LGBTAitP Part 23: Et tu, ~Bianca?

[KenderWizard]

The nails aren't actually that much trouble... They're harder to keep up with without nail polish, though (Toni and I haven't really talked since our fight ).

I used to have quite long nails and they drove me mad! It would probably help a lot to get clear nail varnish (or one with a slight pink or cream sheen). That way it would be very subtle but would (a) make it less likely your nails will break and (b) give you the pleasure of wearing nail varnish! (Since I gather you enjoy it.) But lots of people wouldn't even notice! Also, sorry to hear about your falling out, hope things get better.

It'd be... More than a little weird to have your parent's own uterus.

Squick aside, though, I'm more concerned with whether there'd be room during a pregnancy. It seems like there should be (organs are pretty tough about that sort of thing)...

There's also the matter of ova. Even if they put in ovaries... Well, those only have so many eggs in them, and their genes are already determined. Hmm... I wonder if they could use a body cell? Now that I think of it, that might actually work... :smallhopeful:

It would be super weird to have your parent's uterus. I mean, there's no real reason why it should be so weird, but it strikes me as really really weird!

I think a trans woman pregnancy would need more ongoing help than a cis woman pregnancy, but since there are cis women with a variety of pregnancy problems, I think a lot of them should be already solved.

Good point... Nutrition may be an issue. The blood goes through some changes, doesn't it?

As for lactation, some meds induce it in cis men. I don't know how nutritious it is (it's probably pretty similar), but it's entirely possible.


~Bianca

I figured that lactation would be more like colostrum than the more nutritious milk that comes in about 24 hours after birth. I'm going to try find out!

I think, for early days at least, the embryo will be implanted like it is when a cis woman gets IVF. So then the eggs and sperm can come from wherever makes sense: one or both from partners, donors, family members, or frozen before transition.

[SiuiS]

And they might think you were cosplaying.

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Not sure if I want to argue or discuss, but there is a small orange warmth at my solar plexus which goes along with enjoyment of something I think about, so that's nice.

Hi folks! I've been feeling combative, so I've avoided posting too much. But I also want to avoid quotewalls which means I'd have to skip all this neat stuff... Bah.

How would this Day of Silence work at a customer service or retail job?

[Asta Kask]

A trans woman has gender dysphoria. She takes estrogen and the dysphoria goes away. She goes off estrogen and the dysphoria returns.

A cis woman has estrogen from her ovaries. She goes into menopause and the ovaries no longer produce estrogen. She does not get dysphoria. What makes her different?

Is it something that happens during puberty? Maybe a trans girl who doesn't experience an androgen-dominated puberty wouldn't fall back into dysphoria. There are a few people who are like that now. We obviously can't take their estrogen away - that would be grossly unethical. But if they find themselves in circumstances where they are unable to get estrogen it would be very interesting to hear what they have to say.

[KenderWizard]

A trans woman has gender dysphoria. She takes estrogen and the dysphoria goes away. She goes off estrogen and the dysphoria returns.

A cis woman has estrogen from her ovaries. She goes into menopause and the ovaries no longer produce estrogen. She does not get dysphoria. What makes her different?

Is it something that happens during puberty? Maybe a trans girl who doesn't experience an androgen-dominated puberty wouldn't fall back into dysphoria. There are a few people who are like that now. We obviously can't take their estrogen away - that would be grossly unethical. But if they find themselves in circumstances where they are unable to get estrogen it would be very interesting to hear what they have to say.

It would be interesting.

Okay, well, I might be wrong here, obviously, being neither a hormone specialist doctor nor trans, but as I understand it, the estrogen for trans people helps to fix the dysphoria but the dysphoria is caused by being born with the wrong kind of body. So it's not absence of estrogen that causes the problem, it's being in the wrong body. Old cis women don't need estrogen to cure dysphoria because they don't have it. By this theory, we would have to check trans women who have bodies that no longer seem wrong to them, due to surgery or whatever else, and then go off estrogen.


Also, on the topic of lactation, it seems men have the capacity to lactate. Sometimes lactation randomly happens in anyone from newborns (called "witch's milk, which I think is awesome) to people going through puberty, to ... just random people, both cis women and others. This article talks about men lactating, but doesn't go on to discuss how we could make it happen. Sounds like it should be possible, but more difficult, to induce lactation in people other than cis women, the same way we do it with cis women. Cis women can "make" themselves lactate, for example, if I adopted a baby, I would want to induce lactation so I could breastfeed the baby. You do it by going on hormonal birth control, then off suddenly, combined with lactation-improving foods (which are also used by people already breastfeeding to improve supply) plus stimulation of the breast tissue. So it sounds like it should be possible to do something similar with trans women once they give birth from their donated uterus, if it doesn't happen automatically with all those pregnancy hormones swirling around!

[SMEE]

Fact, hormone replacement therapy can cause lactation.
I can attest that it is far less than fun. I lactated non-stop for several months in 2009.
Luckily, spontaneous lactation seems to have stopped.

[Lea Plath]

This needs to be said. The human body is weird and wonderful.

Any volunteers to test it?

[H Birchgrove]

Call me vindictive, but the hand eczema I'm having right now? Which makes me groan at best and at worst scream of pain if I wash my hands with soap? Which along with the open wounds (well, now "half-open", thanks to strict regiment of cortisone and lotion several times a day, and not cleaning the dishes despite I really, really need to), make the hands ache and difficult to close, especially with the cold winds we Turnips are having right now?

I would most certainly wish it on my worst enemy.

BTW, the wind made me cry and my eyes hurt quite some today. I nearly wished I had epicanthic fold. I mean, it's not like I'm wishing that I wasn't European or anything... >.>

Yes. I have a neighbor who has a kidney transplant and her life is pretty rough. But it is so much better than dialysis.

I see. ._. Well, as you say, it's better than being hooked on a machine.

Astrella - *hugs*. You are in the system now, they can't just ignore you like they could before. You're on the road. And it will take you to a beautiful place.

What Asta says, Astrella.

Wow, I just had a massive crysplosion. I literally cried for 45 minutes, it was ridiculous and my eyes hurt a lot now. I think I might be a bit stressed. (Crysplosion was triggered by not being invited to a dinner. Even I don't think it's that big a deal, it was just a rejection on top of my big giant spiky bundle of stress in my tummy.)

*hugs* I hope you feel better now.

From my observations, EVERYONE in the past (you know, like, say, pre-1960s) was racist. And by "everyone", I mean, "everyone whose writings we have". Maybe some people weren't. Maybe Jesus was really non-racist and it just didn't come up very often. Anyway, my point is, provided we make it clear that it's not okay anymore, we can't eliminate any literature from "the old days" based on a little institutional racism. I betcha people will look back at the great literature we produce and say "Wow, those people in the past were really transphobic. And also still racist and sexist and stuff, I mean, this stuff is laughably blatant, given how long those movements were around by the turn of the millennium."

Yeah, if you look hard and close enough, you'll notice some form of prejudice, including well-meaning one. Just look at the ethnic side-kicks in hero pulp novels, radio plays, comic books and films. Or some "Adventures of Tintin" books, like Tintin in America, The Blue Lotus and The Red Sea Sharks. While a paternalistic pat on the back, or trying to portray an ethnic group sympathetically by drawing them more like white folks, is better than demonizing them and calling out to Ex-ter-min-ate! them, it's still not treating them with respect and dignity. Even if the creators were progressive for their time, if not before their time.

BTW, I'm a member of a Swedish Facebook group against Internet bullying. Quite often, the topic(s) become(s) more about objectification (nearly always of cis women) then about bullying, though they also often go hand in hand. Because of this, I wrote a few posts about preferences of people's looks, especially hetero men's (and to a degree bi folks and lesbians') preferences of women's looks. I don't feel quite comfortable translating them and posting them here, but I might post on my Facebook profile, or better still, as a Facebook document. (Probably not at the GiantitP Chat Page though.) Just so anyone interested can take a look.

>.>
<.<

*hugs Kender* It's okay, we're gonna throw a party just for you. A nice party full of rainbows and cookies and whatever else you like.

Great idea!

On the subject of now-long-dead writers who were racist:
case in point, H. P. Lovecraft. Excellent writer. Very imaginative. Nicely explored the theme of the (fear of the) unknown. Introduced the important idea that the universe is absolutely immense and doesn't care about little specks of life such as we are.
Also several kinds of -ist, which really shows in a couple stories, and was kind of ridiculous even for the times, to the point said stories suffer from it (in a world where both unspeakable things and black people exist, he's choosing to be suspicious of the latter? Really?). But I still enjoy him immensely as an artist, just not as a human being. Of course, the bright side is that he's not benefiting from my money and attention, being dead.

In a weird and obnoxious way, he got rather... poetic about his racism. >.>

I've heard quite a few fans have trouble to fathom that he was bigoted. I guess that's fandom for you.

I took a picture today! Of me. :shyface:

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So, I was adjusting my jacket in a clinic bathroom, and I had an oddly self-confident moment... I'm, uh, over 50 pounds lighter than I was when I got that jacket. I'm thinner than it makes me look... >.>

Also, bonus pic; a cube I drew in two dimensions back in November or so. I don't know how accurate it is (the non-diagonal lines represent parts of the surfaces, which I probably should have color-coded or something), but I think they're kinda neat.

... They're less impressive when you know I drew them in the middle of class. >.>

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I like!

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Don't feel bad; like I mentioned, I'd probably make out with me too. I have really soft lips. >.>

That we'd look kind of like our respective sisters isn't really that bad... I mean, a lot of people do. We'd probably look different enough to us for the awkwardness of them being us to be the main one.

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Lets hope so!

I mean... if there EVER would be a situation like that... better be prepared, huh?

That's a good point... I imagine that any birth made in such a circumstance would have to be through C-Section. Assuming there's room for the uterus, it may actually be possible... :smallhopeful:

Yeah... ._. *hopes*

~Bianca

~Marcus

That helps, yes. (Hope you figure out what you want to do too! And I'm always willing to share what I know about transitioning and whatnot.)

And thank you everyone for all the hugs and sympathies.



Aww, *hugs*. Crying usually makes me feel relieved though, so hopefully this helped get a bit of the stress out of your system?



Awesomes! I can't really think of a name right now though.

-----

So aside from it raining horribly and being nervous I missed my therapist appointment. I have to take two trains and the first one stood still cause of a red sign in the middle of nowhere for about an hour. So I'm going to call them tomorrow and see if I can reschedule.

Thanks for the thanks!

*hugs* There will be another time...

I'll be at my therapist/nurse tomorrow afternoon, I hope there will be progress, or at least a beginning of something...

... and that I'll be able to concentrate on what she says instead of thinking about having "French lessons" with her. ._.

So... Natalie put up a ring about a magical gender-changing ring for sale on e-bay. Inspired by this I put together a little poem:

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Three rings for the qenderqueer high above the binary
Seven for the trans women with their wonderbras
Nine for the trans men who inject themselves with T
One for the kyriarch on his dark throne
One ring to rule them all
One ring to find them
One ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them
In the lands of the kyriarch, where the cis rule

No, I don't know what the genderqueer do with their rings either.

Awesome.

And scary.

[Mina Kobold]

So... Natalie put up a ring about a magical gender-changing ring for sale on e-bay. Inspired by this I put together a little poem:

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Three rings for the qenderqueer high above the binary
Seven for the trans women with their wonderbras
Nine for the trans men who inject themselves with T
One for the kyriarch on his dark throne
One ring to rule them all
One ring to find them
One ring to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them
In the lands of the kyriarch, where the cis rule

No, I don't know what the genderqueer do with their rings either.

We use them for those ring-tossing games you see at carnivals. If you get all three, you win a rainbow Nazgûl plushie. :3

@Birchie: That sounds painful. ;_; *Hug*

[Astrella]

Also I missed y'all! Ive been too busy with school.

What I miss?

Oh, And day of silence is tomarow. Got lots of students to particepate . I wont be posting that day.

Awesome.

I think I'm just going to put up some posters throughout my dorm.

Well, like I said, I know it'd be way worse for me if I didn't cry these things out, but I also really don't like the experience of crying. And, once I cry once, anything at all will set me off (I call this being fraught, I dunno if that word is used for this elsewhere) for the rest of the day. So, if something minor happens, like I knock something over, or if something reminds me of the thing that made me cry, or sometimes just randomly. I hate being fraught. But I do feel better today and I'm sure crying it out did help.

Also, sorry to hear you missed your appointment. Only a minor problem, soon you'll be on your way!

Thank you.

Glad you are feeling better. [/QUOTE]

And my diet is going well. Trying to drop 3-4 stone. Eating a lot less, walking 5 miles a day too and from school, cycling to Leeds rather than busing in.

Hopefully I'll have a body shape I can pass for femenine if need be soon. But I've started to feel a kind of shift back from female to male. It feels really really weird to go back and forth. At the same time, exciting. And I'm with Heliomance on prefering my female self, but that might just be my self esteem issues at times.

That's good news.

A trans woman has gender dysphoria. She takes estrogen and the dysphoria goes away. She goes off estrogen and the dysphoria returns.

A cis woman has estrogen from her ovaries. She goes into menopause and the ovaries no longer produce estrogen. She does not get dysphoria. What makes her different?

Is it something that happens during puberty? Maybe a trans girl who doesn't experience an androgen-dominated puberty wouldn't fall back into dysphoria. There are a few people who are like that now. We obviously can't take their estrogen away - that would be grossly unethical. But if they find themselves in circumstances where they are unable to get estrogen it would be very interesting to hear what they have to say.

I was under the impression that menopause meant a reduction in estrogen production; not a complete absence?

It would be interesting.

Okay, well, I might be wrong here, obviously, being neither a hormone specialist doctor nor trans, but as I understand it, the estrogen for trans people helps to fix the dysphoria but the dysphoria is caused by being born with the wrong kind of body. So it's not absence of estrogen that causes the problem, it's being in the wrong body. Old cis women don't need estrogen to cure dysphoria because they don't have it. By this theory, we would have to check trans women who have bodies that no longer seem wrong to them, due to surgery or whatever else, and then go off estrogen.

I'm not sure about that; because I've read quite a few narrative of trans peeps feeling less depressed already when just starting out HRT before any major changes; so I'd think the different hormonal setup in itself plays a roll too. (Though absence of the cross-gender hormones could also be the reason for that.)

[Asta Kask]

I see. ._. Well, as you say, it's better than being hooked on a machine.

Although the thing about a uterus transplant is that once you've had all the babies you want, you can remove it. It's not like it serves any other purpose. Then you can go off your meds.

I was under the impression that menopause meant a reduction in estrogen production; not a complete absence?

Ooops. Seems you're right. The adrenal glands and fat tissue can produce estrogen. It's about 1/3 to 1/5 of pre-menopausal levels (30 ng/l). I knew about the fat tissue. Why didn't I think of that? (Fatty tissue can convert testosterone into estrogen, although the activity is very low.)

[Caustic Soda]

*Hugs* Thanks.

How so? The sleeves never fit me (I actually couldn't button it up at first, and they were just as far down my arms) - wait, "cute"? Uh, thanks.

Well A) I didn't know that your sleeves also fit you poorly beforehand b) it is very obvious that they don't fit you well, so I suppose I just figured that was because you'd lost weight *Shrug* . The weird thing is that I can't really tell to what extent the rest of the jacket fits you poorly (if it does), but as you wrote earlier it certainly seems to obscure your figure a bit.

While we're on the topic of your appearnace, I'll add that I'm rather jealous of the way your hair grows out. If I let my hair grow out I just end up with a Harry Potter-esque haystack wthout brushing, and that is not a look I appreciate.

@Fans not getting that Lovecraft was racist: What really? Even including that quote Tvtropes has where he describes someone as a 'negress' as though that person might as well be a Deep One or a ghoul? People are wrong on the internet *sad headshake*.

[Ninja_Grand]

How would this Day of Silence work at a customer service or retail job?

You still have to speak. Or a note pad to speak if its approved by your boos.

Awesome.

I think I'm just going to put up some posters throughout my dorm.)

AWESOMENESS! Im happy others are involved! *Glomp* Forgive me if thats a Bianca thing

@Bianca You look amazing

[Asta Kask]

Warning. You are about to read wild speculations that are almost certainly not true.

Damasio has this theory about 'core consciousness' that is formed from a collection of 'maps' over the body. These maps include everything you're sensing (including things we don't normally think of, like where all our limbs are) and a description of the state of the internal organs. There's also a lot of parameters that must be closely watched, because if they go out of whack we die. Core body temperature. Blood pH, glucose levels, oxygen content, carbon dioxide content, blood pressure, etc. These things are also mapped in this set of structures that form the core consciousness.

Now, imagine there's something there keeping track of gender identity. The female body map include things like breasts, like the uterus, like estrogen and progesteron levels. That would be the 'body map' we're talking about, but it would also keep track of things that are not what we usually call the body. And if it senses something wrong with the signals it's getting, it reacts by kicking and yelling. That would be gender dysphoria. But it's also connected to the cortex and if its kicking and yelling wakes up the cortex - well then you have an acute attack.

However, it takes about a month for the effects of estrogen on gender dysphoria to set in. This tells me that produces gender dysphoria isn't sensitive to estrogen itself. It communicates with some other part of the brain that is. This secondary area - let's call it the Sex Steroids Meter (SSM) because I like three-letter acronyms - dips into the blood stream and samples it for sex steroids. And then it sends a memo to the primary area, and it is sent in such a way that it takes a while for it to calm down (or excite) the primary area. Synapses have to be built, proteins have to be produced, maybe the astro-glial network has to be re-organized.

Now, we don't really care about what SSM does. What we want is to bypass it and calm down the primary area directly. That way we can reduce gender dysphoria quickly and maybe even find an acute medicine for gender dysphoria attacks. What receptors are involved? How do we activate them in such a way that we remove dysphoria without affecting gender identity (which we don't want to mess with). The goal here isn't to 'cure' Gender Identity Disorder, the goal is to get complements to the existing cure - transition.

[Arachu]

You'd also miss out on meiosis, which is a special kind of cell division only gametes go through. And we know that during this process certain genes are switched off, and the pattern is subtly different in sperm and egg cells.



Oh, there will be things we didn't think of. So we start with an animal model and work upwards from there.

True... I think it'd be a lot more ethical (not to mention concise and reliable) with full-body emulation, but we can't even get the brain by itself yet. >.>

Not sure if I want to argue or discuss, but there is a small orange warmth at my solar plexus which goes along with enjoyment of something I think about, so that's nice.

Hi folks! I've been feeling combative, so I've avoided posting too much. But I also want to avoid quotewalls which means I'd have to skip all this neat stuff... Bah.

*Hugs*

Also, on the topic of lactation, it seems men have the capacity to lactate. Sometimes lactation randomly happens in anyone from newborns (called "witch's milk, which I think is awesome) to people going through puberty, to ... just random people, both cis women and others. This article talks about men lactating, but doesn't go on to discuss how we could make it happen. Sounds like it should be possible, but more difficult, to induce lactation in people other than cis women, the same way we do it with cis women. Cis women can "make" themselves lactate, for example, if I adopted a baby, I would want to induce lactation so I could breastfeed the baby. You do it by going on hormonal birth control, then off suddenly, combined with lactation-improving foods (which are also used by people already breastfeeding to improve supply) plus stimulation of the breast tissue. So it sounds like it should be possible to do something similar with trans women once they give birth from their donated uterus, if it doesn't happen automatically with all those pregnancy hormones swirling around!

There's one big question I have about lactation; would it have the same immunity-boosting effect? With the proper signals it seems like that should be exactly what happens, but... Well, again, hard to say on a speculative level.

This needs to be said. The human body is weird and wonderful.

Any volunteers to test it?

The lactation, or the weirdness?

... What would a hypothetical volunteer receive in compensation for such testing? >.>

Call me vindictive, but the hand eczema I'm having right now? Which makes me groan at best and at worst scream of pain if I wash my hands with soap? Which along with the open wounds (well, now "half-open", thanks to strict regiment of cortisone and lotion several times a day, and not cleaning the dishes despite I really, really need to), make the hands ache and difficult to close, especially with the cold winds we Turnips are having right now?

I would most certainly wish it on my worst enemy.

BTW, the wind made me cry and my eyes hurt quite some today. I nearly wished I had epicanthic fold. I mean, it's not like I'm wishing that I wasn't European or anything... >.>

*So many hugs*

BTW, I'm a member of a Swedish Facebook group against Internet bullying. Quite often, the topic(s) become(s) more about objectification (nearly always of cis women) then about bullying, though they also often go hand in hand. Because of this, I wrote a few posts about preferences of people's looks, especially hetero men's (and to a degree bi folks and lesbians') preferences of women's looks. I don't feel quite comfortable translating them and posting them here, but I might post on my Facebook profile, or better still, as a Facebook document. (Probably not at the GiantitP Chat Page though.) Just so anyone interested can take a look.

>.>
<.<

I tend to avoid Facebook for reasons that in all honesty probably root in laziness. I will say that I tend to prefer feminine looks more than masculine ones, though... Some guys look great with short hair, but I think they'd look better with longer hair.

In a weird and obnoxious way, he got rather... poetic about his racism. >.>

I've heard quite a few fans have trouble to fathom that he was bigoted. I guess that's fandom for you.

I had trouble getting it at first. Then it occurred to me that all of his stories are about alien, unknowable beings invading and corrupting the world for some obscene and equally unknowable reason(s)... And some have disgusting, treacherous half-breeds or the subtler-yet-still-inherently-disturbing descendants of said half-breeds... >.>

I usually just interpret it as horrible entities that hold themselves to be 'better' corrupting and eliminating things they don't care to justify their contempt for, but I don't think that was his point. :/

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Lets hope so!

I mean... if there EVER would be a situation like that... better be prepared, huh?

Well, one can never be too prepared...

Which reminds me;

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I think... I think I'm finding myself attractive. Like, actually so rather than in 'theory'. It's weird. I like it.

~Marcus

I like your name. I don't know why, but I've always liked... Something about it.

*hugs* There will be another time...

I'll be at my therapist/nurse tomorrow afternoon, I hope there will be progress, or at least a beginning of something...

... and that I'll be able to concentrate on what she says instead of thinking about having "French lessons" with her. ._.

*Hugs*

Well A) I didn't know that your sleeves also fit you poorly beforehand b) it is very obvious that they don't fit you well, so I suppose I just figured that was because you'd lost weight *Shrug* . The weird thing is that I can't really tell to what extent the rest of the jacket fits you poorly (if it does), but as you wrote earlier it certainly seems to obscure your figure a bit.

Well, they are more loose than they were (they're just as far on my arms, but looser around). The main part of the jacket is so big on me that I can fold one side over to my shoulder while wearing it, and it's all over the place (even when I button it, like I did in the picture). I may get it hemmed someday, but... I'll probably keep it the way it is. It's a symbol of how far I've come.

... Besides, it'd be two more years before I could get all the tears back in it.

While we're on the topic of your appearnace, I'll add that I'm rather jealous of the way your hair grows out. If I let my hair grow out I just end up with a Harry Potter-esque haystack wthout brushing, and that is not a look I appreciate.

*Hugs* I think that look's kinda cute.

AWESOMENESS! Im happy others are involved! *Glomp* Forgive me if thats a Bianca thing

I kinda stole it from everyone else... >.>

@Bianca You look amazing

Thanks.

And, thanks to everyone for the compliments. I... Almost forgot what it's like to have a good day.

[H Birchgrove]

Fact, hormone replacement therapy can cause lactation.
I can attest that it is far less than fun. I lactated non-stop for several months in 2009.
Luckily, spontaneous lactation seems to have stopped.

Must have been a pain to wash all those bras...

... is lactation in itself painful?

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I know that lactating cisgender women can get pain if they don't get the milk sucked by a baby or by a milking machine thingie (ugh, that sounds horrible).

This needs to be said. The human body is weird and wonderful.

Any volunteers to test it?

Well, since I have a "thing" for it, may as well learn how painful it is to women. You know, like those lessons protagonists learn in comedies with magic stuff going.

[Kindablue]

there is a small orange warmth at my solar plexus

I know we're not supposed to give advice on this kind of stuff, but you might want to get the checked out. Sounds pretty serious.

@Fans not getting that Lovecraft was racist: What really? Even including that quote Tvtropes has where he describes someone as a 'negress' as though that person might as well be a Deep One or a ghoul? People are wrong on the internet *sad headshake*.

The Thing on the Doorstep is my favorite story by him. It's a beautiful story about friendship and loyalty pushed to its farthest limit, set in a world filled with horrible misogyny that stinks up the air like a rotting, squamous corpse baking in the June sun. The ending makes me teary eyed just thinking about it.

[noparlpf]

Help how do I answer this question on a survey?
S24. Please circle the number that best reflects your sexual orientation.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
/ /
100% 100%
homosexual heterosexual

I'm thinking of writing in (-1)^(0.5).

[pffh]

Help how do I answer this question on a survey?
S24. Please circle the number that best reflects your sexual orientation.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
/ /
100% 100%
homosexual heterosexual

I'm thinking of writing in (-1)^(0.5).

It's better to leave it blank. Surveys are more likely to keep data on how many people left a certain question blank then to keep data on how many times a question was invalidated (which writing in your own answer would do) for some reason.

[SMEE]

Must have been a pain to wash all those bras...

... is lactation in itself painful?

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I know that lactating cisgender women can get pain if they don't get the milk sucked by a baby or by a milking machine thingie (ugh, that sounds horrible).

Well, since I have a "thing" for it, may as well learn how painful it is to women. You know, like those lessons protagonists learn in comedies with magic stuff going.

Washing shirts was a pain, yes. I usually don't wear those evil things named bras, as I am pretty flat chested.
Of course, that lead to a few awkward situations during that time.

And yes, I had to dry them up through the day to avoid that. It was... very bothersome, specially in the first 6 months when I was producing a lot of milk.

[Glass Mouse]

Help how do I answer this question on a survey?
S24. Please circle the number that best reflects your sexual orientation.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
/ /
100% 100%
homosexual heterosexual

I'm thinking of writing in (-1)^(0.5).

Words cannot express the amount of "yes!" I feel for that answer

[Lea Plath]

The lactation, or the weirdness?

... What would a hypothetical volunteer receive in compensation for such testing? >.>

The former.

Hugs, cookies, a ticket to ride, the lost arc, the holy grail, the crystal skull, an acre of land on the moon, and more hugs.

OK, maybe just lots of hugs :P

Must have been a pain to wash all those bras...

... is lactation in itself painful?

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I know that lactating cisgender women can get pain if they don't get the milk sucked by a baby or by a milking machine thingie (ugh, that sounds horrible).

Well, since I have a "thing" for it, may as well learn how painful it is to women. You know, like those lessons protagonists learn in comedies with magic stuff going.

Same for you, lots and lots of hugs!

[noparlpf]

So, I've been thinking about how we experience -isms in our life. Take any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation. There's legal, which is thankfully being taken apart, and institutional, which is much more difficult to deal with. Those are on the scale of societies and groups. Then there's what I'm tempted to call "active" and "passive", in groups and individuals. I'm going to illustrate with examples rather than explain, using me and two of the facets of my identity: being a woman and being bisexual.

So, I'm a woman, definitely. I identify and present as a woman, and, being curvy, not very tall, with rounded features and a feminine haircut, people invariably read me as a woman, even though I often wear gender neutral clothes (and a bra). So, if someone is misogynist or sexist, they can target me. If someone is saying misogynist or sexist things near/to me, they must be aware that they're aiming them at me, as well as at other women. They are actively hurting my feelings.

Then take me being bi. There's no way to "dress bi" or "look bi", so I presume I don't. I'm in a long-term relationship with a man. Also, straight is the default. You are presumed straight until proven otherwise, generally. So, if I meet someone who hates or discriminates against bi people or non-straight people, they don't know, unless I tell them. They can't see it by looking at me, and they can't work it out from my relationship, and it's normal for both men and women to comment on the attractiveness of women, so unless I say something like "I am personally sexually attracted to that woman over there", I'm "secretly" bi. So if someone's saying stuff, it still hurts my feelings, but they don't know, they're doing it passively. It's a by-product of the actions that they would be taking anyway.

What do you think? Is there a difference between passive and active hate that you've noticed in your life? Do you find it easier or harder when whatever it is that people discriminate against is always obvious (often race, presented gender, age, obvious physical disability) or when it's "secret" until you reveal it (often sexual orientation, invisible disability, neuroatypicality, class).

Note: Not all of those examples are always that way. For example, sometimes it's possible to read someone's class, people who are biracial will often "pass" as one or other race, if you're out and about with your same-sex partner people will likely guess you're not straight, etc.

I think there are different sides to each. Passive is bad because it shows that that way of thinking is so ingrained in the person's psyche that it just comes out all the time. Active is bad because it shows that the person is knowingly inflicting pain on another person.
I think it's easier to get through life when whatever it is somebody might discriminate against one for is invisible, because then the only worry is passive -isms, and in many cases those can be fixed by pointing out to the other person that they're being offensive. (For me, this just makes me feel sad about society.) When whatever it is somebody might discriminate against one for is obvious, active -isms come after one. (For me, attacks knowingly directed at me are more painful.)
So I guess I dislike active -isms more because they're harder to get rid of?

It would be super weird to have your parent's uterus. I mean, there's no real reason why it should be so weird, but it strikes me as really really weird!

Well there's a thing inside you that you were once inside of. What isn't weird about that? I know I would constantly ponder the fourth dimension if I had a thing inside me that I was once inside of, because clearly if I fit inside it (once) and it fits inside me it must be bigger on the inside than the outside.

It's better to leave it blank. Surveys are more likely to keep data on how many people left a certain question blank then to keep data on how many times a question was invalidated (which writing in your own answer would do) for some reason.

Well it's not a real survey I'm doing for something, it's an old survey in the back of a book I'm reading that was used to collect data for the book and I was filling it out to see what kinds of questions it asks.
And it was a small enough sample size (I think around 1000 between the two universities involved) that if I had been involved I might have been able to find the people giving the survey and become an aberrant data point.

Edit:

Words cannot express the amount of "yes!" I feel for that answer

I kind of wish I had been involved in the survey back when this research was done just so I could give that answer.

Specifically, it's a book called "Why We Love" and the survey was about romantic feelings (past or present). There were various questions about personal background (wealth, race, nationality, gender, age, orientation).

[pffh]

Well it's not a real survey I'm doing for something, it's an old survey in the back of a book I'm reading that was used to collect data for the book and I was filling it out to see what kinds of questions it asks.
And it was a small enough sample size (I think around 1000 between the two universities involved) that if I had been involved I might have been able to find the people giving the survey and become an aberrant data point.

Well if that's the case then go with an irregular number since that fits an irregular answer

[Arachu]

Well there's a thing inside you that you were once inside of. What isn't weird about that? I know I would constantly ponder the fourth dimension if I had a thing inside me that I was once inside of, because clearly if I fit inside it (once) and it fits inside me it must be bigger on the inside than the outside.

Either that or you are. Or more likely, the inside of it is the outside of you. Wait... @_@


~Bianca

[Lix Lorn]

The goal here isn't to 'cure' Gender Identity Disorder, the goal is to get complements to the existing cure - transition.

I am 100% sure that people would try and use it as a cure.

[Asta Kask]

And yes, I had to dry them up through the day to avoid that. It was... very bothersome, specially in the first 6 months when I was producing a lot of milk.

On the plus side you could make icecream!

[Astrella]

*snip*

Tangentially related; but I figured you might find it interesting. I've read quite a few accounts of trans men experiencing a "phantom penis", which is often described akin to the sort of "phantom limbs" people who have lost limbs might experience? On the other hand; trans women who undergo GRS apparently note experiencing a "phantom penis" only in a minority of cases, contrary to cis men with genital damage. So I guess this sorta supports the "neurological body map" theory?

[pffh]

Hah phantom penis. Now I'm imagining a flying ghost penis.

Apparently I'm about as mature as a 12 year old.

[noparlpf]

Tangentially related; but I figured you might find it interesting. I've read quite a few accounts of trans men experiencing a "phantom penis", which is often described akin to the sort of "phantom limbs" people who have lost limbs might experience? On the other hand; trans women who undergo GRS apparently note experiencing a "phantom penis" only in a minority of cases, contrary to cis men with genital damage. So I guess this sorta supports the "neurological body map" theory?

I think I read something about the "neurological body map" theory last semester, but I can't remember.

[Serpentine]

Help how do I answer this question on a survey?
S24. Please circle the number that best reflects your sexual orientation.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
/ /
100% 100%
homosexual heterosexual

I'm thinking of writing in (-1)^(0.5).

Well, if you have equal lack of interest in men and women, go with 5?