Edit: Bruja has suggested that this is the original source:

https://vsemily.tumblr.com/post/689087385425903617/dont-play-defense

sorry if this isn’t the right community but it seemed like it was either here or askchapo and i felt like it was too personal of a question for there.

basically i used to think a lot about how i wish i was born a girl when i was a kid, before i really knew transitioning was an option. more recently the idea resurfaced for a couple of reasons and i think i might want to transition.

but the idea has kind of come up before and it seems my girlfriend and i would break up if that happened. we’ve been going out for 8 years and she’s easily my best friend. i don’t really have a social life outside of that. i try to talk with coworkers or comrades in my org but generally i feel like people act like i’m off putting. tbh i think i might have schizoid personality disorder or something cause i don’t really like interacting with people generally besides my gf. idk i guess i just always pictured myself like doing girly things with my friends but i don’t think like transitioning will suddenly make it so i can connect with people and make friends to go out with. and i don’t even know if i have physical dysphoria so i worry it might not be worth it.

but on the other hand i just read the page in the gender dysphoria bible on biochemical dysphoria and identify with it 100% but it could just be depression bc of some other reason.

i love her so much i don't know if i can even make myself tell her. i think even if i make friends it's not going to be anything like how i feel talking with her. how many of you had a similar decision to make? i don't know what to do

I just really don't know how to feel or what to do or how to figure this out for myself so if anyone else has been in my shoes I'd really love some advice

[For context I'm in my 30's]

Sooooo growing up I knew that trans people existed, and I knew about androgyny which I was very fond of, but it wasn't up until my mid 20's that I had learned about genderfluidity or nonbinary identities. Once I heard it described, it just clicked with me and immediately I felt that that is what I was, nonbinary. This was around the time that gay marriage became legal in California, so really these terms were not widely used at all outside of queer communities. As a very young child most of my interests aligned with my gender assigned at birth, but even into 2nd and 3rd grade it was very obvious that I was more interested in hobbies and things typical of the opposite gender, and this has remained static. The things I liked, the ways I dressed for the most part, my choice in friends, my sexuality, the way I talk and kinda move around the world was more reflective, in my mind, of the "opposite gender". There were characteristics, however, that up until learning that I could be a third, secret gender (lol), were in alignment with my AGAB, so I never identified as anything but.

Now I have identified as nonbinary/agender/transmasc nonbinary for close to 15 years, but over the past few years I've been feeling like I am really not actually anything other than cisgender. Being misgendered by others still REALLY bothers me...But due to my experiences in the world and how I've always been perceived, I really do resonate with the experiences of my AGAB, especially when it comes to experiences of gender based violence. I feel like in my brain I slip and call myself my AGAB more now than I used to. I'm in relationships with people where it looks like a straight relationship. I don't really belong to any queer community, so I'm used to people constantly misgendering me, and it just feels like I'm always perceived as my AGAB even when gendered correctly.

I don't take hormones, I've never had any type of gender affirming surgeries, and I generally don't want to change my body. I have body dysmorphia, but that I think is more due to societal expectations of what my body is supposed to look like/chronic verbal abuse focused on my body. I have thought about hormones, I have wondered or wanted my body to align with my gender more but never to the point of feeling that I need to change it. But at this point, I feel like I should resign myself to just being cis. ADMIT to being cis....and I just feel like a fraud. I still bristle against the idea, but I just feel like I'm faking it, and have been faking it because no one else sees me as what I want to be seen as....But that's the thing, do I just WANT to be seen as someone else, or NEED to be? What's the difference? I feel like I would NEED to take hormones, or want/need surgery to really ACTUALLY be who I feel I am...Especially since I've had more and more thoughts that feel cis??? Is the only way I can describe it. I feel like my identity is not much more than a choice of pronoun, and I just feel like I'm cosplaying or something....So I don't really know what the fuck I am or how to figure it out. It's just one more thing to perseverate about and I wish I could just not think about it. But I don't know how to get there.

I was pondering what I wanted to put in this post for a while, and I feel the obvious thing would have been for me to info dump about a math thing. Yes, the urge is strong… but maybe next time. This time I want to go for pizzazz – oomph, if you will. I have another obsession I have not yet graced our corner of the internet with: the color orange.

Let us all take a moment to bathe in the excellence of orange. You may use the shrine below to aid in your meditations:

various shades of orange I find visually appealing

(i totally forgot to sit down and type out something more substantial and less stupid lol)

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Inanna/Ishtar, also called "The Queen of Heaven", is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility, but also associated with gender, sexuality, political power, and divine justice. She was originally known in Ancient Sumer as Inanna, and later worshipped by Assyrians, Akkadians, and Babylonians as Ishtar. She is also widely seen as a progenitor to the goddesses Venus/Aphrodite. She tends to be associated with lions and sometimes owls. Her symbol is an 8-pointed star that looks something like this:

Her most popular myth involves her descent into the underworld, which was ruled by her sister, Erishkigal. Inanna went there with the purpose of attending the funeral of her sister's husband Gugulanna, who was slain by Gilgamesh, but her trip was also potentially motivated by an intent to expand her dominion over the underworld. Upon reaching her sister's throne room, seven underworld judges (known as the Annuna) blamed her for the death of Gugulanna, and so Erishkigal killed her and hung her body on a hook. Days later, Enki hears of her death and sends two enby friends, the kurgarr and the kalatar (described as being neither male nor female) to save her. They sprinkle the food and water of life on her corpse, bringing her back to life. The enby friends escort her out, but the guardians of the underworld kidnap her husband Dumuzid to serve as her replacement. Dumuzid is later allowed to return to heaven for half the year, being replaced by his sister Geshintanna, which serves as an explanation for the changing of the seasons throughout the year.

The priesthood of Inanna's cult was known as the Gala, a group widely known for transcending gender boundaries and were said to have sung in the women's dialect, adopted women's names, and wore attire traditionally used by both men and women. They would also often perform war dances in women's attire in her temples, and festivals in her honor were typically marked by crossdressing and the general blurring of gender lines. They were also well-respected community members who took it upon themselves to look after the sick, poor, and downtrodden.

Inanna was also said to have the divine power to change a person's gender directly. Enheduanna's hymn states:

To open up roads and paths, a place of peace for the journey, a companion for the weak, are yours, Inanna. To keep paths and ways in good order, to shatter earth and to make it firm are yours, Inanna. To destroy, to create, to tear out, and to establish are yours, Inanna. To turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man are yours, Inanna.

If you'd like to read more about Inanna/Ishtar and her associations with gender, this is a good article worth reading. There's also this video about Inanna and this video about the Gala specifically.

Before posting this, I prayed to the goddess and asked her to bless this megathread and all who post in it. She agreed to give us her divine blessing, but only on the condition that our posts be extremely, absurdly, unbelievably gay (like far more gay than we usually are), so I hope you can join me in honoring her request.

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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

Also, be sure to properly give content warnings and put sensitive subjects behind proper spoiler tags. It's for the mental health of not just your comrades, but yourself as well.

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I made a small batch. Not sure what my levels are from it, I'll be able to find out soon. But so far they don't completely dissolve in 24 hours. Anyone else experiment with these?

Edit: here's the article for those curious.

https://stickies.neocities.org/stickies

Hey yall, I'm reposting this here from the transenby liberation comm. There's alot more traffic on this comm, and I want more queer folk to be aware of these resources.

Edit: btw this post was about a year old, so some of the information is outdated.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/279079

Thank you to: @emi@lemmy.blahaj.zone for the amazing Resource Collection Thread @Dislodge3233@feddit.de for the International HIV PReP @fadingembers@lemmy.blahaj.zone for the Hair loss recovery for Transfems guide

Comment with your favorite resources I missed here, I plan to revisit and edit with additional resources as time goes on.

Crisis Lines
Trevor Project	Connect to a LGBTQ understanding crisis counselor 24/7, 365 days a year, from anywhere in the U.S. It is 100% confidential, and 100% free.
Trans Lifeline	Trans Lifeline’s Hotline is a peer support phone service run by trans people for our trans and questioning peers. Call us if you need someone trans to talk to, even if you’re not in crisis or if you’re not sure if you’re trans.
Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World	Hotlines available internationally
RAINN removed, Abuse & Incest National Network)	RAINN removed, Abuse & Incest National Network) is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. RAINN created and operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE, online.rainn.org & rainn.org/es
LGBT Youth Hotline	LGBT YouthLine is a *2SLGBTQ+ youth-led organization that affirms and supports the experiences of youth (29 and under) across Ontario.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline	The 988 Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States. REPOST DISCLAIMER: they can send cops to your house without your permission, so I cannot in good faith recommend this source

Resources

Trans Lifeline Resources More than just the hotline, they have a great page linking to many resources, including but not limited to... ID Change Library, Community-Based Crisis Support Resources, A Binding Guide for All Genders, Microgrants for some legal and medical fees, and much more you can easily search.

The Trans Resistance Network Formed to ensure the survival of gender diverse people and families through strategic coordination of resources for relocation, alternative systems of gender-affirming care, mutual aid, and community defense.

Erin’s National Informed Consent Clinics Map Erin Reed’s informed consent map lists every informed consent hormone therapy clinic.

Rainbow Passage Providing transportation for individuals in harm's way, with a focus on bringing them to the Sanctuary States and Cities. Safely escorting individuals to communities with the necessary legal, financial, educational, and medical resources to meet their needs.

Rainbow Railroad Rainbow Railroad is a global not-for-profit organization that helps at-risk LGTBQI+ people get to safety worldwide. Based in the United States and Canada, we’re an organization that helps LGBTQI+ people facing persecution based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics

Elevated Access Elevated Access was launched in 2022 in response to the extreme healthcare bans being enacted in state legislatures. We are a non-profit organization that enables people to access healthcare by providing flights on private planes at no cost. Our volunteer pilot network transports clients seeking abortion or gender-affirming care across the United States.

Transgender Map This free website shows how to make a gender transition.It tells about gender identity and gender expression, as well as the social, legal, and medical ways to make a transgender transition.

Hudson's FtM Guide This Guide is intended to provide information on topics of interest to female-to-male (FTM, F2M) trans men, and their friends and loved ones. Non-trans men have also found the pages on men's grooming and clothing to be helpful. Transgender, cisgender, intersex, non-binary, genderqueer, questioning, and "just plain folks" are all welcome.

Gender Spectrum Gender Spectrum is a national organization committed to the health and well-being of gender- diverse children and teens through education and support for families, and training and guidance for educators, medical and mental health providers, and other professionals.

Trans Health Project The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund's Trans Health Project aims to ensure that all transgender and non-binary people can access the trans-related health care that they need.

Trans Resources Trans-Resources aims to help transgender, non-binary, and other gender non-conforming people find resources where they live. Our goal is to be a directory of advocacy organizations, legal resources, support & social groups, and other resources that servce the trans community.

LGBTQ Healthcare Directory The LGBTQ+ Healthcare Directory is a project of the Tegan and Sara Foundation and GLMA – Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ+ Equality. It is a free, searchable database of all kinds of doctors, medical professionals and healthcare providers who are knowledgeable and sensitive to the unique health needs of LGBTQ+ people in the USA and Canada.

UK Gender Kit Gender Construction Kit, the UK guide to changing things that are linked to gender.

ICKY_MTF_GUIDE I’m Icky also known as Ashley I believe that info about medically transitioning should be super easy to attain and not require 100 google tabs and a medical degree to understand.

Gender Dysphoria Bible The purpose of this site is to document the many ways that gender dysphoria can manifest, as well as the numerous forms of gender transition, in order to provide a guide for those who are questioning, those who are starting their transgender journey, those already on their path, and those who simply wish to be better allies.

Beehaw.org LGBTQ+ Wiki Parts of this page have been adapted from the Global Transgender Resources Registry, the Tildes ~lgbt wiki (to which one of our admins was a previous contributor), and Emi’s blahaj.zone thread

FtM Packer+ Spreadsheet Includes information on Binders, Packers, and More

HRT Coffee information about HRT, and sourcing, bodily autonomy is a human right. That means everyone has a right to choose what does or does not happen to their body. Not being updated please refer to: diyhrt cafe

nominal.naomi's research document A great document containing research documents related to trans health and more

/r/asktransgender wiki Provided below are a list of general resources to help everybody out.

Check out What_Religion_R_They's DIY post

gathered from

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ , lemmy.world , hexbear.net, and beehaw.org (warning beehaw is lib central)

i'm sick and forgot to send a message for this week's mega so i'm just making it myself

beep

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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

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By praxisstvdio

Hi, some acquaintances of mine are running a fundraiser for a queer run HEMA group. I'm not a part of the group officially nor am I officially speaking on behalf of them, but I can answer any questions you might have about us

We're a small group of queer people in Olympia, Washington who teach combat sports. (Viking Style Western Martial Arts to be specific). All people regardless of gender identity are allowed to show up and we do not charge a dime for it. As such our only source of income is fundraising on the internet

In the wake of the recent executive order banning trans women from sports whever possible, groups like the Olympia Queer Fyrd are a lifeline for any trans, non binary, or gender non conforming person to get exercise in a place away from increasing social backlash

If you have any questions about us, feel free to ask them and I can answer them the best I can. Thank you!

Hi Everyone! This is my first mega and I thought I would start simple around something that I think is interesting and that is the history of the first handheld calculator as well as introduce Lynn Conway, a trans woman and electrical engineer that helped pioneer the modern CPU we have today. Lynn recently passed away but her personal website is still up:

Lynn's personal website

I think I hit the limit or picture limit or something and it's not letting me add more pictures so I'll post what I have and will update with more stuff as more things come to mind. Thank you and have a great week.

Shortly after the invention of the transistor in the 1950's companies like Sharp were looking to build the first transistorized calculator. This would be significant because at the time, Vacuum tubes were comparatively large and fragile. That changed in 1964 with the introduction of the first truly transistorized calculator such as the Sharp CS10.

Now at the time this predated the "Integrated Circuit", aka the little black chip filled with transistors. Below is a picture showing the construction of this desktop size calculator, filled with boards with many components each. Not to mention the display for this was the Nixie tube, basically a little specialized neon tube.

Now something like the CS-10, or any portable calculator would require many hundreds of transistors, plus the passive components required meaning that with the technology in the 1960's a handheld calculator was a futuristic concept. For context, the Apollo space program was one of the earliest projects to attempt to fully utilize this new IC technology, and even then each IC would only hold a few transistors per chip. Below is an image of one of these IC's, a 3 input NOR gate.

This concept of increasing density of electronics is something called integration, with varying acronyms indicating some further refinement (LSI - Large scale integration, VLSI - Very large scale integration). Essentially what they were doing at the time was figuring out how to make transistors smaller and to squeeze more on per silicon die. You can imagine at the time this was cutting edge technology thus very expensive and companies were looking for ways on how to be able to justify this cost. By continuing to shrink the size of transistors, integrate more into a single chip and have that same chip also increase in functionality led the way.

By the late 1960's and early 1970's electronics were transitioning (not a pun I am just bad at writing) from discrete, individual transistors, to IC's that had a few transistors each and composed of logic gates, to devices that had tens or hundreds of transistors on a single die. This integration soon led to "chipsets", where the functionality could be accomplished by a handful of IC's instead of hundreds of individual transistors.

A calculator company in Japan named Busicom wanted to build a new innovative calculator taking advantage of the new breakthroughs in this LSI (Large scale integration) technology and partnered with a company called Intel to create this new calculator. What they came up with was the implementation of one of the first true CPU's, the Intel 4004. Although the 4004 would soon be surpassed by other devices, this "chipset" concept and reduction to a single circuit board was groundbreaking.

By this time in 1971-1972 the holy grail for the first truly portable handheld calculator was within reach. A chip (or small set of chips) that could contain all of the functions needed for a calculator that could run on a battery. During this era there were many, many handheld calculators but it can generally be agreed that the earliest breakthroughs came from Texas Instruments, HP, Sinclair and Casio and some others and the market was flooded with these calculators.

Within a few years the price of a handheld calculator would plummet from a few hundred, to around 100, to less than 100. Without the calculator it's arguable that the development of the modern CPU would have been set back years or decades thanks to the major contributions that calculators had in pushing LSI technology forward.

Source: http://www.vintagecalculators.com/index.html

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As a reminder, please do not discuss current struggle sessions in the mega. We want this to be a little oasis for all of us and the best way to do that is not to feed into existing conflict on the site.

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What a dumbass. As an aside, Riverboat Jack is pretty cool.

Dia daoibh a chairde!

Have you ever found yourself wanting to read a good book about queer feminism but you weren't sure where to look?

I have spent more hours than I would care to admit studying, writing about, and educating on the topic of gender and sexuality, and I've realized that I could lend a bit of my educational development work to you kind folks by prepping this here reading list.

I hope you can find something to interest you--and I would love to talk about any of the works listed. The categories are not hard and fast, with many books belonging in several of them, but I figured there had to be some way to organize this, so bear with me. I also tried to narrow inclusion to books relating to queer/feminist studies.

I'm sorry I thought the headline was funny

The picture is from like page 2 (or "page 4") of chapter 2 of the Esperanto translation of Sailor Moon on Mangadex.

Esperanto estro ("leader") is from the productive suffix -estro ("leader of..."), itself from Italian maestro ("master").

I'm frankly curious how much of a coincidence this really is, though. I can rule out the "es" parts in estrogen and maestro being cognate, but I don't know about the "tro": in maestro the "tro" traces to PIE *-teros (forms contrastive adjectives), whereas in estrogen the "tro" traces to...... Well, no online etymological dictionaries want to say! So it seems possible but not super likely to be from that same PIE suffix.

The word estro also shows up in Italian, Portuguese and Spanish as a regular reflex of Latin oestrus, and interestingly enough Wiktionary also tells me that estro is a word in Galician meaning "oven floor" or "animal bedding", cognate to English stratum.

I want to give surveys to a large sample size of users while filtering out bots and without compromising the privacy of the actual survey respondents. I figure a lot of the people whose voices need to be heard will have legitimate fears of being hunted down.

Traditional captcha is easy for AI to crack, but reverse captcha should hypothetically be more difficult.

My intention is to randomly generate a set of alphanumeric characters with each instance of the survey, and request the user to draw the characters as best as they can. The resulting answer to the "captcha" would be saved with the rest of the form data, alongside the randomly generated characters for that instance of the form. The idea is to exclude blank and nonsensical responses, as a quick-and-dirty bot filter.

My current plan is to create the surveys using Google Forms (with sign-in not being required and user email not being collected) and create an embed/plugin that allows the user to draw, ideally formatted for a mobile device. I would collect the drawings with the rest of the form responses, but nothing else. I do have concerns about storage.

If you have a better suggestion of how to go about this, I welcome comments. I do also have my own domain but I haven't used it for anything yet. I struggle with executive dysfunction pretty badly.

If you'd prefer to chat with me about this on Discord, just let me know and I'll DM you my Discord username.