I think it’s important to note that almost every step in transition takes a lot of time, so you must be patient. Getting on hrt is a big step for sure and congratulations! But be prepared that it will take time to start seeing tangible results from it. Don’t be afraid to get started on some of the other aspects like makeup and clothing in the meantime.

That being said, (and this is also partially a personal gripe of mine,) don’t be afraid to shop around for a good doctor. Far too many doctors are unwilling to give trans people proper dosages, either out of malice or ignorance, and this can make the process of second puberty much harder of a process than it should be. I hate to reference the infamous Dr. Powers (his personal views are pretty… Weird, to but it lightly. And a lot of doctors practically despise him), but I can’t help but admire his patient-first attitude. Even though his personal opinions are kinda gross, he takes his patients seriously and does more in depth testing than any of the doctors I’ve had throughout my own transition. Too many doctors will give you a bare minimum dose that barely does anything for you and refuse to increase it, citing poorly researched statistics or basing it off of cis hrt which was never designed to induce a second puberty. Listen to your body, keep track of changes and when they happen, and be patient. But don’t let a doctor gaslight you into thinking that things are happening when they’re not.

And on that note, take some good before pics that you can compare yourself to down the line! It can really help when you’re feeling down or feeling like things are too slow, to see how far you’ve come and what changes have actually happened.

I was feeling pretty frustrated about my transition progress up until earlier this year when I finally switched to injections and was taking a way higher dose. And now I can confidently say that my boobs show through my shirts. As it turns out, I don’t think having sub 100 E levels is enough to actually start going through puberty. It did do some changes for sure, but they’re basically nothing compared to how my body has changed since I managed to switch.

This study seems to me to be a retreading of old ground by cis people. Like I can appreciate getting more data that yes, trans people aren’t freaks, but the study just seems like a massive “duh”.

Why did they think hrt changed vocal chords in trans women in the first place? It’s pretty well known that hrt cannot take away the things that first puberty already changed. I also don’t like how the article presents voice feminization surgery as if it’s a common and normal choice for most trans women. Even beyond the implication that trans people need surgery to be successful in their transition, voice feminization surgery is extremely risky and is only ever recommended in extreme cases. If they couldn’t even do that amount of research, it doesn’t make me feel confident that the study is all that worthwhile to think about.

Secondly, why only focus on trans women? It’d be more interesting if they included trans men in the picture since on their side of the fence, hrt actually does affect their voice. It would be interesting if the study compared their trans participants with cis benchmarks at all, actually. Maybe the study itself does that where the article does not, but for reason #1 I don’t feel like it’s worth my time to check.

Lastly, the actual results of the study are pretty “duh”. Just by the physics of how the human voice works, it’s pretty easy to see that yes, having a breathier and higher pitched voice will lead to having thinner vocal folds. Because having thinner vocal folds is what causes those effects on the voice in the first place. The study mixes up the cause and effect here, so it isn’t exactly groundbreaking research. What would’ve been more appropriate to examine is the vocal chords at rest compared to either cis benchmarks or the speaking voice average. Since the conventional wisdom is that voice training can’t really change your voice at rest, that would be more interesting to look at.

Overally I appreciate having more data about trans people, but didn’t find the study or article to be particularly knowledgeable about trans people in the first place.

So basically, James Somerton stole literally all of his content from other queer creators while positioning himself as the de-facto queer creator to support. And by “all his content”, it really means all his content. Every. Single. Thought. Was plagiarized from someone else’s writing. And the extremely few that didn’t revealed that James Somerton is a crazy misogynist Nazi-loving lesbophobic transphobe.

Basically, he’s a massive piece of shit who’s comically evil to a mind-numbing degree.

Not sure how old you are or how jaded by society you are just yet, but conservatives don’t come to their positions from facts and logic. They hold their positions because conservative media has fanned their fear of the unknown. Conservatives are deeply emotional, and aren’t going to be convinced by any kind of studies or data to renounce their positions.

To provide an example, the infamous 41% statistic was referenced in this study. 41% referring to the stat that 41% of trans people have contemplated suicide ever. Conservatives don’t take this stat as an indicator that “hey things are kinda fucked up. we should be nicer to trans people!”, they take it to mean that “all trans people are mentally ill psychos and shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions for themselves or exist. You can’t be mentally ill if you’re not trans and this stat proves it!”

OP, your heart might have been in the right place, but my opinion is that it’s pointless to try to convince conservatives that they’re wrong.

Well, that’s the thing. I didn’t jump to that conclusion. I can see how the way I worded it may make it seem that way though.

And that passage is part of my point. The title makes it seem like being poor will make you more likely to be trans, while the study itself in fact says the opposite. That there are a number of different explanations for their observations, and that one shouldn’t draw the conclusion that being poor makes you trans. The title of the article is clickbait at best, and intentionally misleading at worst.

title is some crazy unsubstantiated clickbait, and the article itself is a massive nothing burger. Basically, there are more trans people recorded in the poorer parts of the UK, and they generally have poorer mental health than cis people. Which is entirely unsurprising and unhelpful at this broad of an analysis.

To be clearer, the distinction I’m drawing is that the title implies causation when all the study is is a correlation. “There are more trans people in poorer areas” is not the same statement as “poor people are more likely to be trans.”

ah, yes. because respecting someone’s identity and being willfully evil by refusing to are exactly the same things, yup. Brilliant deduction there, sir Watson!

Freedom of speech my ass. You just want to be an asshole without facing the consequences.

Y’all do my eyes deceive me or is the “L” using the lipstick lesbian flag instead of the sunset?

I appreciate your sentiment and do think that it’s important to defend trans rights and not let the right split us up. But I also want to say that just because horrible shit is happening in one place doesn’t mean we can’t address other issues in the community while we’re at it. We don’t need to play suffering olympics, and if we do then we lose out on valuable intersectional experiences.

I’m sorry that that shit happened to you. People can really suck sometimes :/

Let’s not forget how the war on drugs was also am excuse to discriminate without being as obvious about it, since weed was disproportionately used by mexican and black communities(? The details are a bit hazy to me, truth be told).

And since capitalism needs its blood sacrifice, and our constitution explicitly states that slave labor is still allowed for imprisoned people, we now have a permanent underclass of drug possessors to extract slave labor from. Not to mention that since we don’t have any robust ways to rehabilitate former criminals into society, and most jobs categorically deny the applications of anyone who has had a felony on their record, it just funnels these people back into the industrial prison complex. I mean what else are you supposed to do when you have no money and nobody will hire you?

Capitalism is working as intended and the criminalization of drugs is just one of those levers it can pull. It was never about the actual harmfulness of drugs, and that’s why problems like this have never been fixed.

I appreciate seeing the wins in court and am glad that there are at least some controls in place still to reign in conservatives, but let’s not forget that the R’s have been trying to stack the courts in their favor whenever they can. Heck, the supreme court has already been captured by them and they’ve already legitimized discrimination based on “religious reasons”.

There’s going to be a long battle ahead for us yet. Still, I try to appreciate the wins where we get them.