[ SECRET POST #6353 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6353 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Honkai: Star Rail]



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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 22 secrets from Secret Submission Post #908.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I relate, too. As someone who started hanging out in LGBT spaces in the early aughts, it's quite weird, and definitely something that trends young.

And they have some perspectives that just seem...I'm not sure what the adjective would be. I happened to stumble across a post the other day where people were basically saying that anyone who tries to say there are possible side effects or complications from HRT, SRS, etc is only doing so because they hate trans people. The belief being expressed was that there are no negative effects at all, ever, for anyone, from any of it. They were even denying really low-level, basic things that everyone knows, such as that taking testosterone can increase aggression. I was like...well, first of all, that's impossible. Even the absolute best medications and surgeries still have some side effects, because we're complicated, imperfect beings living in a complicated, imperfect world. But second, what in the gosh darn heck do they think when they happen across the side effects for pretty much anything else? "Damn, they must really hate people with high cholesterol, telling them there's a possibility of getting liver disease from taking statins!"

And look, I get it: there are crazy people out there who think that the presence of side effects and complications for SRS means that it should be banned outright. Those people are wrong. But the fact that those people exist doesn't mean that side effects don't.

[(Anonymous)]

what in the gosh darn heck do they think when they happen across the side effects for pretty much anything else? "Damn, they must really hate people with high cholesterol, telling them there's a possibility of getting liver disease from taking statins!"

I work in a medical field and yes, absolutely, people take side effects as a personal attack across pretty much any drug. A lot of people think there's a perfect medication for their condition and anything that isn't perfect means that the doctor/Big Pharma/science/conspiracy theory du jour/I personally am hiding it from them for nefarious reasons. Trans healthcare might be more politically fraught but it's hardly unique.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Geez, that's absolutely bonkers to me, especially since I'm the exact opposite! I feel like I'm being properly cared for if side effects and complications are explained to me.

I can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to know about side effects, so that they can be prepared for them; and I can't imagine being under the illusion that we've perfected medicine (as if we're capable of perfecting anything). It must be frustrating having to deal with that mindset on a regular basis.

[(Anonymous)]

It's not everyone, but boy does it get tiring.

[(Anonymous)]

It's like medication. There's positive and negative effects and for some people the good will outweigh the bad. It's not truly informed consent if we're not allowed to talk about it. Even my friends who have had successful transitions have some notable gripes, both minor and major for their health.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Right, exactly! And it's important to know about those gripes, to know about negative effects, so that you can expect them and prepare for them. Like, off the top of my head, I know that taking estrogen can increase the chances of getting blood clots. Wouldn't you want to know about that so you can watch out for them? And wouldn't you feel upset if your doctor didn't tell you, and you wound up having a serious medical event from not catching one early enough?

[(Anonymous)]

Reminds me of that trans(or not? I think they weren't quite sure anymore afterwards) person who took testosterone and then got the classic male balding pattern that made them (early 20s) look like a middle aged accountant. And then they made a video to cry about it because weirdly, the glorious HRT didn't make them look like the cute twinky dreamboi they imagined themselves to turn into but like just.., a washed out dude. And theybregretted it immensely and they were mocked relentlessly for everything, not by cis people but by other "trans dudes" who had the good fortune that (at that point in time at least) the testosterone hadn't made their hair fall out (yet).

And shit like denying that there are side-effects, and be it just something harmless like balding, acne or hair growth in places you don't want it to, cultivated this toxic environment were people in their own community mock and attack each other for perfectly natural side effects that do, in fact, occur.

The whole thing also makes a lot of trans people end up unhappy with the bodies they end up with because their "no critical voices allowed" echo chambers made them have incredibly unrealistic expectations.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

This is really sad to me! D: It's really hard to talk openly in public about something as personal as balding and other aspects of physical appearance that make people very self-conscious. To be mocked for *common side effects* of transitioning is just awful.

It's always a bit interesting to me how in any progressive/social justice movement (or any form of politics, really), you can always identify a certain type of person who gladly throws individuals in their own group under the bus just because those individuals' personal experiences would be "bad optics" for the movement as a whole. Like, if you can't treat a single person with kindness and empathy, I don't think you'll be very good at creating a world where everyone is treated with kindness and empathy -- it's a bit self-undermining.

[(Anonymous)]

It's often a matter of tearing others down to feel better about themselves. The whole community is unfortunately just as full of mean spirited bullies and narcicists as other communities.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

But yeah, I've seen this. A recurring pain point in the detrans community in Reddit seems to be that testosterone has unpredictable and potentially irreversible effects on a woman's voice. It doesn't necessarily give them a masculine voice, and can fuck with their ability to pass as either gender. But I get the impression that a lot of the more talked about symptoms are less embarrassing to confess to other people. I was recently reading about trans men who've been pushed into the hormone equivalent of a post-menopausal state in their twenties by taking testosterone. Pelvic floor muscle loss was making them incontinent, and apparently this is an extremely common problem? And, I mean, I'm absolutely not bringing this up to embarrass anyone, I'm saying something because this is the sort of thing they should have been told was a risk before taking anything. And apparently weren't.

[(Anonymous)]

Regarding voice, I think that's a very personal thing and it depends on the person. There's a lot of range of registers and timbres among (cis) men and women in terms of their natural speaking voice. I personally like registers in between the typical women's range and the typical men's range and find them pleasing to listen to (I'm cis), but for someone else it may be disappointing or not sound like the voice they wanted. They might feel like it shuts them out of passing credibly as a man or a woman, even if their voice is actually within the range that cis men and cis women have. The point I'm trying to make is that there is the physical reality (how your voice changes) and there's the mental/psychological framing (whether the person likes the change or not), and I feel like the way you're presenting it in your comment conflates those two things. Changes can be unpredictable and irreversible without necessarily being bad or unwanted, but it depends on the person and how they feel about it. People can have the feeling that their new voice makes it impossible for them to credibly pass as either a man or a woman without that actually being reality. A trans person (or detrans person) can hate the sound of their own voice without it being the case that other people also hate it too. Subjective reality is not the same thing as objective reality, and for someone going through a hard and disappointing transition, you need to be careful not to "yes and" all their negative subjective impressions and you need to provide an objective reality check for them (yes, it's disappointing; yes, you've lost something important to you; yes, this hurts; no, it's not the end of the world; no, you're not irreparably broken).

And then regarding incontinence, to be honest, incontinence is an issue that even pre-menopausal women face a lot that is very underdiscussed in general because it's embarrassing. Going on birth control can cause someone to become incontinent (hi, me). This is not even listed as a side effect of my birth control pill, but it happens. I know pre-menopausal women who have difficulty holding in their pee and this has led to accidents in public and this is just a state of being. I'm not saying it's not an issue or that people can't complain about this happening to them (they can and should!). I just think that there's a tendency to exaggerate the negative impact of transition side effects and view them as special or extraordinary compared to other treatments that people might voluntarily request from their healthcare system.

I think there is a huge difference between listening to and validating a person who is lamenting the disappointing and unexpected effects of transition and regretting their decision to transition vs. completely validating that person's beliefs that they are irrevocably broken by having transitioned. Saying things like "Oh your voice is in between two registers and it's permanently stuck like that? I guess you'll never be able to credibly pass as either a man or a woman. That's tragic" or "You're incontinent now, pre-menopause? Wow that's awful," that have a sense of defeatism or that validate someone's feelings that they ARE actually broken and fucked up and unable to integrate into society anymore are statements that not only negatively affect trans people but also cis people who are affected by the exact same problems.

[(Anonymous)]

DA

>the fact that [people who want transition outlawed] exist doesn't mean that side effects don't.

This.

The first time I read the words of a detransitioner online, what they had to say about why they regretted surgery was a very precise litany of (likely permanent) unwanted side effects that they were not told about. I'd hoped that guy just had a particularly irresponsible doctor, but apparently not, because so much has come out since. Trans health care has made a complete mockery of the concept of informed consent, by hiding known medical problems from people who are weighing whether they think their life would get better after hormones and surgery. The most obvious side effect is the way both of these destroy sexual function (and even in the case of hormones, that's often not "reversible"), but I had no idea how much else they tend to mess up, besides.