when I wear pads, the adhesive usually balls up, ends up on the panties which then get transferred to my thighs and hands, and then it makes a mess everywhere - it gets smeared on countertops, onto toilet seats, etc. and is a pain to clean up ...

any suggestions on how to avoid the adhesive balling up or this problem in general? it seems to be a problem with any brand I use, they all have adhesives to keep the pad in place in the panties 🤷‍♀️

made this post NSFW just in case anyone is squeamish about talk of pads and so on 😅

edit:

here's a photo of what I'm talking about:

click to expand and see photo

Was looking into this because of that recent Paul McCartney article that was shared, and wanted to share what I found:

Here's a good breakdown of differences between vegan & vegetarian diets in terms of climate impact: https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00795-w

Emissions:

• Vegan:............. CO2: 2.16, CH4: 04.39, N2O: 0.71
• Vegetarian:........ CO2: 3.33, CH4: 20.21, N2O: 0.98
• medium meat-eaters: CO2: 5.34, CH4: 40.88, N20: 1.73
• high meat-eaters:.. CO2: 7.28, CH4: 65.40, N2O: 2.62

So vegans have 30% of the emissions as high-meat-eaters, and the differences between vegans and vegetarians are significant with regards to their emissions, particularly methane emissions due to the significantly higher consumption of cheese by vegetarians.

(EDIT: it has been suggested it's worth clarifying that vegan diet having 30% CO2 emissions means that there was a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions, and that methane emissions were reduced by 93% going from high-meat to vegan.)

Vegetarians ate significantly more cheese (30 g / day) than even meat-eaters (19 g / day), despite eating less dairy overall otherwise.

Also should be noted that there is a big gap between biodiversity impact between vegans and vegetarians, with vegetarian diets causing nearly double the number of species extinctions per day than vegan diets.

I was surprised that water use was so similar between vegans and vegetarians considering how much cheese vegetarians eat.

I still would recommend a vegetarian diet to meat eaters, as it's still a massive improvement (and in my experience, it's easier to become vegan once vegetarian), just thought it was interesting to actually quantify differences between veganism and vegetarianism in terms of climate impact.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/34079011

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.

In a brief, unsigned order, the court said the policy doesn’t appear to discriminate against transgender people. “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” it said. “In both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”

Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed nonbinary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation.

A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/34079011

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.

In a brief, unsigned order, the court said the policy doesn’t appear to discriminate against transgender people. “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” it said. “In both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”

Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed nonbinary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation.

A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.

The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to enforce a policy blocking transgender and nonbinary people from choosing passport sex markers that align with their gender identity.

In a brief, unsigned order, the court said the policy doesn’t appear to discriminate against transgender people. “Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth,” it said. “In both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.”

Sex markers began appearing on passports in the mid-1970s and the federal government started allowing them to be changed with medical documentation in the early 1990s, the plaintiffs said in court documents. A 2021 change under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, removed documentation requirements and allowed nonbinary people to choose an X gender marker after years of litigation.

A judge blocked the Trump administration policy in June after a lawsuit from nonbinary and transgender people, some of whom said they were afraid to submit applications. An appeals court left the judge’s order in place.

A video of the incident on Tuesday shows a visibly drunk man trying to kiss the president on the neck and embrace her from behind, as she removes his hands and turns to face him, before a government official steps in and places himself between them.

“This is something I experienced as a woman, but it is something that all women in our country experience,” said Sheinbaum in her daily press conference. “If I do not file a complaint, where does that leave all Mexican women? If they do this to the president, what happens to all the other women in the country?”

Get your HPV vaccine, and if post-op, see a gynecologist!

when dilating, often I have a lot of pain around what I suspect are certain scar rings in my neovagina, basically areas where it's much harder to push past, almost like a sphincter but without control to tighten

I have discovered that after pushing painfully past certain points I can experience painful burning sensation, but if I pull the dilator out, put a horizontal ring of lube on the dilator around the threshold of how deep it goes in, and then put the dilator in, I often manage to get the same depth as was painful before but experience less pain and burning. I think this is twofold, maybe relaxing and re-inserting helps reduce tension, and maybe the lube at the edge helps prevent pain from pushing deeper.

Was wondering what people think about the label "lesbian" and what it means, and who should or shouldn't use it.

There was someone on Bluesky who was upset when they learned I sometimes identify as a lesbian because I'm a woman in a long term relationship with a woman, even though I'm technically bisexual. (I've only ever dated women, would only ever want to date women.)

They said I was appropriating the label "lesbian", that I was lesbophobic, and that I was communicating that it's shameful to be bisexual. (For clarity, I don't hide that I'm bi, I will identify that way in some contexts, and in others I will identify as a lesbian - usually I identify as lesbian around straight people, and among LGBT+ folks I'm more likely to identify as bi or communicate more about my sexuality; tbh it doesn't come up much, and my sexual orientation not a big part of how I like to identify).

I tend to think a label like "lesbian" communicates a sexual or romantic relationship between two women, so I'm surprised to interact with someone who was so rigid about the label that it cannot apply to someone who is even capable of opposite-sex attraction ...

I'm not sure I would ever date a man, so sometimes "lesbian" or "sapphic" are labels that feel more accurate to who I am than a term like bisexual, which implies more openness than I actually have. It's also irrelevant for me since I'm in a long-term monogamous relationship with a woman, from the perspective of others in my life, I have been and will continue to be a lesbian ...

I just wonder where the rigidity comes from, and why the person thought I was lesbophobic. I wasn't able to ask her or learn about her perspective, so I was hoping someone would help me understand wtf just happened, lol

Feminine-named hurricanes (vs. masculine-named hurricanes) cause significantly more deaths, apparently because they lead to lower perceived risk and consequently less preparedness.

...

We use more than six decades of death rates from US hurricanes to show that feminine-named hurricanes cause significantly more deaths than do masculine-named hurricanes. Laboratory experiments indicate that this is because hurricane names lead to gender-based expectations about severity and this, in turn, guides respondents’ preparedness to take protective action.

underestimate a female hurricane and die, I guess

so, I should start by saying vaginoplasty significantly reduced my genital dysphoria, and in general has helped me feel more like a woman - it's overall quite clear it was the right choice for me (and same with transition overall).

... but I've struggled a lot with continued bottom dysphoria and anxiety that I made a mistake or the surgery was problematic or wrong in some way

for example, my labia continue to look and feel like scrotal tissue, and I feel insecure about this - they can sag and look wrinkly at times, which makes them look scrotal to me.

I also seem to have no labia minora as far as I can tell, or perhaps it's too early post-op to tell, the clitoral hood is just a tighter part of the same labia majora - so maybe as swelling goes down there will be more of a sense of inner folds vs outer folds?

Anyway, lots of insecurity and concerns that my genitals are still male. Any time I'm aroused and my clit becomes engorged, it feels so much like an erection that I become dysphoric and I struggle to stay in the moment and maintain arousal.

Last night I had a dream that a stitch popped or something changed in my recovery overnight, and I woke up with my labia sagging even more and bunching into an empty scrotal sack, and my clit when engorged would become erect and push out several inches into an erect penis. It was very distressing in my dream, I was panicking and trying to find a private place to capture photos to send my surgeon. (In some ways this nightmare was clarifying or affirming - knowing my unconscious is not secretly coveting having male genitals again makes me feel more confident I made the right choice.)

I guess I never expected to have so much bottom dysphoria post-op, or to struggle so much to see my vagina as female. Sometimes I even wonder if this is what it's like to be a trans man, to "feel male" internally and to have female genitals (though obviously this isn't how trans men feel, trans men generally want to feel male in body and mind, something I don't experience - and my "feeling male" is more like insecurity and imposter syndrome than whatever trans men experience).

It still hasn't been six months since my surgery, and I'm so early in my transition in general - I just trust it will get better over time ... but right now anyway, I am struggling more than I expected with challenges I perhaps naively expected or hoped the surgery would just immediately solve.

I have noticed that the dysphoria I would feel when I lay on my back and twist my lower body in a way that allows me to feel the length of my clit embedded in me, and it would feel like my penis was sewn onto me, has gone away - with the healing I think inflammation has gone down and I no longer notice that sensation of length in me, and when I do twist or pull in a way that seems to engage my clit, it feels more "normal" and doesn't create dysphoria. So already the dysphoria I had earlier in my recovery is subsiding, which is good!

I think this was mostly a vent post / brain dump, but I did want to ask about others' experiences - I wanted to invite general sharing of what surgeries were like for others (esp. what wasn't expected or isn't commonly discussed).

If anyone has advice for me, I'm completely open. Thanks for reading 😊

joined bluesky to stay in touch with a friend

I've never understood Twitter, but I think I'm starting to understand

getting pulled in kinda makes me feel like I should be on mastodon primarily instead, so I was wondering what the "Blahaj" of Mastodon is, what server should I join?