Some commenters were asking for an open thread, so here you go! No trolls.
Here’s another chill capybara and friend:
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Capybara Pool Party Open Thread
We Hunted The MammothWe Hunted The MammothSome commenters were asking for an open thread, so here you go! No trolls.
Here’s another chill capybara and friend:
Thank you to everyone for the well wishes and outpouring of support. I was really nervous that I’d screw up the coming out, and I’m glad that there is so much support here.
@Snowberry
This is the only site on which I regularly comment, and I don’t think I’ve ever lied about anything here (though I have deliberately omitted personal details in case any malicious trolls are reading e.g. I’ve never said what city I live in or listed my legal name or other details that could be used to find me in meatspace). That being said, I understand the idea that personality can be fluid. There are certain viewpoints I hold only when in certain moods, and that I would only advocate in some contexts, and some of my ideas do change based on my emotions. I think this is natural, and I don’t think what you’re doing is inherently wrong. However, if it is causing you discomfort, it’s possible that a therapist can help.
@Naglfar
I know I don’t comment a lot here, but congratulations!
When I was first figuring out my gender identity, I reached out to the (semi-)local LGBT organisation. They had support groups for trans men and women, and also one for nonbinary folks. Going to one of their support groups helped me a lot, in the sense that it allowed me to see a lot of different people going through similar stuff and being at different stages of their transition.
I don’t know if there’s anything similar where you live, but checking it out could be worth your while. It didn’t really help me with my social anxieties because I wasn’t able to connect with anyone on a personal level, but that wasn’t a requirement. The support group I went to was for binary trans folks, and there was a joke of sorts about people “graduating” as they figured their stuff out and stopped coming to meetings, so I don’t think that any commitment was necessary either.
Maybe you could check if the LGBTQIPA+ community there has a chat, email address or a phone you could call to ask about their stuff to see if it could help you? My first contact with the local organisation was through their social worker, who had an email you could contact if you had any questions about gender identity and the like.
Hope this helps!
First, @Naglfar I hope your doing alright, and you will always have my support.
second about me
I took my husband to the airport yesterday morning for him to go back to japan and I kind of want to throw myself off of a building right now because of how low I’m feeling. The high when he is home is so great but the low when he leaves is almost equal to fucking withdrawals from opioids. We have 2 and a half more years of him being in the core before he is officially no long government property and we are both struggling.
Even married I can’t go there to be there with him because of the type of orders he has. At least now if something bad happens to him I get notified. This is better then me get an anxiety attack every time his mother calls me because I use to not know if it was going to be just a chat or if something happened.
@Naglfar:
Congratulations!
@Victorious Parasol:
Nice! I’ve been told that if I get involved in spinning I’ll go even further down the fibre-arts rabbithole than I do with knitting, so I haven’t taken it up, though I’ve occasionally tempted.
@Naglfar
My apologies! Thought I had included congratulations in the post to VP. See I haven’t, so … Congratulations on working out part of yourself! Always better to see yourself as you are. 🙂
@Snowberry
Nowt wrong with presenting different aspects in different places, or attempting to keep private. Pretty sure most people do it to a certain extent (and the longer they’ve been online, the more likely it is!).
If you feel the unignorable need to advise someone on something you know but that particular persona shouldn’t know, the old “my sibling/cousin” dodge still works. Not as well as it did, but it’s still an option.
@Lainy
Just read yours to the missus and she thumped me and said “See!” 😛
She ditched the telly back in 2004 because if something happened she wanted to hear it from the regiment, not the news.
One thing she came up with was to write a diary every day, for me to read when I got home. I did the same for her – and it were a good idea. Kept us both up on the growing we inevitably did while we were apart. Meant while we both kept growing UP, we didn’t really grow APART. Letters are great (and vital!!!), but there’s a temptation to sanitise things in those.
@Naglfar Congratulations! All the well-wishes! <3
@Naglfar
Happy egg-cracking day!
I can probably answer any questions you might have on purely technical matters, I researched the ever-loving hell out of things when I started several years ago.
On other topics, such as how to come out, I (and several of us here) can give our opinions but ultimately the ball is in your corner there. I wrote a post a while back describing my circumstance (tl;dr I’ve known since I was 10, I just spent most of my life trying to repress it) and considering I’ve spent most of my life as a hermitess, I had little to no issues with what friends (or anyone else for that matter) would think.
Have a link to the WPATH Standards of Care:
https://www.wpath.org/publications/soc
Capybaras are wonderful. I love all rodents, though my favorites are cavies/guinea pigs. They are the very definition of “cute but cacophonic.”
@Naglfar
Congratulations! I’m afraid that as a cis man I can’t offer much advice, but as I understand it this means you get to celebrate two birthdays a year!
I called the original my “Belly Button Day” and the latter as my “birthday”, even though the “birth” was metaphorical.
Of course, getting older means I don’t really celebrate either anymore, but meh. You certainly CAN celebrate both, and for a good long while I did.
@Crip Dyke
Which day should be celebrated? The day I came out here, the day I come out publicly (hasn’t happened yet, but hopefully soon), the day I start HRT (also hasn’t happened yet, might be awhile because I don’t have the money right now), or some other day?
Also, should I wait to come out publicly until I start HRT, or should I do that before? I’m not quite sure how most people do this.
There really is no ‘most people’ (or ‘right way) as far as this goes. Safety is generally the main concern, other than that, do whatever feels best for you.
Personally, I came out to my family as soon as I decided to transition but didn’t say so much as boo about it to anyone else, as far as I’m concerned it’s no one else’s business.
I know other people though who are keeping everything to themselves because they aren’t in a safe position family-wise.
Basically it’s a big ole case of ‘you do you’, if you feel safe coming out to all and sundry then by all means feel free. If you only feel okay with coming out to family or close friends, then that works too.
The main concerns are safety and what you feel comfortable with.
A few things happened for me. Some good some bad. First the bad news. Parents changed wifi password and turned off guest wifi until my character improves.
Good news is that I got a job since august that pays min wage. I am set for graduation and have plans with my business counselor on getting into the private University System.
Bad news is despite all that parents still won’t turn wifi back on. It is kind of frustrating since I am never told what rules I broken. Also connections with parents often frustrating since my mother gets into mood swings and stepdad distant. Despite having money to transition still can’t because not exactly lgbt friendly household. And my mother stopped dragging me to church.
Hopefully at some point they stop keeping the wifi off and I can get a step closer to moving out and paying for my own living expenses.
I need to vent about something dumb I did over the last few months. It’s too late to fix it, I think, but I still need to vent about it, and here’s a good and safe a place as any to do so.
For about six months in 2017, I was on unemployment after being fired from my main job. During this time I held down a second part-time job, which gave me a bit of cash, but not enough to live off of. As required by the unemployment rules, I reported this second income to them so that that income could be deducted from what I was awarded. Like, for example, if my full unemployment amount per week was $250, and my parttime paycheck for one week was $75, I’d only get paid $175 for that week. (Not the real numbers I was using, but for this example they work.)
Once I got rehired at the job that fired me, I continued to take a couple of the unemployment checks to tide me over until the job money kicked in, mainly because I wouldn’t have met my bills for that period without that money. Naturally the unemployment people noticed this (evidently I was supposed to stop once I was confirmed as a rehire and not taken that money), and wanted their money back. Because sometimes finding spare money for non-urgent bills can be a major problem for me (retail money suuuuuuucks!), I was more than a little slow paying them back. They got two of my state refunds though, so the amount I owed them for overpayment was about $180 as of this year.
About 2-3 months ago, I got a letter from the unemployment people telling me – as near as I can understand what they said – that they had done an audit of my part-time job’s 2017 earnings reporting, and decided that they had overpayed me for four months of unemployment, and wanted all that money back. Unfortunately for me, I somehow lost the forms I should have filled out to explain what I thought was going on during that four-month period, and didn’t relocate them until two days after the final judgement came down against me.
Upshot is that I now owe the unemployment bureau $5,000 that they want me to repay for being ‘overpaid’ by them in 2017. And I’m just sitting here trying to figure out what just happened here, ya know? Like, why now, why wasn’t this supposed error caught back in 2017? Heck, what even triggered this audit to begin with?
The only thing I know for sure is that I’ll have to contact their debt collectors to work out some sort of payment plan, since there’s no way I have the money to pay them back all at once. Like, $5,000 is almost six months of my paychecks there; and even if I sold everything I had (with the exception of my car), I doubt I’d get anything close to $1,000 for it all.
Obviously this mess is mostly my fault, since I really should have contacted the unemployment people well before their final judgement came down, and see if there was still time to get another set of forms to fill out and send in, but I didn’t. And the local Legal Aid office couldn’t help me make sense of this mess, since they don’t have the right kind of lawyers on hand.
And the number for the LA that did have a better selection of legal people, well, their phone menu didn’t have anything for folks with legal civil problems, that I could tell (this LA is based in Indianapolis, so they have a lot more calls to deal with than here). Best I can do right now legal-wise (I think), is to go to the next Legal Aid clinic in a couple of weeks and see if they can tell me what happened here, and if there’s a way to fix it.
Anyway, like I said above, I just needed to vent a bit about the mess my dumbness put me in. At this point I sincerely doubt there’s any actual solution other than pay the money I ‘stole’ back to them.
To make up for being such a downer among all the happier news upthread (conga-rats Naglfar for the new good self-knowledge!), I offer something for the horror fans here. The Sacred Riana, whose act can best be described as ‘what if a horror fan discovered they were very very good at stage magic?’
https://youtu.be/d_etsAX53Ys
It’s 25 minutes long, but quite worth it.
It’s up to you. I decided that, as a philosophical matter, I didn’t want to give my doctors the power to define me, so I ruled out surgery/hormones as birth day possibilities. But you have to understand that at the time I made that decision, there was much more bullshit in trans* communities about how you’re not “really” trans until you have surgery :rolls eyes:
Weirdly, I ended up still choosing a day that could be said to be letting other people define me: I chose the day I got my ID changed (name and legal sex at the same time). But I fought for that – I was living in Oregon, USA and the state didn’t have standard procedures for updating ID at that point. So, as much as it required someone else to update the database and issue the ID, I still felt is was something that *I* accomplished.
So, y’know, you pick. Lots of people pick lots of different days. The metaphor that worked for me to help me choose was that before birth no one could see me, I was hidden and in many ways only potentially real. Birth was entering into the world in a way that allowed me to be seen. The change on the ID worked for me to represent that. (And even if I didn’t have anything against fucked up medicalization, since I’m not showing my genitals or my breasts off to very many people, HRT or surgery wouldn’t have fit that metaphor anyway.)
I think the only criteria that matters is whether or not you want to tell someone. Are you going to be more comfortable using a men’s restroom right now? Then maybe don’t tell your everyone at work yet. But is your boss a kind and supportive person and you want to reassure yourself that you won’t lose your job publically? Maybe tell your boss right now even though you aren’t ready to change restrooms.
Is there someone your fucking? Would you like to change the types of sex that you prioritize? Is that related to your gender and becoming more certain of yourself allows you to challenge things that in the past you simply allowed to continue because you didn’t know how (or why or when) to explain your discomfort without making yourself even MORE uncomfortable? Go ahead and tell the person you’re fucking.
It sounds selfish as fuck, but this is all about what you want. That doesn’t mean what’s good for other people doesn’t matter. If the reason you want to tell someone is because you want to give them advance notice of changes and you think it would be easier for them, hey, that’s thoughtful of you and there’s nothing wrong with that.
But you’ve had to deal with an overwhelming amount of compulsory gender in your life, with effects that simply aren’t comparable to what since people experience or you wouldn’t be coming out as trans. There are literally INFINITE battles you could fight relating to gender and how people foist it on you. It’s not wrong or evil or selfish to pick your battles.
If that sometimes means that someone you know doesn’t get as much advance warning as they think they deserve or that they think they would have liked? Tough.
You’re going to have enough going on taking care of you. You can’t take care of everyone else who happens to have thoughts about you.
Think about whom you want to tell. Think about when you want to tell them. You don’t have to think selfishly, but this is going to be hard enough just taking responsibility for yourself. So tell people when you want to tell them. Not before.
@Crip Dyke
You’ve given me a lot of good advice, and I thank you.
From what you’ve said, I think the day I will use is when I first dress as female in public. It hasn’t happened yet, but that is a day that will allow me to define myself, and show who I am. It is a day I will do for myself.
My place of employment has unisex restrooms, and my boss is generally quite accepting and has several LGBT employees, so I will probably come out at work relatively soon. I’m not sure I’m ready just yet, but soon I will be.
I’m not currently in a relationship, and I haven’t had much time lately for relationships. I also am not sure if it’s irresponsible to start relationships when I know I am going to transition, as most partners will likely end the relationship then, and might feel misled.
I plan to tell my immediate family on December 6. I have selected this date based on the fact that a) I can see them in person b) it’s a Friday so people are more likely to be in a good mood and c) it’s after Thanksgiving so I don’t have to explain this to extended family who might not be as understanding.
Thanks again for all your advice.
@RedSilkPhoenix:
Sorry for the situation, & I hope you get the help you need!
@Naglfar
Congratulations to you and best wishes to you. From all that you have written here I can tell you are a wonderful and dear person and I think it’s both beautiful and courageous that you are living your true self. I offer you my loving and supportive thoughts for all that the future brings
@Crip Dyke,
I hope so too. And hope that whatever fallout from this mess won’t hit any other program I’m currently in (housing) or may be in the future (Medicaid). Not that messing up any potential future unemployment payments is good or anything, just that punishing me in those programs over what happened over in unemployment is really getting into mean petty territory, in my estimation.
It’s just that, in part, this hits when I literally have no savings to my name. It’s like, any attempt to try and settle assorted debts so I can improve my credit rating and start to save up money to go back to school to get skills for a better job, something like this happens. Or feels like it, anyway. I’d like this bad stuff to just stop for a good long time while I recover myself financially and try and make my plans for my future a reality in some form or another. If that makes sense?
At any rate, I’m going to try the Indy legal aid again on my next day off, and see if I can eventually get a live person who can talk to me about this mess, and what I can do to mitigate it any. And make a serious attempt to assess my current levels of art and craft skills and see what’s at a good enough level to try selling things (and where), and what needs more practice before I offer it for sale. Might get enough money to afford gas and food once in a while that way.
(Study how mongooses and snakes are put together and practice drawing those; study how assorted spiders and machines are put together for combining later; study coding to assemble mini-games for enjoyment….)
(And sorry about the oversharing worddump up above; maybe if I get some of it down in black and white, I can keep myself motivated to actually do most of it in a timely manner.)
@Redsilkphoenix
Oh wow Redsilkphoenix I just saw your whole story and I really want to let you know I totally feel for you. I know you are working hard. It was never quite that bad for me in the past but before I got my current job I did have some times where it was really financially tough. I truly hope the legal aid people can help you. I will definitely be sending you the most positive and encouraging thoughts.
I don’t think you should apologize for word dump because it wasn’t word dump and anyway I have a tendency to do that too. (Sorry!)
@Redsilkphoenix:
It’s no accident. The system, especially in the US, is rigged against people of your (our!) socioeconomic status to siphon every buck you get promptly up to line the pockets of people who need it a lot less than you do.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/it-is-expensive-to-be-poor/282979/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/01/25/why-it-costs-so-much-to-be-poor-in-america/
And you can google “expensive to be poor” for lots more in this vein.
It’s one more reason for Occupy, the insurgent candidacies of people like Sanders and AOC, and the rise abroad of similar figures, such as the UK’s Jeremy Corbyn.
I’m thinking about getting another tattoo. Something small but fun and pretty. Anyone got any ideas?
@Lainy
A world map, and every time you go somewhere you get a dot added there? I have a friend who has a tattoo like that, and it’s fun and functional.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/14/plastic-substitute-made-of-fish-waste-hauls-in-uk-designer-dyson-award
Just some good news to give us a moment of cheer; this is a young woman (24!) who has won both the national and now also the international top spot in this engineering competition, and while of course we don’t know what could/will happen at industrial level, her invention looks to have great environmental potential.
Sam Vimes’ “Boots Theory” seems apt here:
– Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms
@naglfar
I like that idea. Just so you know it’s probably going to go on the side of my leg that is opposite my inner thigh that already has a tattoo to cover up a scar. That or on my shoulder.
I’ve also been thinking about getting something for my husband maybe. He got his first tattoo some months ago. He’s getting a symbolic one for me that he hasn’t told me what it is. But if I had to guest it’s probably something related to the sweetheart name he calls me. Which is mostly one of three Greek goddess. Aphrodite, Athena or Persephone.
I had the idea of getting his star sign which is a Scorpio ♏. But I like the map idea as well. I’ve never left the united States though.