I Really Do Think That We, As A Whole, Are Becoming More And More Disconnected From Our Bodies. 

if it’s okay for me to ask, can you explain a little further how you “reconceptualized” your dysphoria? how did you go from that to realizing your dysphoria is rooted in internalized misogyny? @tejuina

–Shiro

TERF Tips #270

For dysphoria:

Keep telling yourself that you can’t escape your biology! That definitely won’t lead to any suicide!

Forget about your dysphoria!

Keep telling yourself that technically all womynly womyn have dysphoria! And that they all overcome it somehow! Yeah, like my mom knew what the hell was wrong with me when puberty hit me 10× harder than other kids!

Punch a hole through the wall, and pull out that sword that you’ve kept hidden for centuries, and pretend to slice it in half, so that it’s now dead.

people should view reading as a developed skill in the same vein of artistic ability. i think most people on this website understand that artistic ability is cultivated - it's largely a skill. a trait that is the consequence of effort and practice. not some mystical gift of innate talent bestowed by the gods upon certain gifted individuals, rigid and unmalleable.

attention span and reading comprehension are the same!! they are malleable. and you just have to consider, which way are you molding them? and are you doing so purposefully or inadvertently?

you are not unique in having an attention span destroyed by social media. you are not unique in having adhd. or many other extenuating circumstances. and this is good news! this means that you too can improve and develop your attention span, via deliberate practice. successive approximation and clear contingencies work for people, too.

try reading just one page a day. or just one article a day. or listening to an audiobook for ten minutes a day. or whatever! ANYTHING that helps strain the muscle of your attention span, anything that gets you consuming heftier chunks of information than a tweet or tumblr post. set a small and achievable goal, and create a strategy to get yourself to do it. and then incrementally increase the goal.

consider how you can arrange your environment and antecedents for success. you can have a specific spot where you sit solely to read. or you can relegate a delicious drink to when you read, or you can have a special scented candle you only burn when you read. read a page or an article while you are waiting for the kettle to heat up or the microwave to ding. schedule it for the same time each day. whatever specific iteration works for you - whatever encourages you and creates a clear contingency.

you know how dogs can learn, "this is my walking harness," and "this is my pulling harness," and so on? so that they know what to expect and will easily fall into the practiced ritual? WE ARE THE SAME... you just have to choose and condition yourself to a contingency (and the options are beautifully customizable), and over time it gets much much easier.

personally, i focus better when both my hands are occupied. specifically, when they are both grasping the book, or i'm clutching a pen for underlining. i don't know why, i just know that this is so. it helps me when i am reading a book to have my phone in a completely different area. it helps me to sit outside (though Happy is not always helpful when she interrupts my concentration for a ball throw).

when i read ebooks, it helps me to sit in a hard chair and have my phone propped up in front of me (and thus create a dissimilar situation from when i scroll social media). or to pace as i read. i read an article on my phone when i am brushing my teeth and it is hard to scroll. i rotate among books. coffee drinking is relegated to reading for me. i like to save and share quotes from what i'm reading, and discuss it with friends. the social aspect creates a further layer of motivation for me.

those are just my specific contingencies! while my attention span isn't where i wish it was, yet, i've gotten much better than i used to be. i used to struggle to stay focused for a page, and now, time permitting, i read a couple hours every day. it is WORK to develop your attention span - it is a muscle like any other. but by straining it regularly, your endurance and ability WILL increase.

if you are not consuming in-depth information, you can't have in-depth understanding. when you get most of your information from bite sized chunks, it creates a real danger you are being told what to think! vs actually understanding and agreeing with concepts yourself - developing your own takes and opinions. not to mention, you are missing out on SO MUCH. the world is just BETTER when you are engaging with in-depth information.

i truly believe it is damaging to accept "oh i just have a shitty attention span" and use that to justify forgoing any deeper interaction with material. it is a disservice to yourself! you may have to set goals so small they seem silly. you may have to brainstorm and testrun concentration mechanisms that are odd. but the average person on tumblr and twitter can ABSOLUTELY raise their focus. i have faith in you.

Do you or your followers have any thoughts on that new book by Abigail Shrier? I'm not sure if to make a purchase because the cover alone and sensationalistic title gives me be a bad gut feeling

No, I will not be supporting this book with my money.

The Amazon listing for the book says “Abigail Shrier is a writer for the Wall Street Journal.” What it doesn’t say is that she also contributes to The Federalist, a well-known conservative hellhole. Anyone who willfully collaborates with the right does not have my best interests in mind, I can promise you that.

The title speaks for itself. Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The cover has a vintage photo of a little girl with a hole punched out of her pelvis. This is not my narrative. I am resilient, not ruined.

The title and cover align themselves with the conservative idea of “protecting our daughters”, protecting a commodity that belongs to men. It does not recognize that we were already being harmed before we transitioned. It does not recognize what we were responding to with transition. Instead, it posits that the “transgender craze” is swooping in and corrupting sweet young women, reefer-madness style.

The description in the listing says everything I need to know:

These are girls who had never experienced any discomfort in their biological sex until they heard a coming-out story from a speaker at a school assembly or discovered the internet community of trans “influencers.”

Uh-huh. Never experienced any discomfort, huh? Right-o. Sure.

A generation of girls is at risk. Abigail Shrier’s essential book will help you understand what the trans craze is and how you can inoculate your child against it—or how to retrieve her from this dangerous path.

Condescending. “Inoculate your child”? Christ, transitioning isn’t the result of a disease. We aren’t “crazy”. Women who have gone down this path have reasons for doing do beyond being ~infected by those crazy liberal transes~. But the reasons for our trauma aren’t something they’re going to publish in a conservative thinkpiece, because they aren’t looking to solve the root of these problems. They’re looking to preserve it. They don’t want change. They want things to stay the same.

She’s using detransitioned women’s experiences and trauma as a pawn in her arguments, just like everyone else does (across all ideological lines, both left and right). These people don’t care what we actually think or want, they just want the juicy trauma porn they can pick pieces from and use to bolster their own point of view. This book is another example of using the “damaged woman” narrative as a boogeyman. “Look at this pitiful creature, see her moan and gnash her teeth and feel so much regret for what she has done -- your daughter could be next!”

No thanks. I’d maybe borrow a copy if I feel like seeing the latest in how conservatives are warping our stories for their gain in the year 2020, but I’m not supporting it with my money or clicks.

Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (Belgian-Dutch, 1821-1909, b. Amsterdam, Netherlands, d. Ixelles, Belgium) - Playing Cats, 19th c. Paintings: Oil on Canvas

hi, not sure if this blog is active bc im on mobile but you seem v knowledgeable so i hope you are. i have a question if thats ok. ive been id'ing as ftm trans/nb for about 6 years now but havent rlly been able to come out to many ppl or transition at all so im still largely presenting as female. i wouldnt rlly call myself gender critical or anything like that, but i know transitioning is a long & difficult process and im wondering if there is a way to alleviate my dysphoria without going (1/2)

“thru all that. i dont want to transition only to realize that i dont feel better and there was an easier way. in other words, id like to rule out any possibility that im not trans before medically investing in being trans. any chance you have any advice for me? (2/2)”

hey there—still active, if sporadic.

when it comes to healing from dysphoria, there’s no cure-all, no hidden path to healing that you’ve simply yet to uncover. just as there’s no way to guarantee transition will make you happy, there’s no opposite guarantee either. i can only share some of the stuff that has worked for me and some of the hardships i uncovered about living as trans, which i hope you find helpful.

what helps me?

get clear with yourself about what you believe about gender, ideologically. i personally feel, if my beliefs do not stand up to critical thought, if they cannot be supported by rational arguments, then those beliefs are not worth holding on to and i need to let them go. this is what happened to me WRT transness, gender, and all that.

start small—what is gender? is gender innate? do we have gendered souls? how could we have gendered souls if gender is a social construct? okay, so we can’t have gendered souls, so what is gender, if not innate? is gender the social expectations and norms attached to the two sexes? is it possible to break those roles and expectations? does breaking those roles and expectations change anyone’s sex? no—males can behave in typically feminine ways and females in typically masculine ways and that does nothing to change their sex. so what would conceivably make someone (or myself) trans? inhabiting the social roles and expectations of the gender associated with the opposite sex. since we already established that gender isn’t innate and we don’t have gendered souls, there’s no merit in the “born in the wrong body” narrative; it is not possible to be born in the wrong body. we each get one body, no matter how we change it. but if i wasn’t born in the wrong body, why do i feel so uncomfortable with mine, especially with the sexed aspects of it? if you’re female, the likely culprit is misogyny. you don’t actually have to hate women on a conscious level to be suffering from internalized misogyny. we live in a misogynistic world, it saturates everything. if you’re female, it affects almost every factor of how you move through this world—how people treat you, what opportunities you’re given, which behaviors are encouraged for you and which are discouraged, etc. if you are inclined to prefer masculinity—for whatever reason—society will encourage this in males and discourage it in females. having your way of being subtly discouraged all the time can easily lead to feeling disconnected from your body, perhaps even hating it, especially since you know that your way of being would be ENCOURAGED if only your body were male. and that’s when many of us encounter trans ideology that tells us we CAN be male—in fact, we actually were all along! all we have to do is change our bodies drastically with lifelong medication and surgery, all we have to do is trade money and time and health to convincingly imitate the opposite sex—THEN society will finally recognize that our way of being is okay—because we were actually masculine MEN all along, it was simply our female bodies obscuring that. does this feel like a good or healthy trade to you? it doesn’t to me, but i can’t make these decisions for you.

there IS an important caveat, a shortcut that bypasses this bad trade entirely—and that’s realizing that your way of being is ALREADY okay. masculine females and feminine males are healthy and good. it’s not always easy to comfortably BE that way in a society that does not embrace masculinity in women and femininity in men, but the solution is not to change your self, it’s to change the society. and the only way you can do that is by carving out that path—BE a masculine female/woman and you’ll show little girls today that there’s a place for them in this world.

i did try out the trade for myself, however, and i learned a few things you might find useful—maybe these lessons i learned can save you the time and money and pain i’ve already spent.

1) you never actually change sex. you’re always chasing the aesthetic imitation of the opposite sex with transition, but never becoming the opposite sex. in this and so many other ways, transition never ends.

2) passing is conditional. when your sense of self is predicated upon others seeing you a certain way, it can be taken from you in a second. i could be treated like one of the guys for a year, until one of them finds out i was born female. now that he knows, he cannot unknow. now my experience is tied to how he sees me—does he see me as a woman now that he knows? is he comfortable with me in the locker room? it was stressful and uncomfortable for others to have this level of control over my experience of the world and of myself. it’s also out of my control whether he decides to lend manhood to me now—will he use male pronouns with me? will he call me a woman? will he out me to the others? will he sexualize me or sexually assault me based on my female body?

3) as stated above, transition never ends. no matter how well you pass, transition always requires maintenance. you’ll need bloodwork as long as you’re on hormones—that’s time and money you wouldn’t have otherwise spent. you’ll need supplies for your hormone shots—time and money you wouldn’t have spent. there will be instances where you need to disclose your trans status, thus repeating the coming out process infinitely—doctors or EMTs, new intimate partners, friends. this process is exhausting and othering, it’s an ever-present reminder of the fact that you’re trans.

4) medical transition is expensive in terms of money and heath. taking hormones is always a risk. there’s potential for: cardiovascular risk associated with testosterone, vaginal atrophy and sexual side effects, changes to mood (some for the better, some worse), not liking how hormones change your body. then there’s the financial aspect. in the USA at least, this costs money—money for doctor’s visits, money for the hormones themselves, money for the supplies to administer them. there’s risk in any surgery—risk of death or serious complication, loss of function and sensation, improper healing, chronic pain. and of course, the monetary cost associated with surgery. removing the uterus can have lifelong consequences—early onset dimentia, lifelong need for synthetic hormones, osteoporosis.

5) there is no “actually trans.” there’s no meaningful distinction between “true trans” people and others. trans people transition and identify as trans. their dysphoria isn’t any different than mine was. there’s no method for parsing “real dysphoria” from something else. transness is an ideology. i liken it to religion. there are no “real christians” and fake christians, there are only people who believe and those who don’t. that’s the salient difference between myself (detransitioner) and trans people—belief. and if something requires me to believe in it to be real...well that’s a good indication it probably isn’t.

good luck out there. these are heavy questions and weighty struggles. there’s no harm in focusing on other aspects of your life when you’re having trouble answering Big Gender Questions. rooting for you.

i think it's so funny we invented dogs to do so many specific chores (hunting, herding, tracking, etc). i couldn't imagine looking at my cat and being like what if your granddaughters could fold my laundry...

New lino print! Based on an old poster that I saw online but the source of which I couldn’t track down. They’re up in my shop if anyone’s interested! (shop link in tumblr header)

anyone else remember being a child and seeing the very neat handwriting of other little girls and somehow knowing that you were a different genre of person than they were

ive been thinking abt that “being a lesbian is just constantly the cant relate meme” and its actually so true it makes me sad lmao.  like my friends can rant for five minutes about how badly they want to suck some dudes dick but i feel uncomfortable even mentioning that im slightly attracted to some girl. so much of “girlhood” or “womanhood” thats portrayed in mainstream pseudo feminist media, or even coming of age literature is about the heterosexual experience; about a women coming into her (straight) sexuality and thats just so frustrating.  little women was hailed as one of the first books to write about girlhood and growing up and a lot of it involves all the girls falling in love with men.  also honestly the whole “sex positive revolution” thing is annoying and exclusive too lmao.  i read an article that cited sex and the city, 30 rock, magic mike (??), and amy schumer, as “sex positive media” thats contributing to a “more open discussion” on “female sexuality”.. while literally none of these are in any way relatable to the lesbian experience.  im forever grateful to alison bechdel, and anyone else who is making space to talk about the lesbian coming of age experience because we literally have nothing at the moment and it fucking sucks.