if you type @ and then start typing the username there is a dropdown of users you can select from.

I think hexbear might be defederated (or whatever the correct term is) from this instance, so that might be why it’s not showing up? Or at least that’s why I assume I’m not seeing EstraDoll’s username in the dropdown results.

Anyway, all the dropdown does when you choose a user is link to the user profile, like:

@EstraDoll@hexbear.net

The CommonMark code for that being:

[@EstraDoll@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/estradoll)

I don’t actually know if this pings the user or not so they know they are being referenced. 🤷‍♀️

did a double take when I read 130 days - that’s a very short amount of time for so much change!

yum - I’ll try it out, thanks for the inspo!!

I took my partner’s last name because I like their family more than mine, and I liked the idea of no longer being associated with my family.

But I think most people just want to do what is normal or expected of them, so I would imagine that is why most women change their name. Not doing so would go against the grain, putting them in awkward situations where they have to explain they didn’t take the last name.

oh wow, that’s much simpler - I usually have some specific ratio that I weigh out for the gluten and the water, and I knead it for a long time to develop the gluten into long, fibrous strands. I let it sit for a while and knead it some more. Then I eventually braid it and boil the braid in a flavorful broth for a while (can’t remember if it’s like 30 minutes or an hour - I remember it taking a while). Then it goes into the fridge overnight because it’s kinda soggy and soft at this point. The next day it’s like meat - chewy, fibrous, etc.

For a lunchmeat instead of braiding and boiling, I put spices in with the gluten and then after kneading I put the loaf onto some wax paper and wrap it tightly with aluminum foil, and then I steam that. I have even made a substitute Braunschweiger this way which was sorta tasty (incorporated a lot of other ingredients for that to make it fattier).

I’ll try your easy method and see how it goes - do you use it like a lunchmeat substitution or just any kind of meat sub?

I don’t think that’s the tl;dr

a better tl;dr might be that young healthy men with normal levels of testosterone are being duped into needless testosterone replacement therapy by right-wing misogynist mannosphere social media influencers pushing pseudo-science claims on the internet

Thank you, you are communicating my concerns much better than I am!

Of course a third party can claim a trans patient is seeking care for the wrong reasons, or that their care is actually harmful, etc. - but we have to remember that we can still parse claims and test them against reality.

Doctors have a moral and legal obligation to practice evidence-based medicine, and they should not take seriously pseudo-science fad treatments that are contrary to the well-being of the patient. It is their place to deny a patient such a treatment.

That said, because transphobia in our society has resulted in gatekeeping and withholding gender-affirming care from trans patients for so long (including my own care!), it is hard for me not to agree with you: the patient should be free to make choices about their body. I believe hormones should be accessible over the counter, without a required prescription.

But again, this rights-based approach and desire for radically free access to hormones has downsides, namely the harm done if there isn’t anything done to mitigate something like this testosterone therapy fad.

I think we agree that one solution is that a doctor can provide informed consent, but I think this is too much responsibility on doctors to combat misinformation campaigns. As a society we are having to come to terms with how destructive misinformation can be, and what needs to be done to combat it. I actually have no idea how to best solve this, even if I can see that it is naive to expect a single visit with a doctor to deprogram an incel from their ideology or adequately protect them from starting a needless and harmful treatment.

I have some VWG in my pantry and I use it to make seitan sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it easy. Also, I find my home-made seitan has a distinct flavor I don’t like, and which I find difficult to cover up. Admittedly buying Beehive is also for convenience / time-saving.

Since I transitioned I’ve been thinking a lot about how little I knew about trans people until I realized I was one and then took much more seriously educating myself.

It makes me feel ashamed because of how little I understand so many other oppressed groups, and how little true empathy I have. Even if on the surface I have respect for people and consider myself an “ally” to various groups, I feel I should do more than just signal respect and support. Maybe it’s an unrealistically high bar, but my conscience certainly thinks I need to do more to empathize with and better understand other groups.

I can’t help but feel my default tendency is towards a kind of accidental tribalism - I understand perspectives I choose to engage with and understand and this results in a cultural cloistering, an accidental in-and-out-grouping because of how I naturally do or don’t understand someone’s life experience based on my own. Unless I go out of my way to do a lot of work to understand other perspectives, I otherwise won’t be likely to do that.

the tl;dr is that they are not really feminists, and they use feminist-sounding rhetoric to justify anti-trans views, they’re basically just anti-trans activists.

For more rabbit-hole, ContraPoints has a video about “Gender Criticals” (synonymous with TERF): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pTPuoGjQsI

Her video on JK Rowling would be a good follow-up.

seriously, it’s insane that spiro is used so much - it’s a weak anti-androgen to start with, and the side effects are so common and potentially dangerous (I feel like everyone I talk to that takes spiro has a horrible time on it - the only person I can think of who had a good experience is Mia Violet).

Meanwhile, injecting bioidentical estrogen with monotherapy doses is relatively harmless (the biggest harm I guess would be from needle injury, infections, etc. - easily mitigated by following standard / best practices, something diabetics have to do as well).

It’s OK, being closeted was worse. :-)

I didn’t realize having the wrong sex hormones in your body can mess up your mind - I was struggling with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, etc. for decades that were entirely unnecessary. A socially harder life with the right sex hormones is still much better than a closeted life with the wrong hormones. It was a hard lesson to learn, though.

especially when they’re also privileged and unaware of what it’s like to be a minority - I don’t really know how to cross that divide, though. I guess a cis man could cross-dress in public and see how it feels, see how they are treated.

I accept at this point that everyone is a hypocrite, including myself. I still tend to think some people are worse hypocrites than others, lol

Yes, testosterone is converted into dihydrotestosterone (DHT) which causes the male-pattern balding by binding to receptors on hair follicles in the scalp, which initiates “miniaturization” and the shrinking of those follicles, leading eventually to the loss of hair.

I agree with informed consent and bodily autonomy, that seems like a great ethical foundation - but one downside might be in not preventing harm done when people duped by mannosphere social media influencers pushing pseudo-science claims about testosterone ask their doctor for testosterone therapy. The clinical value of hormone therapy for trans individuals is well grounded in empirical research, but testosterone therapy for healthy, young cis-men is not based on clinical benefits.

There clearly needs to be some counter-measure to misinformation about testosterone therapy, this is not like trans healthcare.

https://old.reddit.com/r/flexibility/comments/9212b8/dont_know_where_to_start_click_here/

Splits

This splits routine was created for the 90-day challenge and will give you quick results by stretching every day.

If you just want to take it a bit slower, here’s a follow-along video for every other day.

Hit a plateau in your splits training? Try these brutal but effective loaded progressions. Here and here. Oh, and here.

agreed, the title should be edited

EDIT: instead of “shemale” a more appropriate phrase might be like pre-op trans woman or something like that

The general advice is if you are wishing to avoid a pregnancy that you should assume HRT won’t make you sterile (and use protection), and if you are hoping to have kids that you should assume it will make you sterile (and get fertility services like freezing sperm before starting HRT).

Estrogen also causes penile atrophy^[1], so the phallus may not be as capable of penetration as before HRT.

From the OP’s inappropriate title, I assume they are coming from the context of pornography, where the actresses are using methods to prevent penile atrophy (most porn involving trans women do not show women with penile atrophy), but in those contexts they are also likely taking steps to avoid pregnancy so the question clearly veers outside of the initial context.