Gender

[rodox_head]

These things take my time and energy
Don't stand too close without apologies
Cutthroat, cut out, candid glimpses and
Wind me up, I'm ready
Can't escape this line of best fit

[akirako]

Hey Nicole, how are you doing? I found this thread helpful since I'm going through a similar situation to yours - having been trying genderbendy stuff for a while, I'm now considering beginning HRT. But I'm a bit afraid of actually asking around because I fear I might have to justify myself. How did things go for you?

LMAOOOO found my old username. Yeah, HRT went fine, it's been 10 years now, post-op, post-ffs. Happy

[Widmerpool]

Hey Nicole, how are you doing? I found this thread helpful since I'm going through a similar situation to yours - having been trying genderbendy stuff for a while, I'm now considering beginning HRT. But I'm a bit afraid of actually asking around because I fear I might have to justify myself. How did things go for you?

LMAOOOO found my old username. Yeah, HRT went fine, it's been 10 years now, post-op, post-ffs. Happy

I remember you too. You had plenty of supporters on this forum and I guess I was one of them. At the same time I felt pangs as I was similarly troubled, but too cowardly to act on.
For what little is worth I'm really happy you came through.

Never been a stranger to gender dysphoria myself. My closest childhood friend suffered a great deal —hormone therapy, SSRIs and worse. Now thankfully it's become more standard to transition, but that wasn't always the case.

I used to feel out of place no matter what. At one point I joined a LGTB+ community. It was actually more of a commune bent on political and ideological warfare. Fun times except that after a while I caught on such power plays and instances of exploitation of the frail and confused that I found myself involved in a veritable Waco, Texas situation. And so I bailed out.

Being a largely asocial and reserved person for me the game-changer was having and friends and a partner who dared see me as I really am. Settling into a microcosm where I could free myself. Intimacy: there's no greater assertion of self-image and identity, sexual and otherwise (despite its inherent elusiveness). Of course it's still bothersome to deal with dorks that automatically pin me down as one thing or another, but it doesn't gnaw at me anymore.

Sorry for the rant but I felt a need to pitch in. The moral of the story is that there is none, still a battleground with all too different angles interweaving.

[akirako]

Hey Nicole, how are you doing? I found this thread helpful since I'm going through a similar situation to yours - having been trying genderbendy stuff for a while, I'm now considering beginning HRT. But I'm a bit afraid of actually asking around because I fear I might have to justify myself. How did things go for you?

LMAOOOO found my old username. Yeah, HRT went fine, it's been 10 years now, post-op, post-ffs. Happy

I remember you too. You had plenty of supporters on this forum and I guess I was one of them. At the same time I felt pangs as I was similarly troubled, but too cowardly to act on.
For what little is worth I'm really happy you came through.

Never been a stranger to gender dysphoria myself. My closest childhood friend suffered a great deal —hormone therapy, SSRIs and worse. Now thankfully it's become more standard to transition, but that wasn't always the case.

I used to feel out of place no matter what. At one point I joined a LGTB+ community. It was actually more of a commune bent on political and ideological warfare. Fun times except that after a while I caught on such power plays and instances of exploitation of the frail and confused that I found myself involved in a veritable Waco, Texas situation. And so I bailed out.

Being a largely asocial and reserved person for me the game-changer was having and friends and a partner who dared see me as I really am. Settling into a microcosm where I could free myself. Intimacy: there's no greater assertion of self-image and identity, sexual and otherwise (despite its inherent elusiveness). Of course it's still bothersome to deal with dorks that automatically pin me down as one thing or another, but it doesn't gnaw at me anymore.

Sorry for the rant but I felt a need to pitch in. The moral of the story is that there is none, still a battleground with all too different angles interweaving.

Thank you for your kind words <3

I know exactly what you mean, and I know the need to rant about it, because it's difficult to talk about. The abuse dynamics are too tacit and too ingrained into ostensibly feminist/queer struggle language, and nobody wants to listen. Plus the grimmest part of it all, it's easy to paint the victims as abusers and have them just disappear, simply because certain kinds of queer people are inherently considered suspicious, so people are eager to believe any bullshit about them. Also there's the fact a substantial part of so called "activism" has no real political strategy and no real political goals, and most of all no power over actual abusers or actual exploitative and oppressive social structures. So people rack up social credit by beheading as many of their "comrades" (big word here for such a hypocritical milieu) as possible. They can't hurt Johnny Depp or Dani Alves, and they have no viable long-term plan to overthrow capital, its reproductive economy and its ideological apparatus. But they can stock up on credibility by exploiting and abusing the weirdest, most vulnerable, most mentally troubled, most autistic, queers, then ritually disposing of them and blaming them for their own social murder. It's a social economy built on ritual sacrifice and people like us are the currency. I've been through it and it's been an extremely bitter lesson that has left a very real psychic scar on me, not to mention how much it's fucked up my personal path to economic and individual stability, which shockingly is not over yet despite the fact I'm a 38-year old woman with a degree and some very employable skills, like coding and being able to speak Japanese. I'm on disability benefits and that oficially recognised 67% disability degree comes in no small part from PTSD I acquired from being naively involved in such communities. I have nightmares about it, I still even wake up screaming relatively often. But as disillusioned as I've become, I still am a political radical of sorts and I don't intend to give up. I'm just too sick at the moment, and have some things to take care of now that I've been forced to go back to my parents' place and have got some recent wounds to heal on top of the older ones, plus the ones I got when I was closeted, and the ones I got throughout childhood. But I've realised that, for better or worse, when people like us make it past their early 20's it's because we're bulletproof. It's like absorbing more radiation than any living organism can conceivably absorb, so it's like being cursed, one of the living dead, but I know I personally must live and I refuse to give in to suicidal thoughts anymore.

Have you read Hot Allostatic Load? Finding someone was able to put all of this into words, and that we're not alone and muzzled, was like taking a huge burden off my shoulders.

I'm extremely glad to know you've found your place where you can be safe without having to retreat into isolation. I believe I understand, if it helps. They're powerful in their cultish corner of society, but they're few in number, they tend to turn on each other, and most importantly they're politically corrupt posers. They're nothing. We will outlast them and thrive, and the more we thrive, the more our story will be able to be told and the more comrades will join us. One day we won't even feel the heartwrenching anxiety that comes from seeing a young, naive, transfem being all gung-ho in the wrong ways, knowing she will eventually be sacrificed and knowing we can't do anything to spare her the trauma... yet. We have endured, and so victory is ours.

Thank you for opening up about this difficult topic.

[turquoise70]

Hey Nicole, how are you doing? I found this thread helpful since I'm going through a similar situation to yours - having been trying genderbendy stuff for a while, I'm now considering beginning HRT. But I'm a bit afraid of actually asking around because I fear I might have to justify myself. How did things go for you?

LMAOOOO found my old username. Yeah, HRT went fine, it's been 10 years now, post-op, post-ffs. Happy

HECK yeah! Congrats on all counts! I've considered FFS someday, money is of course an issue but maybe that'll be a goal for the future.

Wait, 10 pages? What pretentious asshole starts a thread like this?

...oh

[akirako]

Hey Nicole, how are you doing? I found this thread helpful since I'm going through a similar situation to yours - having been trying genderbendy stuff for a while, I'm now considering beginning HRT. But I'm a bit afraid of actually asking around because I fear I might have to justify myself. How did things go for you?

LMAOOOO found my old username. Yeah, HRT went fine, it's been 10 years now, post-op, post-ffs. Happy

HECK yeah! Congrats on all counts! I've considered FFS someday, money is of course an issue but maybe that'll be a goal for the future.

Wait, 10 pages? What pretentious asshole starts a thread like this?

...oh

Yay!!! Congrats to you too, and especially thank you for being so much of a pretentious asshole to start this thread because it definitely was an important turning point for me <3

As for FFS, yeah, I'm still paying a hefty amount for the loan, and will be for a few years. I'm on benefits at the moment but I was lucky enough to have a supportive mum with enough resources, which still feels incredible to me. I'd be homeless if it weren't for her and yet I was able to get such an expensive surgery (at Facialteam no less), which is quite mindblowing. I mope quite a bit and have been through some shit but I'm also incredibly fortunate at the same time.

[Negamuse]

Oh hey that's where I had mine. Lovely place.

[akirako]

Oh hey that's where I had mine. Lovely place.

Innit? Dr Javier (forgot his last name) was really kind and I was relieved to realise he wasn't trying to sell me up and actually recommended not doing most of the stuff I had in mind. The clinic was swanky too, I don't think I'll ever be able to stay at a hotel half as good lmao (i'm actually staying at a capsule hotel as we speak because i had to go back to my parents's due to an unfortunate turn of events, but I had some stuff to do in town this week)

[Negamuse]

God, wasn't it just. I was a bit "hmm" on the drive over, cos it's in a weird backroad behind some random hotels in the middle of nowhere, and then there's that first little meeting room that feels a bit makeshift but the hospital itself was like a space station. And yeah everyone was really nice, I had exactly the same vibes off the doctor as you. I wish I could remember his name but in the first consultation as part of a process question he very memorably said "so we will peel your head a bit like an orange..." and from that point onward he was just "Dr OrangePeeler" in our house

I know it was a lot of money and I was very lucky to be in a position to do it. I had all sorts of working myself up to even thinking it was a good idea but in the end it was kinda lifechanging in ways I wasn't expecting and I've never looked back.

[turquoise70]

I have no idea if this is a tacky question to ask, so please don't feel obligated to answer it, but I'm curious: What-all did you have done and, ballpark, about how much did it run you?

I only have one other person (found-family sister) to compare against. She's had great results, and it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $50k US.

Bottom surgery for me was about half that, for the record.

[akirako]

I have no idea if this is a tacky question to ask, so please don't feel obligated to answer it, but I'm curious: What-all did you have done and, ballpark, about how much did it run you?

I only have one other person (found-family sister) to compare against. She's had great results, and it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $50k US.

Bottom surgery for me was about half that, for the record.

I don't know if it's tacky for some people, but I personally feel like it takes me 0 effort to help a sister with simple information like that, so don't worry, for me personally anyway! I had forehead/orbital bone reconstruction and a liplift done. They advised against rhino and any sort of jaw surgery in my case. It was a bit over 19k eur in 2023, but I don't know how inflation, war, energy prices etc might have affected their prices since. They offered a 5-year payment plan (with 3k in interest) with a Spanish bank (my mum has a decent retirement pension and at the time I was employed as a programmer before shit happened and I had a mental breakdown lol). Bottom surgery was amazingly paid for by the Catalan public health system at Bellvitge Hospital and I want to cry because I'm sure the right wing are going to axe all public trans healthcare in Spain after the next election.

I want to say, FFS did pretty much change my life overnight. I was one of those "I started too late, it's over for me" doomers, and it's not like I pass 100% of the time but somehow the combination of passing way more often and being overall happy with my face made passing just not a concern anymore. I guess it depends on the individual case of course but I only have good things to say both about the benefits of the surgery and Facialteam themselves. Also I had no complications and recovery went great, I just had a very swollen face for a while, but besides FFS and SRS I've had a bunch of surgeries for medical reasons (namely cancer and a severe case of gallstones that went untreated for too long) and I've never had a hard time recovering, so maybe that's just me.