the passion that drives me is the desire to not be homeless or hungry, and that has basically informed what I did with my life - I got the basic education needed to get a good paying job without going into debt ...

the fee you pay is different than the total costs, I paid $1,000 for my PIV, but the total costs were still over $100,000. That's not including the thousands I spent on a hotel room for the week after I was discharged but not permitted to go home yet.

Edit: I should say I'm in the US, there are cheaper options elsewhere like Thailand. There is even a very cheap option in Thailand where they don't put you under general anaesthesia to keep costs low.

As a kid I loved how morbid and dark Halloween was, as well as the fact that it was the only holiday that allowed me to escape my house and family for the evening, rather than be held captive to their dysfunction. Holidays were hell, but Halloween was sweet escape.

Today I'm depressed at how few kids trick-or-treat, I've never been able to give out candy and that makes me really sad. The holiday is somewhat dead for me - and I don't know how to revive it.

+1 to this, each transition is different and dependent on what is necessary - I know a trans girl who has no intention of ever getting an orchi, but would like to get breast augmentation.

Vulvoplasty is also a cheaper and easier surgery than vaginoplasty that more and more patients are getting - I know a girl IRL who decided to get a vulvoplasty and not a vaginoplasty, she recovered fairly quickly!

I wish I could get FFS, but have no intention of getting BA.

the numbers last I checked were something like around half of all trans women want a vaginoplasty but haven't had it, but only around 10% have actually had it - so obviously the costs, the preparation, and medical gatekeeping are all barriers to many people getting the surgery they need ...

these numbers are super inaccurate, lol

PPT vaginoplasty is probably going to be a lot more than $20,000 (with anaesthesia, a week recovery in the hospital, etc. that total is going to be a lot more, $100,000 - $150,000 is more accurate, but that's why you get it covered by insurance).

You can get unlimited laser for all body parts at Milan for like $10,000, so $22,000 is more than double what the most expensive laser option should be.

ha, I'm already unemployed, they screwed themselves on that one

that changes, though - there is a tipping point for many where all the collective effort and changes from HRT finally coalesce into passing as cis, and then people (at least strangers) are more comfortable around you.

Some people who knew me pretransition still seem to see me as male, but whether they are comfortable is more about them - one friend felt so much relief at how feminine I was because she was worried about messing up my pronouns, and by passing and being so feminine, I made it easier for her to pronoun me correctly.

Others are obviously experiencing cognitive dissonance in direct proportion to how much I change from my pretransition, male past.

This is why I feel like not spending time with people who knew me before, and why moving to a new city was so helpful. Now I live as a "cis" woman full time, "being trans" is a part of my past in a way. (Obviously I'll always be trans, but I no longer live as visibly trans - I'm free to live stealth now, which motivates not gender rotting, as well.)

All this to say, keep making effort because eventually it can really improve your situation. Cis people are uncomfortable with people transitioning, but they don't understand what it's like for us, or how important it is for our health. So ignore them, and then enjoy the irony when you start to pass when it seems so impossible for that to be true - cis people are also blind and gender-naive in a way.

they seem to come up with non-standard definitions and just live by those, e.g. Matt Walsh denies the existence of intersex people by claiming the only way to be intersex is to produce both kinds of gametes ... but that's not really the definition of intersex, so it's just weird that he uses it anyway (and of course for political purposes, he is essentially a science denier).

the anti-trans activists who push the narrative that kids are being mutilated with gender-affirming surgeries are essentially lying, surgeries are not offered to kids at all. The closest to that is that a minority of 17 year old trans boys have been able to get top surgeries (breast reduction), but this is again a small minority, and these are people on the cusp of being the age of the majority.

Meanwhile cis children are permitted access to surgeries like breast reduction, breast augmentation, and nose jobs without the gatekeeping or moral panic associated with gender affirming care for trans patients.

The very same activists pushing to deny trans people access to life-saving care under the guise of protecting children from mutilation are also the same people who support non-consensual surgeries on intersex children and babies ...

You can't make this up folks, the anti-trans activist Matt Walsh who held a protest called "End Child Mutilation" to protest surgeries that don't happen also supports the unethical and non-consensual mutilation of intersex babies and children.

(Presumably he also supports circumcision, but people seem to feel that kind of gential mutilation is acceptable, and it's less relevant to the hypocrisy of supporting the mutilation of children to force them into one gender or another while making up stories of genital mutilation so he can deny people access to surgeries when they choose it for themselves.)

Thanks Ada - this was really helpful context.

For others and myself, here's the evidence presented about it being an exploding heads community: https://hilariouschaos.com/comment/9332

The community also doesn't remove transphobic posts, e.g. tahira's transphobic posts haven't been removed, and Alice (the instance admin) only asked tahira to ease up on the "trans stuff" to keep things "chill and open for everyone".

Still trying to find evidence about the admins being transphobes themselves - having a harder time finding that (maybe it was an admin that left?).

For what it's worth, the community is pretty quiet and most of the content does not seem to be right-wing, though there is a conservative community there with a single user that posts regularly there. (But just leaving the transphobic content up is enough to warrant defederation from Blahaj; the question about the community's character is more relevant for other instances considering defederation.)

Thank you Ada for having standards and protecting the community 🫶

ah, it seems to be a right-wing instance: https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16819648

got it ✅

thanks!