alchemistdoctor

It's a very *distinctive* blog

queer chemist with a lot of hobbies


DiscoDeerDiary
@DiscoDeerDiary

For young/newly out trans people worrying about the worsening social climate and fearing they'll never feel safe again, I recommend taking up illegalism. It won't necessarily make you feel safer but it'll change your relationship to danger.


Gwen
@Gwen

Tangential but one thing I've noticed with a lot of younger transfolks is a like... terrified reticence to self-med when the legal avenues fail or turn against them.

It feels like something as simple as self-medding that was well known to be common SOP and knowledge amongst trans people a decade ago is now seen as risky and dangerous by the kids coming in now who've never had to do it. Transpeople as a community are largely the ones who helped figure out how to safely administer HRT to ourselves and monitor ourselves and we TAUGHT most of the medical establishment this until they caught up.

Those resources still exists and you can still access them, people in the UK and other countries have to still use them a lot of the time. You can learn how to obtain and use HRT and monitor your hormone levels yourself if the system fails you, this is not some shady, risky action. This is basically down to a science. Do not let fascists prevent you from living your life. Do not let hateful and pointless rules and laws prevent you from doing what you need to do.


DiscoDeerDiary
@DiscoDeerDiary

It is kind of an interesting side effect of trans healthcare becoming more aboveground that you're gonna have more trans people who are not used to disobeying the medical system. And I'd consider the whole situation to be, on the balance, mostly a good thing: my guess is we're seeing people coming out as trans who probably would have died mysteriously otherwise. But yeah it does mean we're gonna have to compassionately guide them through how to do their own medical care.


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in reply to @Gwen's post:

I hate to ever point people at reddit, but given that it's The Last Forum On The Internet in many ways, check out the transdiy subreddit. They have a wiki with in-depth guides and sources. Mostly for blood tests you'll just be going to labs and paying for them up front.

Unfortunately unless you have a full lab available to you and the knowledge of how to use the equipment, commercial labs are the best option here, but you can just have your levels tested and learn to interpret the results yourself and up or lower your dosage based on that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/TransDIY/wiki/index/#wiki_blood_tests

in reply to @DiscoDeerDiary's post:

"my guess is we're seeing people coming out as trans who probably would have died mysteriously otherwise"

I really feel this, coming from a category of trans people who in seeking gender-affirming surgery would very infamously until very recently be pushed toward "back-alley doctors" if not toward attempts at "self-surgery" in the face of total shutout from the trans healthcare system.

Then there's every time I hear of someone who had just been pushed on to gender-incongruent hormones in exchange for being allowed above-board access to gender-affirming surgery.

Then there are all my friends who are on estrogen-based hormone therapy, who didn't want breast development, and who weren't informed of the existence of breast-development-inhibiting SERMs. God, this is becoming a ramble but you've just got me thinking about the very recent development of the healthcare system less aggressively wanting mysterious and unremarkable deaths in place of trans people.