Notices by goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)

@Ailbhe @John_Loader first line treatment for prostate cancer is the drugs that the media insists on calling “puberty blockers” (yes, exact same ones).

And since we already take blockers, or are castrated … well.

@kelpana yeah. There’s a bit of guesswork because our breasts tend to be younger, and lots of us don’t take progesterone. They don’t know enough.

I had my first mammogram in Portugal at 49, but I never told them I’m trans.

Two consecutive emails:

Amazon.co.uk: Black Friday discounts start at midnight!

Amazon.es: Black Friday discounts start at 23h.

Weird timezone artefacts.

@randygalbraith OK, so I don't want to have a go at you, but this bit...

...shows the underlying problem. We are still seen by well meaning, but largely wrong people as "male women" at best.

NO

Let's look at the two examples you mention: breast and prostate cancer. Medically transitioned trans women will have both breasts and a prostate. Both cancers tend to be strongly endocrine linked. Our endocrine systems run much, much, much closer to the "female" baseline than the "male" one.

In other words, we need breast cancer screening far more than prostate cancer screening. My chances of developing prostate cancer with zero detectable testosterone in my body are close to zero, but I have a family history of breast cancer and need mammograms regularly, just as cis women are.

And this is replicated in nearly any medical situation. If you took a blood sample from me and did analysis, pretty much all of my numbers (except testosterone, which would come back zero) would fall in the female range, not the male one.

We say "trans women are women" for a reason, and this kind of "yeah but..." is not only wrong, it's dangerous.

Now there are a few cis people in my life who get this, but in my experience most do not, and still do the "will pretend you're a woman but know you have the male essence" thing, and that's why I generally don't trust cis people. The support of the majority of them is conditional, fragile, and generally misdirected (e.g. "let's get trans women screened for prostate cancer! Yay!" - if you tried to find my prostate in the traditional manner, you'd discover that my vagina is in the way).

I want to talk about something I just saw on Reddit. It was regarding the US election, and it was a Democrat saying something to the effect of how he can agree with “the other side” on one thing.

No prizes for guessing: it’s trans women. Specifically, he regards the idea that we can participate in society in any meaningful way (you know, like being able to use toilets in restaurants and stuff) as “insane”.

And of course, he got to talking about “penises” straight away, which tells us a lot about how people like him see us, because I don’t know about you, but when I think about women, “penis”. Is not my go-to. Hell, when I think about ANYBODY, I don’t tend to think about sex organs. Only really comes up in a sexual context.

Not only do these people not see us as women. They don’t see us as PEOPLE. To a considerable number of cis people, we are “some sort of weird sex thing”. That’s it. That’s the bit of their brain we occupy.

People have hopes and dreams and lives and people they love and who love them, and need to use toilets occasionally. Weird sex things don’t do any of that.

So of course the Democrats treating us as human is “weird” to them.

And he was massively up-voted, and congratulated about “finding common ground with political opponents”, and the comments saying, “what the hell? These are humans you’re talking about!” were all a long way down, and not popular.

This is how cis people see us. Not all of them, but a lot of them. An awful lot. Of the ones who don’t, a lot of them will only support us as long as it doesn’t require any personal awkwardness.

Anyway, my point here is not to wallow, but to present the context in which we fight for equality, because I think it’s clear that these people will never grant it to us voluntarily.

Not only are there no consequences for them to treat us like shit; they are CONGRATULATED for it.

And they will only stop if they are MADE to.

That’s the context in which our struggle operates.

Need a catchy name for the group of countries like the US, Russia, Israel, North Korea.

I’m thinking “The Axis of Can You Just Not?”

Need a catchy name for the group of countries like the US, Russia, Israel, North Korea.

I’m thinking “The Axis of Can You Just Not?”

Just got this Reddit ad for US ambulance chasers implying hormonal birth control is dangerous and causing mass health problems.

It’s starting. We (trans women) bloody warned you.

When I was 15, I got a new pair of shoes for school. They were too tight and caused hyperkeratosis on the ridges of my big toes. This got so bad that the skin started painfully splitting.

The right one slowly resolved itself over time. The left has got worse and worse. 36 years later it has spread to three toes on that foot and despite trying to control it with debriding, salicylic acid, and steroids, it gets worse, and frequently cracks to the point it bleeds.

I have searched and searched and searched on the internet for the same presentation, but it’s always the other side of the foot. Never on the ridges of the toe joints.

Until yesterday. I saw the exact same thing in a photo on duck duck go.

I clicked through.

“Patient told to stop sitting on foot”.

I looked down. I was sitting on my left foot.

Fucksake.