Writing on his blog, Mr. Linehan said he was taken into police custody, searched and interviewed in relation to three posts he made on X in April, including one that read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

…

Mr. Rowley defended the arrest in his statement, saying that the law “dictates that a threat to punch someone from a protected group could be an offense” and that “most reasonable people would agree that genuine threats of physical violence against an identified person or group should be acted upon by officers.”

In the 12 months that ended in March 2024, almost 4,800 hate crimes were recorded against transgender people, British police data shows, up from 2,800 hate crimes in the 12 months that ended in March 2021.

…

Mr. Linehan, 57, is set to go on trial on Thursday on separate charges of harassing an 18-year-old campaigner for transgender rights, accusations he denies.

Linehan made three separate threats, is already on trial for harassing a trans-rights activist, and is a known anti-trans activist - the context is important, it’s not like this is being overblown, a bigot is advocating for violence against a minority group he campaigns against.

DIY just means not through a prescription / doctor, maybe you thought I meant “homebrewing” (i.e. compounding your own prog)?

If you are seeing a doctor (i.e. not DIY) you can just ask them to prescribe you prog, at least in the U.S. it’s typical to be able to access oral biodentical prog gel capsules that can be safely used rectally for proper absorption.

I agree, I don’t see any rules around sourcing - it’s a common rule to protect the sources, however, and I’m just flagging the norm in case you run into trouble.

Have you checked out the Matrix HRT chatroom? That might be a better place for these discussions? 🤷‍♀️

I assume this is for DIY? I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be sourcing in a thread like this, tbh - that can lead to trouble (though it’s up to the mods, I know a lot of communities ban sourcing discussion).

I haven’t notice any difference with my allergies either way - but I never had a perpetually runny or stopped-up nose.

I would give it more time - it’s only been a couple weeks, so it could just be a coincidence. What little I glanced at indicates estrogen might cause worse allergies if anything.

thank you 🥵😩😌

By translating my feelings into action.

The way I see my situation is that passing is a matter of survival - so I put all that anxiety and fear into my self-care and into my transition. The fear motivates all the exhausting labor put towards transition like hair removal, getting surgery, etc.

It helps motivate my willingness to take care of my body (skin, hair, nails, etc.), to learn and refine makeup and fashion skills, and to hydrate, eat healthy, and exercise.

Every step helps make it more likely I will pass as cis and be safe from stochastic violence. The steps I have taken have helped me survive interactions with the police, for example. Prioritizing passing has helped me reduce or avoid the cumulative stress that living as visibly trans incurs.

Focusing on action also translates to other efforts, like the long-term project of moving from a hostile place to a place with trans protections, or going through the bureaucratic process of updating all my legal documents.

By translating fear into action, I not only pragmatically prioritize survival, I also can put the emotions aside and focus on the problem solving. Rather than giving into despair, I try to find the next foot hold and stay calm, focused, and moving towards the next tangible step I can take. This creates a sense of autonomy and control, which is also helpful for my mentality / psychology.

When it’s not adaptive or helpful to get lost in despair or emotion, I stay focused, but I find when there are moments when I can afford to, I can hold space for my feelings, allowing myself to experience the despair and breakdown crying. Seeing a therapist, writing in my journal, and talking to friends can help me process my emotions. Leaning on drugs is a coping mechanism I leaned on during pre-transition, but once I transitioned the motivation to take care of myself and the mental health benefits of transition naturally reduced the need for that coping mechanism. (I have fallen back to alcohol a few times - ironically I hadn’t had any alcohol for a year before when I socially transitioned, and when my egg cracked I drank an entire bottle of wine. The same happened the night Trump won his most recent presidential election, despite not having had alcohol otherwise for many months.)

Otherwise I just try to stay a bit disconnected from the reality while remaining open to the variety of possibilities, and trying not to pre-judge or assume how it will go. There are many possible bad outcomes, but I have been surprised with how many good outcomes happen anyway, sometimes even as a downstream result of a bad outcome. (Semi-related, see also the Chinese parable, The old man lost his horse.)

So just ride the waves and direct yourself towards a better reality, and in the meantime take joy in the present moment and remain open and aware of the possibilities.

Always playing girls or male none-humans in pretty much all forms of fiction

✅ Yes, I usually preferred to play a female character if I could get away with it (i.e. if I wasn’t going to be bullied or teased for it). Sometimes I thought this was for sexual reasons, but it didn’t make sense because it rarely fulfilled sexual desire for me - it really was more about identity. For example, my Stardew Valley character was a woman …

Hating the way guys treated girls (most often in dating)

✅ Didn’t feel this way about dating in particular, but I was a very vocal feminist and had very negative opinions of men and the way they treat women.

Rejecting traditional masculinity, hated the idea that it was expected to act like that

✅ Yes, I was never masculine and never liked masculine things. Never wanted to be a father, never wanted to be a man or boy, tbh. It always felt wrong on a “cosmic” level - it felt like the universe made some mistake.

Ungodly ammounts of trans related porn and no interested in traditional one

I liked all kinds of porn, including trans porn - looking back the porn was related to gender issues, but I am not sure how I would have figured that out at the time based on how broadly I consumed everything on the internet.

What I will say, though, is that my earliest sexual experiences were not from visual depictions of sex, but rather about romantic and sexual stories - I remember reading a Cosmos magazine when I was 8 that had stories about women who had sex with their boyfriends and husbands, and one story about a couple getting caught in the rain and then partially stripping and having sex while still wet was the earliest example of media that served a prurient interest for me. It was actually years before I took any interest in porn, and it was always side-by-side with erotica, though eventually porn became economical and more frequent, erotica was always more fulfilling and “better” in a sense. I don’t remember this being true for any other guy I knew, and now I think it makes a bit more sense.

Very open and radical pro-choice position, even from a relarively young age

✅ See above about being a staunch feminist.

Being around guys was always scary and wrong, while being around girls made me feel safe and in the correct place

✅ Yes, a good way of putting it - with guys I was always on-guard. Guys were typically violent, and I always had to be vigilant around them. They were also inconsiderate - if I had guy friends over for a sleepover they would trash my room and place and leave the next day without helping clean up. Women were always more considerate and never would do that. Guys were generally more selfish and prioritized their needs and desires. Other boys stole from me, bullied me, physically and verbally abused me, etc. Meanwhile I rarely was mistreated by women, and I always felt women were more mature, more considerate, and certainly safer (girls and women were never physically violent with me).

You could not bring me to undress in front of guys

✅ I generally had straight-As in school, but I always made a C in gym class because I refused to strip and change clothes in the boys’ locker room. It never felt right, and I couldn’t explain why - I rationalized that it was just body dysmorphia, that I was too fat, etc. But other fat kids changed who were ashamed of their bodies, I was the only one so frozen by it. Likewise, I never liked taking my shirt off when swimming, being topless always felt wrong. I always wondered why I felt this way, I wondered if maybe there was sexual abuse I just didn’t remember or something. It didn’t make sense.

Dating trans women

🚫 Never dated a trans woman, no. I was strangely curious about and attracted to trans women, though.

Watching trans porn

✅

Jealousy of women

✅

Hatred of masculinity

✅

Nonbinary Internet persona

I even identified as nonbinary IRL, but in general I opted for an agendered identity as much as I could.

Avoidance of all haircare and skincare products marketed to men

I avoided haircare and skin products in general, I neglected my body completely.

Crossdressing while in total denial of own transness

✅

Literally wishing that I was trans so that I could access bottom surgery

🚫 I didn’t experience this, nor did I ever particularly desire a vagina. After 3 - 6 months of estrogen, I realized I really felt a need for bottom surgery to help my integration as a woman both personally and socially - I wanted to have the “right” body. But even then it was hard for me to feel the kind of direct desire for bottom surgery you have expressed.

I realized I specifically wanted an orchi and tried looking up excuses to get one without considering side effects (didn’t realize loss of hormone production without replacement was a problem) or considering that it might somehow be related to related to gender. I had 0 clue why it was so appealing and I refused to think about that for even a second.

✅ Strangely I had a similar experience - when I was around 16 - 17 years old I learned about eunuchs in the context of The Gate to Women’s Country and actively wished I could be a eunuch so I could be accepted among women as a man.

Getting extremely uncomfortable when someone asks you your pronouns.

✅

One thing I remember is gaining muscle after working out for a few months and feeling this really confusing sadness when I noticed that my shoulders got broader. I was so confused as to why so many guys liked being muscular but it just made me really depressed instead. Took me a while to realize that that strange feeling was actually gender dysphoria.

✅ I had a similar experience, but it was from a physical labor job. At one point my shoulders had become so filled out and broad, and I couldn’t fit some of the women’s clothes I liked to wear. I hated the way I looked and felt, and like you I had no idea why.

I would jump at any excuse to wear skirts or makeup or do traditional feminine activities.

✅ Same, I loved doing nails, I was always curious about makeup (but hated it because it made me very aware of how masculine I was, and it never looked good - seeing a man or boy wearing make up in the mirror made me want to cry, so I assumed I just didn’t like makeup). But I also sought any other feminine-coded activity, I happily learned to bake, cook, clean, sew, iron, etc. growing up. Those were activities I took a great interest in despite them being domestic labor that most people didn’t value.

also was basically a never nude; not in the shower but near 100% of the time out of the shower. in over 20 years together my wife only saw me nude a handful of times. Now I love my body, wear all sorts of tight clothes, love myself in the mirror and I have no problem at all being topless or naked in front of my partner. I didn’t even know i had body issues i just thought i hated being chubby.

✅ I did avoid being nude a lot, but not as extremely as you. I hated my body, and I always wanted to cover it up by wearing long sleeves and pants, even in hot weather. I didn’t wear shorts until I was in my 20s (despite growing up in the South). Like you, I thought I just hated that I was chubby, but when I transitioned I realized that being fat and chubby in a feminine pattern doesn’t bother me the way fat distributed in a male pattern does …

1. I hoped my future partner would be bisexual “just in case”

✅ It’s not a coincidence I only dated bisexual women … and I certainly felt a comfort and certain amount of affirmation in dating women who were interested in me because I was feminine.

2. Always being weirdly interested in watching trans youtubers and learning about HRT “as an ally”

✅ I didn’t learn about HRT, but I did enjoy ContraPoints in ways that probably had to do with the trans content she created.

3. And also weirdly envious of lesbian relationships, yet finding it hard to imagine myself in a relationship as a guy

✅ Yes, I sometimes felt like I was a lesbian on the inside, this was the closest I came to some amount of awareness about being a woman.

4. Whenever I’d see a transition timeline, my immediate thought for transmasc ones was “good for them!”, but for transfem ones it was “dang, that’s goals” followed by “wait I’m cis, where did that come from”

🚫 I didn’t really look at transition timelines before I transitioned, and if I did I think I would (wrong-headedly) feel confused about why trans men would want to become men, and probably feel strangely critical of trans women for not being feminine enough. Probably all related to my own dysphoria and discomfort with how masculine my body is.

5. I “knew” I wasn’t trans, but kinda wished I could be

✅ I didn’t want to be trans, but this is close to how I felt - I “knew” I wasn’t trans, but there was a sense that being trans would make sense of a lot 😆

6. Just before finally fully admitting I was trans I started HRT so I’d “know for sure”, and was worried that after starting I would realize I wasn’t trans and not be able to keep transitioning lol

🚫 It worked the other way around for me. While I wanted to start HRT to test and know for sure whether I was trans, I was so afraid I would go back to denial before I had access to HRT that I forced myself to socially transition first so that I had a sense of public accountability and wouldn’t fail to socially transition later.

Imagining that it was perfectly rational to keep a complete set of women’s clothes in the house just in case you end up having someone over who has somewhere important to be the next day and no clean clothes to wear.

🚫 I never had a bra or panties, only skirts and dresses - but those were very much mine, and even became “male coded” in my associations, so I just coped and rationalized in a slightly different way.

That’s part of what can be so hard about gender exploration is figuring out when something makes you “trans enough” - lots of trans experiences can overlap with cis experiences. Lots of people feel awkward or insecure in their gender.

One of the main ways people help differentiate is to focus on the question of whether you have a deep desire to be the opposite sex. A common thought experiment is whether you would press a button that causes you to wake up the next morning as the opposite sex, but it’s irreversible, you have to live the rest of your life that way. Would you press the button?

More comparisons to others’ experiences in this thread:

A recurring dream where I’d become a girl and live an ordinary life; feeling devastated upon waking up back in a male body

🚫 I didn’t have dreams where I was a girl or woman that I can remember. I did have daydreams where I was accepted as one of the girls, but this still imagined me as a kind of boy, just one that was a de facto girl (but without any body changes).

An detailed knowledge of the effects of feminizing HRT (I just like random knowledge, I swear!)

🚫 I knew nothing about HRT pre-transition, tbh.

Being fascinated by and jealous of trans women

🚫 I was certainly fascinated by some trans women, but not usually jealous.

Constantly daydreaming I was a girl

🚫 I never felt I could imagine myself as a girl, it felt too forbidden or maybe painful - I was very repressed.

Imagining how my clothes would look if I had breasts

🚫 Nope, nothing like this - I did sometimes feel stricken by fear about transitioning because I was worried my breasts would look bad or would cause skin rashes from sweat accumulation, and so on.

Feeling uncomfortable around men; predominantly female friends (I honestly didn’t notice this one)

✅ Yes, absolutely.

Disassociating during sex and imagining I was the woman

✅ Yes, though I didn’t realize I was dissociating. I sometimes thought I did that because I was trying to just last longer, it helped me to sorta “leave”, I could last a very long time that way. After transition I realized I had always depersonalized when penetrating, that I always derived pleasure from feeling my body was someone else’s. And yes, sometimes I imagined being the woman (maybe more than I realized0.

Unable to see myself as me in the mirror

✅

I never knew what this meant, but after 6 - 8 months on estrogen I stopped being able to recognize photos of me from pre-transition, and I certainly have memories from puberty when I would spend a lot of time looking in the mirror and struggling to see “me” and feel comfortable with what I was seeing. Sometimes I would try to change the way I looked to make it better, or take photos, etc. - but everything I did made me look closer and feel more, so I learned to stop looking at myself as much and to ignore how I looked.

I avoided cameras in an extreme way and have very few photos of myself from pre-transition.

DPDR

✅ Yes, I often feel depersonalization and derealization. It’s been quite helpful at times for dealing with physical traumas, but it has also made me more willing to take risks that might result in bodily harm. It was hard to recognize this as related to gender dysphoria, since I had “adverse childhood experiences” as well as PTSD.

Hated being topless, even while swimming

✅

Curious how having boobs would feel

✅

Drawn to lesbian relationships

✅

Never even tried to look good as a man

✅ Mostly true, I was very neglectful of myself.

Been taking antidepressants since a little after puberty

I could have taken them, but chose not to. People in my life would have preferred if I had sought medication, though.

Cried when a psychiatry form asked if I had thoughts of being the opposite gender

Never had a form ask this, so I couldn’t say.

Hated being juxtaposed to men

✅

Didn’t dream much about romance or sex because every time I thought about them they would just feel underwhelming and draining

✅ I think my depersonalized way of relating to sex allowed me to enjoy it, but I also never had romance or sex as a goal, I actually explicitly wanted to avoid having a relationship and would have been happy to be completely asexual.

When I imagined myself following a similar life path to my dad or any other male figure, I felt like life wasn’t worth living if that was my future

✅ So true, I hated when my life overlapped with my dad’s. I knew strongly that I never wanted to be like my dad.

Wished I was born a different person, because I had no attachment to who I was and nothing to lose

✅

Disassociating in the mirror

✅

Hated being seen as a big man, I wanted to be seen as soft instead

✅ Though I sometimes felt scared to be seen as a soft man, so at some point as an adult I started to try to appear more big and hard, I grew out a beard and started wearing more masculine clothes so I wouldn’t be seen as effeminate or a boy anymore. (Strangely sometimes the narrative experiences I have read of trans men of struggling to be seen as “men” and perpetually stuck in boyhood matched my experiences in my 20s fairly well.)

Just like, all the signs that who I presented as made me feel awful

✅ Yes, but at some point it was “fine” if I just ignored it.

Here are some that I haven’t noticed in this thread yet:

1. all through K-12 I always covered up as much skin as possible and wore baggy clothes, even in extreme heat and when the clothes were impractical. I’m talking wearing a winter coat on a school bus that had no air conditioning during the heat of the summer in the South.
2. when I was 5 - 6 years old I distinctly remember thinking I was supposed to be born a girl and that there had been a cosmic mistake (I didn’t think I was a girl, just that I was supposed to be a girl, but that I was a boy by accident).
3. something seemed “wrong” about my genitals when I was young; growing up I thought it was due to circumcision that I felt this way. It wasn’t that I felt I shouldn’t have a penis, just that I constantly thought there was something wrong with my penis, even before the introduction of social pressures about size or performance, etc.
4. I always blamed my wanting to be a girl on my sisters, thinking it was because I just wanted to be closer to them (not realizing other boys with sisters didn’t usually feel the same)
5. when dark hair started to come in when I was 13 - 15 years old, I secretly shaved my legs because the hair bothered me, despite feeling insecure in my masculinity and worrying about being bullied for being less physically mature than other boys (basically there was a theme of insecurity about not being as physically mature as other boys, but then hating every time my body progressed towards manhood - I was worried and insecure about my testes dropping and my scrotum being “longer”, I worried about my penis not growing or developing, I worried about my lack of facial hair, etc. - but when any of those changes came in, I hated them and did what I could to erase or hide them, despite actively wanting them to appear to fit in and not being abnormal).
6. I loved Disney movies and female-coded things, and my girlfriend in high school was interested in me partially because of her preference for a boy who enjoyed female-coded things
7. I picked out a female name for myself and tried speaking in a female voice at times, though like any other “gender affirming” activity, this just made the pain worse and trained me to never do this again.
8. I tried organizing a “girls night” with a female friend of mine, I wanted to go out dressed as a woman with her and her female friends (it fell through, and it resulted in word getting leaked to my workplace about me being this way, which killed my trust and friendship and led to bullying and discrimination at work)
9. I told my boss I wasn’t a gay man, but that I was kinda gay because it was more like I was a lesbian, but on the inside - like I felt like a woman attracted to other women. My boss was a lesbian, and she didn’t understand, so I just dropped it, but I always felt frustrated being viewed as a gay, effeminate man - I was just trying to explain in the limited way I understood how I felt, and that was the best way I could put it. This still didn’t make me think I might be trans.
10. I idolized women and thought men were basically subhuman, I developed extreme views about gender. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be a man, I thought it was simply rational and obvious that being a woman was superior. (I don’t endorse these views now, btw.)
11. Starting around 11 years old I felt a strange sexual need to penetrate myself anally, and it just felt right.
12. Starting around 8 - 10 years old I experienced my first orgasms and developed sexually by reading stories in Cosmos magazines, preferring to rub my genitals like a clit rather than stroke it like a penis.
13. By 15 - 16 years old I was aware that I wasn’t interested in penetrating women or topping, but wanted to be topped by women and be a receptive sexual partner.

And compared to your experiences:

1. Regularly thinking that girls got all the cute clothes

I’m not sure I had this explicit thought, I was so repressed I didn’t want to even desire cute clothes directly, but I did actively feel restrained in the clothes I was permitted to have, and while I didn’t extend this to overt jealousy over women’s clothes, I did live vicariously through other women by helping them with fashion choices, as well as taking their hand-me-downs and exploring women’s fashion as much as I could.

2. Buying female clothes (skirt and some underwear) for “cross dressing”

✅ Yes, this happened - if you asked me why I did this, I would have no answer for you. Or rather, I would have a host of rationalizations that varied from “historically men actually wore skirts first” to “it’s just more comfortable” - but none of this explains why I was roaming Belks and buying skirts I felt were cute … I was clearly uninterested in kilts and male versions of things, I didn’t want to wear “man-bags”, I only ever bought or wore women’s purses, and so on. But I wasn’t self-aware about this behavior, or its significance.

3. Feeling physical pain when having to put off bought female clothes to go outside

If you asked me if I felt physical pain from not being able to wear my dresses and skirts outside, I am fairly confident I would have downplayed the distress I felt. Nonetheless, there was clearly frustration and upset that I couldn’t dress as a woman in public (or rather, that I would be perceived as a cross-dresser if I did so, which didn’t feel right to me either).

4. Imagining yourself as the women in porn (that’s why I at first though I was “just gay”)

I didn’t do this all the time, so I didn’t think it was that relevant or dominant - I always assumed it was just about the novelty of perspective taking, but at some point I did realize most of my pleasure from a scene was about the woman - and it became complicated for me when I thought about that enough. That’s actually part of how I figured out I was bisexual without in any practical sense being attracted to any men or boys IRL.

Despite not usually directly or consciously imagining myself as the woman, I did have strange (relative to my peers) preferences to be a passive, receptive partner in sex - I wanted a woman to be the top, even if I was technically penetrating. I also was strangely drawn to being penetrated, but it felt taboo and didn’t find the same kind of expression as the preference to be the “bottom”.

5. Being sad when thinking about trans people and realising I couldn’t transition because I’m not trans

I never felt this way, I was strangely aversive to trans people and hated gender and thinking about gender, and in my mind trans people were gender-obsessed and were not generally successful at transitioning to be the opposite sex (probably you could say I had some reflexive sense of them being a third gender, no longer being their assigned gender nor successfully being the other gender - I didn’t know any passing trans people as far as I knew, so “trans” always meant “non-passing trans”, which I never wanted or felt jealousy towards).

6. Absolutely suppressing every form of thought when thinking about “the trans topic” (in a way that sometimes I reflected myself and thought that I may be trans, but I 100% suppressed those thoughts knowing damn well, that this wasn’t that much of a good strategy. This also included the thought “acts trans, looks trans, probably is trans”, that crossed my mind after taking LSD for the first time)

✅ Yes, I suppressed thoughts about being trans, and every time the thought that I might be trans came up (and it did come up on occasion - more than a few times), I always went to the DSM definition of gender dysphoria and ruled myself out of being trans by not checking the boxes - I didn’t experience enough distress, I didn’t have a strong sense of my gender identity (wanting to be a woman was not the same as feeling I am a woman), and so on … (I didn’t even read the full DSM V criteria, because there is even a category for people who don’t fit the exact criteria, so part of this was on me for failing to read carefully - tbh, I would have just found a way to rationalize my way out of it regardless).

Even if I thought I was trans, I wouldn’t have agreed to transition. I was very stubborn and against such things, it was too indulgent, selfish, awkward, etc. The way I thought back then, I thought it would be like throwing away my whole life because I liked to wear skirts in private …

7. Dissociating kinda regularly. Happened usually when reading fantasy books. Didnt realise it was dissociation until like 3 weeks ago

I didn’t realize I was dissociating, but yes, I dissociated a lot. To whatever extent I was aware, I attributed it to PTSD (I would have never thought it was gender related).

this is so true, I had always thought of transition as impossible, but now I regret waiting so long - what I would give to have transitioned 5 or 10 years earlier …

That’s wonderful!

Even if you’re closeted and unable to transition, have you considered taking DHT blockers like finasteride to stop the hair loss?

Hang in there, I hope your conditions change so you are able to transition soon 💛

I’m so sorry 🫂

That’s such a tough story - especially that the surgeon made it worse. Was the vaginismus like involuntary contractions that created too much resistance for the dilator?

And I assume the surgeon might have had some solution for you if covid hadn’t happened?

This is just heart-breaking Ada. But I’m impressed by your healthy and adaptive mindset about it.

Has there been any thought about seeing the surgeon again or looking into rehabilitation, or is it easier to have moved on?

<groan>

Lemmy can’t resist a good bean joke, can they?

ah, I could easily see that happening to me; every day the largest dilator is just so uncomfortable and it takes so much time and pain for it to stretch everything out, and doing that every day multiple times a day could be quite a burden.

I completely understand getting exhausted with that task and not prioritizing it - that’s fair. This was a concern I had for myself, I even considered a shallow-depth / vulvaplasty for this reason (and I mean, there are so many reasons to do it - fewer risks, faster recovery, etc.). I’ve had struggles with executive dysfunction, so I was really concerned.

I’ll just have to see how it goes - but I’ve also been told that maintaining width is really up to the individual. There’s no imperative to maintain a given width, and I’ve heard of people slowly stretching and getting width back after they paused dilation for a long time.

I’m not sure how you feel about giving up on dilation, but it seems like it might be less of a big deal than some people make it out to be, at least.

Either way, thank you for sharing your experiences - I’m so lucky to be able to learn from you. ❤️

I’m so sorry to hear that Ada :-(

Do you remember when the scarring became evident, and what that timeline was like? I’ve heard tightening and scarring can happen after, and to expect to lose depth as a result - just not sure when to expect that. I’ve been using the smallest diameter dilator (Purple, 1 1/8 inch or ~2.8 cm) for the first 5 minutes to open up the canal and maintain the max depth I can (so far that’s up to the 5th dot).

It’s hard for me to tell with my own situation - there is certainly a significant tightness down there, especially with the Orange dilator (it’s my first full week with that size). It can take me maybe 10 - 20 minutes sometimes to get the orange dilator as far as it will go (which is usually with the 4th dot as far as the inner labia, and the 5th dot as far as the outer labia and the 3rd dot no longer visible).

Stretching a piercing doesn’t sound entirely outside what I experience - tense and uncomfortable describe some of my experience, I just don’t think it’s half as painful as, for example, anal sex has been for me. I was surprised by that I guess, maybe I built up dilation to be not just a day-long exhausting chore, but an intensely painful one as well.

I’m so glad you were able to get the surgery, you have mentioned it was a long term desire. Honestly it feels like a complete fantasy that this is even possible. This surgery has been one of the most difficult challenges in my life, yet I agree that it’s life-changing and entirely worth all the suffering and effort.

First of all, yes, I think some people find it controversial to use the term “genocide” to refer to what’s happening to trans people. Part of the debate about the term “genocide” is whether it can apply to non-ethnic groups, for example. I would argue the spirit of the term does apply to any group, but some people disagree. I’m not sure why it’s so important for the term to be limited to ethnicity, I tend to think these arguments are not in the spirit of validating or recognizing very real oppression and violence intended to completely eliminate a certain group.

The motivation to use the term “genocide” is that the anti-trans movement has explicitly stated as their goal the total erasure of trans people:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cpac-speaker-transgender-people-eradicated-1234690924/

During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, “For the good of society … transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”

Knowles subsequently claimed that “eradicating” “transgenderism” is not a call for eradicating transgender people and demanded retractions from numerous publications, including Rolling Stone.

Erin Reed, a transgender rights activist and writer, tells Rolling Stone that it’s an absurd distinction. There is no difference between a ban on “transgenderism” and an attack on transgender people, she says: “They are one and the same, and there’s no separation between them.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/matt-walsh-supreme-court-erase-trans-ideology-earth-1235192666/

“We are not gonna rest until every child is protected, until trans ideology is entirely erased from the earth. That’s what we’re fighting for, and we will not stop until we achieve it,” he said.

Specifically, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention has described the anti-trans movement as genocidal:

https://www.lemkininstitute.com/red-flag-alerts/red-flag-alert-for-the-anti-trans-agenda-of-the-trump-administration-in-the-united-states

The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security condemns the anti-trans agenda of the second Trump Administration and warns Americans that the recent spate of executive orders, which are in line with a genocidal process against the transgender community that has been emerging in the United States for over a decade, are meant to pave the way for greater state repression against all individuals and other groups in the future.

…

The Lemkin Institute believes that current anti-trans hysteria within the government is meant to serve three purposes within a wider genocidal process. First, the Executive Orders constitute the paper marginalization and ‘paper persecution’ of an identity group that has recently gained rights and greater acceptance in order to lock in evangelical support for the Trump administration. Second, the executive orders create a fictitious ‘cosmic enemy’ that will justify radicalization of government in general, leading to ever-more power for the executive branch; and third, the executive orders, over time, aim to normalize the destruction of identity groups by desensitizing the public to state-sponsored persecution of people based solely on their identities.

Taken together, the Trump Administration’s executive orders related to trans people would effectively destroy, if fully implemented, trans people as a group, in whole, to summarize the text of the Genocide Convention. The orders begin the process of removing a trans presence from collective life and preventing trans people from existing as themselves, forcing them back into invisibility and isolation. This attack on trans identity is reminiscent in the US context of the Native American Boarding Schools, where the goal was to “kill the Indian … and save the man.” Not only would the effort to deprive trans Americans of gender affirming care constitute a form of torture (and medical malpractice) with terrible mental health repercussions, but also such measures are a common phase in genocidal processes and generally lead to ever greater persecution.

Trans people in Florida prisons are being forcefully detransitioned and forced into pseudo-science conversion “therapy”, I don’t think it’s hyperbolic at this point in time to say the intentions of the anti-trans movement are genocidal, and I think the movement is largely succeeding in their goals.

So far necessary medical care has been denied to trans youth in many states, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that discrimination against people on the basis of “gender dysphoria” is legal. We already have data that the ban of gender affirming care (and in some cases, forcing physicians to detransition trans youth) has significantly increased the rate of suicide attempts among those trans youth.

We are also seeing tools used in previous genocides, such as “social death” where the concept of being trans is eliminated from the law and thus on a social and legal level trans people cannot “exist”. Laws in some states have already achieved this (which results in trans people never being able to fix their birth certificates or update their legal documents, for example), and now the federal government is operating under executive orders that establish the same (making it impossible for trans people to have accurate passports or federal documents, for example - but the policies impact much more, including forcing male TSA agents to pat down trans women and vice versa).

So the methods and goals are all genocidal, the only problem is that trans people as a group are not a national or ethnic group, so this would fail a narrow definition of genocide that way.

I get that, but I tend to think the burden of proof in a criminal case is much higher than the burden of proof to believe a victim outside of a courtroom.

In this case I don’t think there is any reason to doubt the victims, and the pressure and evidence points to victims tending to not come forward, the fact that there are multiple accusations from multiple victims indicates to me a much higher probability that Gaiman is guilty of some sexual crimes than not. Luckily my opinion or assessment of Gaiman’s behavior doesn’t have consequences like jail time, so my beliefs do not demand the same scrutiny as a judge’s or a jury’s.

Not that it’s wrong to think about the evidence, but culturally I think we tend to discount survivors and victims more than we validate them, and that can make questions about evidence really difficult, even harmful. Still, we obviously can’t ignore the problem of evidence, but luckily that’s primarily a concern for the courts (not that being cancelled doesn’t have consequences, and “cancel culture” can be reactive, essentializing, and unfair - that’s probably something we should collectively think about more).

here are the things I’ve read:

overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman#Sexual_assault_and_misconduct_allegations

some reporting: https://www.vulture.com/article/neil-gaiman-allegations-controversy-amanda-palmer-sandman-madoc.html

note: content warning, NSFL