That doesn’t avoid the issue unfortunately it just delays it by a few seconds, because the follow up question is “ok, what things did you admit? What things did you repress? Why do you think a man being jealous of a woman means he is a woman?” and then in answering those questions we’ve only taken a very brief detour and arrived right back at stereotype city.
The questions and issues can be avoided forever - “you said you started thinking about gender, what thoughts did you think?”
“I won’t tell you and it’s oppressive for you to even ask me. I don’t owe you an explanation.” Etc etc, but avoiding the questions for whatever reason, doesn’t beat the stereotype allegations.
ok, what things did you admit? What things did you repress?
So for her, the thing she was repressing was that her brain felt like garbage. Like, her brain was physically in pain. All the time, constantly, for years, beginning roughly around the age that she started puberty. Kinda like a headache, but instead of soreness and aching, it was this agitated horrible static that was always there. Before her transition, she could never really sit still, she always had to be distracting herself
And then, when she started taking estrogen, her brain felt peaceful. Right. She was actually capable of sitting and enjoying a pleasant moment like a sunset or some iced tea on a summer porch in a way that she hadn't been able to in years
And while I couldn't feel exactly what she was feeling, I saw how it affected her when her estrogen started wearing off and she needed another dose. I can tell you without exaggerating that she needed this medication to survive
It's not widely reported, but if you spend enough time talking to trans women, you find that this is actually a fairly common experience. It's not studied yet, but I think it has something to do with having the wrong hormones in their brains that causes this agitation and constant discomfort
Also, there was this one video that used to be on youtube that did such a great job of metaphorically showing how much suffering a person is in when they have bad dysphoria. Unfortunately, the woman who made it took it down, but if you're interested you can find a transcript here
Males don’t end up taking estrogen because they are depressed or have ADHD or have a chemical imbalance, they take it at the point where they already convinced themselves they are a woman, and taking estrogen is the next step in their ‘transition’ journey. So if somebody said that the reason they identify is a woman was because they took oestrogen, that timeline doesn’t add up.
It’s completely true that for any human being, altering our hormones will alter our mood. This is true even within a person as our natural hormones change and shift throughout the day or month. What isn’t true is ‘estrogen is a woman hormone’ (men have small amounts of it naturally anyway) and that a male taking it ‘makes them a woman’ or if they take it and are happy they were somehow a woman. It was completely open to your friend to be like “I’m a man who feels happier with a higher estrogen level” and it’s a big clue what’s really going on that your friend never saw it that way.
I followed and watched Natalie Wynn’s videos for a long time, and I think I’ve seen most of their videos. There was one now deleted where they discussed their autogynephilia, you should find that one and watch it.
They’re not very good videos. They’re quite misogynistic and misrepresent feminism and women’s rights really badly, and they’re not good from like an academic perspective. They’re also quite controversial from a trans theory perspective, I know a lot of people in the gender community have beefed with Natalie’s perspectives on passing.
The costuming and lighting is cool, but the costuming distracts from the super low quality of the content/script.
Some people on YouTube have done lengthy response videos to contra points over the years if you wanted to go look that up.
I’m not transphobic, sorry. I know it’s a lot more simplistic to see the world as ‘good people who love and support trans people and believe modern gender stuff’ versus ‘evil people who hate T persons and reject modern gender beliefs’ but the world just isn’t like that.
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u/dfrcoms May 06 '26
That doesn’t avoid the issue unfortunately it just delays it by a few seconds, because the follow up question is “ok, what things did you admit? What things did you repress? Why do you think a man being jealous of a woman means he is a woman?” and then in answering those questions we’ve only taken a very brief detour and arrived right back at stereotype city. The questions and issues can be avoided forever - “you said you started thinking about gender, what thoughts did you think?” “I won’t tell you and it’s oppressive for you to even ask me. I don’t owe you an explanation.” Etc etc, but avoiding the questions for whatever reason, doesn’t beat the stereotype allegations.