u/fireflies315

The comments on a video I saw recently of a woman talking about her CAIS pissed me off so badly recently because they were just full of cis perisex women going on and on about how she was living the dream and they were so jealous of her body and everything. And yes it’s fine that people don’t want periods or don’t like acne, that’s understandable and fine. To an extent I’m glad I don’t get those (though it did upset me a lot growing up because they felt like a club and rite of passage I was told I’d be a part of and then denied entry to). But it’s just so gross to wax poetic about how jealous you are of a minority group subject to a shit ton of oppression and violent medical abuse. They don’t even realize how ignorant they’re being and can’t comprehend how traumatizing and horrific the things that we routinely face are. They want to pick out and consume the palatable bits of us for themselves and don’t care to see us as people in pain.

And the thing is, most of these things they’re jealous of are things they can have for themselves! I’m not saying it’s easy or that medical misogyny isn’t a thing, but they can choose not to have periods via hysterectomy or birth control. They don’t have to make us a part of it. They actually get a choice and we don’t. Again so no one misinterprets me I’m not saying that this is easy or that this kind of care isn’t heavily policed and becoming increasingly difficult to access. It’s just not a choice for me and it comes with baggage they don’t even know is there.

Being intersex is of course not a bad thing and we’re not broken, my intersex variation is normal and natural, and while sometimes I don’t like it because it stops me from transitioning, it’s still a fine body to have. But it’s also true that society has irrational issues with my body, and that that has caused me to suffer. And I know these women wouldn’t want to suffer the way I have. But they don’t see the suffering. They see a body that has something they want and don’t care to learn about what comes with it or what we think of their fetishization of our bodies. It’s infuriating.

Is that I can’t stick it in 19th century artillery:(

Following a few trans people as a cis person is awesome and good of course but if you’re following exactly nine hundred and eighty six million trans creators as a supposedly cis person it’s a wee bit of a tip off, yknow. And I’ve seen this go both ways, girl I knew from high school ended up being the coolest nicest trans woman alive and a guy I knew from high school ended up being a chaser who asked me out a total of five times over the course of two years (I was lonely and wanted friends at the time so I let him stick around longer than I should’ve) and lowkey fetishized me for being intersex as well. Currently keeping tabs on a guy I work with, I suppose time will tell if he’s actually an egg or goes down the path of Evil.

I can’t cast too many stones though, living in my glass house with my trans gym bro instagram reels

I saw my younger brother for the first time in a month and a half yesterday and got hit with this wave of jealousy and grief for what I don’t get to have and who I don’t get to be. It’s like looking in the mirror and seeing what I could’ve had. And it feels stupid and gross because here I am getting jealous at a 16 year old kid for getting to have a deep voice and getting to start growing facial hair, and it’s not something that I can really try to brush off because he looks like me and I can see my features in his, or what my features could have been. But it just feels so stupid and shameful to be trying not to cry because my younger brother came home from summer camp with wisps of facial hair.

It was almost made worse yesterday because I think I passed while buying a 7.50$ bottle of water at a baseball game yesterday but I could just tell from the way the concession guy talked to me he thought I was in my early teens. I’m Canadian, I know the difference between being called a ‘this is just another guy’ bud and a ‘hey there little guy’ bud. I’m a 20 year old grown man. I’d kind of rather be read as an adult woman than a 13 year old boy sometimes to be honest.

I’m scared if I ever actually commit to transition I’ll just be read as a kid, and I don’t know if it would actually alleviate much dysphoria because my dysphoria is so physically based, I do get social dysphoria but just being referred to be he/him or as a man doesn’t help much because a lot of it revolves around other people’s perception of my physical traits and how/if that adds up to them just perceiving me as a man. So a lot of my social dysphoria stems from how others see my body if that makes sense.

And just to head off anyone telling me that getting on T will help, trust me I would if I could and I desperately want it, I want what T could give me, but I have CAIS. So unless we work out CRISPR to fix my androgen receptor gene within my lifetime, it’ll never work on me. And I know there’s facial masculinization surgery and voice training and all that yadda yadda yadda but I honestly don’t really want 100 workarounds. I just wish I could use T. Or honestly just be cis. I know fuck cis people and everything but it still just feels like a cruel joke that the only thing between me and being a cis man was a single premature stop codon. Shit sucks.

It’s probably just because of the dynamic in the group we have, there’s only one guy in this group that I think suspects I’m trans (because I’ve gotten drunk and said vaguely suspiciously trans things to him a few times now and he’s also trans), so I’m pretty sure this guy just sees me as a woman with a brotherly dynamic. Which I guess we do have given the context we’re friends in. But I feel so mixed about it because on the one hand hell yeah we’re brothers. But on the other hand he doesn’t know and I feel like a fraud, I want to be one of the brothers as a man so fucking badly.

And I know he’d be cool with me if he knew I was a man, but I’m too much of a coward to commit to social transition when I can’t medically transition how I want because of intersex shit. This sucks ballsssssss

Now imagine I said something funny to stave off the getting vulnerable with it anonymously online

Normal video of a woman with CAIS talking about the effects that CAIS has on your body while running, oh nice, yeah I have all of this too except I’m not a woman I’m a trans man, let’s look at the comments!

Real and actual quotes:

“So you won at life basically” yeah the horrific medical abuse and discrimination is a win! Aren’t I the luckiest duck for getting sexually assaulted by my gynaecologist and also having to have fought at the age of 16 to stop them from taking my balls.

“No smell, no armpit hair, can’t get knocked up, no period cramps, still get to be a pretty girl… so BLESSED?!??” I will obliterate you with my transgender who has CAIS beam. I do not in fact get to be a pretty girl I get to be a deeply uncomfortable man

“Many women would say you’re livin the dream!” I’m losing it I’m losing it I’m going to become The Joker

The comments:

I love my job and idk it’s nice to be recognized for achieving shit but I’m so tired of being the first “woman” to do certain things, I feel like such a liar and a fraud and like I don’t belong. The other day I helped lead the first “all women” crew for something (my job is pretty niche so I don’t want to get too specific but it’s historically very dominated by men) and we’re going to be recognized for it and everything but god it feels so shitty when I know deep down I’m actually a man. Last year I got chosen for a cool position, but same thing, I was the first “woman” to do it. It’s nice to be recognized but I just want to be another guy doing cool stuff.

There’s also more and more women joining my group every year which is incredible, don’t get me wrong, but I almost miss when there were more guys so I could tell myself I was just basically one of the guys instead of just being part of the group if that makes sense. Idk that sounds shitty and it probably is shitty but I feel like I have to get it off my chest.

Anyways yeah I hate achieving things as a woman, I don’t want to be recognized as the first woman for any of this, I want to be just another guy doing it.

First, be upset that your cis guy friend that you have a massive crush on is probably straight, and there’s no way you could be together as your true self since you’re not actually a woman.

Then, once you’ve gotten comfortable with that, and are a year and a few months into this years-spanning crush, realize with 97% certainty that he’s gay, but also then think that he still probably would never be into you because you’re a trans man who will probably never pass and also you’re not out as a man to any of the people in that part of your life.

Then, two years in, realize it doesn’t really matter anyways because you don’t work with him anymore and he’s fucked off to Quebec and at best you’ll see him like once a year from now on and things will never be the same with your friendship, and also everyone tells you he probably saw you as a little sister anyways. And also a lot of these people don’t really like him for valid reasons because he could be kind of an asshole to a lot of people except you. But you’re autistic and so is he and you feel like he’s one of the only people who really understands how you tick.

Then cry because you feel like a stupid middle schooler and you just want to be over him already and you wish desperately that you could’ve been a cis man because maybe then he’d have seen you how you saw him. And you lowkey need therapy because this isn’t healthy but you’re trans what else is new.

Fuck your stupid trans life. Cry even more because your jerk about the situation turned out to be far less abstract and funny than you thought it would.

Having feminine features causes me great distress and dysphoria. I really want to look more masculine but I don’t know what to do since T won’t work for me. I just want to stop looking like a woman.

You’ll never understand what it’s like to have medically transitioned like a real TRUE transsexual like me. Oh no don’t get me wrong, it’s not that your situation is wrong exactly, it’s that you just couldn’t possibly experience anything like one second of my pain. Yeah no I get that you have a genetic mutation that makes responding to T impossible but you do have to recognize the inherent privilege you have in being able to take on and off your “transgender” identity at will. Real transitioning transsexuals like myself don’t have that luxury. Yeah I get that it causes you constant distress and you want to kill yourself yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah but again I really do have to stress that you just couldn’t possibly have it as bad as me, and I need you to acknowledge your privilege over me here. Otherwise, holy shit what the fuck is that!

Oh fuck-

Shit that’s a gun man listen you don’t have to do this-

Fuck this guy fucking shot himself what the fuck!

Anyways like I was saying a true dysphoric transsexual would’ve killed himself wait no he did that, uh a true dysphoric transsexual would’ve made it work, idk, can we get a new writer in here? OP is kind of out of ideas, outjerked if you will. Send substack essays below in lieu of flowers ❤️

I’m not transphobic or anything I swear! I truly do love and care about the trans people in my life. This is just my opinion, though! You can call me traditional if you want, call me names, whatever. I have the utmost respect for the trans community when I say this, but a head is a truly awful place to mount a cannon.

I don’t care if you’re trans or not! Whatever happened to a nice naval carriage? Or a carriage for a piece of field artillery with a real good limber? I don’t even want to think about how you all are keeping hundreds of pounds of cast iron up on your head, and that’s if you just have a nice small carronade! Call me backwards and stuck in the past, whatever, but I think more trans people should be investing in mounting their cannons on a nice traversing carriage with all the bells and whistles. I’m talking nice side pieces and steps, a good wedge-shaped quoin block, solid fore and rear runner chocks, a nice bollard, all on some good racers and of course a nice barbette, all that good stuff. It’s 2026, trans people are no exception to my personal stance that smooth bore muzzle loading artillery deserves better than to be mounted on someone’s head.

I was at a backyard party with a lot of friends/coworkers last night (currently working a summer student job with a really strong community culture so we hang out a ton outside of work and often consider each other friends beyond work etc.) and was pretty drunk and talking with some of them. For context, I’m a trans man with CAIS but I’m not out at work, so they see me as a cis perisex woman. For some more context one of these coworkers is also openly transmasc, but we were talking with two other cis people as well.

Anyways, somehow we started talking about something related to gender and I said something along the lines of “I could see myself as a man, I’d like to be a man if I could if my life was different”. I do know I am a man, but since I’m not out I kind of thought I was being low key about it and people wouldn’t get what I was hinting at, but again I was pretty wasted so I didn’t really realize how obviously trans what I was saying sounded. My transmasc coworker then asked me why couldn’t I just try it if I wanted to, and I brushed it off and said that I would if I could but I unfortunately have something stopping me (I didn’t say it, but what I was getting at is that my CAIS stops me from HRT). As the conversation continued I mentioned a genetic mutation but then stopped myself and said that we’re not going to get into that right now. I can’t fully remember but I think at one point I realized I was probably being obvious with what I was saying and asked my coworker if he realized what was going on, and he said he did and figured it was something like that because of something a former coworker of ours had said about me.

Last summer I was really close with this former coworker, and he was probably one of my best friends at the job. Other people had a more complicated relationship with this guy, and have fair reasons to dislike him and see him as a bit of an asshole, but we really clicked, he was a bit of a mentor to me and was never anything but a good friend who liked me for who I was and appreciated me (to the point of telling me I was his favourite person in my group at work). I think it’s kind of obvious to some of my other friends at work that I did, and still kind of do, have a crush on him, but one of my closer friends who I think that was obvious to, and who I thought liked him last summer but seems to really not like him whenever he’s been mentioned this year, has said she knew he saw me as a little sister. But all that said, even with how close we were, I was never open to this guy about being intersex. It just never came up, and I don’t have any reason to believe he wouldn’t be supportive (he was also relatively close to my transmasc coworker and was very accepting of them), but the only way I could think of that he could’ve realized I’m intersex is from vaguely intersex-related stuff I’ve put once or twice on an Instagram story.

But anyways, I was chosen by this former coworker to be trained for a particular role, one that’s kind of an honour. I was the first “woman” to ever be chosen for it. My transmasc coworker (just referring to him like that so it’s clear who I’m talking about) told me last night that the former coworker had said I was the “first female to be a [thing], but kind of sort of” (or something like that), so what I was saying was making sense. It is important to note that I never said outright I was intersex or trans during this conversation, just implying it, and I’m just fairly sure this coworker was picking up on it, but I’m autistic and can have a hard time reading things at the best of time without even being really drunk. But I am pretty sure this coworker has realized these things about me, from what I remember it would be hard not to.

I’m just now really unsure about how to approach things from here. I half want to text my former coworker and try to figure out if what my current coworker said he said was because he’d put together that I’m intersex, and I kind of want to reach out and talk to my current coworker about it and double check if he really has figured it out and ask him to not bring it up to other people if possible, not because I want to hide it but because I don’t really want to have to address and be open about my identity in this setting. I think people would be supportive, I’m just not ready. But yeah it’s just a complicated situation and I don’t really know how to handle it at this point. Sorry if this was long and confusing to read!

Basically, may have accidentally outed myself as trans and intersex to a coworker while drunk based on heavy implication and something an old friend and coworker said to him about me and I don’t know how to handle it.

I have CAIS and am a trans man. Which is a really shitty combination to live with for obvious reasons. Even when I’m actually doing pretty well it’s a constant gnawing feeling of wrongness and despair because I know I can never fix the wrongness with HRT. I cry about it a lot.

I know I should probably be in therapy or ask for referrals to try to figure this out but I don’t really know what the point is. What are they supposed to do when the gold standard treatment for desperately wanting to be a man on testosterone (or scratch that, a cis man) is to go on testosterone? I don’t want to have to go through the pain of explaining how I’m intersex and what won’t work for me only to be told what amounts to ‘yeah that sucks idk what to do about it though’. I especially don’t want to be told I don’t need T and the features I want to be a real man. I know I’m a real man regardless of what I look like, how I sound. My body is still wrong. I know it’s not happening but all I want is someone to have a magic solution that would fix everything. But I don’t think anyone would have any kind of solution.

Sometimes I even hate presenting how I’m comfortable as a man because all I can see looking back at me from the mirror is a masculine woman.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this. Just that this really fucking sucks. With my CAIS especially I feel cheated of being a cis man. If a single mutation hadn’t randomly happened I could’ve been fine. And now I’m terrified of dying with the dysphoria, and being remembered and seen as a woman.

I ordered a trans man because I wanted someone non-threatening and who understands the ~woman experience~ and so perfectly attuned to what I want and so will stand up and protect me and be my meat shield if I need him to. I really wanted to help one express healthy masculinity (being a manly doormat for me) and make sure he steers clear of falling into toxic masculinity (not being my manly doormat and standing up for himself).

The one I got seems to be broken, though. All he does is cry about dysphoria and about wanting my emotional support. How do I fix this?

/uj A good third of my friends who are also trans men have a cis ex Like This, it’s crazy

/uj hung out with a few close friends tonight, all cis guys, smoked weed and drank, and I both felt like exactly where I want to be and like I’m one of them but also grief because I’m not like them. I’ll never be a cishet guy kissing his friends while drunk for fun. And I’m not out to them and they see me as a girl and that’s a gulf I can’t cross. But I’m also one of them besides that and it’s beautiful I’m crying now

/rj fujoing out while watching Canada v Qatar and drinking beers with by buddies

I recently read a manuscript that I found incredibly interesting, especially since it's one of the of the only scholarly works I've been able to find on its particular topic (think specific topic in a very niche and pretty understudied area of medical history). I'm planning on writing to the author to ask some questions and to express my appreciation for their work, but I'm not entirely sure how to address them. They're a PhD candidate (and the manuscript was written for a fellowship), so obviously not "Dr. [name]", but from their bio, it seems they also use multiple sets of pronouns, so I don't want to assume anything and use a gendered honorific. However, I don't want to be too informal, and something like "Hello, [full name]" or even "Dear [full name]" feels like I'm being too casual. I feel like "Dear [full name]" is my best option, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm also wondering how appropriate it would be to share my personal experiences in this email. This is a topic I'm interested in academically, but I also have a medical condition relevant to the area of study and personal experiences with that related to some of the places discussed in the manuscript. I'm not planning on spilling my entire life story in this email, but it's directly relevant to why I was interested in and appreciated their work, and why I have the perspective I do on it.

Essentially, two questions: what would be the appropriate way to go about addressing this author, and how appropriate would it be to mention some personal details relevant to the manuscript and the topic at hand? Apologies if answers seem very obvious, I have autism and tend to struggle to understand the proper social etiquette in these kinds of situations, and really want to avoid accidentally being rude right off the bat when contacting seemingly one of the only people studying this topic that I also have an interest in.

I'm also a Canadian student doing my undergrad in history, and am headed into my third year, in case that's relevant.

Thank you!

Girl vs boy nonbinary has been done to death. I propose a new type of discourse: girl vs boy trans men.

Girl trans men are of course any trans man who has ever done something a woman would do. They are also either cis women stealing femboy valour, or they are trans men but appropriating femboy culture, which is an AMAB closed practice. Most non-passing trans men are also girl trans men, despite how they may express their gender using irrelevant shit like clothes and demeanour. But if a guy wears pink or some shit, even if he’s passing, he (I mean she) is a girl trans man.

Boy trans men are of course hypermasculine (by which I mean cis passing and especially if they’re bearded and occasionally occupy places in earth’s atmosphere) to the point of not knowing what a “girl” is, so are actually valid as men, BUT they are dangerous toxically masculine males invading women’s spaces like the gynaecologist’s office, making women uncomfortable. They may express their toxic masculinity by silencing women with opinions like “even cis women are also privileged over trans men”. Perverts, all of them.

Feast well upon my discourse, guys trans men, gals trans men, and not non-binary trans men pals because not a single word in that phrase is real!

This is when you get grandparent dysphorja if your grandchild calls you Grandma rather than simply Gran ☝️