support system, not all this crap. I’ve spent the past week trying to undo all the damage exclusionists, arophobes, and people she trusted did.
Aromantics and asexuals belong in the LGBTQ+ community. You literally cannot change my mind.
Did I already queue this? Dunno. But let me say that I’ve never stood by while gatekeepers try to well, gatekeep.
I didn’t put up with it as a teenager really into sci-fi, I didn’t put up with it from the dude bros in game and comic shops, and I certainly won’t stand for it in my LGBT+ community.
Aces and aros are welcome in my community.
You bet your ass that aces and aros are allowed here. And you can fight me if you don’t agree.
I literally dont know how i can make this any more clear. Asexual and aromantic people belong in the LGBT community as much as the rest of us. And before your dumbass pipes up “but not cishet aces”, first of all fuck you. Secondly, they are NOT HETERO. They are Asexual. Which literally negates the idea of them possibly being heterosexual. They are not heteromantic. They are Aromantic. Which literally negates the idea of them possibly being heteromantic.
Support aces and aros this pride season.
I lose followers every time i reblog this. Good. Aphobes can gtfo my blog.
1. Progesterone: not for everyone, but for many people it may increase
sex drive and WILL make your boobs bigger. Also effects mood in ways
that many find positive (but some find negative). Most doctors won’t
prescribe this to you unless you ask. Most trans girls I know swear by
it.
2. Injectible estrogen: is
more effective than pill or patch form. Get on it if you can bear
needles bc you will see more effects more quickly.
3. Estradiol
Cypionate: There is currently a shortage of injectible estradiol
valerate. There is no shortage of estradiol cypionate. Functionally they
do the same shit.
4. Bicalutamide: This is an anti-androgen that
has almost none of the side-effects of spironolactone or finasteride.
The girls I know who are on it are evangelical about it.
Are there HRT medications that don’t increase blood clot risk? I’m already at risk because of my blood pressure, and my doctor won’t prescribe HRT that increases clot risk while I’m on the medication – and I may never not be on the medication.
Absolutely.
The concerns surrounding venous thromboembolic events as a side-effect of hormone replacement therapy can mostly be traced back to one particular study known as the Women’s Health Initiative. This study was an enormous undertaking which, unfortunately, demonstrated significant adverse effects of the hormone therapies studied. As a result of this the use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal cis women was dramatically reduced as the medical community began to question whether or not the therapy caused more harm than good.
Naturally, trans women have been suffering from this fall-out ever since.
What physicians seem to fail to recognize is that the study examined a very specific hormone regimen which was, arguably, outmoded at the time the study was conducted: It examined the use of conjugated equine estrogen (Premarin) with or without the use of medroxyprogesterone acetate. Neither of these drugs is regularly used for the treatment of transgender women.
The estrogen most commonly used to treat transgender women nowadays is 17β-estradiol either in pill form or in the form of a sticky patch that you apply to your skin. Esters of estrogen (e.g. estradiol valerate) are also sometimes used either in a pill form or as an intramuscular injection.
Transdermal estradiol patches are the gold standard when it comes to treating women who are at high risk of a venous thromboembolic event. It simply does not increase the risk of developing a venous thromboembolism. The only thing you should keep in mind is that patches are not always well tolerated because of the lifestyle changes required to keep them from falling off and the fact that they tend to irritate the skin.
It’s difficult to find hard numbers regarding the relative risk of venous thromboembolic events with regards to hypertension. The best I could find after an hour or so of searching was this study regarding VTE in lung cancer patients. Hypertension increased the risk by a factor of 1.8.
As far as the anti-androgen is concerned: The primary use for spironolactone for cisgender people is as an antihypertensive.
Even if the risk of thromboembolism was truly significant with modern hormone replacement therapy it wouldn’t justify what your doctor is doing to you. The fact is that mortality in the transgender community from suicide–caused in part due to the lack of access to hormone therapy–is substantial. The quality of life lost when a trans woman is denied hormone therapy is substantial. The fact that your doctor does not appear to be taking this into consideration when they weigh the risk of thromboembolism against not receiving necessary medical care is deeply concerning.
I strongly recommend that you seek a doctor who is more sensitive to your medical needs as a transgender woman.
Edit: Fixed a minor, but embarrassing, error.
oh wow this is so helpful & good info
Everyone who cares about transfem people please reblog this
this was really fucking helpful
I know a lot of trans women dont have acess to information like this and its very helpful.
Here’s some stuff I could have used being told when I started HRT:
If you do HRT, you are seizing control of and reconfiguring an aspect of your own metabolism, which is fucking cool and amazing, but despite what medical literature and community knowledge exists, you must always be your own advocate in the process (even if you think you have good doctors). As someone who deals with hypervigilance, I’m not going to tell anyone to be more vigilant, but HRT has myriad and subtle impacts on your body and mind (duh). Some of these you probably want, some of these you probably don’t, but telling the difference can be more tricky than you think.
Really watch yourself for side effects. I don’t mean relatively rare side effects like liver damage or blood clots, but simpler stuff that’s much easier to dismiss as just being transient or bearable, like nausea or mood swings. Such side effects are likely to be be small and easy to deal with in the beginning, easily borne, but if they become more serious over time they can do so so slowly that you don’t realize your quality of life is being reduced, especially if you’re loving many of the effects of HRT at the same time. Don’t accept any side effects of your meds as unavoidable, or akin to a price you have to pay for HRT’s benefits. Just adjusting the dosage of your meds, the times you take them, how you take them, and what you take them with can have a huge impact, but doctors can leave out that this is a process of experimentation, and that finding the right combinations of meds and dosages can take time.
Evangelical is not a word I ever thought I’d use for myself, and I’ve only been on bicalutamide for a week, but wow. If you are using spiro and experience any nausea or stomach pain while on HRT, even if you think it has other causes, or if you’re someone like me who carries their anxiety or fear in their stomach, I’d highly suggest at least trialing bicalutamide in place of spiro, just to make sure you know what’s causing that pain and/or nausea. I took 300 mg/day of spiro for about a year, and was waking up in pain and nausea every day without connecting the dots. Now that I’ve switched anti-androgens and tapered off spiro, in just a week I have twice the appetite and almost no stomach pain. What pain I do have dimishes every morning. So far, bica has been literally life-changing for me.
But I only found out about bica from another trans woman, here on tumblr ( @social-justice-cleric ) . My doctor insists he mentioned it as an alternative, more than a year ago, but frankly he stood by as my stomach pain became worse and worse, and only switched me to bica when I did my own research and asked him to. Don’t underestimate the importance of community and its accumulated knowledge- make sure you find other trans people you can talk about your transition without fear of judgment, especially including talking about any and all biomedical components of it. This is especially important for trans women who tend to socially isolate ourselves in response to stress or uncertainty (aka, me).
And as someone who really wanted results from HRT as quickly as possible, it’s ok if you end up wanting to step back your dosages, or if a medication doesn’t work out. This should seem obvious, but it doesn’t make you less of a woman to slow down or even stop doing HRT. Additionally, don’t assume that the speed at which your appearance changes is necessarily correlated to the amount of meds you take- there is for everyone a threshold of dosage past which there is no benefit (and instead just increased risk). For instance, I just finished a two month trial of progesterone- maybe my breasts developed a little more than they otherwise would have, but mostly I just had slight mood swings that trended slightly more to the negatives than the positive, so I’m not going to keep taking the stuff. And if spiro was the only anti-androgen out there, I might have stopped taking one entirely rather than stay on it. But decisions like these are hard, and intensely personal- your doctor can’t, or at least shouldn’t, make them for you.
Ultimately, all the biomedical means of transitioning are for is getting the changes you want to your body and/or mind. And despite the legal-functionary and regulatory components of biomedical transistion, these means do not make you into a woman. Regardless of whether or not you apply these biomedical technologies to your own transition, you are a woman. Some of us trans women come to accept increased medical risks, or endure physical discomfort, in pursuit of the self and life we want. In this, we are hardly alone among women. And, as is the case for any patient heading into a doctor’s office, what medical experts tell us must always be judged against our own embodied expertise.
Biomedically transitioning shouldn’t be seen as a necessary stage of one’s gender transition- it should be an opportunity available to all of us, but not one we all must take, or need to take, to be happy. Since we live in such a cissexist and transphobic society, biomedically transitioning is for many of us a desperately needed means of survival. And at the same time, and in equal measure, it is also for many of us a source of incredible joy. Listen to your doctor, listen to the community, listen especially to your body and to your own heart, and see what works for you.
Also, as a trans woman who has a chronic liver disease, bicalutamide can be hepatotoxic (damaging to the liver) and so far Spiro is the safest antiandrogen if you are a trans woman or AMAB nb in a similar situation as me. However, bicalutimide has not been tested in hrt doses, which are much smaller than the doses bicalutimide was originally for. Feminization begins as low as 12.5mg and the doses tested were 150mg.
estradiol depot is good replacement for valerate as well. 2nding the injections over pills. you can get so much more estrogen into your system SAFELY when it doesn’t have to be processed by your liver (which is what pills have to do).
It seems like a lot of this advice would be useful to anyone considering or taking HRT – man, woman, or enby. And absolutely, always be your own advocate. Your health is ultimately in *your* hands, not those of your doctor.
2017 is the year of transgender people not taking shit or remaining silent anymore
As an ally, lemme know what I can do to help.
heres a few ideas: -correct people if they misgender someone (famous or a friend) and don’t let it go when they say “whatever you know what i mean” -don’t buy into cis white womens movements like “pussy grabs back” -everyone needs to stop saying shit about penis size making someone more or less of a man -if you dont know someones pronouns ask or just simply use they/them until you know -support businesses owned by transgender people (or trans bands!) -normalize being trans dont make it some taboo -never say shit like “oh theyre like caitlyn jenner!” -stand up for trans people online or in real situations -don’t out someone. before meeting a trans persons friends or family ask them who knows -donate to trans peoples kickstarters if you can
-don’t ask about a person’s deadname/genitalia – When you’re speaking about a trans person before they came out it is still not ok to deadname or misgender them! -be aware and self-critical of ways in which you might still enforce transphobic ideas (ie: calling menstrual products “feminine hygiene products” or using “men” and “women” when you really mean people with certain body parts/physical characteristics) -be aware and self-critical of ways in which you might still enforce the gender binary through your language – get in the habit of using neutral language for anyone you don’t know even when they don’t “look trans”
Remember that queer history is global. There is not one country in the world that has no queer community and no queer history. No matter what the laws may be queer people have always existed and we have always made history and never let anyone tell you differently.
say queer again
we’re talking about queer people. if you don’t identify with that word, chances are… we weren’t talking about you
King James I: *builds secret tunnel connecting his room to the room of a man he calls his husband*
Historians: it’s very hard to tell what kind of relationship they would have had, let’s not look at this through a 21st century lens
Im fucking deceased
The only reason why you think this is not atypical for friendships btw men in the era is because every time you find evidence for mlm couples in history, you call them “friends”, you thick bloody shovel fucker
Brazil did it. Brazil elected a neo-facist, racist, homophobic asshole to govern our country and the consequences about it it’s already happening.
In less than 24h since he’s been elected it’s been hell of fucking earth in Brazil. Countless people have been reported dead all over the country, mainly LGBTQ+. Countless. People parading around cities with their fucking guns (it’s pretty much illegal in Brazil but this asshole is trying to change our law to allow guns, he’s even encouraging parents to give their kids a gun ????), shooting it into the sky in sign of victory. Did you know that one of those bullets killed a child? Yeah. One killed an old lady too. There’s been report of them invading a indigenous village and attacked them. They’ve been saying they are going to kill every single “slut”, “fag”, “dyke”, poor people, Nordestino (people that lives in Nordeste, a region in Brazil, that is mainly against this government), black and homeless people. Aka in the last 24h Brazil felt what is like to live in the fucking Purge.
There’s already people recruiting “good citizens” to erradicate Brazil of “fags and dykes, because now that their master’s been elected, there’s nothing protecting them, they’re not even people.” I kid you not. They’ve created group chats in popular apps to talk about mass shooting the LGBTQ+ community in Brazil. Yesterday there were people waiting outside a queer club to beat anyone that went outside.
Our police enforcement already started to invade college campuses and schools to destroy history books because they think our teachers are indoctrinating us in favor of communism. These history books tells about our 1964 military dictatorship (something we’re very afraid of happening again and we’re pretty sure is gonna happen with this demon in charge). They are trying to say that we choose to elect a military government back then, when in fact was a fucking coup. They’re also trying to get rid of philosophy classes and social studies because they think it only teach us to become communists as well. Basically, they’re all very ignorant and violents and they’re trying to fuck with the only fucking hope we have to our future: education.
You won’t probably hear many of the things I’m saying because I’ve been reading it on social media, and everything we (the opposition) say on social media is basically reported as “fake news” by his voters. But yeah, I can’t count how many videos I’ve saw today of women getting beaten and threatened. Of how many stories I’ve read of people walking the streets and cars pullover poiting guns at them and threaten them. Of people posting pictures of their “victory bbq” with guns spread in their tables close to their fucking meat. Of how many times I’ve cried since his pronouncement, thinking about how I’ve never felt so unsafe in my entire life. Of how I’ll have to be cautious about everything from now on, if I don’t want to become another casualty.
If you don’t believe what I’m saying, read about what foreign news are talking about us:
I do not care if you give two shits about politics or what’s happening in the world right now, just please take some time out of your day to really look at this.
I am so sorry Brazil.
I haven’t posted about this because it honestly hurts too much. I’m worried about my international community, all my lgbt siblings in Brazil , about this place where my dad grew up, where so many of my family is from where so many of the stories I grew up in are based in, and I’m worried about our planet. We as a world need the Amazon. We need it. So many of us are already dying, from smog from climate change. The Amazon is our best filtration system. We won’t survive if it’s destroyed.
And I’m so worried about my fellow lesbians. This type of mix of misogyny and homophobia is going to lead to very very bad things for gay women in Brazil. Be safe. Survive. The good times will come back, but we need to survive to build them.
Beltainefaerie's Flights of Fancy 