44
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Filetternavn to c/mtf

For context, see my initial post here.

I've made a plan with my therapist, and I'll be admitting myself. I've also been advised that given some recent behaviors and events, it's in my best interest to be evaluated for bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorder (yay ;-;). Whatever happens, I'm mentally prepared to step through the doors and allow myself to seek treatment. Maybe all I need is a change in medication, or a place where I feel safe enough to process my emotions and work through them. Regardless, I understand what to expect, and I'm confident that it's what I need right now. I can't get by just letting things happen as they are currently, because I'm only continuing to get worse without proper treatment. I'll likely make a new post when I'm discharged about my experience. See y'all on the other side.

41
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Filetternavn to c/mtf

If any trans women here have been admitted to a psychiatric ward, I'm looking for advice/experiences. My main concerns are the following:

  • Losing access to DIY HRT
  • Inability to shave, or is I can shave, having to be watched while doing it
  • Being strip searched
  • Transphobia from other patients and staff
  • Food

Context - I live in a blue part of Washington State, fairly progressive, and I'm working with my therapist to get a personal recommendation for a facility (she mostly treats LGBTQ+ patients, so I'll be asking specifically about that).

I currently take Estradiol Cypionate by injection, once per week as monotherapy. I've used a tool to estimate my E levels, and I've determined I could likely go 14 days before things get bad (below 100pg/mL), but obviously that would not be an ideal experience for me hormonally. I just tested my levels last week and my E came back significantly higher than I expected (could maybe go longer than 14 days), and my T levels were incredibly low (16ng/dL). So much so that I was planning to reduce my dosage this week, though I think I'll wait to reduce until after my stay in case it lasts longer than I expect. I am almost 100% not going to be able to get them to administer my DIY hormones to me, but if anyone else has had this experience, please comment. I think I've rationalized it enough that I wouldn't be devastated if I were denied access (or more accurately, when I am), assuming my stay isn't longer than 2 weeks. I'm worried that they'll see them and throw them away instead of just locking then up, which would be a big problem because shipping would take about 2 weeks and I don't even have the money for it right now.

However, I am quite concerned about shaving. Since I'll be a voluntary admission, I've heard there's sometimes leniency for supervised face shaving, but I'm also worried about being able to shave my body. Granted, I'll be wearing clothes that cover up all my skin, but the feeling of being unshaven is incredibly dysphoric for me. I could live with it, except for genital hair. I unfortunately have extremely sensitive skin, and I'm pre-op, so if I don't shave for a few days, I will get intense chaffing and irritation, which is the most dysphoric thing I have ever felt in my life. I would be in genuinely severe mental distress having to live like that. But even if I were granted some exception to let me shave there...I'd have to be supervised. And I'm having a really hard time trying to mentally prepare myself for someone watching me shave naked. Especially because I don't know if I'll be allowed to ask that it be a woman that supervises. I've been told it varies wildly from place to place for strip searches, and I assume it would be the same case here.

And then...there's being strip searched. Again, no idea if I can decide if a man or a woman watches me strip and reveal every square inch of myself, which is horrifying. I would feel mildly less mortified if my genitals matched my gender identity, but...I'm not there yet.

The fear of experiencing persistent transphobia while I'm there is also incredibly present for me, especially given that I'm nowhere close to passing. This will be my first time publicly presenting femininely but I think it's what's best for my mental health because it's exhausting having to hide myself in person when I have been open online for almost a year now, and on HRT for 5 months as of today. The only thing holding me back has been living with transphobic parents with a long history of abuse. There are two angles to the transphobia fear. The first is that there may be other patients admitted who are transphobic, and in severely deteriorated mental states, and the second is that staff could be transphobic, and they hold an immense power over me as a patient. Both are terrifying to me, and I don't know how I would deal with it.

And perhaps something more inconsequential is food. I have a milk allergy, so I'd need that to be accommodated, and I'm also autistic so I have a lot of food triggers. I'm worried about not being able to eat enough, to be honest.

None of these things are going to prevent me from admitting myself, I know I need help right now, and I need serious intervention to be able to recover and to keep myself safe...from myself. I'm not going to get into the details because that isn't what this post is about, I've just been having some anxieties about what it's going to be like, and the chances of me leaving the hospital severely traumatized.

If any of you have been through it, what has it been like for you? Any advice?

[-] Filetternavn 18 points 1 month ago

Moot point, as DoorDash driver accounts require a verified driver's license, comprehensive background check, and a valid bank account set up to deposit payment (though after setting up a direct deposit bank account, you can add alternative cash out options). Haven't used DoorDash in a while, but UberEats started requiring facial recognition on top of all that, so I wouldn't be surprised if that were in the DoorDash driver app, too. Hiding IP would do quite literally nothing in this scenario, as you can't create an account anonymously. Counterfeit IDs would not work as they are verified against state records. Oh, and yet another step, you have to provide proof of auto insurance, which is yet another connection to your identity.

[-] Filetternavn 15 points 1 month ago

Regardless of the tone, the opinions he is discussing and the ways that he represents his views are inherently transphobic. He and his views are a threat to us at Blahaj Lemmy, being a space for queer folks (many of us are trans). He is also the lead developer of Lemmy, and the head admin of lemmy.ml. A statement does not have to be framed as a direct insult to be hateful and harmful, and the fact that these views of his have been persistent, along with his influence, means that he as a user is dangerous. Hence why he has been banned from this instance. The question being discussed is really if his views are reflected into the community and moderation at lemmy.ml, because that is the point at which the instance is harmful enough to defederate from. If lemmy.ml is a place where transphobia is allowed to propagate, then that is immensely harmful for us. We need to protect ourselves against transphobia.

[-] Filetternavn 17 points 1 month ago

lemmy.blahah.zone does not allow downvotes. And the concern is moreso that some transphobic content wouldn't be moderated (based on nutomic's views), hence the burden of moderation would come down to our instance's admins, and that simply shouldn't be their responsibility. Defederation is for situations in which the instance in question is harmful to the community in the instance defederating. And if transphobia is not properly moderated, and transphobic views are allowed to spread, then that is actively harmful to lemmy.blahaj.zone.

[-] Filetternavn 72 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Personally, I have a very poor opinion of nutomic. And yes, he has always been/felt transphobic. He has a history of making massive oversteps to attack people that have differing opinions to his, and overall I believe him to be a threat to the trans community. As for whether we should defederate? I really have no clue. It certainly isn't a bastion for blatant transphobia, and hosts many of the top Lemmy communities, and a very large amount of the active Lemmy userbase. I think the effects of defederation would be immense, and take a lot of time and consideration to understand if it's overall beneficial to the community. That being said, I'm sure I could be swayed to support either side. I'd be very curious what Ada has to say about this, as I believe I'll support her opinion on the matter.

EDIT: I think it's valuable to point out that any individual user can block an instance in their settings. So regardless of any defederation decision (which Ada seems opposed to), anyone can choose to block the instance themselves.

[-] Filetternavn 13 points 3 months ago

Well, you could use the wrong finger. After 3 attempts, my GrapheneOS install brings up the password field, but you can go back to the lock screen and try 2 more times until it locks out of fingerprint unlock (so 5 times total). You could always hold the power button down while it's in your pocket or bag, pretending you are searching for the phone or something, and then lock it down as soon as you lift the screen up.

[-] Filetternavn 13 points 3 months ago

Yes, it is possible, as per your linked resource, however it would be up to the server maintainers if they feel it is reasonable to do. Note that federation is not supported over Tor, so federation would go over the clearnet via the original instance. This is not an issue, because the only thing that would be useful for Tor is hiding the client connection IP address, which would be handled under this configuration.

[-] Filetternavn 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I use Mullvad Browser. It's maintained in coordination with the Tor Project, and is essentially the Tor Browser with Tor itself stripped out. Same browser fingerprinting protections, however, among other things.

EDIT: I'd like to clarify that this has nothing to do with my trust in Mozilla or Firefox itself, especially not concerning recent panics about benign changes. I still use Firefox on the side, it just does not have fingerprinting protections by default, and hardening it manually leads to minor differences between user configurations (even with Arkenfox if that's still around) that is solved by Mullvad Browser for me. I use Mullvad Browser for my main browsing, and Firefox for specific exceptions. Firefox itself is fine, and no, Mozilla is not burning it to the ground.

[-] Filetternavn 34 points 3 months ago

This was already posted here, and the original post has a paywall bypass link

[-] Filetternavn 18 points 4 months ago

I really don't like it. That's a term that I've only ever seen associated with porn and sexualization, and I'd prefer not to be sexualized or objectified. I agree with you that I find it dehumanizing, and I really don't like being fetishized. I feel like anyone that would use that term for me is either a chaser or a transphobe, and I don't want to interact with either. And that's without getting into the whole Japanese culture talk, which revolves around traditionalism, heteronormalcy, and misogyny that makes it extra uncomfortable.

[-] Filetternavn 13 points 4 months ago

I can't help with pirating software, your options are going to be heavily limited because most people running Linux would just prefer open source alternatives (like Blender), so it's far less likely you will find cracked software specifically made for Linux (plus, there is a far smaller userbase). On some quick searching, I did find someone who had issues running Houdini in a VM (for multiple distros), but it worked fine when it was installed natively. I'm not seeing an entry in the WINE database for Houdini, so while you could always try running a Windows version through WINE, given the type of program it is, I highly doubt it would run without issue. I have no recommendations on how to get ahold of a Linux compatible version without a license.

[-] Filetternavn 40 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

virt-manager is my go-to. There's also Gnome Boxes, but I've never used it myself. virt-manager is the best I've tried, personally. Both use KVM, so they should be much more resource efficient

[-] Filetternavn 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I think this conclusion is incredibly naïve given the dramatically increased bioavailability and significantly decreased side effects that sublingual administration has over oral estradiol. Flooding the liver through oral administration results in strain that is significantly reduced by sublingual administration, and the increased bioavailability alone accounted for comparable testosterone suppression without an anti-androgen at the same daily dosage. So on top of the decrease in liver damage by moving away from oral administration, this approach also does not account for the side effects of the anti-androgen. The miniscule sample size doesn't do any favors to this study, either. The supposed "alarming excursions of serum estradiol" is solved simply by adjusting the dosage and spreading it out into more frequent doses throughout the day. It seems they did split the dosage into 4 doses for sublingual administration, but they are providing the same daily dosage despite significantly increased bioavailability of the sublingual route (which also accounts for the testosterone suppression). Additionally, a dosage of only 2mg of estradiol daily via oral administration is quite low for trans women.

I have a lot of problems with the conclusions of this study.

I'd like to link to a much more complete analysis of the sublingual route of administration for estradiol that analyzes a wide variety of sources (including the one linked in this post) for those interested in a more accurate picture of the benefits and shortcomings of sublingual administration:

An Exploration of Sublingual Estradiol as an Alternative to Oral Estradiol in Transfeminine People

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Filetternavn

joined 6 months ago