I’m holding up well in spite of everything. I lost one of my friends this week. She had moved into what I thought was going to be a safe situation several states away and something clearly went wrong. She was a really smart and inspiring person.

I also just took another friend to the airport so she could permanently relocate to Europe, and two of my other friends are leaving soon too.

It’s been a rough week but I’m not planning on leaving, mostly working on organizing the trans people who stay.

I check all/comments/new, see what people are talking about and if anything catches my eye I may subscribe

It’s really telling how as soon as someone critiques the way things are run on swamp island you just get defensive about ‘foreigners’ rather than taking the constructive criticism about your alleged healthcare system.

I’m an anarchist, I don’t like any of these fucking countries, they’re all capitalist shitholes, some more so than others. Fuck the wars, literally just setting money on fire and acting like the problem is minorities getting healthcare.

I’m just saying that the surgeries to the face shouldn’t be handed out no-questions asked.

The only way this happens right now pretty much everywhere is if you have money, then you can get whatever gender affirming surgery you want, cis or trans. The issue I have is that even the first step of this process like hormones and non-invasive procedures are already extremely gatekept, do you think they should be more accessible or less?

I never stopped doing organizing work since Trump 1, during the Biden regime a lot of people went back to brunch, it was harder to find volunteers. Now they’re all back and ready to be mad at the government and do work.

At no point did I ever blame trans people. I don’t know how you even read that out of what I said.

here’s the things that jumped out at me:

A “bias” against self report and DIY HRT is understandable as the person has likely just been hanging out in forums and Discord servers but not assessed by a professional.

based on this I can only conclude that you don’t consider self report people to be trans. You’re clearly shitting on them for not following the 6 year labyrinth of your health system to get hormones and a proper diagnosis.

from what I can tell your main concern is continuing austerity rather than just figuring out what care is needed and providing it.

I think it’s important for it to be assessed first to make sure that necessary care is being funded by the taxpayer and not just cosmetic surgery

I can conclude and you either missed or dismissed my point about cosmetic surgery. things like electrolysis on the face to remove facial hair may be “cosmetic” but it’s also kind of a big deal for transfems who don’t follow the puberty blocker track. It involves a lot of work in the system to even get to have that covered, I can assure you that nobody is getting recreational facial electrolysis.

if your concern is actually taxpayers money getting spent well maybe you lot should spend less money on weapons, cops and tax cuts? it’s what I tell them here because those things are money pits.

Yeah, I’m offering you my experience with the US’s horrifyingly dysfunctional healthcare system that was still able to give me a prescription within months rather than 6+ years. Maybe you should stop trying to blame trans people for your system failing so many people for so long.

I know it’s not for profit, I explained how classifications are used under our for profit system to do the same things you do under your alleged healthcare system.

at 6 years to provide service you might as well not have a healthcare system

If your health system is taking 6 years to provide people with a hormone prescription it’s clearly complete dog shit. Frankly sounds more like a warcrime than a health service. I don’t think that making the care it provides worse for miniorities is going to fix how fucked up it is for everyone else. Maybe try fixing the system itself instead of punishing people for failing to conform to bullshit standards designed to deny care.

Classifying things which are neccessary care as “cosmetic” is how things are gatekept in our for-profit healthcare, as opposed to hand-wringing about misdiagnosis in service of cruel austerity.

Not even saying we should be more stringent. We might already be stringent enough.

If you have 6 year wait times it sounds like the issue is with the healthcare system failing to meet demand. In the video you linked they were struggling to get even hormones prescribed, citing a bias against self report and diy HRT. I can relate as while I’ve been able to get it prescribed I’ve had to pay out of pocket myself (with coupons) for injections because my insurance prioritizes oral and patches first because that’s what the formulary says. It doesn’t make medical sense because I can’t really get to a therapeutic dose on patches, it doesn’t make financial sense because patches are way more expensive than shots, but it is an arbitrary decision that makes getting care more difficult.

I think the system is already overly strict, also not the same everywhere, especially for even being able to start the transition process. For transfems facial hair is something that’s going to need ‘cosmetic’ procedures (laser/electrolysis) to remove. The insurance pathway for that in my experience essentially requires you to be on HRT for a considerable length of time before they will even cover the procedure. That kind of wait can really compound mental stresses. I have a good connection for electrolysis and had enough income to get it done in parallel with starting HRT without insurance, but that’s the exception.

Can you clarify what ‘sex change operations’ is intended to refer to, are you calling every step of gender affirming care ‘sex change operations’ or is something like hormones distinct in your mind?

The effects of going on hormones is largely reversible, surgery obviously less so.

The reality is vast majority of the people who do de-transition do so because of familial or social pressures, often social coercion. That’s not to discount that there are ones who have some misdiagnosis leading them to pursue care that they didn’t want. I just don’t see how arbitrarily limiting care for everyone else solves this perceived issue other than via effective austerity- not allowing anyone to have care.

I do think there should be research done into seeing if there is a cure or therapies for gender dysphoria, and use sex changes as a last resort.

but right now, sex changes appear to be one of the most effective options if someone is truly experiencing dysphoria. But again, they should have everything else ruled out first

The most effective (and reversible) treatment should be a last resort, because you think that people aren’t truly experiencing dysphoria, and even if they are everything else needs to be ruled out first.

the video you cite is someone who is impoverished and unwell dealing with a system that is intentionally disfunctional and has clearly been overreacting making threats that aren’t even really actionable considering how poor they are. Having a mental health condition exacerbated by poverty and a disfunctional healthcare system doesn’t mean your other conditions aren’t real.

Broadly speaking being gender nonconforming is more likely to cause you to end up in poverty simply because your bigoted family might just cut all support from you and leave you to fend for yourself with a hostile system. having to live in poverty and not even able to get medical care then exacerbates pretty much every underlying mental health issue regardless of gender.

hey some of us are Russian bots who just happen to be trans, rather than for nefarious reasons

There’s been some bad blood since when they were federated and the (old) 196 mods were particularly shitty, example: https://hexbear.net/post/363529/3762934

Since then there’s been new 196 mods because the old 196 tried to force-migrate the whole comm to .world.

This reminds me of Iran for some reason.

hey they made an aid pier that got used to distribute a tiny amount of supplies before it got used to launch an Israeli massacre and then broke apart under its own weight

you wish your eyebrows/eyeliner looked half as good

agreed, plus as it stands they’re actually somewhat on track for the “Russian disinformation” leaked 100 day peace plan

no worries, sleep deprivation can be quite taxing