@hot-flanks / hot-flanks.tumblr.com
Discussion of "feminine" mannerisms, culturally bound stereotypes, and striving for true knowledge of self vs surface level comfort. Largely talking about my own experiences, includes some observations of community norms, but I continue to withhold judgement on any one else's personal decisions regarding how they choose to go about their lives in this world. All love.
Thoughts on living with authenticity and striving to truly know oneself. I am speaking only of my own experiences in the hopes that it will resonate with someon who needs to hear this; I am not speaking out against anyone else's personal decisions. We all do what we have to do to get by, and it's all love.
besides being on HRT, if you feel okay saying have you ever used PEDs/ would you in the future? and what are your thoughts on PEDs and how they interact with female biology generally even if you don't want to answer about yourself i know it's personal
I have not used PEDs (Performance Enhancing Drugs, for anyone reading that’s not familiar) other than HRT, though there was a year and half or so when I was really just getting started lifting that I considered it. I have tried DHEA (which is legal to use and common in drugstores but not legal for drug-tested athletes), but am not convinced that I derived any benefit from it. There is a five-year period post-DHEA use that one is technically out of the running for drug-tested athletics, and I am still in that period and still competing untested.When I was considering gear, I was in a place where I had convinced myself that I could pursue certain aesthetic ideals in a way that was divorced from identity politics (it wasn’t actually divorced from identity politics, I was just using different words to dance my way around idealizing certain body types). I know that most of the women that I admire in strength athletics use gear (not all of them - have you seen Kim Walford? Strongest person pound for pound in deadlift in the world, and she always competes IPF tested), which is something that I’ve really had to sit with in terms of crafting logical and attainable goals as a natural lifter. I sat with the idea that, while you can maintain some strength and muscle when you cycle off gear, that inevitably you will see a decrease when you come off. That is to say, your strength and muscle at that point is sort of “on loan,” rather than “owned.” With that in mind, I decided that my pursuit of actually being something rather than just looking like something was better served by being a natural strength athlete.I think that the endocrine system is very delicately balanced. I put a lot of thought into the things I consume to fuel my body in order to best support my natural balance, so at this point the idea of tinkering with that balance is very far out of the picture for me. More and more studies are cropping up about how exogenous testosterone use causes mitochondria damage and oxidative stress (in as little as 12 weeks), and that it can significantly contribute to PCOS symptoms. There’s not a ton of studies regarding testosterone use by females, and I have a hunch that adverse symptoms are underreported by FTMs because it goes against community values to admit that testosterone is causing your body pain and harm, and no one wants to admit that the “one cure” could be causing harm. However, there are enough studies out there to convince me that it is not worth it to achieve strength/aesthetic gains that are only on loan for as long as I’m on gear. I’d rather play the long game and make my gains the old fashioned way; I’d rather know that I’ve earned my strength for keeps.
If you’re interested in a really informative and candid video about PEDs from a respected strength athlete, I recommend checking out Gracie V’s “Steroid Q&A.” She’s since come off gear and has discussing how that’s affected her training, and so far seems to have decided to stay off.
Here's a #transformationtuesday for ya 😏 Top left: March 2010, when I starting my physical transition with testosterone. ~1 month on HRT, no lifting except for lifting beers to my face and thrashing around a lot with my bass at metal shows 🍺 Bottom left: May 2013, a little over one year off testosterone, after realizing HRT and transition actually exacerbated my issues because of dealing with the mental disconnect of material reality vs what I "appeared to be" to society. Still struggling a lot to feel at home in my body, daily, but I started lifting at my work gym and earned myself these cute little guns 🔫 Right: December 2016, the year of learning the true meaning of discipline and how to be totally integrated within my body. Dysphoria comes, but it passes and doesn't have control over me. I have control over me. I manifest my reality. I am complete, and now all I'm going to take everything I've learned and make 2017 my best year for growth yet 👊🏻
This evening I assembled a piece of really cheap, shitty furniture with nothing but my equally cheap and shitty leatherman. I took this time to take my shirt off and complete a task while I was fully in my body and focused. As I crouched over to fasten screws into the piece, I was very conscious of how my stomach had rolls when I bent over, and how my hips bulged out a bit from my pants when I leaned. I usually feel pretty grossed out by how my body looks and behaves in these situations, how characteristically feminine and soft is appears, but I made myself sit with it this time. I wanted to reach for my shirt to cover my body up but I didn’t. For three hours, I bent over, drove screws into metal, and watched as my (soft, lumpy) body completed the task. I grew more and more content with the body performing the work as the project came together. When I was finished I felt so confident and pleased with the new addition to my apartment that I hung out with my shirt off for the rest of the night.
This is an example of an approach to a dysphoric moment that, rather than hiding or disguising my body, highlights my body’s existing capabilities and its inherent good. This method does nothing to create the illusion that my body is somehow different than what it really is. Essentially, this strategy is the opposite of that utilized through binders/packers/etc., devices that attempt to alter the appearance of the body, and thus the experience of being in that body, to relieve dysphoria. I distracted myself from my discomfort with a task that required a lot of concentration (those instructions were also shit, lol), and I became more familiar with how my body looked and felt over the course of a few hours. The familiarity somewhat desensitized me from the feelings of revulsion I typically feel toward my body.
I’d like to announce recruitment for a new research study designed to better understand the experiences of people who have undergone gender de-transition.
For the purpose of this study, gender de-transition is defined as having undergone gender transition related medical procedures (hormones and/or surgeries) and then subsequently de-transitioned. The study is an anonymous online survey. Take a look at the recruitment information and if you are interested, follow the link to the study. Please share the recruitment information and link with anyone you think might be interested and eligible.
Recruitment Information Study Title: Individuals who received medications and/or surgery for sex reassignment and then de-transitioned: a descriptive study Gender dysphoria, discomfort about one’s biological sex or assigned gender, is often treated with sex reassignment (also called transition) with medications and/or surgery. Some individuals choose to “de-transition” by stopping medications and/or having surgery to reverse the effects of transition. The purpose of the study is to describe a population of individuals who experienced gender dysphoria, chose to transition/undergo sex reassignment by taking medications and/or having surgery, and then de-transitioned (by stopping the medications or having surgery). We are interested in individuals who have de-transitioned, whether they feel positively, negatively, or neutrally about their decision to transition and the time they spent transitioned before de-transitioning. This research study is being conducted by Lisa Littman, MD, MPH, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Although previous research shows that the satisfaction rates for transgender individuals who transition is generally high and the regret rates are low, several individuals have recently begun to describe unsatisfactory experiences with transition and have been posting about their experiences of transition and de-transition on social media. An informal survey on social media yielded over 100 surveys from de-transitioned individuals in only two weeks of recruitment. Given that this population exists and has not yet been described in the medical literature, this research is needed to describe this outcome, to generate hypotheses, and to assess the psychological and social needs of persons who have taken, or are considering, this decision. This survey is completely anonymous and confidential and conducted through Survey monkey, an independent third- party. There is no way to connect your name with your responses. We do not track email or IP addresses. Please do not write in any identifying information about yourself in the open text boxes. The survey should take 30-60 minutes. Participation in this research study is voluntary, and you may refuse or quit at any time before completing the survey. If you know of any individuals with a similar experience who might be eligible for this survey, or any communities where there might be eligible participants, please copy and paste this recruitment information and survey link to share.
Survey Link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/V6YXXYG
Oh, am I taking a lot of shirtless photos lately? I'm mostly just asserting the normality of the naked female body. It's gotten real hip and trendy in our community right now to talk about "not being defined by gender." I understand the sentiment; we've all been fed a lot of shit about what it means to be female, to be a woman, for so long that it just seems to be inherently true instead of fabricated by patriarchal society. I can understand wanting to stand strong, be seen, and say "these assumptions do not hold true for me." The problem is, when that's framed as the individual being "not defined by gender" or simply not being female, it throws other females under the bus. It says "I am not this way, but this is true about women, so therefore I am not woman and not defined by being a woman." I'm gonna stand here instead and say that I manifest my own reality, but my reality and manifestation are not in any way limited by the fact that I am female. I refuse to conform to these bullshit expectations the same as I refuse to throw the female sex under the bus by claiming separation from my sisters. I see the strength in all of you, I see your determination and perseverance and willpower. I stand with you, in solidarity, always ✌🏻️
Fall Conference, October 20-23, 2016 Coordinators: Tucker and Sage H.
Contact: Womonwrites@yahoo.com
Registration: $50-100 (sliding scale) includes lodging, workshops, readings, no food (kitchen available). No woman will be turned away due to inability to pay.
Womonwrites takes place at a park 50 miles from Atlanta.
I won’t be able to make Womonwrites this session, but I plan to be at the spring session 2017!
Friends in the south who are interested in writing and women’s space, you should consider going! I have tons of friends who go and love it. It’s not exclusively female-only, but from what I hear it tends to shake out that way any way. Let me know if you’re going to go, and I can have friends to look out for you and be “big sisters” to help you find your way around :)
Every single day I'm grateful that I chose to embrace my female reality instead of continuing to chase medical modification to just look like something that I can never truly be. I love my strong, capable, powerful female body. Three years of lifting weights and grappling with my body dysphoria through the iron has brought me a hell of a lot more satisfaction and peace of mind than injecting testosterone and being concerned with being "treated like a man" ever did. Self made, in every way ✌🏻️
A butch friend of mine went through this really unfortunate phase once, where she made all these jokes about women drivers.
I don’t tolerate that kind of talk. When I hear someone trashing women, I feel no less offended and disgusted than I would if that person had thrown up on my shoes.
So I told my friend that I didn’t think those jokes were funny, that she would have to stop telling them if she wanted to be my friend. Because she is a kind, thoughtful, politically aware person, she stopped telling them.
I’m still friends with her and she still feels embarrassed when she remembers what she said. To be honest, I think she’s a little hard on herself. We’ve all done it, and I don’t mean the butch we, I mean the lesbian we, the woman we, the ALL OF US we.
It’s too easy to engage in these little horizontal hostilities. It’s too easy to sympathize with the people who oppress us. We are all responsible for our ability to harm each other, and we are all responsible for calling out harmful behavior when we see it. I take that responsibility very seriously.
But the term “butch misogyny” makes me want to break something.
Because misogyny is poison, and every single person born female in our society is forced to drink it, and smile, and thank the person who poisoned her and lie about how good the poison tasted. And when you’re forced to drink poison with a grateful heart every single day of your life, it’s going to affect you in ugly ways. Sooner or later, you are going to throw up on someone’s shoes.
And when someone throws up, no matter how gross you think it is, a caring friend says: “Are you okay? Was it something you ate?” Instead, when butch women make misogynist comments, we call it by the special term created just for them— “butch misogyny”— suggesting that butch women INVENTED misogyny, that it has never harmed us, that we benefit from it, and that we are the primary perpetrators of it in queer communities.
Let that last part sink in.
There is no special term for “misogyny perpetrated by het males.” There is no special term for “misogyny perpetrated by gay males.” There is no special term for “misogyny perpetrated by males who like to wear women’s clothing.”
And that’s curious, isn’t it? Males are the only people who stand to benefit from misogyny without incurring any damage to themselves. Males are consistently the worst perpetrators of misogyny in queer communities, causing the most harm, on the highest institutional levels, the most often.
When you promote the term “butch misogyny,” you deliberately turn a blind eye to the real problem and promote the scapegoating of some of our community’s most vulnerable members.
What we call “butch misogyny” is not an expression of woman hatred but an expression of self hatred. Butch women are no strangers to self hatred, it comes easily to us, we have to make peace with it. Maybe that’s why we’ve accepted our role as scapegoat within queer communities. We’re already scapegoats in the straight world, where we are the most visible and most despised targets of our society’s hatred for lesbians; maybe we’re used to it.
Or maybe butch women cooperate with the term “butch misogyny” because it equates us with men. Maybe we take it as a twisted compliment; maybe we feel that it boosts us up a rung on the queer hierarchy. We’re no stranger to that, either. Since childhood, we have known that the barrier between the men’s world and the women’s world is permeable. We have been able to slip across and taste the forbidden fruits of personhood. Maybe we hope that, if we shoulder responsibility for men’s crimes, we can keep some of that personhood for ourselves, at least in our own little corner of society.
If that’s what we think, we’re horribly misguided. As much as it hurts to face the truth, we have to admit that we are not men. Butch women are women. We are brave, smart, scrappy, tough-as-hell women. The way we are is natural, healthy and adaptive. We deserve to be loved and respected for what we are and it is completely unfair that we ever have to pretend to be men to get that respect. It’s worse than unfair— it’s oppressive.
Because my friend still feels bad about her woman driver jokes, she brought it up again recently to apologize. I asked her why she ever thought those jokes were funny in the first place.
“Oh,” she said, “I guess… I was working as a line cook and all of my coworkers were men. They made those jokes all the time, and I had to make those jokes too, or they’d turn it against me and make me the target. I forgot to leave that stuff in the kitchen where it belongs. You know. Butch privilege!”
“You had to make jokes at your own expense to protect yourself from male violence at work? I see the logic, but how is that privilege?”
“Because once I was in the boys club I got treated a lot better than other women,” she said.
“Did you, though?” I said. “You don’t think your male coworkers enjoyed watching you humiliate yourself? You think you were getting what they had? Let me ask you something. How many of those men have ever had to disown their maleness as a survival tactic? When do men ever do that?”
She didn’t have an answer, but she was suspicious of my argument, she thought I was trying to tell her that it was okay for her to trash women.
Listen, that’s not what I’m saying. It is not okay for you to trash women. I mean “you” in the most collective sense possible, you, dear reader, YOU. Butch women are not acceptable female targets. Stop looking for acceptable female targets. Stop it.
I am saying that if you are a woman (ANY woman) who trashes women (ANY women) you need to realize that you are throwing up all over your sisters because you drank poison. It’s not your fault that you drank poison, but you need to stick around and help clean up.
I am saying that you need to look long and hard at men, and especially at your queer brothers. Look at the gay men who say that your genitals look like potted meat mush. Look at the drag queens who mock you in front of gleeful audiences. Look at the het males who demand that you validate their identities by sleeping with them and who fly into histrionic fits every time you say the word “vagina” or admit that you menstruate.
I want you to ask yourself why you’ve never proposed a special term for their brand of misogyny— actual misogyny that reflects an actual hierarchy. Ask yourself why you’re so comfortable sacrificing butch women at the altar of male feelings.
Because it may be time to consider the possibility that you are engaging in a little horizontal aggression of your own.
Freaking brilliant:
“Because misogyny is poison, and every single person born female in our society is forced to drink it, and smile, and thank the person who poisoned her and lie about how good the poison tasted. And when you’re forced to drink poison with a grateful heart every single day of your life, it’s going to affect you in ugly ways. Sooner or later, you are going to throw up on someone’s shoes.”
Relevant—
“"Because once I was in the boys club I got treated a lot better than other women,” she said.
“Did you, though?” I said. “You don’t think your male coworkers enjoyed watching you humiliate yourself? You think you were getting what they had? Let me ask you something. How many of those men have ever had to disown their maleness as a survival tactic? When do men ever do that?”“
//You think you were getting what they had?//
Is there a reason you prefer sumo deadlifts over conventional? I see a lot more women do them lately but they're bad on my hips and I've been told it doesn't allow as much range of motion (and thus strength/size building) as conventional...
I prefer sumo deadlifts because they’re better for my leverages in terms of moving maximal weights. The day I first pulled sumo I was able to get 20lbs on my previous conventional max purely by changing technique - no additional muscle. It’s true that conventional is generally better for muscle building, but because I’m a powerlifter and not a bodybuilder, I’m much more invested in how much weight is on the bar than specific muscle stressors. Yes, sumo has a shorter range of motion, and the shorter ROM allows for heavier weights to be moved (similar to having a high arch in bench press - there’s a lot of good protective reasons to arch the back in bench, but another reason powerlifters do it is to shorten ROM to achieve heavier max weights). In a typical deadlift session I’ll do heavy sumo pulls off the floor, even heavier sumo pulls from 3″ blocks, and then I’ll hit a final high volume deficit conventional deadlift set to achieve muscle burnout before moving to more isolation movements.
Sumo definitely requires much more hip mobility and hamstring engagement than conventional. If I haven’t adequately warmed up my hips (which is normally a 20-30 minute affair all on it’s own), then I have a *much* harder time breaking the weight from the floor. With a sumo pull, the difficulty is off the floor and lockout is usually relatively easy compared to conventional pulls where locking out is the more difficult part and requires a strong hip drive, but breaking from the floor is comparatively easier. I find that sumo pulling and focusing on hip opening is also beneficial as a cross-over to the wider stance I take with low-bar squatting (as opposed to the narrower stance I use for olympic/high-bar squats).
I could talk about deadlifting all day
Do you also concede that there are trans people who have to transition? I tried therapy but hormones and surgery are the only things that have helped in any way. I have been transitioning for 8 years and I'm happier than ever. I have absolutely no desire to detransition.
I don’t believe that there are people who absolutely need to transition in order to be happy. I believe there are multiple ways to address any kind of suffering, including dysphoria. I would not deny that people can find satisfaction from transitioning but no, I don’t think that’s the only way to get there.
I basically think that there are a lot of unexplored options for treating and healing dysphoria and I think we’re just getting started in terms of finding different treatments. I’d be interested to see if more research into things like how the brain relates to the rest of the body and neuroplasticity could open up new ways to address dysphoria as well as learning more about how dysphoria can relate to trauma and dissociation. I have no doubt that some people will still choose to transition even if other treatments are available but I want it to become a real choice, not something people feel like they have to do in order to be happy. Let people choose to transition because they think it’s the best option for them instead of the only option.
I see dysphoria as something we are still learning about and coming to understand and I fear that thinking we know everything there is to know about it and that we’ve found the one best way to treat it needlessly limits our perspective and could prevent people from seeing other possibilities and creating new treatments.
I’m not actually a big believer in therapy. I know some people find therapy helpful but I’ve never personally gotten much from it and I know a lot of other people who’ve found little to no benefit going to a therapist. I know some detransitioned and reconciling women who’ve found it helpful to work through their trauma with a therapist but most of the women I know have found ways to treat or heal their dysphoria on their own or with the help of other dysphoric women. While I would like more therapists to be better informed about detransitioning and alternative ways to understand and treat dysphoria, I don’t think more therapy is the answer. It can be one tool among many, but it’s not going to work for everyone. I want get information out about ways for treating dysphoria that doesn’t involve going to any kind of professional and help more people get peer support.
If you’re happy with your transition, cool. I’m glad it’s working out for you. I’m not sure why you want me to believe it’s the only way though. I mean if it was one option among many would that somehow detract from the happiness it’s given you? Are you worried people would judge you if they thought you could’ve chosen differently? Does it disturb you to think that maybe there was another way to treat your suffering and you didn’t find it? Again, if transitioning really has satisfied you, why would it be a problem if it was just one of many paths to happiness? Why is making transition one treatment among many possibilities so scary?
Hey I am recently coming to terms with being a lesbian and trying to figure out if I can use the term butch to describe myself? How do I know if I'm like... butch enough to call myself butch?
Hey there friend :) I’m glad to hear that you’re coming to terms with being a lesbian, it is a very good way to be
Butch is a complicated word, and one I don’t really use for myself in a lesbian context. I’ll sometimes use it as shorthand among straight folk because it quickly describes an experience, but among other lesbians I prefer to focus on our similarities as dykes rather than drawing pretty arbitrary lines in the sand meant to separate us from one another.
One of the more useful material definitions I’ve seen of “butch” revolves around whether one is typically easily understood by the outside world to be a lesbian, and further sometimes/frequently mistaken for male. I think this sets the bar pretty low, being mistaken for male at least occasionally is a common bond I’ve found with plenty of butch-identified women, but it’s also something that plenty of not butch-identified women experience. I’ve never really been able to figure out a good definition, and I think that’s because there’s never really going to be a completely material definition for something that most folks use as an identity word.
All that to say, I think butch can be a useful word to find community and hopefully other women who understand themselves similarly to the way you understand yourself. If it is useful to you in understanding and describing the way you move through the world, then it’s a word for you, but only if you want it to be a word for you (it’s really an opt-in identifier, I don’t think it’s really appropriate to label another woman “butch” who wouldn’t self-identify that way).
how tragic, your existence. so desperate to escape your womynhood that you transitioned and now you honestly believe it was everybody elses fault when you knew, deep down, that you were a womyn and always have been. did you ever look at yourself in the mirror and say "i am a man, and I always have been, I've always known, and outside of stereotypes, I knew that something just wasn't right about my female body" or did you say "i wish I wasn't a womyn" because there is a huge difference
“Tragic,” “trainwreck,” “mutilated,” …if these are the only kinds of words you know for strong womyn who survive then you should really re-evaluate what you know womyn to Be.
i was curious, did you get top surgery? or is your chest just natural very flat?
No mastectomy for me, although I was absolutely planning for it while I was transitioning. The size of my breasts fluctuates a lot with my bodyfat%,, which fluctuates a lot with my diet and activity level etc. I’m somewhere around an A or B but I don’t wear bras so it doesn’t really matter. When I’m naked there’s no doubt that I have breasts. I still struggle with people being able to notice them, but I’m working on it all the time. Not wearing compression very much at all anymore makes a big difference in my mental health, but I still put on a sports bra every once and awhile when I’m going to the gym if I anticipate it being busy and therefore my anxiety to be running high. I mostly live my life in the way I always hoped/figured I would after mastectomy, I’m shirtless constantly in my house/yard and in women’s spaces, I just don’t go topless anywhere there’s men around.
True story. Part 3 in the saga of how Jaime and I met is up at lesbiansovereverything.com 💌
Feudal Nerds #8! Check it out
I love you so much <3
The world needs more lesbian art! I’m so proud of your important contributions to our culture and also your extremely important contributions to my entire life
"What are you training for??" I train so that I am physically and mentally prepared to take on whatever life throws at me. I train to develop the discipline that carries over into all aspects of my life. I train to feel true mind-body connection. I train so I can better manage my day to day anxieties - because if I can handle getting under a bar with 225lbs even tho it scares the shit out of me I sure as hell can handle just having casual conversation out in public. Yeah, I train to get strong, but it's at least as much of a brain game as it is a body game, if not more so. Every single morning at 5:30 I'm up and grinding, getting my day started on my own terms. I train so that I know I can handle my shit. What do you train for?
I’ve sat with this realization for a handful of months now: that I can say that dysphoria is no longer a part of my daily life. It’s not even really a part of my occasional life. I have had four (4) difficult days in the past year or even more. Those days are barely blips on my radar. I also experienced these bad days very differently than I did in the past when dysphoria was a regular thing in my life.
It’s as if I had this bad, painful thing inside and now my interactions with it are from the outside, where I put it, and said “you’re no longer welcome here.” Yes, I would still recognize it standing in front of me, but now I walk away instead of feeling eaten alive by it for days, months, years on end. We say hello occasionally but I don’t linger. I am not dysphoric anymore. Dysphoria is an infrequent freak hail storm, not a part of who I am.
I got here slowly. From 19 to 22 while I was transitioning, dysphoria was a constant, which worsened the longer I was trying to live as a man. Then from the time when I first started detransitioning until recently, my dysphoria slowly got better. I worked very hard to get here, healing in intense difficult ways from age 22 to 25. I didn’t actually think I would get to this point - but I knew it was worth it to see even small improvements in a condition that had strongly contributed to my frequent suicidal ideation.
I’ve spent about a year now away from publicly discussing my detransition. I’ve come to understand myself much better as a womon, as a lesbian, as someone who can now afford to take a break from making anatomical diagrams of my trauma.
I wanted to come back to this. I needed to say that I made it out, that I feel very firmly on the other side of being ftm, being dysphoric, and even on the other side of the bridge of actively detransitioning. There’s no big secret to how I got here - it’s the same things that I wrote about doing in the past to help me.
I sat with the incongruity between the “map” in my head and the body I was in. I recognized this incongruity as a symptom of trauma, as a symptom of something I may never be able to tell a coherent story about. I worked with the symptoms instead of the idea that they meant I was trans. I let my dysphoria deflate into a neutral phenomenon, unattached to judgements about good or bad or being terminally different.
I talked to other women with this experience, a lot. I recognized over and over that I was not alone.
I wrote and drew.
I got and stayed sober.
I walked, and did pull-ups, and sit-ups, and jumped around. I found ways to be in my body in a way that was actively-doing instead of passively-being.
I continued to move on with the rest of my life. I went back to school and worked towards achieving my goals.
I continued to reconnect with my sense of self as a lesbian, in a way that grew way beyond the overshadowing of having a history of transition.
I found it helpful to take all the posts off my blog and stop being a public voice on detransition for the past year. After sorting through so much and sharing it with the world, it was good to take my words back, and to take my life back fully from feeling stuck in the past at all. I don’t have to share anything of mine. I exercised my knowledge that I am not just an idea or a resource and just focused on me.
I lived with myself. I learned that I could make sense of my life without re-writing my whole story. I learned that I could sit with painful things and find real ways to heal rather than always reaching for the more immediate ways to cover it up and let it fester.
The most important factor in my healing has been time. This is something I could not understand at nineteen. Healing from anything takes time. It takes sitting with something difficult and not destroying yourself over it. Time allowed me to understand that I could make it through a bad day because I had done it before, over and over. Time allowed me to look back and see that I had made progress. Understanding that healing takes time helped me keep moving forward without a clear path, knowing that I would reach another lookout point again even though I did not know when.
I want women, ftms, and other female people with dysphoria to know that healing is possible. I am not dypshoric anymore.
what would u recommend for womyn who want to lift weights and get stronger? i have always wanted to do this (and seeing you and the look you have achieved has really inspired me) but i have no idea how to break into it. i have some friends who do things like crossfit but im way too broke for something like that...
Hey friend! Happy to hear from you.
Starting up with weights can be really intimidating! It really took me a year or two until I could say I had any sort of confidence in the gym - I’ve found that the trick is to just keep showing up. I can understand why so many folks like crossfit, it’s kind of a way to get your hand held through the beginning process and then it’s help with motivation if you’re the type to be motivated by group classes and that sort of accountability. I’ve been much more interested in directing my own strength journey, and like you obviously know, crossfit boxes can really be super prohibitively expensive.
My suggestion is to find a relatively basic beginners program, and stick to the program to the letter for at least a few months (3 months bare minimum). I really like Stronglifts 5x5 for absolute beginners, because you only have to learn 5 highly effective compound movements (squat, bench, deadlift, overhead press, and row) and there is a clear weekly progression for how to move up weights on those movements. All of these movements can be practiced at home with a PVC pipe to gain some comfort with your form before you go into the gym, which can go a long ways towards alleviating the anxiety a lot of us feel going into a gym for the first time. Once you’ve gained a little comfort and proficiency in the basic movements (which could be 3 months, but might be as long as 6 months or a year - take your time, you will almost certainly be able to keep progressing on stronglifts for an entire year if you are a beginner and follow the program to the letter), you might want to move on to a program that has more variation in movement. My favorite “intermediate beginner” program right now is Chad Wesley Smith’s Juggernaut Beginner program, which introduces many more movements (most of which can still be practiced at home with a PVC pipe) and is more of a bodybuilding-style volume (less sets, more reps).I’d recommend bringing your phone in to the gym with you, and don’t be afraid to look up videos of the movements or to take videos of yourself to look at your own form. I know the idea of the gym can be intimidating, but in my experience, most everyone has their heads down worrying about their own lifts and programming, and almost everyone has had the same gym anxieties - but the only folks getting stronger are the ones that fight through that and keep showing up. We were all new once, we were all small once - but we kept showing up. There’s no reason for you not to start now.
Good luck, and feel free to write again any time!
