[ID: Text that says “🥳 Celebrate 🥳 Transgender Day of Visibility with @transgenderteensurvivalguide. Text is written over trans pride flag background]

Lee says:

This pinned post is a transitioning starter pack for all my trans folk out there!

Your transition is up to you- we want to provide information on all your options so you can make an informed decision about what you want. If you find a resource useful, then use it! If you’re not interested in doing any of the things listed, then don’t!

Transfeminine resources:

Presentation:

Medical transitioning:

Other:

Transmasculine resources:

Presentation:

Medical transitioning:

Other:

More resources:

Crisis help: Suicide and crisis hotlines

Anyone can reblog, including allies!

biskly:

calling all transfems w/o bottom dysphoria: is there a better strategy than “use it or lose it” for preventing Shrinkage™ on HRT

12/4/22 - Out of Maintenance Mode

transbucket:

There’s many considerations that go into maintaining this site. Despite many “offers” by volunteers and organizations over the last decade, no consistent help has ever materialized. The admin maintains it alone. As a result, the site is structured to run as independently as possible, with ad revenue to pay for its server cost (literally tuned to just cover it), and a moderation system that allows members to police the site themselves for inappropriate content. This works surprsingly well most of the time.
Unfortunately, during the summer of 2022, an article in the most read newspaper on Earth was written about transgender care with a mention of the site by a journalist who did not reach out beforehand. Traffic immediately 10x’d and then 100x’d. Dozens of people contacted the admin: some overwhelmed with relief to find the resource, others absolutely terrified that it was now more widely known.
At the same time, the site admin’s father was dying of cancer. To make matters worse, a famous trans streamer was the focus of a targeted harassment campaign that led, after weeks of intense and dangerous struggle that itself made international news, to the takedown of a significant site that organized and supported attacks on trans people and resources.
So, the article was not great timing, to say the least.
Out of an abundance of caution in that risky climate and lowered ability to attend to the site, the admin chose to take the site down entirely. Was that the right choice? It’s hard to be sure: it meant no access to those who needed it, but also no access to those looking to harm us.
In September the same year, months after the traffic spikes had decreased to nothing, the admin’s father died. The busiest months of the work year followed. Now it’s two months later in December, and after some consideration, the admin has taken the site out of maintenance mode.
Just as taking the site down is a choice that can’t please everyone, bringing it back up is also rightfully controversial. There will never be a 100% risk-free way to present the resources on this site. Even if we switched to removing broad access and began hand-approving every new member to the site, the reality is that someone who identifies as trans today may not in months or years from now, and may not be motivated to protect these resources in the future.
The goal of the site was to maximize access to information about our experiences getting care, and that means a much looser screening process than you’ll find in other private groups. Sharing on this site is an incredibly courageous and generous act that hundreds of trans people have done over many years. Each one of them is potentially sacrificing their privacy so that someone else can benefit. When you use this site, when you share it, when you discuss it in articles, you should ask yourself: have you made a sacrifice to your community equal to that sacrifice? Are you honoring what was done for you?
The admin is still committed to the site, but there is no way to promise it will be up or even should be up forever. It may be that in the years to come, private groups on Facebook or Discord, even with the inevitable data loss that happens as they change over time, is preferable to a site at a fixed address. Time will tell.
If you are able to code and can contribute to feature development, especially in security, please reach out (use our normal contact mechanisms).

Lee says:

TransBucket has been life-changing for me and if you’re able to help the admin out, I’d highly encourage you to do so!

Lee says:

TransBucket has been an invaluable resource for me throughout my medical transition.

I would spend hours on the site looking at photos that I’d already seen because it helped me prepare for my own medical transition and it helped me feel like what I wanted was a possibility.

Seeing the ‘before and after’ photos from other trans people who had gotten top surgery and phalloplasty gave me so much hope at a time when I was really struggling with dysphoria and depression.

I’m someone who has benefited in ways that I can’t even fully express from the post-op community’s generosity. I don’t know if I would have the life that I have now without it.

After I had my top surgery and hysterectomy, I chose to upload my photos to TransBucket to give back to the community (in a small way) and help others as I had been helped.

This is largely why I hesitated in sharing photos of vulnerable moments depicting surgical healing, although I ultimately did upload several photos showing the early weeks and months of recovery.

I didn’t upload any photos after I had fully healed and gotten tattoos to hide my surgery scars because I was worried about my privacy, which is something I still struggle with, and I ultimately decided to not upload photos of my genitals after phalloplasty for the same reason.

While I always knew TransBucket was publicly accessible, the mention of the site in the news made me reconsider whether I wanted to continue having my images hosted there.

The site being down for the past couple of months has given me some pause, but today, 5+ years after getting top surgery and making my first TransBucket submission, I have gone back and deleted some (but not all) of my post-top surgery and post-hysterectomy images.

I’m still considering what the best way is for me to protect myself from transphobic cisgender people who might use my images in ways that are incompatible with my views and how I feel about my body, and also protect myself from some of the hate coming from within the community as many of the most hurtful comments about about post-op bodies like mine are often made by pre-op and non-op trans people.

I became a mod on this blog when I had just turned 16 and I had top surgery at 18. I shared things online that I probably wouldn’t have shared if I had been if I had become a mod at my current age in my early 20’s, but the internet is forever and I can’t take it all back, even if my feelings on my online privacy have changed.

I would like to encourage our followers to take a moment and reevaluate their internet privacy as well, and think about what things they’re comfortable with sharing going forward.

I’m not saying that you should delete your images from TransBucket specifically— I might even end up reuploading mine there at some point, with some redactions for privacy. But you should think about what photos you are okay with sharing online a lot longer and harder than I did.

All that said, I’d like to circle back to my original point— that TransBucket has been an incredible resource for me (and many others) and it continues to be one of the first things that I recommend to anyone who is considering gender-affirming surgery (and is not a minor in the jurisdiction in which they reside as the site hosts images of genitals and it is against the terms of service for minors to join).

I would like to thank the admin of @transbucket for all the work they’ve done, and encourage our followers to assist them if they are able to:

About Transbucket | Transbucket.com

transbucket.com

How to Tailor Boxers

dragonflavoredcake:

I’m making this because I recently looked for a guide for this and found absolutely nothing. Hearken to me, ye who have too much space in the front of your boxers, for instructions on how to make your men’s boxers actually fit—aka how to remove the huge flap in front.
1. Wash your boxers. Always wash fabric before working with it, and always wash clothes before wearing them.
2. Make sure they fit in the waist and leg. Elastic is quite forgiving, but they have to be comfortable. If there’s a sizing guide on the boxer packaging, go by your lower waist measurement. (Look at WikiHow or a tailoring guide to get that.)
3. Take a seam ripper or a pair of embroidery scissors and very carefully rip out the front center seam. Pull out all of the loose thread. Congratulations! You have reached the point of no return. You will now have two distinct flaps in the front of your boxers. This is fine.

Keep reading

flowercrowncrip:

Does anybody with any tech knowledge/Experience with dictation software (Especially Dragon) have any idea how to get to recognise Neo pronouns?
I am practically tearing my hair out in an attempt to be able to use ZE / ZIR pronouns in a sentence. Even after I’ve added them to vocabulary and have corrected it multiple times it just won’t recognise it.
I work for an LGBT org so there’s quite a high chance that I will have to use them for a service user in the future.

A Good Way to Get Affirming Clothes (US)-Goodwill Outlet

Goodwill Outlet usually does not have clothes on hangers, and you pay for clothing by pound (99 cents USD). Because of this, when shopping with people you can’t get affirming clothes with, it would be easy to put clothing you want in a bag, wrapped in clothing you don’t want (i.e. putting panties/boxers in a t-shirt). It is also a good way to get clothes in general, because it is very cheap. Hope this helps some people!

letsplaysocialjustice:

Reminder [UK]: your GP is REQUIRED to refer you onto a gender identity clinic if you ask them to. They may try to refuse a referral - but it is not up to them. They do not get to decide who is ‘trans enough’ to be referred. The system is broken enough as it is - do not let your GP refuse you at the first hurdle.
If your GP refuses a referral:
1) Ask them to officially note the refusal in your file so that they cannot deny that they refused a referral later.
2) Talk to the practice manager - point out that it is a requirement that they refer you.
3) Speak to PALS.
Finally, once they do agree to refer you - chase up on it. A reluctant GP may ‘lose’ or 'forget’ your referral. Don’t sit for 6 months thinking that a referral has gone through when your GP hasn’t 'gotten around’ to it yet. Chase weekly.Advocate for yourself. Sometimes being a (polite, but firm) nuisance is the only way to get things done.
I’d appreciate if you could share to make sure this gets seen by people who need to see it.

gatheringbones:

[“I told my mother I thought I might be trans in a lengthy and overly apologetic email, which she didn’t quite know how to respond to. From her perspective, my transition had popped up out of nowhere, with no prior warning signs. She was convinced I had been brainwashed into transitioning, and agreed to meet my counsellor for a joint meeting with me, primarily to meet the person she felt had brainwashed her child into transitioning.
My mother describes her first meeting with me presenting as Laura as very difficult for her, due in no small part to her inability to see me as anything but her very traditionally masculine son in a dress. For a while she knew but did not talk to my father, which she found very difficult. She told me years later that she went through a period of mourning, feeling like her child had died, and that she was left with a stranger she did not know. It put a lot of strain on her, and on our relationship as parent and child.
Why the assumption I was brainwashed? Because of autism infantilisation.
Before we talk more about my journey coming out as transgender, we have to rewind a little bit to something else that went on at around the same point in my life: my diagnosis of Asperger’s. By the time my mother attended that appointment and met me as Laura for the first time, I had already been diagnosed with Asperger’s, which was part of the reason she was so worried about me. She was not aware of any statistical link between autism and gender dysphoria, and in her eyes I was a vulnerable young person with an autism spectrum condition who was being manipulated into transition because I was easily swayed, or lacking in ability to assess my feelings on the matter properly for myself. This is depressingly common: an adult’s assumption that having an autism spectrum condition means you’re incapable of proper self-understanding, or that you’re susceptible to being manipulated into believing things about yourself that you did not previously. You’re not trusted as being of sound mind to make choices about your own life, out of fear you’ve been manipulated.
Speaking to my mother years later, now she has somewhat settled down and got used to me going by Laura and female pronouns, she told me that her biggest fear, and the primary reason she agreed to attend that first joint session together, was that, as a youth with Asperger’s, my therapist was influencing me into believing that I was trans. She feared it was some kind of brainwashing that my gullible mind could not resist the allure of, rather than believing my own account of what I was experiencing.
I also faced this same issue with doctors when trying to access medical support through the NHS. I would have general practitioners, mental health doctors and gender specialists alike raise an eyebrow when I acknowledged my Asperger’s diagnosis, and then proceed to take plenty of extra time asking me lengthy questions about how my autism symptoms manifested, to ensure I was of sound enough mind to make permanent choices about my body. Apart from the obvious infantilisation of people with conditions like Asperger’s on display there, I always just explained it as being like the decision to get a tattoo. I am an adult, over the age of 18, who has been deemed sober and mentally sound, and as such I have every right to permanently inject colours into my skin that may never go away. Why should I not be trusted to take slow-acting meds that are somewhat easier to reverse? Still, the fact I had to fight to be believed that I was mentally sound enough to make that choice says a lot about misunderstandings about autism spectrum conditions, but highlights that to assert that transition is unique in the permanent nature of its change to the body is completely inaccurate.”]
laura kate dale, from uncomfortable labels: my life as a gay autistic trans woman

Asked by Anonymous

transfem related -- the free crochet breastforms site is off, is there any other site i could use?

transgenderteensurvivalguide:

Lee says:
I’m not sure if there are any other people who are giving away free handmade breast forms right now— if the followers know of any, please reblog/reply!
However, the pattern to crochet your own breast forms is here:
Crochet Breast pattern by Gillian Barclay
Click the word crochet in the url for the pattern.
Ravelry
The PDF version of the instructions is here:
https://href.li/?https://www.lcgb.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Crochet-Breast-LCGB.pdf
href.li
That might be a helpful resource if you’re interested in learning to crochet and have the time to pick up a new hobby with the help of YouTube videos and/or library books and online articles and websites, or have a friend who knows how to crochet and is skilled enough to follow the pattern and is willing to teach you or make it for you.
If you’re not able to make your own, there are a lot of people selling them on Etsy, but that might require using the strategies in this post to purchase:
Transgender Teen Survival Guide
Lee says: This post is about getting a binder without your parents knowing, and the general concept can apply to anything you want to buy on
transgenderteensurvivalguide.com
Followers, does anyone know of any people/organizations that are currently donating free crocheted breast forms?
Anon says: Hi there, I saw your post about crochet breast forms but can’t reply on it. This site has a pattern for breasts designed to be used in teaching breastfeeding techniques, hopefully it would suffice :-)
Publications & Leaflets - The Breastfeeding Network
To order our leaflets or publications in larger quantities please visit our online shop. Leaflets Mastitis and breastfeeding (Please note th
The Breastfeeding Network
Knitting Pattern for knitted breasts (used for teaching)
Crochet Pattern (Option 1) for crocheted breasts (used for teaching)
Crochet Pattern (Option 2) for crocheted breasts (used for teaching)

datgenderqueerboi:

Got my ‘keychain’ model pump bulb at my education appointment today!

I also got to see a few actual & models of the pump and testicular implants, but the nurse practitioner who showed them to me and let me touch them asked me not to share my photos/videos online.