this is along with name, race and other demographic information

They don't have a gender field, and it really feels like they are just reducing sex and gender down to "you are what you were assigned at birth", and then hiding behind amorphous medical "reasons" as justification ....

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/49471032

Why or why not?

In my experience, dysphoric thoughts can be contagious in a way, a particular, dysphoric way of seeing can transmit to other dysphoric trans people who may have not have considered that way of seeing.

(I am of course not implying gender dysphoria is contagious, just that my experiences with dysphoria have in the past caused other dysphoric people to have worse dysphoria.)

So as a precaution, I'll put my cognitohazard dysphoria thoughts behind a spoiler.

These feelings have improved somewhat over time, and it's only been three months since my surgery, so it's still recent-ish. I don't know how long these dysphoric feelings will continue, but I assume they will get better.

I guess I'm looking for reassurance, or at least someone else who has had similar experiences to chime in on theirs.

I was getting ready to go out. I put on a bra, and slipped on a pair of jeans. It was a mundane moment, but I felt the jeans snug around my butt and hips, and as I pulled the jeans up, I felt the material pushing up into my groin where my genitals used to be, my body fitted the jeans, finally.

Walking across the room to get the rest of my clothes, I suddenly felt so extremely and inexplicably happy, even doped - the feeling of a good pair of jeans made me feel better than drugs do. It took me by surprise, I never expected to feel this way.

yes, this is about @TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone

just feeling unusually happy today, but I attribute most of my happy days to transition (particularly estrogen), and in case it's helpful or motivating, others should know it really can get better, just keep trying

💖

It's so good I had to stop watching it so I watch it for the first time together with my partner 😊

Politeness norms seem to keep a lot of folks from discussing or asking their trans friends questions they have, I figured at the very least I could help try to fill the gap. Lemmy has a decent trans population who might be able to provide their perspectives, as well.

Mostly I'm interested in what people are holding back.

The questions I've been asked IRL:

• why / how did you pick your name?
• how long have you known?
• how long before you are done transitioning?
• how long do you have to be on HRT?
• is transgender like being transracial?
• what do the surgeries involve?

For the most part, though, I get silence - people don't want to talk about it, or are afraid to. A lot of times the anxiety is in not knowing how to behave or what would be offensive or not. Some people have been relieved when they learned all they needed to do is see me as my gender, since that became very simple and easy for them.

If there are trans people you know IRL, do you feel you can talk to them about it? Not everyone is as open about it as I am, and questions can be feel rude, so I understand why people would feel hesitant to talk to me, but even when I open the door, people rarely take the opportunity.

been thinking about all the little moments tucked away in my memories that are a world unknowable to those younger than me, so consider this an opportunity to reminisce over old times, but also to ask those about the times you did not live through.

I guess my question for those older than me is: before computers, how did you learn to do something?

Did access to knowledge change your life, was a constraint lifted when you no longer depended on having found the right books or people to learn tips on how to cook a new dish, or how to fix a plumbing problem, or how to plant a garden?

Was life more simple, did you have fewer problems to solve without technology in your life, or did technology make life easier?

Hi, I've maintained and used a sourdough starter many years of my life, and I've tried different methods of making the stater. For a while, I would make my bread and then pinch a piece of it off (a "levain") and let that function as my sourdough starter for the next loaf.

More recently, I feed a cup of sourdough starter with flour and water each day, and after a few days when it gets old enough, I start a new one using a small amount of the sourdough as a "seed" and discard the rest (usually I make bread with it).

My question is about the seed - if a sourdough starter has a variety of microbes, the way I seed the next starter might have an impact, it's a form of selection.

Since they are microbes, I assume there are many of them in the sourdough and I don't need much to get "enough" of a sample to keep a healthy culture going - I just stir a spoon in the old sourdough, then use that same spoon (with the little bit of sourdough stuck to the spoon) to stir the new sourdough's flour and water together, and that's it.

But I keep thinking about how this might be a kind of selection - and I was wondering if there is a significant difference in, for example, a levain method of pinching off a piece of the whole and the microbial sampling that has vs the sampling from just not cleaning off the spoon when stirring the old and then the new.

I would imagine the levain has a greater likelihood of all the microbes being present, while a single spoonful might constitute a more narrow subset of microbes? Or maybe the microbes are distributed evenly enough in the sourdough that a spoonful represents as broad a sample as a pinched off piece?

I haven't noticed any obvious, practical differences in how the starter is made, but I'm wondering if a theoretical, significant difference exists.

I guess some of this paranoia comes from thinking about Zeno's paradox, the 100 prisoner problem, and the Monty Hall problem.

A levain seems more likely to contain a small amount of each kind of microbe (since the whole is incorporated and then mixed well before being divided into a part) than the approach of starting a new starter from a single spoonful (which necessarily selects only a subset first from the whole - a subset which may or may not be as evenly distributed as from a levain).

In practice this probably makes no difference, but maybe there could be minor ways a spoon would preference some kinds of microbes over others (maybe if the spoon were made of silver, for example, the microbes that survive contact with the silver would be more likely to carry on to future generations?).

Anyway, thoughts? (Other than about my mental fitness, lol.)