tae glas [siad/iad]

if she wants to, but doesn’t feel safe to, then her decision not to start yet is still valid. there’s also no rush, early twenties is so young & she has decades & decades of her life ahead of her, where her circumstances could change dramatically & she might then feel completely safe to start hormones.

safety is often a factor when trans people choose not to medically transition, or to detransition.

it sucks & of course ideally, we’d all live in a place where these decisions can be freely made without having to consider safety, but ultimately it’s each trans person’s decision to make for themselves, because no one can guarantee safety.

if she chooses to socially transition & never to do anything else, that’s perfectly valid. a lot of trans people choose this route, and it’ll be immensely helpful for her to have a supportive friend like you around.

if she chooses to medically transition as well, on her own timeline that she’s comfortable with, it’ll be immensely helpful for her to have a supportive friend like you around.

basically, you’re already doing what you can by being there for her, whatever happens 🫶

that’s a v legit concern, i think any trans people in the u.s. should be looking into stock-piling prescriptions if they can, and/or look into diy hrt.

there are plenty of guides online for diy hrt, like this one: https://slrpnk.net/post/16002807

it sounds intimidating & clandestine & everything, but you can get pharmaceutical-grade hrt from places where they’re more widely available, if where she lives isn’t providing her with enough options.

the first year of hormones often doesn’t involve really dramatic changes (although everyone is different & dosages etc matter too ofc), so she could probably go on hormones while in her hometown & be stealthy for perhaps longer than she’s expecting

when people see you every day, they don’t really notice those gradual changes. for example: my family never seemed to notice me being on testosterone & after i got top surgery, their only reaction was to ask how i “lost weight”. 🤭

if you’re living somewhere like the u.s., i can see why transitioning would be extra worrying these days. she has already socially transitioned, though, so she’s already fighting back against the fascists’ plan to intimidate people into detransitioning or never transitioning at all. fair play to her, i wish her the best & happiest life, whatever she decides to do! 🙌🫶

i never said you said that either; i was just attempting to tie the conversation back to the research there, apologies for my clunky writing!

i’d be fine if the researchers had asked the nonbinary people in their study whether they consider themselves trans or not, then the researchers would have learned new things about transness & what it means to individual people! 💚 but disappointingly, the researchers seem to have excluded them from transness by default, without asking. 🥀😮‍💨

i agree that people can call themselves whatever they want, they know themselves best!

these researchers don’t have the right to make that decision for others, though.

yeah, it’s v weird & ill-informed of them to not count nonbinary people as trans. even the way they shove these two sentences into one paragraph, as though being nonbinary is somehow detransitioning:

One thing to consider is that this study began almost a decade ago, in 2013, and the way we frame transitioning and “detransitioning” has been evolving. When the researchers started the study, no one they interviewed identified as nonbinary or used they/them pronouns, Olson told NBC News.

i’m pretty sure nonbinary people were trans before 2013, but those researchers also had plenty of time to, y’know, do research on it in the meantime 😬

the legends say that toby’s still napping now, and on a quiet night like tonight, you can hear him snoring contentedly 😌💚