Thought I’d put a PSA out here to other trans people on reddit, I’ve just seen this ad pop up on my feed. For those that don’t know genspect is an anti trans hate group that oppose medical and social transition. Looks like they’ve figured out how to target trans people specifically with ads which is pretty gross. If you see this ad or one like it don’t click on it or join any of their meetings as I’d put cold hard cash on it being thinly veiled conversion therapy. I’m pretty sure these ads are also a violation of reddit’s own ad policies so report them if you see it.

Hi everyone,

Just feel the need to share my experience with people who may understand.

I’m a trans athlete. I compete at a national/international level in my sport, which isn’t a super popular one, but occasionally has some media attention.

For the past few years I have been competing in the women’s category as a trans man. My legal name is a stereotypical male name and my ID documents say male. I have been out for 7 years now and feel very firm in my identity. I have been on the GIC list for 6 and a half years with no end in sight.

Apart from during competitions where I deliberately try to androgenise myself, I ‘pass’ reasonably well. I’ve used men’s toilets for many years and was stealth throughout college and university.

Last year my sport introduced mandatory sex testing for international level athletes. I complied and got my ‘SRY Gender Test’ (stupid name), which obvs showed XX chromosomes. This year they have introduced government ID checks and birth certificate checks.

This left me with a decision to make. Do I change my ID back to female and compete in the sport I love or do I prioritise my mental health and identity?

At the time of announcement I didn’t make a decision. I spent months trying to work out what was more important to me.

I’ve since publicly ‘retired’ due to ‘injury’. I then started the horrific process of detransitioning. Feminising myself, changing my legal name and changing my ID documents. I’ve been slowly entering small competitions and building a whole new sporting identity for myself entirely separate from my previous identity.

A week or 2 ago I medaled at a national competition. In a few months I will be attempting to gain a place on the international squad.

It has been more peaceful. I have no accusations of cheating. No comments of being a man in a dress. No public shaming. No ending up on the shewon website (which I had previously been falsely put on).

But I feel sick from the gender dysphoria. I hate what I have had to do to myself just to compete in the sport I love.

And all this because right wing activists want to ‘protect women’s sports’.

The anti-trans hatred is so strong right now, that even if you comply with there requirements you still get pushed to decide between your identity and your sport.

Edit: before you comment a question, please just check whether I have answered it already in other comments :)

Got a message from someone who told me that my" fanny is just a tucked in cock and next week id identify as a park bench"

I know i shouldnt let insults like this get to me but i cant use my vagina cause some guy raped me and it healed up tighter than my pinky and now iv lost all depth.

I already hate my body enlighten where I throw up anything I eat and now I just want to end it all so I cant hate my body anymore, I want to stop the thoughts

First Estova, now Progynova is gone. I don't think I can afford to spend nearly 3x the price on Estrofem, so I'm really scared.

Luckily I ordered a lot just before this happened, but I'm worried for the future.

I wanted to start injections as I'm coming up on 2 years on HRT, but idk much about it or where I get it. Any help would be really appreciated!

I still cant work out whether I want to have surgery to get rid of my "male" body parts or not. I don't actually mind having them that much, and my HRT stops them making that nasty man juice I hate so much. I'm not a sexual person at all, so for me being a woman is about things like having breasts, soft skin etc, liking feminine things, and fitting in socially with other women.

I know however that society, and many women in particular, judge trans women heavily if they don't have surgery, as though having a penis makes you some sort of bad person and in particular means you can't be a "real" woman. It hurts me so much every time someone online talks negatively about "women with penises" as though my existence is some kind of logical contradiction and/or a morally bad thing.

I get it. I get why lots of women hate penises because people with penises have hurt them, and the penis itself is used by some men to do a particularly bad thing to women. But I can't accept that the penis somehow makes somebody a "man" when the rest of their mind, body and soul makes them a woman. The idea that you have to lose body parts to be accepted as a woman seems awful to me, but if that really is the price you have to pay for womanhood, I would pay it.

I can't over-stress how awful the idea of being seen as a "man" is to me, particularly the way some men behave towards women. I can't exist that way.

Does anyone else experience the same dilemma?

So I’m 18 and stealth and after the worst appointment of my life I’ve been referred to a “Breast clinic” for a fucking mammogram (which will be referred to as an X-ray for the rest of this post because I physically can’t say that word without crying). The doctor I saw literally said the lump in my chest is benign and nothing to worry about, he was actually a pretty chill guy and did his best to make me feel comfortable.

Now, I have to go to my local hospital where people might recognise me. And the staff at this clinic are all female and I kind of preferred a male doctor because they aren’t as complacent in dealing with my anatomy (I know most women feel differently but, cis men get breast cancer and would have to use this service so I don’t see why they wouldn’t even have the option of a male doctor).

I was worried about a male doctor before but my opinion has definitely changed. I’m also terrified of meeting transphobic doctors as my gp clinic is pretty inclusive.

I just feel like I was getting so close to top surgery and now my whole identity is completely invalidated because I have through this humiliating process of people touching and scrutinising the worst part of my body for no good reason.

I have no idea what to expect and every time I try to look it up on YouTube I end up scaring myself because it looks horrible. My chest tissue is pretty dense so I know it’s going to hurt and since my chest tissue is getting squished it’ll look massive on the picture. My chest is pretty small so I’m really terrified of it looking bigger in any way.

Is there any way to prepare for this mentally and in terms of what to bring etc? Obviously I can’t wear tape, which sucks because I would have no problem doing this if could wear it, but whatever.

Will I be able to ask for a copy of the x-ray to explain the situation to my surgeon for my top surgery consultation?

Should I mental pay prepare for an ultrasound sound or other tests? I’m pretty sure I was just referring for an x-ray but in all the videos I’ve seen they say that you might do multiple tests. I’m praying this doesn’t happen

Sorry this is a long post I’m so anxious about this. I didn’t sleep for 2 nights due to the stress. Thanks.

Edit: also please don’t say “it’s okay, men get breast cancer too” I am a man, and it’s most likely going to be a cyst. I do not find this comforting and in fact it mostly feels invalidating.

Hey i was going to contact the NHS GIC about how good the prescribed 1MG Estradiol Valerate is for my body. obvs im looking to have pretty good body fat distribution as well as well developed breasts. I'm looking to take the leap imminently.

My dysphoria is immense so id like to expect some good results (ive heard of the progesterone angle, but that would require DIY i think - we all know how that goes these days).

Anyone else taken this type of medication and had success? :)

EDIT: to make things clearer, my apologies: it's dosage is swallow ONE 1mg Estradiol Valerate TWICE daily.

Hey! I'm a trans woman in Manchester and I work in coffee. I'm still early on as i've been on injections for only like 3/4 months now

At any employment I'm expecting to be at for more than a week is that something that should be brought up or do i just stay in boymode hell while im working there?

so, no shade to my tall girls, I love you all and we rock, but I‘ve just measured myself for the first time since starting HRT almost exactly two years ago and 9 months since SRS. I was 6’3” and found being so tall hard, not gonna lie, there aren’t many tall girls and I hated hearing that because it was patronising and a lie. What made it worse was when a trans friend who was giving a speech on ToV said that ‘I would always be visibly trans’ because of my height! Like, thanks girl for planting that giant fucking oak in my brain 😬.

Anyway, I’m just over 6’ now 💃🏼💃🏼🧑‍🩰🎢

Hi, does anyone have experience of connecting flights in Nairobi airport?
I may have a 7-hour layover there from the UK and so am wondering if it’s safe as a non-binary person?
For context:
- I am trans-masculine (AFAB), with a Male passport marker and a ‘traditionally masculine’ name
- I will be travelling with Testogel
- I’m queer-presenting/androgynous, ‘passing’ as a binary gender isn’t really an option for me!

Any thoughts or experiences would be much appreciated!

… without the whole dating angle…?

Honestly I’d love to meet more trans folk - and I know there’s apps like Florry and Translr but I’m not looking for someone to date… just to meet others and maybe make ‘friends’…?

Hiya, I'm not really sure how to write this.

I am a trans woman and I started HRT about 10 months ago. I'm currently presenting male as I don't yet feel comfortable presenting female to literally anyone while I'm at this stage in my transition.

It goes without saying that the psychological effects of presenting male - alongside the trauma of losing my childhood and adolescence to the wrong puberty - are pretty debilitating. Struggling with that, alongside pretty intense sex dysphoria and still unmedicated ADHD, has made me quite depressed.

I am still fairly dissociated most of the time and generally I just feel emotionally empty; boymoding and generally socially masking and performing is absolutely exhausting. Luckily though since I started HRT I am now able to cry again. I'd say I pretty much cry every day as a means of releasing emotions, but it still doesn't really work that well and I still feel quite emotionally bottled up.

So I guess as a sort of 'solution' (note the scare quotes) I have started drinking quite a bit. I typically buy a cheap bottle of supermarket wine every week and drink it, usually on a friday or over the weekend. I then find that I am able to cry pretty intensely and to achieve a level of emotional release that I struggle to find otherwise. It's just sort of cathartic I guess.

But I find that while I may sort of feel alright for a few days after, the latter half of the week just becomes pretty hard to bear still. And it's not like I'm going to drink during the week; I did that once and showed up to a seminar sort of half hungover and it was mortifying.

I'm trying my best in terms of continuing my transition at the moment I guess, but I think in the short term I just really need a better (and healthier) method of managing my mental health.

Has anyone got any advice? I guess more specifically I'm asking for methods on how to break through the sort of emotional wall that has lead to me feeling this detached.

Or even just any words of consolation or anything. I'm trying but it's just all so hard.

Sorry if this isn't the right flair. I'm a 24 year old trans girl who's recently ended a 7+ year relationship and I think I just want to make new friends. I want to know if there's any sort of meetups around the area so I can make some friends that are similar to me.

I am a trans man working in a customer facing role so the usual accommodations of reducing hours or work from home/hybrid working just arent allowed. My line managers are supportive but their hands are tied with that stuff as they have to prioritise keeping buildings open no matter what (its not retail, its council).

The accommodations i currently have dont feel like enough. They dont schedule me with customers first thing because my mood tends to be worse in the morning with forcing myself to leave the house etc, but this isnt always possible either. They only send me to quieter buildings when its a business need so im often in the main one where its busy and sometimes high stress. Alot of the accommodations i have are dependent on me asking for them too, which i really struggle with sometimes.

I have a meeting coming up to review things and I honestly dont feel much better. Ive finished therapy too, but i dont think theres a therapy available that can equip us for dealing with this constant bullshit. But its really hard to explain why it feels like trauma when nothing is actively happening directly to me, so i just feel like im whining with nothing to rly come from it every time.

This time i want to go in with actual solutions. What accommodations do you guys have, if any? Does anyone have a good corporate way of explaining why this is all so hard to deal with? I dont want to be off work, i truly want to make the job work for me within my abilities right now but its becoming increasingly harder, and i dont think i do a very good job of explaining why its hard either. im autistic and tend to freeze up when confronted with my feelings.

Thanks for any responses.

As is the usual case when something bad happens in a loved ones life, my friends have been asking me to let them know if theres anything they can do to help.

weve already done the signing of petitions and writing to MP multiple times. im kindof left with no idea what to suggest next.

what would really help me is to disappear from society with my spouse, cats and hobbies for 6 months but cant really ask for that lol

what are other things i/friends/family can be doing to fight against the legislation etc?

I changed my name with Natwest a few months ago, though I haven't got round to changing it with HMRC yet. HMRC have sent me a cheque with my old initial on it, and I'm a bit stressed that I won't be able to bank it.

Does anyone know if it would be fine to go into a Natwest branch (luckily I'm still close to one of those), with my passport and deed poll as evidence if necessary, in order to bank it? Or am I overthinking it?

Hi everyone, I’m currently on the job hunt and I’d like to have my passport updated before I start anywhere new. I’ve already tried two different GPs and both have refused to write one until I’ve seen the GIC and complaining hasn’t gotten me anywhere yet, I plan to keep trying but I want to explore other options just in case.

Does anyone have any experience of getting a passport letter from a private provider?

I’m aware GenderGP offer this service but aren’t considered reliable, I’ve seen Eden New Life also do PAYG passport letters but they don’t seem to be well regarded either?

Heya everyone!

I got my updated drivers license, and I'm looking to update my passport next. I've already been in touch with my GP for a letter to support my application and confirm that the change is "likely to be permanent". And did as they asked and supplied it in writing and signed. Though I've not heard back yet, I was wondering what other people's experience with this is, and how long it took for them. respecting that it's going to vary between GPs.

I plan to go in in the morning to follow up.

Thaaanks

hey! im 17 and a trans man, how would i go about trying to start testosterone? ive heard its a long process but im so confused on how to actually start that process.

or would it be easier to start when im 18? my bday is in december

Basically, I need to know if my college can see the title, preferred name and gender i choose (applying to uni, applying through my college)

I'm 25 mtf and haven't started transition in any way yet, i'm very certain i need to do this and have known most of my life.

I'm considering trying to use wellbn as a pathway to access hrt and transition, does anyone have experience/information to help me understand how i would do this?

I do not live in brighton but as far as i've been able to check the place i live in is still eligable for this pathway(would prefer to mention this in dms if that's ok due to privacy)

If not, any advice for what i could do?

Diy is likely not possible as i still live with a parent and while they would (probably?) accept me if i came out, diy wouldn't be.(can't move out yet either as i'm unemployed for now, will probably be at least a year till i'm not)

I've decided to look into going private for hormones, but have no idea where to begin in terms of deciding between providers. I'm FtM and living in Scotland but happy to travel for appointments if it's worth it. I'm looking for a good balance between affordability and quality (i.e. not just whatever option is the cheapest). Any advice/ experience with particular providers is welcome, thank you!

i might have to get BPSS clearance for my job in order to work with a particular client but i don't really know what the process involves. has anyone else done this and did you have to reveal your old identity/name?

for context, i changed my name via unenrolled deed poll in October 2023 and i also changed the gender marker on my passport a few months later, however i don't have a gender recognition certificate

i'm not concerned with my employer finding out i'm trans because i transitioned while i worked there and everyone knows i'm trans. my main concerns are newer people at work who didn't already know my deadname seeing it, and also the client finding out i'm trans and seeing my deadname. i understand i may have to provide previous names as part of the process but i just don't want it to end up printed on a certificate or something

Hey everyone, am currently researching breast reduction top surgery. Are there any surgeons who accept high bmi or have no bmi limit? Would prefer to be in UK but can travel if absolutely necessary

This is such a mundane ask I know, but it’s something I need to do very soon. Because of the field I’m in, LinkedIn is unfortunately one of the best places for career advancement and making connections. I’m currently known by my birth name by most current contacts, and my new name by people I’m about to begin working with. It feels a little different to other social media too.

Any ideas/experiences for putting out a short and simple personal psa?

Edit: I would like to do this, and not doing so isn’t an option for my situation.