currently in a hotel, hours away from my scheduled orchiectomy
mostly feeling a mix of anxiety that I have deluded myself into this, that I’m about to commit to a mistake, and joy at the thought of not having testes anymore - all the ways I will finally be able to sit and walk and not feel discomfort, the freedom from that nauseating and disgusting feeling when they slap against my thigh, and of course a guarantee that the spectre of testosterone will never haunt my body again
I’m not sure I think the Nazis are a special kind of evil, nor that their symbols should receive special status due to that supposed special evil. When you read about Columbus flaying humans alive, or the systematic genocide and concentration camps in the U.S. of indigenous populations (which inspired Hitler’s concentration camps), I do not think the Nazis were somehow special or unique. I think as losers in a world war their evil was especially punished and made known by the other countries. An example was made of them largely because they were losers, not because the other countries have moral superiority. There should be no sympathy for the Nazis, nor for other genocidal states, but admittedly there is less sympathy for Nazis than for other genocidal states, and I think this is for geopolitical reasons.
Humans do worship the past, which is exactly why it’s good to destroy the past association a symbol has - it would even be nice if someday the swastika went back to its much more legitimate and long-standing associations with Hinduism.
I think you might be underestimating the power in symbols and how by setting aside a symbol it guarantees a meaning for it will last longer, and in this case it is a symbol of evil, used by evil.
The only controversy, truly, is whether the workers union intended to associate themselves with Nazis, but since that is so clearly not the case, I think this is a great example of how those Nazi symbols might die out and how their meanings can be destroyed by much better causes.
so many femcel tropes in the book so far:
etc.
It’s well written.
ah, I haven’t seen the movie but I read one was made 👀
will have to check that out!
it’s a (presumably cis) woman author, so it’s not anything like /r/menwritingwomen
I wouldn’t call it a “good reference of femininity” either, but it is certainly authentic in its feminine characters thoughts and feelings, but more importantly the character feels like a femcel to me.
eh, I dunno - the Nazis stole their symbols to begin with, and considering we’re talking about a worker union I actually like the strength in reclaiming symbols. I understand the reason for the taboo, but sometimes it feels like it gives too much power to the wrong people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Farm_Workers
At the mortuary, UFW supporters unfurled their union flag—and then the trouble began. The bold red flag with its black Aztec eagle in a white circle had long been controversial in the Central Valley. During the 1960s grape strike, the growers used to call it “Chavez’s Trotsky flag.” Even UFW members were initially unnerved by the powerful image. When the flag was first displayed to the fledging union membership in 1962, some workers complained that it looked like a Communist flag, others that it resembled a Nazi banner. “It’s what you want to see in it,” Chavez told them, “what you’re conditioned to. To me it looks like a strong, beautiful sign of hope.”
quote is from the 1993 book Toxic Nation: The Fight to Save Our Communities from Chemical Contamination
terrifying to read about all the local towns around me in this database 😬
right, but since representing Jewish people as lizards is an anti-Semitic trope, representing Zionists as lizards in this meme is an obvious blunder, assuming it wasn’t intentionally trying to be anti-Semitic
I have found this video showing various glute exercises helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rguEilBV5mk
It’s by the guy who published the Strong Curves book / program that /r/strongcurves is based on.
There are also a bunch of resources on feminizing exercises, e.g.
tl;dr here are some of the exercises from those articles (I focused on ones that don’t require gym equipment):
Other good exercises include:
Hip thrusts are touted as the best glute-developing exercise, esp. if you can work up to lots of weight.
Note that when you want to make a muscle bulkier (i.e. “hypertrophy”), you want to exhaust yourself with fewer reps, so instead of aiming for 30 hip thrusts you want to exhaust yourself in more like 10 reps (after warming up of course, to avoid injury).
For people unfamiliar with the jargon: a rep, or “repetition”, is where you do the exercise motion once. For example, with a squat one rep would be squatting down then coming back up to the starting position. 10 reps would be squatting down and coming back up ten times. Related idea is a “set” which is a group of reps with a rest between, so 2 sets of 10 reps would be 20 squats overall, but you would take a break between the two sets of ten. Taking a 3 - 5 minute break in between sets does make a difference, and is important for making the muscles bigger.
Other things to keep in mind:
I think this is the all pro routine that was mentioned?
https://web.archive.org/web/20240417114601/http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=4195843
A Simple beginner’s Routine
You will do 3 work outs per week on non consecutive days. The first work out is your heavy work out. The second work out is your medium work out, use 10% less weight for your work sets. The final work out for the week is your lite work out, use 20% less weight.
Do a lite warm up with 1/4 of your work sets weight. Do a medium warm up with 1/2 of your work sets weight. Do 2 work sets with the same weight. Choose a starting weight and start light.
These are the seven exercises you will be starting with.
- Squats
- Bench Presses
- Bent-Over Rows
- Overhead Barbell Presses
- Stiff-Legged Deadlifts
- Barbell Curls
- Calf Raises
You will be running this program on a five week cycle as follows:
- The first week do all 4 sets for 8 reps.
- The second week do all 4 sets for 9 reps.
- The third week do all 4 sets for 10 reps.
- The fourth week do all 4 sets for 11 reps.
- The fifth week do all 4 sets for 12 reps.
If you got all of the required reps on the fifth week then increase the weight by 10% and
repeat the cycle. If you didn’t get all of the reps on the fifth week then repeat the cycle with the same weight. You shouldn’t need more than one minute rest between the warm up sets and you shouldn’t need more than one minute thirty seconds between the work sets. Do some cardio and abs work on non weight training days.
Please correct me if I’m wrong OP!!
My point is that your baseline for legitimacy and moral acceptability is based on the attitudes taken by the colonizers, then and now. It can feel pragmatic and reasonable, but I think it only seems like a defensible position because the “ex”-colonizers (I mean, the U.S. hasn’t been decolonized, has it?) broadly agree that “colonialism is bad”, though it does seem like strong support for Zionist Israel by colonial countries like the U.S. and UK is a clear counter-example to this.
Ultimately if you look closely and found Zionist occupation illegitimate, you will certainly think so of other occupations. The reasons you give for ignoring the illegitimacy of other occupations don’t feel that different than those given for ignoring the illegitimacy of the Israeli occupation.
colonialism was the norm and in no way internationally frowned upon
When you mention colonialism wasn’t frowned upon, who were the people that did not frown upon it then?
yes exactly - don’t use an anti-Semitic trope when criticizing Zionism, lest you be confused for an anti-Semite; this weakens the meme significantly and for no good reason (other than maybe to pick up support from conspiracy nuts and right-wingers by using a dog-whistle while still being palatable to people who don’t see the dog-whistle, but this is a bug rather than a feature in my book)
lol, this is just a great sentence is a great post
Sorry things were rough, but thank you for your service!
I didn’t know I had biochemical dysphoria until starting HRT; my mental health improved so much I realized what I experienced before as a baseline was actually clinically significant depression, anxiety, anhedonia, etc.
That said, not every trans person responds to HRT the same way (in some of the scientific literature there is mention of trans women who actually experience increased and worsening gender dysphoria on HRT despite being the “right” sex hormone).
My experience, and the experiences of lots of trans women I know IRL and online, has been that it’s sorta hard to lose muscle mass significantly. It’s actually something that really bothers me, my body is too muscular and male-looking.
Eating lots of food and putting on fat is necessary for growing breasts, so I highly recommend it regardless of how much you exercise - the exercising is actually great for this because it increases appetite and capacity to eat, and because exercising is a much less relevant factor for fat loss than people think. You can definitely exercise excessively and still be fat, and put on fat.
🥰