u/DamonMedius

Hello, I’m brand new so I really hope that this is acceptable for this subreddit! The short of it is that I’m looking for somewhere in Chicago that offers introductory, non-contact roller skating lessons I can start taking with the eventual goal of joining a derby team.

The long of it is that I’m asking because I’m a trans woman very early on into my medical transition. My body hasn’t had time to change much yet, and because my family is extremely transphobic I’m presenting as male in my day-to-day life. I still look like a man, and I know it. I know how to put on makeup and dress more feminine, but it doesn’t change my face, proportions, or voice. I plan to wait to compete on an actual team for another year or two until I’m more passing so I don’t make people uncomfortable, but I’d love to get started actually learning how to skate so I can prepare and start practicing, plus just have something else to do. Trouble is, all of the derby skating lessons I could find in the Chicago area are either for women only or “women and gender expansive” individuals, which unfortunately I know from experience often means “women and people we think of as women, even if they call themselves something else.” I am a woman, but I don’t look like a woman, and I am paranoid of getting kicked out of lessons on the accusation of being a creepy pervert or something. For this reason I’d like to try to find coed or non-gender-restricted lessons somewhere, but I’m not sure if that even exists.

I have been so fixated on roller derby for about a week now, after knowing basically nothing about it. When I decided I was going to transition, I basically came to terms with the idea that I would never be able to participate in sports again, which was extremely hard for me. I saw on a trans subreddit a girl talking about her roller derby team, and was immediately intrigued because, hey, here’s another trans woman playing a team sport! But the post was from several years ago, so I checked the WFTDA website fully expecting them to have recently changed their policy to exclude trans women, as most women’s recreational sports leagues have done since 2024. I literally broke down into tears of joy when I not only saw that the league is trans inclusive, but that the culture of the sport as a whole tends to be explicitly trans supportive. I’ve been watching videos and reading about derby all week and I’m enamored. I love contact sports, and this genuinely seems so fun.

So yeah, does anybody have any info to skating lessons I could attend knowing I look male? I really promise I’m not trying to make anyone uncomfortable, I just want to be able to experience sports again and derby specifically.

Today my partner and I brought home a new cat, N. We have had another cat, B, for three years prior to now, and B has gotten along very well with roommates’ cats in the past. We’re hoping he can have a similar positive relationship with our new cat.

So we bring N home, and we have her set up in our second bedroom with a litter box, food, water, beds, scratchers and other enrichment, etc. to segregate her from B who has the rest of the apartment. A few hours after we brought N home, B figured out there was another cat in the second bedroom and was very interested in sniffing at the crack beneath the door and pawing at the door. Neither cat seemed stressed by this, so we let it be.

Tonight I was spending time with N and had said goodnight and was headed out the door. While in the door I got distracted by my partner saying something to me and B ran between my legs into N’s room. There was some hissing from at least one of the cats (couldn’t tell which) but the two were very quickly separated and there was no fight or other physical altercation. After the incident both cats seemed to be doing alright, neither looking overly stressed or phased from the incident.

Of course, our plan was to slowly introduce B and N over the course of several weeks. They weren’t even supposed to look at each other for another few days at least. I’m worried that because their first interaction was rushed and stressful they’ve already imprinted a bad idea of the other cat, and that this ruined their chances of ever positively coexisting in the future. Has this rushed interaction ruined their chances of getting along in the future? Is there any way to salvage their relationship? Or am I just overreacting about this whole thing? My partner is also extremely anxious about this.

Pretty much what the title says. Granted, I am a metalhead, but that’s not why I have hair down my back. I ask my (extremely queer friendly) barber for a feminine cut every time I go in, and I have what on paper should be feminine bangs and shaping. But people perceive my hair as “heavy metal” not “girlypop”. Just within the last week I’ve had one person come up to me and say “hey man, you look like you play rock and roll!” This morning someone said I looked like Dave Mustaine.

The caveat here is I’m in boymode and not very far along with my medical transition. My hair is wavy-curly and difficult to tame, but I’ve gotten a lot better at using products and drying it properly so it’s not an out of control mess. Given that I definitely look like a man to the casual observer, are they just reading any long haircut on a man as “heavy metal” whereas if I presented more feminine they wouldn’t? I’d like my haircut to be read as “Botticelli woman” not “Dave Mustaine.”

Something that’s been weighing on me is that, unlike a lot of trans people, I can’t think of much in the way of obvious “signs” from childhood that I was trans. In fact, the possibility of being trans wasn’t even on my radar until I was 18/19, and even then I was sure I couldn’t be for several years. I know that it’s normal to not know from childhood, but even people who transitioned later seem to be able to easily point out obvious signs from their childhood that they were trans. I can’t easily do this. I never cross dressed. I never insisted I was a girl. I always thought of myself readily as a boy (still do sometimes in passing thoughts…) I never got jealous of girl’s clothes and activities (that’s only happened recently). I remember being embarrassed when I had to go into a Justice store with my mom and sister when I was a kid. It makes me feel like an imposter, like I’m not actually trans and transitioning is going to end up being a huge mistake.

After racking my brain, this is everything I can come up with that may have been a “sign”:

- I used to have massive screaming fights with my dad about cutting my hair. I wanted it long, and as soon as I turned 18 I grew it out. However, I never connected this to gender, I just hated how I looked with short hair.

- As a kid I used to tuck my genitals behind my thighs and look at myself in the mirror. I know that this sounds like the eggiest thing on planet earth, but I only remember it happening a few times and, once again, I never connected it to gender.

- I have always been uncomfortable with facial hair from the moment it started growing in, but I remember thinking this was because I wanted to look youthful, not because of gender.

- When I was a tween I was into books aimed at tween girls, which I was extremely self-conscious about.

- I used to get bullied for “sitting like a girl,” but this would make me upset. I think I was upset because I knew I was being bullied more so than because I was called a girl.

- Since I started puberty most of my friends have been girls/women, and I’ve always found girls/women easier to relate to and interact with.

But that’s literally it. That’s everything that could possibly be interpreted as a sign. It doesn’t feel like enough. Did anyone else have basically no signs growing up that they were trans?

The short of it is that I was playing in a long-term project sandbox park and the game crashed when I tried to delete a coaster station. When I loaded the autosave the station was gone but the platform paths were still present in a bugged state. They cannot be selected or deleted, other paths don’t connect to them, and they only render the top texture. However, when trying to place a station over them I get the “paths cannot intersect” error.

I’ve spent several hours trying every fix to delete these paths but to no avail. Is there a mod that removed the intersecting paths restriction so I can place a new station directly on top of where the old one was? I found a video of a mod that does this but it doesn’t seem to be publicly available. I am desperate for a fix and I’m at the point that I will pay someone to make this mod for me if there isn’t one out there.

I haven’t played the game in a few months and I just came back to it tonight. I started up a new zoo, and none of my staff will do anything. My first dinosaurs are starving and dying in their enclosures while keepers and veterinarians just say “idle.” I made sure to put them all in the same work zone and I removed all scenery pieces away from the gate, and still nothing. I even closed the game and re-opened it and the same.

What am I doing wrong here? Was something other than work zones added in a new update I’m not aware of? I’m not sure if this is a glitch, but staff worked just fine last time I played and now they won’t work.

EDIT: I should also add I try to manually request staff in the feeder GUIs, but I click it once and it just says “no staff needed”

I am a PhD student at the University of Chicago just going into my second year. My partner and I have an apartment in Hyde Park, but the landlord is raising the rent considerably and we cannot afford to renew our lease. We found someone renting a condo in Woodlawn on the block southwest to the intersection of Cottage Grove and 61st, just south of that Jewel Osco and directly catty corner from the university campus proper.

We love the unit, would give us significantly more space in a much nicer building for a fraction of even what we pay now. The building has a solid fence around it and security cameras. But I’m just a tad worried about safety from stories I’ve heard. I’ve heard that crime is a problem between MLK and Cottage Grove, and of course we’d be just barely over that line. I’ve also heard of issues by the green line stop at 63rd and Cottage Grove, and that stop would be the most direct public transit route for my partner (a tiny 5’2” white woman) to take to work. She often leaves at 5:30-6:00am, when it would be dark during som parts of the year.

However, most of the anecdotes I’ve come across are nearly a decade old and I know the neighborhood as a whole is improving a lot. Would love to hear some updated info. We drove around the surrounding blocks in the daytime and were getting a lot of mixed signals. Some buildings were new constructions, well-maintained, and had beautifully managed front gardens. There were also a lot of empty lots and rotting buildings with boarded up windows. There were plenty of street lights and a new-construction senior living community on the same block we’d move to, but not much in the way of thriving small businesses. Also worth noting this block is within the UChicago PD extended patrol area, and the block catty corner holds the headquarters for the UChicago PD. But I’m not sure how much these facts contribute to actual safety versus just the illusion of safety.

I know the guidance for Woodlawn is it gets safer the further north and east you go. In this unit we’d be plenty far north, but I’m just not sure if we’re far enough west it would get sketchy. How much of a safety risk would we be taking signing a lease here? The condo is beautiful, spacious, and we love it, so wanting to move as quick as we can to securing a lease while also doing my due diligence.

I appreciate your input!