I always wanted to be an interesting person when I grew up but now I’m here I rarely find it fulfilling. It turns out 98% of the things that result in an interesting person are highly unpleasant to do or experience.

The short version is, as a pseudo-trans person, being born female makes a lot of it ok to most people. People born male who act more female get a looooot of backlash.

I LOVE comments like this from people who clearly cared enough about what I said to interact with my comment TWICE in two different ways (downvote PLUS comment) JUST to try to convince me they don’t care, and right below another commenter who has emphatically expressed the opposite. It’s fascinating both in the sense that they might actually internally believe it AND that they’re deluded enough to think I might as well.

Oh hey I’m AFAB but more or less NB at this point and let my gender presentation flux with both people’s perceptions and whatever seems to be working best in the moment, especially career-wise so I actually have a LOT of thoughts on this. A looot of this discusses societal stereotypes on gender, so while I think it’s shitty, the fact that a lot of people (wrongly) perceive trans people as their birth sex is of relevance to my perspective on this discussion. So, trigger warning: prejudice / transphobia.

Background:

• I’m AFAB so most of my upbringing was femme oriented

• I also come from an autism / ADHD HEAVY family so I still missed some of the social aspects of gendered upbringing

• my parents WERE fundies however, so my attempts at more feminine presentations (makeup, heels, etc) resulted in a lot of sex-shaming from my parents, but there was also a looot of pro-birther nonsense and everything about pregnancy just freaks me out. There’s probably a looot to unpack there as to how I wound up nonbinary, but ultimately I am what I am now, so it is what it is.

• I spent the first few years of my career working on a psych unit for criminally insane men so the formative years of my young adulthood were spent learning how to speak from my chest and not look like a target

• my current presentation is that sort of “no gendered features” / look like a clean shaven young man / lesbian (vs the beard AND boobs / “aaaall the gendered features” look). The only surgery I’ve had is my tits chopped off + tubes out. So I don’t look ooobviously trans, but a lot of people also can’t really tell what genitals I have at a glance which some people find …distressing. for some reason.

• I’m also white which I think lets me “get away with more” than others.

Thoughts:

• I usually use the women’s bathroom. Sometimes I bring a she-wee to work but all the unit bathrooms are singles so it’s more just because I work with animals (male and female) who don’t know how to put the seat up when they pee standing / squatting. This is mostly because whether it’s reality or trauma based (see above work history) I don’t trust most men around me with my pants off vs women will be socially awful but I likely won’t have to come to blows over it. I do get some weird looks though, and some have stopped me, but then they just get this really confused / uncomfortable expression and ultimately leave me alone. But as far as your question goes, I do think I would get less backlash as a AFAB going into the men’s room than an AMAB gets doing the reverse, so there’s definitely an aspect of my vagina being inherently less threatening in vulnerable contexts… somehow?

• sexually, I can be a top or a bottom (penatrator OR penatratee) and pussy vs bussy doesn’t matter too much to me other than that fitting things in the backdoor takes a lot more prep work (but I’ll talk more further down about how that flexibility is convenient for me personally). As far as gender relations go, I feel like I get more “girl power” brownie points for strapping on and pegging my male partner vs how men who receive anal penetration are perceived despite the fact that I’m essentially letting him do almost the exact same when he fucks my ass. I even typically use a “strapless” strapon (they still realistically need a harness to stay in) so I am actually being physically stimulated by the act, it’s not even (necessarily) a dominance thing.

• work / patient care: I work high-acuity psych so every patient has to have their skin checked for injuries and contraband (particularly weapons). I usually count as female for the purposes of keeping things same-sex. As far as your specific question though, it’s also usually fine for me to count as female when searching men, even if the other person is also a woman. I usually try to have a male staff member with me as well, but nursing is pretty female dominated and I’ve noticed both in terms of patient comfort and working policy, two women searching a man is NOT as frowned upon as two men searching a woman. Do with that what you will. Same also goes for care / cleaning of genitals / breasts when patients require that.

• In terms of responding to violent patients: it depends and I’ll change my demeanor as needed. If a patient seems like they’ll respect a man more I’ll stand taller, drop the pitch of my voice / speak from the chest, and be more directive. If I think they’ll respond better to me being more gentle / nurturing I’ll do that (although I’m not as good at it) but again as far as your question goes, I don’t think an AMAB person would be trusted the same way were they witnessed going back and forth like that.

• That said, this raises the most important advantage to looking / acting masc - the high violence patients who respond better to gentleness are fairly few and far between. Patients who perceive me as more masculine are far, FAR more likely to cooperate with me being directive when I need to be. It’s also in most cases not a fear thing in that they perceive me as stronger / more powerful, it’s that they perceive me as more equal and worth listening to. I’ve had (usually boomer age) dementia patients in particular who gave every female nurse before me absolute hell for every single part of their treatment plan including the stuff the nurse has 0 control over but just went along with me saying the exact same things, then halfway through the shift they tell my coworker that “oh yes that nice young man has been so helpful!” It happens a lot actually, and I have a muuuch easier time with the sexist patients than most of my female coworkers. I recently did have one patient with homosexuality related delusions who targeted me a little, but that’s pretty rare (they commented on him mostly going after men in report last night and I was like “hey he came after me the other night!” and one of my coworkers actually turned to me and was like “I don’t think that counts as him targeting a woman…”)

I guess my ultimate statement on it is thus: my particular combination of transness (including my race) is highly favorable considering, and I’ve heard that’s often true for transmascs which I think is highly reflective of societal prejudices based on birth sex. I still get the weird looks and called mean names, but I’m sitting in exactly the least taboo combination where most people can assuage their prejudices by categorizing me as a “tomboy.” People also often assume I’m a lesbian which is a little less favorable, but much more favorable than being trans (which is closer to the truth, I’m surgically confirmed and actually tend to prefer men).

I’ve actually arguably been able to use my gender presentation to avoid violence in many cases, which almost universally cannot be said for transwomen or AMAB NBs or men or any other AMABs who find themselves with any kind of femme aspects in their gender presentation. I’m also fortunate that the dysphoria I did have tended towards removing gendered aspects vs adding them because that also gets a lot of backlash.

I’m also almost entirely uniquely fortunate in that I don’t have any dysphoria that causes me inherent distress based on how others perceive me or how I’m personally acting outwardly. That makes my ambivalence an asset almost, since I can just do whatever seems to make any given situation go smoothest, and I don’t experience any emotional distress from doing so. I’ve noticed that lack of omnipresent dysphoria is almost unheard of in trans communities, especially for someone who got surgery (to the extent that I’m often actively unwelcome for expressing my unusual combination of lived experiences; I’ve actually felt far less welcome in trans spaces than pretty much anywhere else; and that includes on lemmy, a lot of my comments like this get removed with transphobia cited as the reason).

Anyway that’s my garbled post 12-hour-night-shift stream of consciousness that I wrote and re-wrote a couple times on the bus ride home. Hope it was interesting but imma tap out and go nap before I have to go back tonight.

Me fucking around in chat gpt until I had something good to repeat to myself in times like this. It turns out it’s actually pretty good at common meter rhyme, the trick is to ask for 5 iambic pentameter couplets at a time, then split them at the eighth syllable into those 4 8686 syllable lines. I also usually specify “casual language” and “natural word order.” You ask for five or so options for each verse so you have some ideas for words to swap around until something sounds good. I’ve been thinking I need to write a proper ballad about some characters at some point but I haven’t got round to it.

Forgive yourself for past mistakes,

and things you did not know.

Your errors guide your victories;

they ache so you can grow.

The version of “leave room for Jesus” we can all get behind.

Nothing directly for any individual, but you can host, moderate, and / or participate in more apolitical hobby spaces.

One of the biggest ways delusions keep a hold of people is by disconnecting them from supportive / positive social relationships. The deeper down the rabbit hole they go, the more people they argue with, and the less non-delusional friends they have. Try to figure out what those beliefs and social groups replaced, then get them back into supportive social groups around that. Often it’s a hobby like gardening, book clubs, cars, sports, hiking, etc.

That’s why all of this took off so hard during COVID, people got ripped away through all of those things and Russian disinformation bots were right there and ready to replace that sense of connection with a sense of being part of a larger movement. Sometimes it’s spiritual or religious groups which has been difficult because so many of those groups have just become completely overtaken and become vehicles for the delusions, so we also need to work on ways for people to express their religion and spirituality in non-delusional ways, but that’s a whole other discussion.

The short version is: make the delusional stuff subtly less accessible (encourage them to get away from the computer and TV) and try to get them into other positive activities that connect them with other people and help them move their focus away from the delusions without directly confronting them.

When confronted directly delusions tend to integrate the new information into the existing belief system so two examples here would be that maybe the study was flawed or only referring to a specific type of signal or specific type of brain cancer but the more likely option is just deciding that this is more proof that the system as a whole aims to deceive them.

Source: am psych nurse and was trained long ago to never try to talk someone out of a delusion for the exact reason that it tends to just make them stronger (I answered somebody’s question about what to do instead down below if you’re curious).

Probably not ever, but hopefully enough that their accumulation doesn’t outpace their use picking up dogshit.

Well they’re still macroplastics for now. I’m delaying their conversion into microplastics by about 5-10 years in a way that will prevent the need for more of them.

Yeah the real eco friendly aspect is it lasting longer than and upcycling the existing already used plastic bags and actually used to prevent more from accumulating; I’m trying to make something that can be taken to the grocery store instead of getting more bags.

They’ve been accumulating for 5+ years now…

We haven’t been using them for pet waste at the rate they’ve been accumulating for quite some time now, so they had really built up. I’m hoping that making him a grocery shopping tote will also help them accumulate less quickly.

I’ve been netting more than I use for a while so a looot have built up.

Idk but I’m part of a makerspace and I bet at least a few of them also have some bags they feel too bad to throw away.

Actually several people asked me how to plarn in my first progress post. I’m really finding my stride and even if this isn’t your specific jam I highly encourage you to engage in more constructive and enjoyable activities …at least as much as you’re able to.

There’s a couple different ways to make the plarn but this is super simple, all you need is scissors, and you can do it as you go. That said, I would follow a single-crochet tutorial online with some kind of string even like a shoelace or something first because I found the plarn somewhat difficult to work with at first and it would’ve been much harder if I didn’t already have that basic stitch down.

I mentioned this on another sub but they were super displeased that I interrupted their extremely important political discourse about politicians and political parties memeing at each other. I suspect they may have also been upset that I was referencing activities they have difficulty engaging in; upcycling being only one example.

A thousand-and-one years vs a thousand I would think.