Ah, I think they just don’t want people who are anti-trans posting here - I think allies are fine. If you do have questions about trans folks that you feel wouldn’t be welcome here, you’re always free to DM me and I can try to help answer them.

Let me know how the auto-injector goes, my experience with the oil is that because it’s so thick and going through such small needles, it injects slowly and requires more force on the plunger than typical injections, so I would imagine an auto-injector would be tricky to get to work. (I once had a pharmacist go on a full-blown rant about how my endocrinologist must not know anything because the oil could not possibly go through the needles he ordered, which of course was false, it just takes patience.)

I will say, you do get used to pushing the needle in and there are lots of coping mechanisms, so don’t despair if the auto-injection doesn’t work out.

My point about 90 days is that it’s difficult to easily compare differences in IM and subq directly - even if were planning to compare them with blood testing. Even with e. valerate injections I find my blood levels can be quite variable with no other changes - part of that is due to the way syringes are manufactured and the resulting variation in the actual dose being delivered. I also swear sometimes the oil doesn’t depot the same when there is more tissue trauma or if I nick a blood supply. These speculations would be really hard to isolate with a relatively fast-metabolizing ester like valerate, so an accurate comparison between subq and IM would be difficult to do for an ester like EUn which requires much, much longer time periods between changes before being able to test.

Anyway, I’m suspicious about claims that EUn is uniquely different as an ester between subq and IM, but as usual I think the only way to clarify things is to get empirical evidence, which won’t be forthcoming anytime soon, esp. for an ester that isn’t manufactured or used outside of a minority within DIY communities.

Either way, thank you so much for calling it out and bringing my attention to this - I’m interested in learning more if you have links to anything about this.

cool, TIL, I’ve previously been familiar with enanthate being used - I wonder where the raw material comes from for EUn, maybe Chinese manufacturers like for EEn.

Are the differences in subq and IM with EUn from reports in the DIY community? I would imagine it’s quite hard to track that considering it takes what, 90 days before EUn reaches steady state?

Can confirm, I have a trans friend IRL who was followed into a parking lot by an off-duty police office and physically assaulted by him unprovoked. It’s fair to assume no police are safe for trans folks.

E. undecylate is discontinued and was only used in Europe until the late 2000s. That said, it looks like it’s an oil based depot injection into muscle, which is pretty typical for the other esters - I don’t see why subq injection of e. undecylate would be that different than IM (at least compared to other esters). In fact, it looks like it was injected subq in some animal testing. It also looks like the data we have on the topic are too low quality to draw conclusions from. Anyway, just curious what info you might have and why you call this out particularly.

While I have heard subq can be a little less effective than IM, it looks like that isn’t accurate.

She’s obviously trans, a guy doesn’t enjoy taking estrogen.

a lot of trans folks live in extreme denial, it’s very hard to accept

The video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWZAbKU-JzE

Why do you try not to post here? (I just want you to feel welcome as an ally!)

Injections is the best way to get estrogen, AFAIK, and I have had great results with injections.

It is, however, a challenge for some people to get used to stabbing yourself. I have needle phobia as well, which made it quite difficult to manage at first, but where at the beginning I had to spend 30+ minutes mentally preparing and injecting under special conditions, now I can seemingly do it anywhere and with no preparation. It is usually painless and easy for me.

I have so many suggestions if you want them, but if injections sound scary, at the very least look into subcutaneous (subq) injections with a small gauge needle like 27G. They’re like the needles for injecting insulin. I am not sure whether I would be able to handle intramuscular injections, and being able to inject subq has made injections possible for me.

Probably worth reading through this: https://old.reddit.com/r/TransWiki/wiki/hrt/injections

My problem is with associating it with feminism, it’s offensive to me and factually inaccurate. TERF talking points are usually gender essentializing in a way that is contrary with radical feminist viewpoints, for example, and lots of TERFs now distance themselves from feminism intentionally as they coalition with the right-wing. “Gender critical feminism” is not feminism at all, and better characterized as fundamentally anti-trans rather than fundamentally feminist.

Oh, sorry - it was hard for me to follow your comment as well, but here’s my understanding:

We read about OP sharing nudes with a friend.

TERF warns OP that they are sharing nudes not with a fellow woman, but with a man (TERF is assuming friend was a trans woman, assumes OP is a cis woman).

We expect OP to reveal they are actually a trans woman, but instead we learn OP and his friend are cis men.

Does this seem right?

Sorry, these moments make me feel like I must be autistic or something, lol

Woke up this morning and couldn’t see a man in the mirror. I think my sleep bonnet hiding my hairline and eyebrow ridge helped.

I’m not sure I understand what the transphobe is saying (I don’t want to call these people radical feminists, they’re not).

She sees an exchange where two people talk about exchanging nudes, and she assumes they were both trans women, so she thinks she’s exposing them as men because they aren’t acting like women (who would never share nude photos of themselves)?

It’s honestly confusing to me (lots of cis women share nude photos, though not usually to their friends AFAIK).

awww 🥹

It sorta went the opposite for me, when I first started with a vegan diet I abstained from all substitutes and eventually I learned to use them to recreate foods I thought I wouldn’t be able to eat again.

Oh boy.

First of all, form good “sleep hygiene” habits, read: https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep Hygiene.pdf

A lot of it is obvious, like go to bed at the same time every night (set a timer to get yourself reliable at first!), and wake up at the same time every morning. Give yourself more “sleep opportunity” than the hours you want to sleep so you actually get enough sleep (e.g. if you want to sleep 8 hours, maybe give yourself 10 hours in bed with the lights out).

Don’t use screens several hours before bed, don’t do anything but sleep in your bed, and wind-down before bed with something like reading a book (again, in a chair in another room, not in your bed).

Now for more advanced tips I’ve learned from dealing with insomnia:

A problem I have sometimes had is that tasks like meditation can actually cause me to become more alert, and it turns out meditation actually does cause insomnia.

When struggling with meditation related insomnia, I got lots of practice navigating falling asleep.

What I found most helpful was rather than focusing on an object in a meditation like way, to instead allow mind-wandering and rumination and to try to cultivate a lack of metacognitive awareness about that rumination. Basically, the opposite of meditation. Meditators will hopefully know what I mean by this - but basically, don’t pay too much attention to what you are thinking, just get absorbed into the mind-wandering.

Sometimes if the mind-wandering leads to thoughts or feelings that are “strong” or engaging enough it can prevent me from sleeping, like when I’m anxious or my mind is preparing or rehearsing for an important event or the next day. In that case, a little bit of meta-awareness can be helpful to alert you to the need to redirect your rumination to something actively boring or benign.

In the most extreme instances, I visualize myself working in a factory performing a repetitive motion like pulling a level to operate a press. I essentially constantly try to pay attention to that mundane task and ensure that it remains mundane / uninteresting - just keep pulling the lever and keep paying attention to that task. This is akin to the counting sheep method, but I always found counting sheep too interesting or engaging of a task.

After hours of boredom I usually lose consciousness.

Sometimes I threaten myself with getting out of bed, and often in response I feel a resistance and that makes me realize how tired I actually am, and I threaten myself with doing something boring like sitting in a chair and staring at a wall. Sometimes that is enough to kick me out of my energized thinking into a milder / more boring and repetitive mind-wandering that leads to dreams and unconsciousness.

Sometimes I actually do have to get out of bed and do something, often I will stretch and if I’m not feeling overwhelmed with sleep that way, I find it helpful to exhaust myself with forearm planks - just hold until you can’t anymore (you can also use a timer for 30 seconds or 60 seconds, whatever pushes you past comfort but all the way to failure), maybe try this a couple times. You will sweat and it’s miserable the whole time, and you will be tired and want to crawl back into bed. That has helped me fall asleep really well before, and sometimes I think it’s because the blood also gets into my muscles and somehow this helps me relax.

Anyway, hope this helps!

Have you considered that your anger can have consequences for people on the other side, and that this can even be harmful - and that if you feel disgusted or upset about something it doesn’t always give you the right to express that anger directly at someone?

I mean, I want to be sympathetic, I get how a corporate and sanitized internet can feel wrong and changes the kinds of community that are possible, e.g. young boys on Xbox live were known for saying vile things and riling one another up (as boys commonly do), but as someone who was also present in that culture at the time, not everyone felt at home or comfortable in that environment, and the bullying and culture often made me feel like I couldn’t enjoy those games.

Sometimes tolerance and civility is a small price to pay in exchange for making spaces accessible to other people. That said, I’m not sure every space needs to be like this - so again, I want to be sympathetic here.

ah yeah, good points - I’m just always wary of the way health fads misrepresent problems, e.g. organic foods being somehow a part of the solution for climate change, etc.