dandelion

Even so, your therapist should also know that doubts and hesitation are very common with trans people. The second group of psychologists I had to see to get an independent letter for vaginoplasty talked about how it's very common for trans people to even experience regret and doubts immediately after the surgery and how those tend to melt away after a few months, etc. It just really sounds like your therapist is not up to date with current clinical guidelines and not familiar with trans patients generally (this is unfortunately common with therapists and doctors, tbh).

And HRT doesn't melt your muscles away like butter, especially not if you're working out or remaining active. I'm over a year on HRT and my calves are still so muscular they make me want to puke, I would love to lose muscle mass, and it's just not happening. I think I have lost a little strength in my biceps, but I have also completely stopped a lot of the activity that maintained those muscles, in addition to the estrogen.

You know cis women are able to build significant muscle right? You can definitely build and maintain muscle while on estrogen, you might just find it requires some minor adjustments to diet and exercise - increasing protein and increasing weight or frequency to maintain the same bulk. It might just require more effort to achieve the same results that you found easy to achieve on testosterone.

Either way, I wouldn't be too worried about this - maintaining your muscles on estrogen is within your control. If that's your only hesitation starting HRT I think you will be fine, there's no reason to go with low doses and so on.

Also, so weird that you've heard of going to Planned Parenthood as DIY, that's wild, lol. It sorta makes sense to me because informed consent feels like you're deciding for yourself and it feels like eliminating the gatekeeper, but it's still very much under the supervision of a doctor and with safety-regulated hormones.

feminazi is a right-wing pejorative term for feminists, I wouldn't be using that term (even for TERFs) unless you want to be perceived as right-wing.

yeah, agreed - TERFs are mostly not feminists

but I do think the anti-trans movement that styles itself as feminist picks up a lot of average people who are like I'm describing, middle-aged second-wave feminists, and they are duped into anti-trans positions. However, the ideological core of TERFs is now anti-feminist as far as I can tell.

different Jenner, lol

yes, please don't take my post seriously, it's meant in jest 😜

if we were being serious, I would claim TERFs don't qualify as feminists, they abandoned feminism when they started working with misogynist right-wingers (just like the SWERFs in the '80s) and started making essentialist claims about women that most feminists reject. It's hardly surprising when TERFs like Posie Parker (the woman who popularized "adult human female" as an anti-trans slogan) started off with feminist styled transphobia, and as soon as she started collaborating with right-wingers suddenly she identifies as "not a feminist" and started calling herself a "woman's rights activist" instead. (I could be getting the timeline mixed up, so take this with a grain of salt - but I think the point still stands about how TERFs quickly become "not feminists" in the name of their anti-trans views. The transphobia is much more important than whatever feminism they might have had.)

It is religion ...

Yes, the Christians I am talking about believe in predestination, and they disagree with, for example, Baptists about whether people can save other people or whether people can save themselves. Instead they believe God predetermines who ends up being saved or not, through the grace of God alone.

And to answer your question about what is the ultimate point if there is no motivation through free-will, their answer is usually either "it's a mystery" or "to glorify God".

They still believe in a kind of free-will, but only within the confines of God's pre-determined choices. God chose for you, but it was you that did the choosing and are responsible. One explanation I was given is that you make the choice out of free-will, and then God observes your choice and then goes back in time and determines it from the beginning. It's not a coherent view, as far as I can tell - there is no compelling logical or reasonable compatibilist account they offer, it just sounds like contradiction and fantastic thinking.

Also, their view is that our nature is fallen (total depravity), and the only good is from God and God chooses who receives the gift of salvation and thus who will become cured of their evil nature. They believe they should do good things and proselytize to convert others to Christianity because God commands them to, not because those things will save themselves or anyone else. Obedience is very important to this mindset.

Some things I wish your therapist knew:

1. being masculine and enjoying hobbies that are male coded don't invalidate your gender, e.g. there are women body-builders, there are also legitimate trans women who have male-coded hobbies - there are also tomboy trans women and so on
2. HRT can be diagnostic - you can stop after taking it for a couple months without any long term changes and that time on HRT can be useful to help evaluate whether long-term HRT is for you or not
3. some trans people don't ever take HRT but socially transition and live full-time presenting as their gender; some people take HRT and don't socially transition - transition and HRT are related but not the same

It sounds like your therapist might have outdated information about trans people and transitioning, for example expecting strong commitment and fully girlmoding before starting HRT sounds like old Benjamin rules to me. WPATH guidelines have changed significantly and no longer require "full-time real-life experience" before starting hormones.

All that said, your body like many bodies, probably will need sex hormones or you might experience some symptoms. Starting HRT and then just stopping is probably not a realistic way to approach this, but I do know some enbies who maintain low doses of estrogen to achieve their goals. Still, if you go that route you will want to watch out for signs of menopause and avoid hormone levels that are too low. Your experiences and desires might also shift once you start HRT, they certainly did for me.

This is a minor point, but going to Planned Parenthood and getting HRT is called "informed consent", not DIY. DIY is when you buy your hormones from a grey market without a prescription (or homebrew it yourself), which doctors see as more risky. At least your hormones through Planned Parenthood are sourced from a regulated pharmacy, for example.

Either way, congrats!!

I don't agree that it is doomed to fail, but I also don't believe humans are inherently Fallen, and especially not in the particular soteriological sense that Christians believe (i.e. all later generations have inherited the guilt from the single act of disobedience by Adam & Eve dooming all of humanity to endless toil and suffering, as well as an evil nature).

That said, I do think humans behave in sometimes predictable ways, and it might be useful to look at what kinds of choices about society might alleviate suffering and promote well-being and fairness in society.

That said, I don't think that's going to happen without significant social upheaval, and that itself seems to bring about a lot of violence and the kinds of suffering I think we should all avoid ... so, yeah - these are hard problems.

you're welcome 😊

Caitlyn Jenner didn't get arrested in an act of civil disobedience tho 👀

EDIT: Marcy Rheintgen, despite being a conservative, listed Dorothy Day as an influence ...

Relevant facts:

• she self identifies as a "moderate conservative", also identifying as a "centrist" who cares about "family values"
• she is a devout Catholic
• she lives in Illinois and traveled to Florida just to do this
• before going to Florida, she sent letters to lawmakers stating her intention to break the law, including when and where she would and a photo of herself (police were thus posted at the location and time she indicated, hence why she was arrested)
• she explicitly identifies as not a "political activist"
• she is breaking the law because she thinks it is wrong (she is engaging in civil disobedience), though she did not expect to actually be arrested
• she didn't consult any legal or advocacy groups before doing this
• she was arrested upon going into the restroom and washing her hands, after cops posted at the bathroom told her not to; she was held in the men's ward of the Leon County Detention Facility overnight, and she faces 60 days of incarceration if convicted
• she is back in Illinois but will have to fly back to Florida for hearings
• she didn't expect to be arrested and regrets doing it

source: Tampa Bay Times (archive.ph link)