The first time we tried having me cut her hair, it went atrociously because I freaked out worrying I had cut it too short. (And it did end up very short) This time it apparently went pretty well, we pinned a towel around her shoulders and I just went at it. My knuckles are knobbly so I have trouble keeping hair between my fingers, but she seems very satisfied with the cut, even if it was a bit uneven and needed some revisions. I erred toward cutting not-enough over too-much.

Should do more "girls' night"-y stuff like that I guess, hanging out styling our hair or painting nails or whatever kind of rocks. Both intimate and relaxing. Thank fuck I'm not a man or I would be the most ANNOYING WIFEGUY

Honestly someone needs to answer for starting the idea that you have to be skinny. That shit's terrible, squish is good actually

This is Views From Both Sides of the Bridge? and it fuckin slaps. I discovered it by punching "trans sexuality" (critical spacebar press) into Searx or something ages ago. I have also done this with "autism and sexuality" because Idk I'm weird this way. The title might sound less than promising, but the abstract is downright insightful;

The aim of this paper is to examine whether transgender people’s experiences of relationships are influenced by heteronormativity, the related concept of sexual legitimacy, and gender as a binary construct. Data from an Internet-based study of transgender people in the USA was used. Findings seem to indicate that participants were strongly influenced by heteronormative discourses. However, less rigid gender beliefs are associated with lower levels of internalised transphobia, which, in turn, are associated with higher levels of self-esteem. Transgender people can therefore find themselves in a double-bind where, on one hand, conforming to gender and sexual norms leads to validation by mainstream US. society, but could possibly entail diminished psychological well-being.

It's pretty silly and boring that it only polls Terminally Online Mostly White Binary Trans People From Burger Empire, but that's okay, it's got cool and funny observations: 'More transfem people cohabitate!' This Just In: truly, the u-haul is essential to the experience of being a dyke, since lesbians were like 30% more common than straight trans women or some shit.

It has a lot of stats I never thought I would see statistified though: Trans women are less likely to want to discuss dysphoria in a relationship, and naturally trans men are more game to talk about their junk with a partner. Funnily, 85% of both categories surveyed are chill with being touched 'down there'. One third of people surveyed are non-monogamous in some form. These statistics are amazing, even if it's just a small study group. I'd die to have more info like this freely available. Idk it's like an anthropology thing, look at the facts about my people. Qualitative and quantitative study and surveys coupled with ACTUAL FIRST PERSON TESTIMONY about trans people and their sexual/romantic lives? I'd pay for this, easily. How many stupid fucking cisnormative studies are there that are basically trash? This is gold to me.

Views also provides super concrete utterly unassailable objective proof that dogmatic, stringent, binary gender ideals are unhealthy for you:

A Pearson correlation of the selected scales, using SPSS 17.0, revealed two statistically significant correlations, as detailed below. The gender ideology scale significantly negatively correlates (r = −.347) with the internalised transphobia scale (p < .001). This means that the higher participants scored on the first, indicating more strongly held gender stereotypical construing, the lower they scored on the latter scales, implying a higher level of internalised transphobia. The internalised transphobia scale significantly positively correlates (r = .326) with the Rosenberg's self-esteem scale (p < .001). This means that the higher participants scored on the latter, indicating higher levels of self-esteem, the higher they also scored on the former, indicating a more positive transgender identity and lower levels of internalised transphobia.

That's my personal favourite stat. I cannot genuinely express how pleased I am that Views exists. It also cites Kate Bornstein (!!!!) and Julia Serano (!!!!!!!) so it truly was made for me. Its Discussion section is super good, excerpt:

Interestingly though, a closer look at the three psychological instruments used in the survey, indicates that participants experiencing lower levels of internalised transphobia not only have higher levels of self-esteem but also hold less rigidly stereotypical gender beliefs. This could be said to leave many transgender individuals in a double-bind: on one hand performing masculinity or femininity is often key to their sense of selves; yet less rigid construing of such gender binary is related to higher self-esteem and a positive transgender identity. Whereas, in fact, a non-transgender person could challenge stereotypical masculine or feminine behaviour without their gender identity being put into question, although their sexual orientation might be, a transgender person might feel far less free or safe to do so if they want to avoid harassment or even violence.

[...]

If all of us, including transgender people, are to be able to express our authentic selves, as well as to increase our capacity for intimacy and sexual autonomy, a new sexual revolution is necessary. This revolution would entail the collapse of limited, hierarchical models, and a move away from reductionist binary constructs of gender and towards the creation of pleasure-based models of sexuality encompassing the wealth and breadth of human desire and experiences.

It is an alltime banger. One of the only studies I have taken true joy in reading and I recommend you do it too.

i ended up self-diagnosing with adhd, seeing a psyc about it and having them prescribe meds for me (and also secretly diagnose me with several other things like OCD which i only found out about because i saw the notepad he was writing in). i stopped taking them a while after because i felt they weren't really doing anything for me, i only tried one med, though. my mental state was a wreck at that point in my life, i was with a partner who didn't understand, having regular meltdowns, and not really able to find a place that worked for me.

at the time, i thought that i might have what used to be called asperger's since i played "to the moon" and it completely wrecked my sense of self. the psyc i saw was very dismissive about this so for many years i didn't consider it, since he's a professional shrug

i'm trying to figure out what my "deal" is now, because i'm starting to struggle at work again to get things done (i manage software devs, so loots of context switching), and i'm not currently able to enjoy my leisure time and i'm not really sure why. i'm having doubts about having adhd.

i'm reading unmasking autism and i sure do relate to a lot of the "masked autism" traits but i don't want to call myself anything at this stage because i'm having trouble teasing apart what might be gender issues and trauma related to that, possible adhd, maybe asd, c-pstd even maybe (a long-time friend of mine has this + adhd and it apparently looks a lot like autism), or even a combination of them. i started seeing a counsellor (who has adhd btw, so immediately this is positive) but she's like $180 a session lol so i want to at least be prepared when i'm talking to her, with as much research done as possible beforehand and some theories.

so, naturally, i did the very normal thing of doing every test on embrace-autism.com , uh and i scored very high in pretty much all of them meant for suggesting autism, well over the threshold. but like, certainly they're not adjusting for confounding factors like being trans or having adhd (although if i'm honest i'm wondering if i was mis-reading my own symptoms back in the day... do i have trouble focusing, or is it that i take a long time to context switch, etc.)

i could seek a formal diagnosis, but well, i'm not sure what the point would be? i'm feeling very lost, like i'm a chameleon who is just adapting my own life story to fit whatever's neat at the time, like i lied to the doctor who diagnosed me, like he was wrong, it's a mess. and of course, i don't want to just get told i'm borderline lol

In a hundred years, when they dig up your bones, they'll say you're a man

Lmao idc. I'll literally be dead dumbass.

Alternate: why are they disturbing your mother's and my resting place!?

Like on one hand I think it gave me some amount of trauma because I was alone at night in a secluded location with this man who would not stop trying to come on to me and ask me these really inappropriate sexually charged questions. I was just kind of frozen in fear trying to placate him incase he reacted aggressively and also terrified he would figure out I was trans and that would set him off.
It was not fun in the moment.

But at the same time it like…connects me to pretty much every other women in the world and this shared experience/struggle.
And it’s kind of validating to pass enough (at night at least) for this dude to even make a move.

Idk am I alone in having these mixed feelings?

I think I will go with this doctor, but I need to put in a lot of thought about whether I want to go with minimal depth or piv. I’m personally not at all interested in receptive sex, and asexual. The idea of lifelong dilation also sounds very difficult for me personally. Going to have a long discussion with my therapist about it tomorrow, as I feel very conflicted about it. What if I change my mind, what if a future partner has an issue with my anatomy?

Any advice on your own experiences, trans comrades?