honestly half the posts I upvote end up being from @LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone, cheers friend - you consistently brighten my day 💚
I think this is why it's so common in the LGBTQ+ community to prioritize chosen family - your story is tragic, and also unfortunately very common.
It's a hard lesson to learn, but eventually some of us realize we have to find better people to surround ourselves with rather than kill ourselves to please the less than ideal family we were born into.
You're starting a new life, a better life - congrats 💕
EDIT: btw, I had an orchi a few months ago and I highly recommend it - great experience. I can't wait for you to enjoy it too 💖
unfortunately I think this is the current answer, at least on Lemmy.
Yes, the Catholic Church is anti-trans, but you have to understand that trans people are just like everyone else, they are subject to the same influences and pressures as cis people, and they come from the same backgrounds - from religious families, from conservative families, etc.
While trans people in the U.S. form an alliance with lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, two-spirit, and intersex individuals - this does not mean every trans person accepts the label "queer" or thinks of themselves that way, let alone how they think of other trans people. There are many self-hating trans people, and lots of trans people who hate other trans people.
Caitlyn Jenner is a Trump supporting Republican who went on Fox News to deliver anti-trans remarks about a trans athlete.
Blaire White is a Trump supporting Republican who makes a living supporting right-wing and anti-trans talking points on YouTube.
The Log Cabin Republicans are mostly LGBT+ folks who are Republicans, and they show up to support anti-trans legislation, like in the recent California vote to ban trans athletes.
I think you have to understand that labels like "queer" and "LGBTQ+" are political identities, and lots of people who are descriptively queer based on their sexuality or gender identity refuse to identify that way for political reasons. Some people remain closeted and hiding, but other people are open about their sexuality and just don't connect the dots between their sexuality and the political struggles of people with those sexualities, refusing to identify as gay or queer and instead just insisting they're "straight" even while openly engaging in queer sex.
Sure, it boggles my mind too, but it's unfortunately very common. I think a lot of this has to do with the dominance one identity has, like one's identity as a conservative or as Christian, over another, such as one's identity as a queer person. When those conflict, it's not surprising that sexuality or gender identity are not always the winner - especially in cases like Christianity where the religion can have a hold on your entire life (your job, your spouse, your whole family, your entire community - everything might depend on a religious identity like that and it's very difficult to escape). This is especially the case for a binary trans woman who transitioned so young and can live as a cis-passing woman, there might be very little visible about her trans identity at that point, making it easier to live as a conservative Catholic.
😭
When I was a teenager still I was buying women's clothes, trying to arrange a girl's night with a female friend of mine, had picked and used a feminine name, and even painfully explained to my boss at the time (who insisted I was a gay man) that I wasn't a gay man but actually it was like I was a woman on the inside so I was maybe a gay woman. Never did the thought even cross my mind that I might be trans.
When the idea came up later that I might be trans, I ruled it out easily. Trans women knew they were girls when they were three years old, and they were in medically significant distress from being in the wrong body. I had gone through childhood as a boy without any such self-conception as a girl, let alone severe distress. As far as I could tell, I experienced no dysphoria. I couldn't have been trans, the DSM made that clear to me.
It was over a decade later before I learned that gender dysphoria can look like what I experienced, or that I actually had fairly common and stereotypical trans experiences, like dressing in my mom's heels as a four year old and continuing to "cross" dress throughout my childhood and into adulthood. Oops.
men, is it gay to suck milk through a hotdog hole?
it's so meta that this post isn't marked NSFW
Oh boy.
First of all, form good "sleep hygiene" habits, read: https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep%20Hygiene.pdf
A lot of it is obvious, like go to bed at the same time every night (set a timer to get yourself reliable at first!), and wake up at the same time every morning. Give yourself more "sleep opportunity" than the hours you want to sleep so you actually get enough sleep (e.g. if you want to sleep 8 hours, maybe give yourself 10 hours in bed with the lights out).
Don't use screens several hours before bed, don't do anything but sleep in your bed, and wind-down before bed with something like reading a book (again, in a chair in another room, not in your bed).
Now for more advanced tips I've learned from dealing with insomnia:
A problem I have sometimes had is that tasks like meditation can actually cause me to become more alert, and it turns out meditation actually does cause insomnia.
When struggling with meditation related insomnia, I got lots of practice navigating falling asleep.
What I found most helpful was rather than focusing on an object in a meditation like way, to instead allow mind-wandering and rumination and to try to cultivate a lack of metacognitive awareness about that rumination. Basically, the opposite of meditation. Meditators will hopefully know what I mean by this - but basically, don't pay too much attention to what you are thinking, just get absorbed into the mind-wandering.
Sometimes if the mind-wandering leads to thoughts or feelings that are "strong" or engaging enough it can prevent me from sleeping, like when I'm anxious or my mind is preparing or rehearsing for an important event or the next day. In that case, a little bit of meta-awareness can be helpful to alert you to the need to redirect your rumination to something actively boring or benign.
In the most extreme instances, I visualize myself working in a factory performing a repetitive motion like pulling a level to operate a press. I essentially constantly try to pay attention to that mundane task and ensure that it remains mundane / uninteresting - just keep pulling the lever and keep paying attention to that task. This is akin to the counting sheep method, but I always found counting sheep too interesting or engaging of a task.
After hours of boredom I usually lose consciousness.
Sometimes I threaten myself with getting out of bed, and often in response I feel a resistance and that makes me realize how tired I actually am, and I threaten myself with doing something boring like sitting in a chair and staring at a wall. Sometimes that is enough to kick me out of my energized thinking into a milder / more boring and repetitive mind-wandering that leads to dreams and unconsciousness.
Sometimes I actually do have to get out of bed and do something, often I will stretch and if I'm not feeling overwhelmed with sleep that way, I find it helpful to exhaust myself with forearm planks - just hold until you can't anymore (you can also use a timer for 30 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever pushes you past comfort but not all the way to failure or injury), maybe try this a couple times. You will sweat and it's miserable the whole time, and you will be tired and want to crawl back into bed. That has helped me fall asleep really well before, and sometimes I think it's because the blood also gets into my muscles and somehow this helps me relax.
Anyway, hope this helps!
ah, millennial's revenge
For chkn I shredded and baked some oyster mushrooms and baked some home-made seitan in a convection oven until it was poofy and crispy, which added a lot of flavor to the seitan (which I normally don't love because it has that distinct flavor that is hard to mask).
Made souvlakis on the grill. Tofu & red onion kebabs, tzatziki sauce, pita bread, gold potato fries, tomato, lettuce.
Marinade for tofu was red wine vinegar, lemon juice, olive oil, and fresh mint & oregano from the garden. Pressed the tofu then put in marinade for a few hours.
Then I put the tofu on skewers with red onion and grilled them: https://imgur.com/a/1kiMvfE
Tzatziki sauce was made with Kite Hill Greek-style yogurt (which IMO isn't rich enough, I would have made my own cashew based yogurt from scratch if I had the extra time). Also included minced garlic cloves, minced fresh dill and mint, coarsely grated cucumbers that were salted and then squeezed with a towel to remove liquid, and some lemon juice, olive oil, salt & pepper, etc.
Pita bread was made with freshly milled wheat berries (hard white, soft white, hard red, einkorn, and spelt berries). Also used a pre-ferment to reduce the amount of yeast I needed. Also cooked those on a cast-iron in the grill, which worked well.
A lot of work, but quite delicious.
What all have you been cooking recently?
ingredients:
recipes to get you going the right direction (not all are vegan):
For the sour cream, I put 1 cup cashews with 1 TB vinegar (preferably something like sherry vinegar, ACV works too), maybe 1/4 tsp of salt (to taste), and enough water to get to the desired consistency ("as needed"). Blend in a high-powered blender like a Vitamix until smooth.
Can also inoculate with a yogurt culture and skip the vinegar and then ferment it if you have the time (use a yogurt maker and instructions, then ferment longer for a more sour flavor).
no kids means no slaves means no slavery
Buttigieg would probably throw trans people under the bus to make a deal, but he seems against it generally ... the problem with overly pragmatic politicians is you can't tell how far they will sacrifice their values in the name of pragmatism. The extreme end of this is that don't really have any values - and sometimes this is exactly how Buttigeg comes across (as overly eager to win, and willing to mold himself and do whatever it takes).
He has repeated transphobic talking points about trans exclusion in sports, which I take to mean he is trying to position himself as a moderate. (Which makes sense, in this same interview he mentions Sarah McBride is a major influence or someone he sees shared values with - she has also advocated for Democrats capitulating and endorsing transphobic policies in the name of political pragmatism and keeping a big tent.)