[personal profile] mercurychaos
Those of you who aren't aware: T-vox.org is an awesome trans-related wiki with links and information about all kinds of resources, including medical resources. The other day I was looking over the Physicians in the United States page, and I noticed that there are several states with no listing at all. I actually found the doctor that i currently get my T from via this website, and I think it's an imprtant resource to maintain – so if anyone here knows of any resources that aren't listed, please add them.

There's also a "Physicians by region" page, and there are links at the top to pages for "specialists" (therapists, endocrinologists, surgeons, hair removal specialists, etc.) which can also be edited.

ETA: mods, can we create some tags for this? Perhaps "resources", "doctors", finding local support", etc?
inherent_discord: (Default)
[personal profile] inherent_discord
Since this community isn't very active and the last post was my own, I guess I am somewhat of an attention whore and decided I would crosspost my journal entries here as well.

Keep in mind I am a female in the navy and pre-everything and mostly closeted, but pass very well.
Read more... )
But I figured since I shouldn't doublepost everything (like last time with the multivitamin thing) I should at the very least bring up some discussion.

Maybe there are less FtMs in other countries because the US is just so damn sexist?
I know that my FtM friend didn't care anymore once he got to Japan. Reason being "They treat me how I want to be treated here" so he didn't "need" an operation.
When I went to the topless bar, the girls commented on my voice, how young I looked, how soft my skin was, but never once did they even infer I was a girl. They called me boy, then one "corrected herself" and called me a man since I mentioned I was 22. In fact when I looked down when they mentioned how high my voice was, they were like "Oh don't worry, it's cute!"
Of course they're topless baristas so I guess they kind of have to be polite, but I think Japan is polite as a whole. I was sir'd at the airport and by taxi drivers and stuff too.

Do you think culture plays a big part in how we feel about our gender identity? Or do you think that the people who care about social status/treatment in regards to gender were never "real" transgenders?

UNRELATED:
I bought an STP device yesterday. )
inherent_discord: (Default)
[personal profile] inherent_discord
[Personal intro] )

So I decided to get a multivitamin. Except that didn't work out too well because what I chose was an assortment of huge pills. Now I don't know about you, but I have a very hard time swallowing pills, let alone five huge ones every night. So I went back to GNC and asked for a liquid multivitamin, something akin to a meal replacement but not meant for losing weight. They only had one, and guess what it was? Women's Ultra Mega Active.

I've talked to other transguys in the past, they all say they are overcome with such huge grief when buying supplements and the like because they don't want to buy something for women. I used to feel exactly the same way. I went out of my way to find something not proclaiming gender or just buy the men's. I couldn't fathom what made our bodies so different that it warranted different ingredients. I always thought it was some marketing scheme set otu to genderize psuedo-pharmaceutical products.

I was with a co-worker at the time and in a revealing [female] uniform so I was't passing as male at all (plus i was on base). I didn't feel like getting the men's version because, well, I am not technically "a man" so without thinking I just bought what the GNC rep gave me.

I mean, I needed this afterall. I am suffering from exhaustion all the time currently and I can't up my PT(physical training) schedule without doing something about my pitiful nutrient intake first.

While a part of me sees this gigantic bottle of women's multivitamin on the counter and dies inside a bit, I can't also help but think. "I am a female. This is what my body needs to get better. Right?"
Does it?

I guess we'll see if the 30 bucks was worth it. And hey, I've got 4 years left in my contract. If it "feminizes" me then maybe I won't have to shave as much. That'd be something to look forward to, right? It's not like I need to worry about passing in the military.
[personal profile] mercurychaos
The U.S. Department of State is pleased to use the occasion of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Pride Month to announce its new policy guidelines regarding gender change in passports and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad.

Beginning June 10, when a passport applicant presents a certification from an attending medical physician that the applicant has undergone appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition, the passport will reflect the new gender. The guidelines include detailed information about what information the certification must include. It is also possible to obtain a limited-validity passport if the physician’s statement shows the applicant is in the process of gender transition. No additional medical records are required. Sexual reassignment surgery is no longer a prerequisite for passport issuance. A Consular Report of Birth Abroad can also be amended with the new gender.

As with all passport applicants, passport issuing officers at embassies and consulates abroad and domestic passport agencies and centers will only ask appropriate questions to obtain information necessary to determine citizenship and identity.

The new policy and procedures are based on standards and recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), recognized by the American Medical Association as the authority in this field.


So basically transgender Americans will now be able to get their gender marker changed on their passport with what amounts to a note from their doctor — they won't ask you for medical records, nor if you've had surgery, and indeed they have explicitly said that surgery is not required. Fuck yeah.


Source (state.gov)

ETA: read the full policy here (PDF.)

Oi!

Oct. 21st, 2009 04:17 am
keltik: (Marilyn)
[personal profile] keltik
Any of you guys on stickam? If so, theres a regular room in there worth checking out. Its called FTM/MTF/Allies, have a look!
floit63: (19)
[personal profile] floit63
First off, I want to apologise to everyone for neglecting you for so long. Life got hectic and I only had time to make sure there wasn't drama being started before crashing (thanks for not causing any, btw).

Now I have a full month off (!!!) so I'm thinking of maybe putting together a few resource posts to be linked to in the profile. I'm thinking a general list of online resources (DW/LJ/DJ/etc comms, blogs, Underworks, etc), a basic Trans 101 type overview, and maybe a few subcategories.

I'd like all of these to be a community effort, it seems to be the best way to make sure everyone's voice is heard. I could put them together myself, but then it'd be biased towards my own views and my opinions aren't always the popular ones (actually, it's usually quite the opposite). What I'll do is put up an info gathering post for each of the topics and then base the actual resource posts on what's in the comments. I figure the more people contribute, the better they'll be.

So, does anyone have suggestions for other resource type posts?
floit63: (16)
[personal profile] floit63
I'm not out as trans to anyone in my current city except my partner. Theoretically there are...five or six other people who know, but I never see them so it's kind of a moot point. However, at school my circle of friends default to me when they have a trans related question because most of them know my partner is trans. I don't have any problems with this, answering questions was never part of the reason I chose not to disclose.

What is amusing to me is that while my close friends ask me trans questions, everyone who doesn't know me will ask one of them. So when the Chaz Bono news broke everyone ran to one of my friends rather than me. Up until the past two or three years I was the go-to guy for all things trans related in my area (particularly when it came to transmen), now I'm not even in the top ten. I actually prefer it this way because it means I get to skip the Trans 101 stuff and talk about more important things, like why gay men really need to stop using "tranny" as the new catch-all.

It does take some adjusting to though. I instinctively start to answer questions that haven't been yet asked simply out of habit. Has anyone experienced anything similar to this as they've gotten further along in transition? Any pointers on how to learn to keep my big mouth shut? The ADHD really doesn't help, but I've managed to learn to think before I speak in most other cases.
bee: A lushly stylised pair of red animated lips. (Jessica Snark)
[personal profile] bee
KRXQ Morning Hosts Advocate Physical and Verbal Abuse of Transgender Children.

Link goes to a blog post. There is information on it, however, from GLAAD; as well as links to more information.

K. Oh my god. This came from a west coast station too. BASED IN SAN FRANCISCO.
[personal profile] floit63
Chastity Bono, civil rights advocate, journalist, author and musician, is in the early stages of changing his gender -- transitioning from female to male, TMZ has learned.

More under the cut )

via TMZ

(I would warn anyone who doesn't want to spend the next three hours headdesking to avoid reading the comments on the original article. People suck sometimes.)

Trans 101

Jun. 5th, 2009 10:53 am
[personal profile] floit63
I'm speaking at DC Trans Pride tomorrow. I don't do this often just because [a] I'm so different from most transguys that I don't feel comfortable speaking for everyone and [b] very few people on this coast know I'm trans. They were having trouble finding a guy though and I know one of the women organizing everything so I said I'd do it.

Since this is a Trans 101 panel designed for trans and non-transpeople alike, does anyone have any suggestions for things they'd like brought up? I already know what I want to get across, but since I'm theoretically speaking for all of you I thought I'd ask what you'd like.

Oh, and if anyone's going, feel free to introduce yourself. I won't have *too* much time afterwards (moving to a new apartment), but I'm always up for meeting new people.
floit63: (18)
[personal profile] floit63
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104452266&sc=fb&cc=fp

Albert D.J. Cashier was the shortest soldier in the 95th Illinois Infantry. In one of the few existing photographs of Cashier during the Civil War, you can faintly detect the outline of breasts under his uniform.

More text behind the cut )

Cashier/Hodgers is dead so we'll never know if s/he identified more towards the male end or just liked the freedom and cash that came with living as a man, but it's still pretty interesting.
bee: A lushly stylised pair of red animated lips. (Lighthouse)
[personal profile] bee
Okay guys, it's getting desperate over here in the bee hive. I have had a steadily declining libido for at least the past year, possibly two, and I'm certain it has very little to do with body image, because I am not disgusted with my body even though I'm trans. I like it, it's a good body, but it's just not for me.

My lover of two years has done worlds to help me get to that point, and yet my physical drive is still all but gone.

My private joke is that transsexuality for me is more a phsyical than a mental condition, but I was doing research on having low libido today and found out that my joke is rapidly proving eerily true: Whether my apparent lack of viable testosterone is due to all the x-rays I had as a kid, or my stint with the pill, I don't know--but the only thing that can physically cause a total absence of libido like this is a lack of T, and even normal cisgendered females have some. It's the lust hormone. I don't seem to have any, or if I do, the chemicals that stay in your system after using the pill are becoming more and more potent.

My question is this: I have no insurance, since I haven't been able to find a job for the past year, and the clinic I mentioned in earlier posts is booked because it is the only affordable one in the area. I know that our sisters get E on the sly--is it possible to get T? I don't want to be asexual! Help!
floit63: (25)
[personal profile] floit63
I was diagnosed with epilepsy about 4 years ago. Up until the past six months I'd only had absence seizures (basically looks like I'm spacing out) and the occasional febrile seizure, but recently I've been having more and more grand mal seizures (the kind most people are familiar with). I've noticed that these tend to come on when I forget to do my T shot for more than about a week. Has anyone else experienced this correlation?

It's not an automatic thing, I won't just have one because my shot was due last Tuesday. However, I have noticed that the times when I've been most regular about my shot have also been the times when I've not had a single grand mal while the times when I have had them have all been during a missed shot week. I realise the simple way to test this is to just do the damned shot, but I have pretty bad needle anxiety so quite a bit of the time I'll sit down, prick myself, and chicken out before I've even hit subcutaneous tissue.
misterporcelain: (Default)
[personal profile] misterporcelain
Since I've noticed everyone seems to be giving them and wanted to get in on the action.

I'm Nathaniel (Nate for short), sixteen years old, living in Murrieta, CA. I haven't been identifying as trans for a terribly long time... )
downtide: cartoon of me (cas far away)
[personal profile] downtide
I always find these things hard, so I'll go back to re-posting something I wrote a couple of years ago. Behind a cut, for tl;dr.

The Alchemical Boy )

Not much has changed since then, unfortunately. Husband still unsupportive, still no nearer to the dream of transition, though it's still on my mind pretty much every single day.
floit63: (16)
[personal profile] floit63
I'm guessing most everyone here has heard of using a medicine spoon to pee. Most "urine director"s marketed to women have a very similar design. Hard plastic, pressed up against your bits. I've never been a huge fan (seems uncomfortable) so I've been trying to find a decent alternative.

Behold the medicine dropper. Cut the bulb open and you've got nice, soft plastic to press up against your bits. The biggest drawback is that not all medicine droppers are made the same way. Most I've found have a small, thin bulb rather than the large, round one. I don't know where else the useful ones are sold, but if you're near a CVS and want something a bit cushier to use they're around $3.

New Layout

Apr. 23rd, 2009 05:16 pm
floit63: (19)
[personal profile] floit63
Just wanted to alert you all to the new layout on here (here being [community profile] ftm). It's basic and completely NOT done by me (I'm not that talented). It's Core2 so it may break at some point, but for now it's better than the default. If anyone happens to have CSS skills and wants to give designing something custom a shot feel free. I haven't designed layouts for LJ since I was about 13 so I can guarantee it'll be better than what I'd do =)
[personal profile] floit63
It's going to be quiet around here until the site goes to open beta, but I was wondering if anyone had suggestions for posts they'd like to see. A FAQ page maybe, links list, whatever you can come up with.

I was also wondering if anyone would be interested in a basic "haircut tips" post. As you may know I'm a stylist and one of my main focuses is giving quality haircuts to transpeople since that's an easy way for me to give back to the community. One of my more recent projects was giving a female mannequin a haircut to make her more masculine, it highlights some of the more common issues with transguy haircuts pre-T.

My intro

Apr. 15th, 2009 02:08 pm
floit63: (18)
[personal profile] floit63
I'll probably end up introducing myself again after the site goes to open beta and there are a few more members, but I figured the couple of you who've joined already should get a chance to know who's running the comm.

My name is Nicky, I'm a 23 year old cosmetology student and I'm from San Francisco, CA (though I currently live in Washington, DC). I came out as trans when I was just past 20, started T about six months after that, and have been living mostly stealth for the past two years.

Boring history details behind the cut )

I'd like this community to become a resource for transmen, allies, and those who are questioning. Because not everyone is a gender studies major I'd like to ask that we not attack people for a simple mistake. We all started off on this without knowing much (if anything), I think it's important to give people a chance to learn rather than shouting at them to look everything up themselves.

This means that I'm not going to be the language gestapo. If you're offended by something someone has said go ahead and tell them POLITELY. Be prepared to back up your feelings, not everyone agrees with what is offensive and what isn't (see: queer). I'm not going to ban people for debating (lord knows I do it), but I will give out warnings for open attacks. Three warnings and you're gone, I don't have the patience to deal with people who can't argue civilly.

Please, no genderqueer issues in here. I know that a lot of times they overlap, but I'd like this community to maintain a more narrow focus. [community profile] polygender seems to be the genderqueer resource on DW and I've opened up [community profile] transgender for all people on the trans* spectrum.

By the same token, this is an ALL AGES community so keep the explicit stuff on [community profile] ftm_adult. I don't want this community to be screened, especially not when the youngest of us are often the ones who need the most support.

Really I'm pretty laid back. I prefer everyone act like adults simply because it means I don't have to be the bad guy, I hate being the bad guy. Play nice, stay on topic, and we'll all get along just fine.
[personal profile] floit63
Who we are: Transmen, men of transexual history, family, friends, partners, and allies.

Who we aren't: Bill O'Reilly, transphobes, homophobes, sissyphobes, racists, sexists, classists, other negative -ists.

What we do: Provide a forum for trans* men (transexual men, ftms, etc) to discuss issues pertaining to transition, life as a transguy, medical options, coming out, disclosure, and anything else relating to...well, FtM. Also, provide a resource for people who may be questioning their gender identity.

What we don't do: Police guys' gender expression, use this as a forum for your PhD in Gender Studies, jump on people for an accidental word misuse, be the PC Police in general, act like special snowflakes.

What is allowed: Pretty much anything on-topic so long as it is in prose format (no poetry, please), not inflammatory, appropriate for those under 18 (boobs and bits somewhere else, tyvm), and not one of the items banned below.

What isn't allowed: Explicit sex talk, photos of "swimsuit areas", personal ads, spam, personal attacks, community advertisements, hate speech, "do I pass?" posts, screening or deleting comments.

What goes behind a cut: Pictures larger than 360x240, any picture beyond the first, long posts (use your judgment for now, if it becomes a problem we'll come up with a clear definition).

What doesn't go behind a cut: Everything else.

Are there exceptions? Yes, of course. If you wish for something to be considered an exception go ahead and PM an admin.

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