This comment has been on my mind since seeing it yesterday, and I felt too foolish to ask, but is there an equivalent term without a dogwhistly connotation? 'Cause I’m pretty sure “transgenderism” has come out of my mouth before, and for the sake of describing “the state of being transgender” I can’t come up with anything else that suits.

I understand the reason why we don’t like “transgenderism”, and probably anything with the ism suffix that would imply ideological motive, but nothing else feels as succinct while also being grammatically correct.

At the risk of over explaining, I’ll provide an example.

“When I was a child, there was very little public discourse about transgenderism.”

In this sentence, I’m trying to convey a lack of discourse about transgender existence as a whole, encompassing not only the state of transgender experience (dysphoria, isolation, mental health impacts), the process gender transition, social and political stigmatisation, and so on.

If I were to substitute “transgenderism” with “being trans”, I feel it speaks more specifically to one’s internal experience; the state of being a certain way in a vacuum. Maybe that’s just my interpretation and something I need to change.

For the record, “transgenderism” never sat right with me before I knew it had been co–opted in the way you pointed out, and more than a few times I’ve made references to my “transness” which sounds clunky af and weirdly pejorative in its own way.

I tried. And I never try.

Problem with VPFs is irrigation throttling, or lack thereof. Most people are cool, but I’ve heard of people hosting exotics which just max out downstream 24/7. Plus everyone has root access which gets abused frequently.

Front end dev fully turned towards the back end dev, drinking a juice box, happy to let them take all the attention so no one asks him difficult questions like why a deprecated component (the green bike’s chain) is hanging around creating a potential safety hazard while doing nothing useful. Back end dev awkwardly skirting the matter of a snowballing reliance on SQL stored proc spaghetti until finally one matter arises on which they can both speak confidently and in unison. How does this clusterfuck stack fit together? “REST API”.

I’m sorry you’re going through this, Smorty. It won’t be forever. Please keep sharing. 💙

Myeeah, narcissist or not, she fumbled a lot of opportunities to show empathy here. It sounds like she wanted you to know what an ordeal this was for her which I think is pretty shitty. I admire your tenacity in sticking out the conversation.

Also I don’t know if she does have a point about having to repeat yourself. I personally felt much more comfortable coming out to every friend and family member one–by–one, and must have repeated myself at least 20 times now. I felt more confident and empowered each time. It also served as good practice in owning my identity when it came time to change my name legally, and everything that came along with that.

The bottom line is that it’s totally up to you how you want to come out, fast or slow, privately or publicly. You shouldn’t have to be made more uncomfortable than the whole thing already is.

You wear it like it’s pink 😘

Edit: I realise this is far from the outfit above, but having gone to the effort of digging up the childhood book of which I was reminded, I had to post it.

Smorty no… 😥

Them: I like your shoes.

Me: Thank you!

Brain: That was really selfish of you to not notice and compliment them on something first. Pretty entitled of you to just accept their compliment like you know you deserve it. Do you even think of anyone other than yourself? You are such a self–absorbed attention whore and they know that now.

The affirming experience of being harassed as a woman!

Okay, if you’re progressing towards the goals you feel are most important right now then I’m happy for you. The impression I got was that you still don’t feel comfortable enough articulating the true severity of your issues to make any real progress, but perhaps I’m missing the whole story. I’m sorry if I overstepped.

Monthly blood checkups is insane! My prescriber only wants quarterly, but I guess the frequency isn’t the point for you. >1 is too many. Needle fear is real. I really hope you can make some progress with that soon. Perhaps your doctor could prescribe an anxiolytic to help you ease into it. Never hurts to ask!

What do you think separates your Lemmy persona from IRL? Do you feel more comfortable expressing yourself authentically here than out in the world? I find it hard to believe that the “real you” is a totally different person. I know you struggle to express your femininity out there, and probably conceal a lot of yourself. Plenty of us have been there, and we realise in retrospect that we weren’t doing nearly as good a job of masking as we thought we were. That’s kinda the whole theme of egg_irl.

If you’ve exhausted your allotment of therapy sessions for this period, and you’re still not feeling comfortable enough to speak plainly with your therapist, then I agree with TotallynotJessica that this speaks to a failing on their part, or at least indicates that this therapist isn’t a good fit for you. I’m on my sixth psychologist, and it took me until now to feel comfortable digging deep and really working through stuff in a meaningful way.

It sucks that you have to shop around like this, and go to all the time, expense and emotional burden of opening up to new psychs trying to find the right one, but it will serve you well in the end. It sounds like you’ve made enough of an effort with this one to declare that they’re not right for you, and it might be time to cut your losses.

ITT: “go to the vet”. Please give us closure now. Have you been to the vet?

This would have been a good time to know the difference between “then” and “than”.

Flashback to 9–year–old me sitting by the radio with a blank cassette in the drawer waiting for this song to come on so I could record it. If it’s an egg song, then this totally tracks with everything else about my childhood.

I think you’re lying. I think you were able to read it just fine on your own.

More Smorty content! Ḿ̷̥̝́̒̎̊͂͝Ǫ̴̢͍͙͖͊R̷͚̃̿͊̃̍̚Ẽ̴̘̟̯̃̅̌̏̆̆̍̎͠!

I am once again imploring you to keep doing what you’re doing, and bend to no perceived pressure to be anyone else’s idea of funny or interesting. There is only one person in the whole lemmyverse making Smorty content right now. And she’s inspiring me to think about possibly intending to maybe one day learn Krita.