as i understand it, being told to behave more like a man is a common experience of being a boy, so seems like you’re doing it right to me

slightly depressing jokes aside, your identity isn’t determined by how you dress yourself, it’s determined by what you say and believe you are

that said, not everyone is able to discern the distinction. that doesn’t mean they’ll never understand… but it might require your own rock solid belief in what you are, and explaining the difference, for some people to understand it

it’s a harder path, especially if you want people to understand you and see you how you are… it’s easier to be gender conforming for a reason, you know? but you can take that information into account and act according to your preferences, balancing between your expression and your desire to conform. there’s no wrong answer

for what it’s worth, it’s a reasonably common sentiment that i’ve heard amongst transmascs, to enjoy feminine expression a lot more post transition. usually reluctantly expressed due to a desire to pass

for myself, i was content to dress quite femininely for a long time. recently, i’ve started working out and putting on muscle, which i’ve enjoyed a lot… but it does make dressing in a pretty way very challenging. i got too big for over half of my wardrobe… sigh. i’ll get back to it, one day

as a last note, phallo doesn’t require HRT as a prerequisite, the way meta does. unless, of course, your doctor specifically requires it, which is fairly commonplace but unfortunate. i imagine that’s the case for you, but i figured i’d include this note on the slim chance it wasn’t

hope this all helps you on your journey

would it be that it were so simple, but for that “feelings garbage” to be the cause of ADHD to begin with…

More than half of adults with ADHD also experience anxiety. But, Sibley’s study shows this might not always be a bad thing. skip past newsletter promotion

this article feels… really gross. like wow, ADHD people thrive under stress! i wonder how they ended up like that

it also doesn’t seem to have any regard for the wellbeing of the people in the study, just their productivity, although it could just be being presented poorly by the article

just shitty overall

if it’s not worth preserving

IT’S NOT WORTH PURCHASING

rarely, i like to play a fluffy, feel good game with no real stakes. enter: Flynn, Son of Crimson

there is absolutely no chance of anything really bad happening in the game, the worst that happens is your powerful guardian diety dog loses his powers at the beginning of the game (but it’s OK, he just rests until you reclaim his powers and he feels better). you never really feel like anyone is really in danger, you get to play a pretty fun 2d action platforming game, and it has some really fun sections later on that make you feel awesome

it wraps up nicely in probably 20 hours too, if you want to 100% it, so it doesn’t overstay its welcome and lets you experience all of its content with low demands. really a lovely little experience. it’s not pushing the envelope at all, but if you want basically 20 solid hours of lighthearted fun, this is a great way to get it

gonna throw in my caveat here; ITT is a really good co-op game but there’s like a 25% chance the story isn’t for you. it’s the kind of story where, if you think about it too much, you start to realize that the characters do some pretty fucked up stuff including

::: graphically tearing a plush doll apart while it screams for mercy

:::

i don’t want to come across as judgemental if you enjoyed it; i get that some people are gonna find it more slapstick than anything. but it was more than enough to make me and the person i played it with flush it, and i wouldn’t feel right not mentioning it for specifically “uplifting games”

if you can ignore the story, the co-op gameplay is super solid, though

(sorry if the spoilers don’t show up right, my client doesn’t show them properly)

to clarify, i’m talking about the hypothetical situation where OP’s wife, who has chronic fatigue, also has a baby. i’m sure there are people out there with chronic fatigue who have had babies, of course, and they are champs, but uh, i believe that would be a future situation for OP :)

haven’t had a kid, but 2 weeks with a wife who has chronic fatigue seems really short. honestly the start up life doesn’t strike me as great for having a kid, but idk what your job situation is. can you peace out for a day or two every week without things going off the rails? if so, you might be fine. but usually, start ups are pretty lean, and rely pretty consistently on the presence of each person on the team (or at least, this is what i’ve heard, i haven’t done a start up, either)

how much do you have to help your wife? have you asked her thoughts on the situation? does she work?

you’d might want to do some research on child development to help form some timelines. e.g. when does the baby start crawling around / how long are they breastfed? learning stuff like this should help you roughly forecast how much supervision you’ll need to give (it’s probably not linear, fwiw)

last thing to consider is, what if your wife or baby comes out of this requiring more care than average? what benefits does your work provide in those situations? not everything goes as planned, and i’d be a little worried about that given your wife already has one chronic condition. pregnancy is not exactly easy on a body

regardless, i hope you can figure things out and everything works out well for you and your family!

lots of great suggestions in this thread, just wanted to shoutout this little indie i played and had a delightful time with: Flynn, Son of Crimson

it’s a little 2d adventure game with pretty linear progression, although there will probably be some backtracking if you want to 100%. but it’s level based and not open world at all. the movement and combat both feel pretty good, the story is very fluffy and feel good, and you have a giant dog as a pet, what more could you want?

it’s probably like a 15-20 hour game in total, if that. a great time if you want something short, fun, and uncomplicated

idk if i should be encouraging you, per se, beyond just encouraging you to allow yourself to be how you are and accept it… but, if you really want to know, perhaps studying trauma will give you the answers you seek.

you’re being homophobic and kind of racist, too (not all ethnicities grow very much body hair, but apparently being attracted to them would also make you a pedo). so if you’re not right wing, you’re sure acting like it

i hope you have a really unpleasant day and get banned

my good person, you need to take a break from the right wing alarm machines

you are the only one here who is uneducated enough to think that “weight and body hair” are the only signs of post-puberty maturity in men

a lot of men don’t put on weight well into their 20s, for reasons which are completely explainable without “second puberty”, something you entirely brought into this conversation as a strawman to knock down by yourself

a lot of men also have trouble growing body hair. not every man is a big hairy fuck (affectionate, as i am a big hairy fuck). also, plenty of men shave their body hair, and it’s still fine to be attracted to them. are you going to start calling straight men pedophiles for being attracted to shaved women???

you may also note that twinks are famously attractive for being quite muscular, which is very difficult to achieve without the heightened testosterone levels post-puberty

please stop posting these deliberate false exaggerated takes. it’s really ruining the vibe, tbh

(ps: second puberty is a thing, but it’s a trans person thing, so it’s not part of this argument)

i like this question

one of the major roadblocks to figuring out i was trans is that a lot of my self value and perspective of the world was rooted in being a woman

the night i realized that wasn’t true, that i wasn’t a woman, that i probably had never been a woman, was truly incredible. everything i knew about the world fell away and for a short time, i saw everything with fresh eyes. nothing i had learned before was taken for granted; everything was subject to change, everything needed to be checked again

of course, over the course of the next week or so, i found that indeed, the world worked pretty similarly to how i had figured it did before. but ever since, a lot of things have changed, too. for example, it’s very hard to assume that people’s genders are set in stone anymore. prior, i thought them to be fairly rigid, known early in life. and now it’s more like… if you’re cis, it’s a little harder to assume you’ll always be cis, since most cis people haven’t gone through the internal work to even be open to the possibility that they’re not cis, nevermind the various threats to life and identity that come with it…

anyways, the point i was trying to get by talking about all this is- especially over the last decade or so, where i found out a lot of people i looked up to or even aspired to be like were total shitbags- i think that rooting your identity is a mistake

let yourself be open to being whatever you’re composed of at the moment… knowing you might need to release it in the next. appreciate it while it’s there, understand what you get out of it, and don’t be afraid to fall into its absence… trust that you’ll always find the solid ground of yourself below it

beyond the obvious ways this is fucked up, imagining this happening with AI gen text is insane. trying to craft a post to both empathize with another poster, kindly demonstrate flaws in thinking or logic about a point they usually care a lot about, and trying to explain how the different point of view better supports the things they care about it such a monumental effort already that AI just cannot do. no actual persuasion will come out of this (not that a ton happens on the internet to begin with, but even less than that)

and honestly if you’re firehosing people like that, AI is just going to absolutely drown out any actual communication from happening. at some point, we’ll just have bots going to war for us about our points, and no one will be reading it

big shoutout HOTS… i should tap back in… FUCK deadlock (note: this user has not played deadlock)

the survival story was beautiful. marco should be extremely proud of reraising himself and achieving a happy life

it was also shocking to see that this is maybe the link between homosexuality and pedophilia that the right are so often trying to warn people about. it’s… truly horrific, what kentler did to these kids. and kind of infuriating that his actions would be linked to homosexuality as a whole

it’s not like i don’t have any empathy for him, he was a product of… deeply fucked up people, people who also judged and shunned homosexuality. but what he did is just absolutely fucking vile

that’s true, but there’s also an argument of resources and conformity to consider. oppressive regiemes also have large amounts of media at their disposal and tend to be very good at issuing orders from the top down, so their ability to define things is pretty strong

we don’t really… have those things :') so our ability to make an impact isn’t really as great, i would think. and given that, maybe it’s best to recognize and educate people on what the existing dog whistles are, rather than trying to reclaim them?

really would like to see the article if you have it on hand. i can see the argument for both sides, so i would like to read more and potentially be persuaded one way or the other

are you working out? if not, it won’t happen very fast, or at least, it’s much better when you’re working out

also, iirc you were on low dose? are you still on low dose? (am i remembering correctly? lol)

you might want to spoiler tag this but congrats!!!