Are you trying to imply that the US doesn’t already do this? They’ve overthrown democratically elected governments all over the latin americas (and other places, like hawaii) and imposed more fascist ones for access to their raw materials. Sure it’s not exactly using loans to do that, but the real end-game is fascism anyways once markets are fully saturated and there are no more ways to generate capital.

Op, do you just hate fun? most of these are pretty cute or funny and just because they’re not the most efficient design doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to exist?

I’m no comic book expert but doesn’t making spider-noir live action defeat the point of his whole aesthetic?

Get your eyebrows shaped! They change the framing of your face so much and nobody ever talks about it.

Nowhere was I trying to say that Britain didn’t mistreat its colonies. Not sure where that came from.

I mean they’re right that the US was founded by a bunch of religious extremists and rich fuckers who didn’t want to pay taxes. For which we do in fact see the ramifications still to this day.

But to draw the conclusion that somehow it’s a good thing and we need more of it in public life is pretty twisted.

Thanks for the info, I didn’t know that. Since voice training more/less got me to where I wanted to go, this isn’t something that I researched all that well.

Thankfully this isn’t an opinion I’ve shared at all outside of this thread, but I’ll make sure not to contribute to the stigma going forward nonetheless.

Maybe it’s because I’m risk averse or maybe I’m just not as well read on it, but I do personally think it’s generally riskier than other transition surgeries.

For vaginoplasty, even if the job is botched, you’ll still be able to walk normally. FFS, you’ll still be able to talk and eat and smell normally. Breast augmentation, you can still lift your arms normally. Plus since these three are the “main” options available, there’s more people doing it and more people experienced in handling the complications.

For vocal surgery, if the job is botched, you can permanently damage your voice and not be able to shout. And even then it still takes a degree of voice training to get a good result (althought it does lower the bar). The relative rarity of the procedure also does not inspire me to take that kind of risk.

I’m open to being convinced that it’s not as risky as I think it is, but I do think that it’s a pretty risky option. Especially when you compare it to voice training on its own, which is way harder to fuck up. And voice training will get most people across the line.

I’m not trying to argue with your lived experiences here, but as a neurodivergent person myself, I don’t think that judging intent is a meaningless endeavor. Yes, it can be messy and difficult, but I do find it worthwhile to examine writing from the perspective of what the author is trying to convince the audience of. I personally don’t think that the answer is to just stop trying to interact or be understood by neurotypical people, because like it or not, we can’t avoid neurotypical people in life. Yes, I do wish neurotypical people were more accomodating to neurodivergent people but I don’t think being antagonistic is helpful. I think it’s pretty unfair to say that because you don’t like using intents, that everyone else needs to stop as well.

As for your point on the web of cause and effect, I think it’s important to remember that there often isn’t a clear cut path from A to Z. And people with different life experiences will come to different conclusions about whether A leads to C or B leads to C. If you want to communicate to others that A leads to Z, you need to thoroughly explain how you reached that conclusion rather than assuming that everyone knows that A leads to Z 100% of the time.

You say that our senses of empathy are flawed and limited but I also haven’t gotten the impression that you’re making any real effort to understand other people. I’ve tried to read your words several times over and each time it feels like you think you’re absolutely right and everyone else is absolutely wrong. I don’t understand half the things you’ve written and you never explain them or try to present other opinions. You bulldoze through everyone else and shut down when they ask you to slow down and explain where you came from.

To be clear here, I actually sympathize with a lot of the sentiments you’ve mentioned here. But just because I feel frustrated that someone does not see things exactly the same way I do, does not mean that I can automatically assume that they’re wrong and evil and it’s okay to be mean to them.

Well the thing with trans healthcare is that it’s been hardly researched so what I’m about to say is not official medical advice. Especially considering that everyone’s body is different and will develop at different rates. If you have a sister, you could use her as your benchmarks for approximately what changes you’ll see. Otherwise, your mom may be a second option. If you don’t have either of those people available to you, you’re basically just taking a shot in the dark.

In terms of more scientific stuff. Again this is not medical advice so I urge you to make your own conclusions. You may want to check out the dr powers subreddit for the types of tests he uses. Just a warning though, don’t look at any of his personal opinions. Because honestly he kinda sucks. But people also generally love his care and it’s pretty radically different from the status quo, so tread with caution.

In a nutshell, some of the key differences include that he tests for not just total E levels but more importantly free E levels (don’t ask me what the difference is, I didn’t study biology or medicine). Also more generally, he tries to match up the low point in your hormone cycle to the low point of the average E level of a cis woman. Being below the low point of the average E level when you’re at your trough level means that you’re not getting enough E. Testing at peak levels can be pretty unreliable and I personally don’t think it really makes all that much sense to match up the peaks of your cycle to the lowest point of the average.

I think it’s important to note that almost every step in transition takes a lot of time, so you must be patient. Getting on hrt is a big step for sure and congratulations! But be prepared that it will take time to start seeing tangible results from it. Don’t be afraid to get started on some of the other aspects like makeup and clothing in the meantime.

That being said, (and this is also partially a personal gripe of mine,) don’t be afraid to shop around for a good doctor. Far too many doctors are unwilling to give trans people proper dosages, either out of malice or ignorance, and this can make the process of second puberty much harder of a process than it should be. I hate to reference the infamous Dr. Powers (his personal views are pretty… Weird, to but it lightly. And a lot of doctors practically despise him), but I can’t help but admire his patient-first attitude. Even though his personal opinions are kinda gross, he takes his patients seriously and does more in depth testing than any of the doctors I’ve had throughout my own transition. Too many doctors will give you a bare minimum dose that barely does anything for you and refuse to increase it, citing poorly researched statistics or basing it off of cis hrt which was never designed to induce a second puberty. Listen to your body, keep track of changes and when they happen, and be patient. But don’t let a doctor gaslight you into thinking that things are happening when they’re not.

And on that note, take some good before pics that you can compare yourself to down the line! It can really help when you’re feeling down or feeling like things are too slow, to see how far you’ve come and what changes have actually happened.

I was feeling pretty frustrated about my transition progress up until earlier this year when I finally switched to injections and was taking a way higher dose. And now I can confidently say that my boobs show through my shirts. As it turns out, I don’t think having sub 100 E levels is enough to actually start going through puberty. It did do some changes for sure, but they’re basically nothing compared to how my body has changed since I managed to switch.

This study seems to me to be a retreading of old ground by cis people. Like I can appreciate getting more data that yes, trans people aren’t freaks, but the study just seems like a massive “duh”.

Why did they think hrt changed vocal chords in trans women in the first place? It’s pretty well known that hrt cannot take away the things that first puberty already changed. I also don’t like how the article presents voice feminization surgery as if it’s a common and normal choice for most trans women. Even beyond the implication that trans people need surgery to be successful in their transition, voice feminization surgery is extremely risky and is only ever recommended in extreme cases. If they couldn’t even do that amount of research, it doesn’t make me feel confident that the study is all that worthwhile to think about.

Secondly, why only focus on trans women? It’d be more interesting if they included trans men in the picture since on their side of the fence, hrt actually does affect their voice. It would be interesting if the study compared their trans participants with cis benchmarks at all, actually. Maybe the study itself does that where the article does not, but for reason #1 I don’t feel like it’s worth my time to check.

Lastly, the actual results of the study are pretty “duh”. Just by the physics of how the human voice works, it’s pretty easy to see that yes, having a breathier and higher pitched voice will lead to having thinner vocal folds. Because having thinner vocal folds is what causes those effects on the voice in the first place. The study mixes up the cause and effect here, so it isn’t exactly groundbreaking research. What would’ve been more appropriate to examine is the vocal chords at rest compared to either cis benchmarks or the speaking voice average. Since the conventional wisdom is that voice training can’t really change your voice at rest, that would be more interesting to look at.

Overally I appreciate having more data about trans people, but didn’t find the study or article to be particularly knowledgeable about trans people in the first place.

I think the original commenter’s point is that calling grown women “girls” is a commonly used tactic to infantilize women and make the situation seem not as serious as it’s supposed to be.

Take for example the headline that we’re talking about here: “girl” vs “woman” is the difference in thinking that this is some 16 year old who made dumb decisions and someone who probably understands the consequences of what they’re doing and takes proper precautions to prevent it.

This is not to say that I personally believe that one abortion is more justified than the other (because I don’t), but just want to point out the semantic difference here.

Yeah. You’re absolutely correct in that the two parties aren’t remotely equal. I guess my comment stems from the frustration I feel seeing democrats constantly trying to “take the upper road” while conservatives block anything the democrats do on principle. They’ll take a thousand concessions to get bills passed and even when the democrats are in power, somehow still don’t manage to enact very meaningful change.

So when I see the democrats slip up sometimes it feels like they undo whatever little progress they managed to make with all the conservative bad faith actors.

Democrats 🤝 Republicans

Fucking the poor. The only point they have in common.

Are there any benefits to doing this over having a dedicated server with a vpn you can connect to for outside the network?

Because otherwise this seems like unnecessary performance overhead on a device which I’d like to squeeze as much performance out of in order to play games…

Don’t know how to do quotes here but:

“Any community always ends up attracting downvotes and trolls, and the conventional resources such as the suicide hotline chat are only meant to keep you talking and don’t help discuss chronic problems.”

This is pretty much it right here. It boils down to qualifications, money, and the anonymous nature of the internet. It’s hard to give real and useful advice to someone based off of only a couple of internet posts.

Offline, are you gonna run into shitty therapists who deserve to have their license revoked? Yes absolutely. But the people who can help have qualifications and charge a lot of money for their time. They’re not gonna come on the internet and dispense useless or generic advice to strangers. It would be a waste of everyone’s time, not to mention the whole issue with separating work from life.

Maybe you could prod them by asking them questions designed to highlight their unconscious biases? Assuming that they’re not a malicious actor of course and actually genuinely trying to learn and expand their worldview.

I do think it’s important to determine whether the person you’re arguing with actually cares to grow and learn or if they’re just trying to start fights with people and “win” arguments with comments that take a lot of nuance to address. In the cases where they don’t care, don’t waste your breath on arguing with someone who’s sole purpose is to make you angry. They don’t care about your nuanced answer.

I forget how the original phrase goes, but someone once said that these people use language as a toy to play with, while the reasonable person uses it to justify their actions.

While I don’t disagree with anything you said, I’m not sure how this answers the OP’s question. At least without a little bit more elaboration on what assumptions you’re making and why you’re bringing up feminism specifically in this case.

Just to take a stab here though, I think you bring up feminism because more often than not men will discredit women because “women get emotional”. And since the men in this situation aren’t crying from whatever casually horrendous shit is being said in the name of “debate”, that to them, they think they are just and unbiased and have a more unbiased opiniom than women. Which ignores how men will often react angrily to a woman who buts into their conversation and not even realize that anger is an emotion too.