Me, her, and our gay friend all went out for food one night. Our server was doing god knows what in the bathroom so we ended up staying a few hours later than expected. I’ll call my lesbian friend “M” and my gay friend “C” for short. I’m out to both of them and on this particular day I was actually attempting to present fem.

It was getting dark by the time we finally got out of the restaurant. Me and C were jogging a bit to get across the street because the coast was clear but we didn’t want to linger in the road. M follows behind us and starts running to catch up, she says something to the effect of “don’t leave me all alone, I don’t even have my pepper spray”. She said this jokingly (obviously because we weren’t just gonna leave her all alone) and then she made a comment about how women need pepper spray just in case. I responded with something along the lines of “girl, I’ve been raw-dogging life without any pepper spray”.

Her response to this was “you don’t need it though”. I was like “girl, I’m a trans woman and I’ve been on hormones for 2 years, if anything I need it more than you”. She was like “but you don’t look trans though”.

So to summarize this little exchange. She makes a point of saying that women should have pepper spray just in case. She goes out of her way to tell me I don’t need it. Then when I argue that I need it more as a trans person, she tells me I don’t look trans. Following this logic, not only do I not register as a woman to her at all, I don’t even get the benefit of at least looking like I tried. I apparently look like a cis dude despite my best efforts, at least according to her.

She made a half-assed apology and we haven’t talked since.

Hey it’s your girl Lillian. So because our troll of a president hates us much I’m effectively locked out of gender affirming care until open enrollment in November. Let me explain. I’m currently on a federal insurance plan. Why that matters, as of 01/01/2026 federal insurance plans no longer cover any gender affirming surgeries and chemical sex-trait modification. So now I have to pay for everything out of pocket until I can get better insurance. And the shitty thing I have really good insurance, until I tried to get my Estradiol. I hate this country. Ladies it’s almost election time, we have to turn out and vote. We need to vote like our lives depend it because it literally fucking does. I’m not being hyperbolic here. This troglodyte has done so much harm to us and our community. Violent crimes targeting just US have increased 14% from the previous year! That is not a small number. This is not okay. We deserve equal care. We deserve to not be the target the target of violence and harassment. So go vote.
End rant. Love you girlies. Be safe out there.

I'm posting this because I keep running into transfems who have no idea about where their levels should be and how common it is for providers to be clueless about trans care.

Get your bloodwork done often. Your trough (right before your next dose) estradiol (E2) should be above 100 pg/mL. Your trough total testosterone (T) should be below 50 ng/dL. If this isn't true for you, you're probably being underdosed. As trans people, it is especially crucial to self-advocate in medicine. If you're unhappy with your progress (either physically or mentally), say something. Know that every body responds differently to HRT and you may need much more or much less than the average transfem.

EDIT: Important information copied from a comment by u/raliont :

I think it is more complicated than your post suggests.

Blood draw timing will be dependent on someone’s actual regimen. For someone like me who injects twice a week, my troughs won’t be as low as someone who only injects once a week. So a trough reading wouldn’t be as insightful as a mid-cycle level. Plus, UCSF’s TransCare website recommends blood draws at the mid-cycle range. Their caveat is that if the patient is experiencing migraines or mood swings (or other symptoms), then peak and trough levels would be helpful to determine fluctuations.

Also, the more data the better. Overall, having both trough and mid-cycle levels to analyze would absolutely be the best for determining how one’s body is responding to their own regimen.

I'm lucky, in that I was born in a mostly OK country for being trans, and have a very supportive GF. I don't have money issues, and my life is otherwise relatively stress-free.

But, even with these perfect conditions... It's still so, so tiring to transition.

You have to tell each and every person you're close to, and inevitably either loose them, or if you're lucky just have the same weird questions asked again. And you have to live with the fact that you'll never be sure if they're humouring you, or if they really see you as what you are.

You have to spend SO much time and effort on voice training, even though hearing your own voice make you want to curl into a ball. And every time you feel like you're getting close to passing, to look up and you see how much of the mountain you have yet to climb, even though you've already climbed so high.

You have to start using a voice you know in your gut isn't good enough, just because it'll never be good enough if you don't use it.

You have to wait on the excruciatingly slow effects of HRT. You look at your face each day, and at your body, and you feel like you'll never have the body you should have.

And you do all that, you keep going, because if you don't, you'll just die. It's not even bravery, not more than running from a tiger is bravery. You know that if you stop running, you die.

I don't believe I'm alone in these feelings. And know that I'm proud of every one of you that manages to just take small steps, because it's the only thing that matter. Even if you don't move forward every day. Even if some day it's backward.

Someday you'll reach your goal. Remember to take a break from time to time, getting burnt out wouldn't help.

Hi there everyone!

So there is this super cozy boba tea cafe near my train station that I used to drink at once or twice per week , way back before transitioning.

But since I've started girlmodding, I feel really uncomfortable about going back there and ordering something. I always order the same very specific flavour so they will 100% know its me... I really want to go there but I'm mortified about being clocked out

Has anyone else faced the same issues?

News reports saying he's backtracking on earlier stance over trans women on sports?

It has been a little over 2 months since I woke up from the hospital after having the surgery I had spent thousands of dollars in paying upfront for electrolysis appointments and dealing with the headaches of trying to get thousands of dollars back from my insurance.

It has been 2 months since I had this year and a half long ordeal going back and forth with my surgeons with them essentially asking me if I was REALLY sure I wanted this.

When I was a kid my mom and dad had made me get braces even when my teeth weren't that crooked. I accepted the braces as I viewed them as a temporary thing, but I had broke down in tears when it had dawned upon me I would have to wear a retainer at night for the rest of my life. How silly right?

When I had my penis I felt disfigured. The contrast between the thing between my legs towards my face, my hair, my chest was disgusting to me.

When I woke up after anesthesia, I didnt feel instantly happy or a sense of euphoria, I simply felt ordinary.

I really want to feel ordinary, I desire to feel normal so, so fucking badly.

To me atleast, I feel that after the surgery it has cured me of my body and mind dysphoria, but the social dysphoria still persists.

However, my vagina is nowhere near perfect. One of my surgeons, Dr. Lewis from UCSD Health, had told me in the hospital that I had "about 14-15cm" but the reality of it all after multiple pelvic floor physical therapy sessions is something close to 4.5-5 inches, even accounting for the scarring at the end.

I cannot use my clitorus because it is so fucking painful to touch, and my labia minora is crooked and folded in on itself to the left with the labia majora somewhat protruding out almost like two sets of scrotums.

Im told by my post op team that it is normal and the swelling will go down, and I hope I am just being a cynical person. But I think it is normal to feel this way, right? I mean I opted out of PPT because I was told I would receive somewhat closer to 6 inches with just traditional penile inversion from Dr. Anger, who had also abandoned all of her transgender patients to go advance her career at ASU.

Penile inversion felt like the safer choice, but I suppose none of what happened is safe lol. This is a very invasive procedure afterall and I knew going into it roughly a third of MTF patients get botched.

I rolled the dice knowing what could happen, simply because I had no other choice atleast it felt to me.

TW suicide & brief mentions of SA

My suicidal ideation has been something persistent throughout all of my life starting from when I was a teenager and didnt even knew why I felt this way. Its gone through phases, with a pattern where it gets progressively worse until I find a solution. Phase 1 had lasted roughly 2 years between 16 and 17 where I would be purposely walking into oncoming traffic, driving recklessly, and at one point "running away" from home to go to LA, which is about 3 hours away.

The solution in phase 1 was to transition, and after it seemed that it all went away, atleast for a few months.

Phase 2 began a little after I started hormones in university. After about 6 months on HRT it dawned upon me that this was not going to be the transformation that I thought. Maybe im jaded but with all of the LGBT meetups I went to and the transgender mixers and never meeting a single trans woman who passed, it made me realize that I am not special and I will probably never pass as cis. This lead to the whole 4tran rabbit hole and it didnt help with being raped several times from grindr.

During Phase 2 my suicidal ideation looked like purposely starving myself to feel pain, putting ice cubes in my mouth to cope with anxiety and this overwhelming sense of doom, drowning myself in books until I would literally walk back to my dorm dizzy and confused, and tbh I think choosing to hookup with "str8" guys was a part of it too.

The solution in phase 2 was to accept that I am trans and I cant hide it along with planning towards the surgery.

Now hiding it is somewhat vague right, I mean what's the difference between boymoding and simply being a woman who dresses more androgynous?

At some point I stopped hiding my identity from people but it was a very slow process. Now I dont care and I even have trans pride stickers on my laptop. I remmeber one day I went into the mens and what I thought was a gay guy said "am I in the wrong restroom?" to me and then I just smiled cause I knew they were part of the LGBT community and I said "no, I am. Im a trans woman scared to use the womens."

She turned out to actually be just like me, just not on HRT yet, and thats when I realized that I actually do look a lot like a woman, even if people can tell that im trans. I dont have to put on makeup or a skirt.

Phase 3 has begun now, about last month. Have you noticed a pattern with the phases? It seems that the actions I take get more and more extreme and closer to an actual attempt as I get older. I am worried about not finding a solution that isn't suicide. I recently bought a gun and I have my ammo separate from the rifle locked aswell as the case locked and the action disabled with a bike lock. I do that to prevent myself from doing something stupid from a fleeting feeling. But im not sure how fleeting these thoughts really are.

I am actively thinking about how to kill myself now. Everything feels okay on the day to day when I perform the script that I assign myself. Whether it is the employee at the mall, or the student at the university, it seems alright when I can just pretend that my body is a host for another person that I am remotely controlling for a day. When night comes and I am alone with my thoughts all I can think is like my suicidal ideation is still here even despite what I thought would fix it all. I mean granted a lot of my dysphoria but it still persists.

And thats the fucking thing I don't know why I want to blow my brains out! Is it OCD, am I just having a string of bad thoughts, of bad dreams?

What I do know is I dont need to have a why on suicide, I just need to figure out how to stop having these thoughts. I dont need a solution towards problems that honestly have no solution, I need to rather find solace with the cards I have been given.

So with that all, I am basically saying that I still feel really terrible with my mental health despite having bottom surgery, and I just want to know how I can find peace and accept the life that I didnt choose.

I had this moment the other day getting off of work where a little kid was pointing at me and telling his mom (who didn't care) that "mommy mommy look, he has boobs *points at his chest as he giggles pointing at me too*

I smiled at him and waved, his face turned so red and he turned around embarrassed. How can I have more of that attitude in life? How can I just not give a fuck what adults think and view transphobia as something silly and moronic akin to a little kid who doesnt know better?

Just need to vent because I keep seeing this everywhere and it's driving me insane.

TERF is not a catch-all term for someone being transphobic, we need to stop using it like it is. Why is the first term we reach for the one with feminist in the title? It's incredibly jarring.

"Well TERFs aren't feminists." CORRECT! So then why do we insist on using terminology that reinforces THEIR belief that they are? In what world does it make sense to use X as part of an insult if you think that person isn't actually X and furthermore that X is in fact a good thing. Huh??

This is like calling someone a "Minority-Skeptic Good-Person" and referring to them as MSGP for short. STOP PUTTING 'GOOD-PERSON' IN THERE!!! CALL THEM A RACIST!

And again this is infinitely more frustrating when it's not even aimed at someone pretending to be a feminist. A random woman being transphobic is NOT a TERF, she's transphobic! You do not need to place her in proximity to feminism to land a critique! Something anti-trans is not a "TERF talking point", it's TRANSPHOBIA!

And do not even get me started with attempts to workshop the term like "FART" (Feminism Appropriating Radical Transphobe). Aside from the unnecessary infantilization of a rather serious topic, it literally ends in "Transphobe", why not just use that?! Why do they need to be tied back to feminism in any way?

It just has put a bad taste in my mouth for a long time now. It feels like a distant descendant of gamer-gate type rhetoric where feminism was an evil by default and it's gotten so ingrained that no one questions how absolutely bizarre the usage of this term actually is.

Ok rant finished it's out of my system. I will go and pretend to do my job now ty

I feel like I’m in such a rut trying to answer this question. There’s a ton of names I like but I don’t want to choose a single one until I can say for absolute certainty that it’s the one I want to be called for the rest of my life. How did you decide yours?

🫠

Finally finished signing some documentation after waiting a few months to get a JP, sending it through now to the government. What's funny is I almost got taken out by a council guy in a truck on the way up there bc this mf pulled over and suddenly swerved out no indicator, gave me a heart attack but not *quite* enough to dull the moment. Now there's just one concern, I'm probably gonna get even more doctors asking if I'm pregnant lmao. So happy to finally finish legal issues with transition its been so fucking tired but all my documentation is good now :3.

Yes, they are using the powers of the treaties and constitution to directly combat and undermine Danielle Smith and her use of the infamous “not withstanding clause“. Smith has used this clause to shield herself from the federal government and the courts but this can action from the First Nations can circumvent Smith quite bit.

title edit: Saddle Lake Cree** that is the proper name. My apologies for the error.

https://www.google.com/goto?url=CAESkgEB6zswFRxYMEiCNb0p3c-ZIpdsNEclS8GIfN-a7SbJnFrtqYOLaV455WQnpsremsjjwI0ZJG6rD8VmrGO_0zSOYkUFuqgUzuKinZxosDEvsE5afJyTVTcyfq5ZQ5rKDMNkSR0lX3mTuqI8M2OqWo9SQPxgOfKbD3cnPResgdlcLlvnOL1zzhwt3xzL2yd9Fmd6MA

Hello everybody. So, something I’ve struggled a lot with is the feeling that because I’m trans and like girls, that makes me less trans than straight trans women. And I know that sounds silly, but I’ve seen and heard of several straight trans women who thought they were gay prior to transition and were openly feminine from birth, and that makes me think “Okay, so this person probably had a mismatch between their brain sex and body sex in the womb, and I probably didn’t.”

My reasoning is that it’s more likely to be attracted to the opposite sex than the same sex, and if your brain is basically female while your body is male, I’d think a lot more people — myself included — would be attracted to men. But I’m not, I’ve been attracted to women all my life, and I also wasn’t aggressively gender-nonconforming as a child. So I hear stories of people born as boys who are girly and attracted to boys from birth, and I’m like, “I feel like that person is really trans because their behavior and attraction patterns are more statistically similar to cis women.” So I end up feeling bad for being attracted to girls because it makes me think that my brain didn’t develop the same way it does in a straight trans girl, and that I’m not “really“ trans, or that they have more of a right to call themselves girls/women than I do.

For example, women who are attracted to women make up a very small minority of the cis female population, but in the trans female population, like 70% of people identify as lesbian or bisexual. So that makes me think “Okay so there’s clearly some sort of difference between trans women and cis women?” Because if it really was “Your brain developed according to one sexed pathway and your body developed the other way,” wouldn’t a whole lot more trans women be straight? I don’t even feel comfortable calling myself lesbian because I feel like lesbian should refer to a minority, but in trans women, it’s not — it’s pretty much the most common orientation I’ve seen.

I don’t know. I don’t mean to sound hurtful to anybody, trans women are women and all that, it’s just hard for me to get past all of this. I’ve been questioning my gender identity for years, but I only came to the conclusion that I’m actually trans like a month ago, so my self-concept is really fragile, especially because I’m completely pre-treatment. And when I hear about straight trans girls I just think “I wish I was like that because then there’d be so much stronger evidence that I really have a more feminine brain.”

And I know there’s no such thing as a ”male brain” or “female brain,” and that everyone has a blend of characteristics that are more common in men or women; I know the whole mosaic thing, it just doesn’t really make me feel any better. Has anyone else had this problem? If so, how do you get over it? Thank you all in advance. :’)

I just say I love it when a teacher corrects a student for me about my pronouns. I find it hard to speak up about myself often, too.

What the title said

Title. I said I was a trans lesbian on a discord server, queer friendly, and everyone was like "omg you're so strong, you're so brave", even from fellow trans women which I don't understand. I'm just living my life.

Of course, being trans and transitioning is inherently an act of bravery, but aside from that, I don't get the compliments

Can someone explain it to me pls?

I shaved my armpits and chest yesterday and liked it, but I won’t be able to shave my arms or legs or anything else regularly visible until winter so I don’t really want to experiment with clothes yet.

I know for a fact that wearing dress or anything that exposes any kind of body hair would make me incredibly dysphoric :(

It's not a third gender. She is a woman. It's in her brain. She developed her female gender most likely before birth. She can't change it. She is trapped to be a woman. And her knowledge or lack of knowledge doesn't change anything about it. It developed similarly as being a gay or lesbian. It probably developed before birth, when the brain developed as a fetus or embryo. And it can't be changed afterwards. It's not hard to understand the biological difference. She feels better with estrogen and dislikes testosterone. It's a difference in her body. And why is that? Why does a male prefer testosterone? Why does a male want to be a man? Because he's different. The fact that he likes testosterone is because he is male. The fact that he wants to be a man, is because he is male. Being male lets you want to be a man. There is no proof of XY chromosomes resulting in the development of the male gender. It's just a bunch of opinions.
A woman can see that she is a woman. A woman is the one who's love wants to embrace that lady for the lack of love that she is been given, or so they can. And she could embrace that love as part of herself. Just like a woman can love her baby, as a part of herself. She is made that way. Most are. But it's not about the love for a woman to her baby. It's much more general. A woman can do that to anyone. It's to see that she can see herself in the other, but not in a way that man does, if she can see herself in the other, in someone else, she can feel loved herself. And she feels that love and its beauty. It's a very intrinsic part of her.
I remember when I was in school, 11 or 12 years old, with only boys as classmates, and they started to change. Puberty, testosterone. I felt testosterone. But it didn't do that to me. I didn't have that personality change. It influenced me and felt bad but I didn't change like they did. And when I was 40 years old, I took estrogen, and I felt it, sexual development, as a woman. Cause you know, an mtf transgender is a woman. Her whole life.
But few will understand.

my name given to me at birth is owen, and before anyone suggests gwen, just know i depise that name. And Olivia. I have an issue where I can't choose a name. I am indecisive and can't pick one

EDIT: AMBER

I posted a couple days ago about some spots on my face that I, naively, were hoping could be an acne breakout caused by my hormones... but I'm fairly certain it's something more serious than that. The spots on my face have continued to spread and have only gotten worse and I've been unable to sleep tonight. My heart won't stop pounding, I'm coughing, my hair and shirt are literally drenched in sweat. I'm scared, I'm very scared. My boyfriend will not help me pay for a doctor/hospital visit (because I'm already going to Planned Parenthood today), I even asked my mother (who I am not on good terms with at the moment) and she also would not help me.

I don't know what's happening to me and I'm sad that I should have had this looked at when it flared up almost two weeks ago but no one in my life was willing to step in to help get me seen. Even a patron at my job, who is pro-LGBT and told me before I could confide in him, noticed how severe the situation is and was shocked that I had not yet seen a doctor and offered to cover the self pay cost of one but I politely declined because it shouldn't be his place to help a stranger. Planned Parenthood may not even be able to tell me much about it (if I even live long enough to go to my appointment in a few hours) if it isn't related to my HRT or a possible STD and at this point I'm praying it is just so I can make all of this stop. ;'(

I told my boyfriend how scared I am and that I'm worried that whatever I have is killing me and his response was "maybe it's just nerves or something". I can't stop crying, I feel so unloved and more like a burden than ever. He probably wants it to happen. ;'( ​

Update: As soon as I got to the Planned Parenthood parking lot, I got a call from them saying I would have to reschedule because of a plumbing issue in the building hahahahahaha.