dandelion

that's huge, congratulations!! Are you doing anything to celebrate?

congrats on your sobriety ❤️

I've never tried hair removal cream - that sounds like a nightmare 😅

Hope you recovery goes well!

any like top books you would recommend (bonus points for being academic or, you know, filled with footnotes and citations 😅)?

I feel like I know too little about both domestic abuse and cults considering how frequently religious trauma and domestic abuse comes up in my life ‼️

oh totally, sorry - I do this thing sometimes where I see the shape of a common belief (like LSD reveals deep truth), and then I just narrowly respond to that as though that's the totality of what you were saying - that's annoying of me, sorry about that 😅

LSD is definitely a powerful tool for changing your mind and seeing from different perspectives (during one particularly dramatic, high dose trip, I even experienced telepathy and merged consciousness, though of course it's not real, it certainly felt real!!).

Anyway - thanks for your patience and kindness ❤️

I love my curls, but it is a lot of work and special rules. Everyone always coos about my curls, but they don't realize it means my hair looks messy and horrible without planning and lots of maintenance, that I have to sleep with a special silk bonnet and my hair kept up, that I have to use dreaded cold water to wet my hair every morning, that I can't just use any shampoo or conditioner, etc. So, yeah - massive PITA, but I love my curls anyway 😅

And I agree, chocolate (what was I thinking?)

I think a good comedy is like candy, it's easy and fun and I want too much of it - but it's often not that satisfying. So I would probably say I have a preference for a good drama film or tv series. I can't stand The Office, but I'll watch Severance.

Here's a weird one: if you are opening a soda in a glass bottle, do you prefer to drink it from the bottle or poured into a separate glass to drink from?

I also choose pedis, because they last so long and my ~~pedis~~ manis chips within a week or two 😭

My hair is naturally curly (like, people all the time ask me if my hair is this way naturally or if I use curlers), and I also happen to love to put my hair up, so I'm going to say up 😁

chocolate or wine?

I leave a lot out - like the revenged humiliation section has three really good examples of conspiracists who became conspiracy theorists right after a particularly publicly humiliating experience - two examples of which I particularly appreciated:

Naomi Wolf was a famous liberal feminist who, during an interview, had the thesis that formed the basis of an entire book she wrote exposed as a basic misunderstanding of a legal concept. After that experience, she really lost her mind and now she is a conspiracist who posts anti-vaccine content and co-hosts a show with Steve Bannon.

Likewise, Candace Owens originally was an anti-racist activist after she experienced racist harassment in school, and she didn't become a conservative until she launched a website that essentially aimed to doxx anyone who made racist statements, which was responded to not only by universal condemnation, but also the internet doxxing her. That experience caused her to become "a conservative overnight", and now she's so anti-Semitic even the right-wing Daily Wire had to boot her from the organization.

There's so much I didn't capture or didn't represent well, so I highly recommend watching the video. It's not as long as it seems, lol. It also helps if you just watch a chapter at a time - you probably watch 10 - 20 minute videos all the time, this is just a bunch of 10 - 20 minute videos chapterized into one longer video.

lol, agreed. I am too lazy to change out my handbag more than once or twice a year, so I prefer something neutral that goes well with everything ... meanwhile, I change my shoes to match my outfit every day.

Wherever you are, there are probably other trans people in the same city or town. Find these people, they will have local knowledge - this is how I know who is safe to go to as a hairdresser, as a doctor, as a therapist, etc. If you live in a big enough place, trans people might share this knowledge online, too, and you can search for it there.

it doesn’t really feel like gender dysphoria ... I dont hate my current body.

I thought similar things, too - I just didn't know the variety of ways dysphoria could look like. I didn't hate my penis, so I thought I couldn't be trans, for example. Pre-transition I repressed my feelings a lot, and once I transitioned I became much more sensitive to everything "wrong" with my body. I went from thinking I had no dysphoria, to realizing just how extreme my dysphoria had always been.

Realizing one is trans can be difficult, I lived decades of my life before I had the tools to interpret my experiences accurately. So don't be surprised if your feelings and your understanding of your feelings shift as a part of this process, they certainly did with me.

EDIT:

Oh, and this video playlist by the Transition Channel was what specifically caused me to seriously consider that I might be trans. Previously I had only used the DSM-V clinical definition, and I assumed because I had "no" severe dysphoria / distress I must not be trans. (Turns out I developed coping mechanisms like dissociation to help me survive being trans, and those also masked my symptoms without my awareness.)

EDIT2:

Also, what I didn't realize before is that even the DSM-V has flexible sub-categories for gender dysphoria that allow clinicians to diagnose for those who don't strictly meet the typical criteria, e.g. "Unspecified gender dysphoria" and "Other specified gender dysphoria".

unsolicited advice:

• get a trans-affirming therapist, ideally someone who has worked with trans patients about their gender before, to help walk through how you're feeling
• keep a journal and sort through your thoughts on paper, not only did this really help me analyze my gender issues in a concrete way, it also created a record that later I could return to and remember why I was transitioning and what my exact reasons were (and how I was feeling, and how those feelings were changing during transition)
• start HRT as a first step, think of it as part of your diagnostics rather than as a last step after being 100% certain. It's not extreme to take HRT, it's relatively trivial. You can be on HRT for a few months without long-term consequences (with estrogen the long term consequence being breast budding that results in permanent growth, and won't go away completely once you stop), and it has practically no risks - do it first and see how you feel, it can be really helpful. If you want to have children you may need to freeze sperm before starting HRT in case you become infertile, but again that's mostly a concern with being on HRT for longer than a few months, a test run should still be safe.
• get educated: read as much as you can about trans stuff, esp. Gender Dysphoria Bible; Intro to Transfem HRT; nonfiction by Julia Serano (esp. Whipping Girl and Sexed Up), Mia Violet (Yes, You are Trans Enough), Susan Stryker (Transgender History); fiction by Casey Plett (Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love), Imogen Binnie (Nevada), Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby), Leslie Feinberg (Stone Butch Blues)

EDIT:

I also live in a far-right place, but instead of 50%, it's more like 70 - 80% vote right-wing where I live (a political supermajority). I understand your fear, and to some extent all LGBTQ+ people live and deal with the reality that society is largely homophobic and transphobic, and violence against us is common. All I can say is that this isn't something you can change about yourself, and not transitioning due to intimidation and fear is actually part of that transphobic violence. Transitioning is a radical act of self-care and kindness, and I have come to see it as essential, as necessary for our health and well-being, just as taking hormones is for anyone else with an endocrine disorder. Not all trans people react the same way to hormones, we are not a monolith (biologically, culturally, personally), but many of us are similar this way, and it's worth finding out.

lol, I literally didn't recognize her from her previous photos‼️