It’s always easier to abuse a oppressed person. And since cis women are less oppressed these days and sexual assault of cis women is less socially acceptable, trans women are an easier target to manipulate.

I didn’t really know what I was feeling and why I was having issues like not being able to maintain erections even when I was aroused by my partner. It finally hit me what it was and it continued to get more disruptive until I finally decided to get bottom surgery. But for me that part was physical as well as social dysphoria. Some only experience one or the other or other variations.

I think I am ok with doctors I trust, but with the way that doctors are spread so thin, it’s hard to even get the same general practice provider every time. Not to mention the push for PAs to do annual physicals by corporate owned clinics to save money meaning I don’t get to build a relationship with a doctor anymore.

My issues are more around doctors not understanding that I don’t express pain or discomfort non-verbally and it’s easy for them to talk me into thinking it’s “not that bad” even with severe pain. Add to that that I’m not good at verbal communication in finding the right words to express things. I’ve tried expressing this to doctors up front, but they seem to tend to fall back on assuming people are over-reporting issues when I’m always under-reporting. That discomfort then makes me have issues with every appointment since I know they’re going to manipulate me into saying I’m not uncomfortable. I miss my old GP who would spend lots of time with me and support me by helping me by believing me, and digging into issues to help me express myself with specialists.

Discovering gender dysphoria, ADHD, and Autism have totally changed my life. Only wish it had happened in my 20s instead of mid/late 40s, but at least I have a chance to work on all of it before major age related issues creep up.

FYI, I also did a quick search and it seems like Ritalin allergies are not exactly uncommon especially compared to amphetamine-based medications. Again, I’m not a doctor or pharmacist, just did some basic Googling.

Not a doctor or pharmacist, who you probably should ask, but I think Adderall anf other amphetamine based medications are significantly different from Ritalin. Also, allergies are sometimes related to ingredients other than the drug itself. And maybe an allergist could help determine what specifically you are allergic to in a safer way than just trying another drug if it was that significant of a reaction.

Yeah I meant if the substance is truly the strongest with no weaknesses. Crystals have a weakness of sheering force in between the cells. If it can be melted, then its weakness is heat. Fantasy materials are often described as being unbreakable, and impervious to heat and chemical reactions. If you can’t shape it, it’s useless. If it requires the heat of a star to melt, or the force of an atomic bomb to bend, then how do you make something useful from it?

Yes, but mostly because it’s a spectrum disorder and there are concerns about how much care a person will need and thus how much of a burden they will be to a healthcare system. I think it depends on the country you’re emigrating to, of course, but a country with a really good public health system is not going to want ro support someone with a very expensive disease. But for someone like me who doesn’t need care, it isn’t an issue, but because of misunderstanding of what Autism is and the poor classifications of “levels” or “severity”, there’s concern that it could be an issue. At the very least it might require extra documentation and thus lots of extra time to process.

Yeah, just meant safety-wise. With corporate built launch systems from companies with a track record of overworking employees and higher than IMHO acceptable rates of injury and death of employees in places like SpaceX, it seems like a hard time to be an astronaut and put trust in the dangerous equipment you’re working with. Of course, when it was new, there were similar trust issues, but that was more exciting to be on the cutting edge. Now it’s just corporate greed making it more dangerous, not just being the first to do it.

This. And to expand on this, if there were a material that was strong against all of the mentioned weaknesses, how would you form it into anything useful?

Diagnosis is a relative thing. What do you mean, should you get diagnosed? Are you sure that ADHD isn’t mentioned in your psychiatrist’s chart? It might be hard for them to justify prescribing controlled substances in case of an audit if it’s not. Right now most pharmacies and insurance don’t require a diagnosis code to be sent to justify prescriptions, but it is something that’s starting to get traction as the industry modernizes, even if slowly. But the diagnosis may already be there and may or may not be in your chart. If it is, it likely will get out as insurance companies often require large amounts of information to be sent to them as they tend to just deny claims and say, “we need more information”, so the doctors have no choice but to send entire charts. Also, a lot of the big medical records systems tend not to have good security as well as the intermediaries that transmit data to insurance companies. There was just a big hack last year that shut down a whole bunch of systems due to the consolidation of various systems recently. Anyway, the only way to keep your diagnosis private is to ensure that your doctor doesn’t use electronic records and you don’t use insurance. Otherwise, it’s going to get leaked eventually, somewhere.

Now as to whether that information will be used to discriminate against you, that’s another story. It might be if you intend to emigrate and you likely will be excluded from high security clearance work due to general mental health discrimination in those areas. But otherwise, an employer is unlikely to go looking for the info, at least for now. Usually jobs didn’t require disclosing medical conditions unless they require high physical labor, security clearance, or some other very specialized work that is very sensitive, so YMMV.

And, if you’re in the US at least, the full repeal of Obamacare/ACA has stalled as conservatives have realized how bad that would hurt them. So it’s being picked apart piece by piece instead, and the preexisting conditions part is low on the priority list as it would be high on impact and thus very unpopular if done alone without hiding it in a larger repeal of the ACA.

Anyway, I had similar concerns and decided it was well worth the risk. I may want to emigrate some day, so I have been avoiding an Autism diagnosis, but that has no treatment options for adults anyway, unlike the ADHD. And I no longer have a job with security clearance, so no concerns there.

For reference, I’ve worked in medical billing and charting technology for a couple of decades and I’m currently a software architect for a major health insurance company in the US.

Or craft their argument that trans people don’t exist which is what they are trying to do in many cases by insisting that AGAB is set in stone regardless of actual biology (because biologically people aren’t binarily gendered) or anything else. Even if a mistake was made or any possibility of the existence of intersex or transgenderism, legally they want to enforce the AGAB and nothing else matters. They need well defined categories in order to ignore their existence and thus make an enemy for fascism to fight when a “fake” or “illegal” group tries to get rights, which is needed for fascism to work, and the current enemy, immigrants, are becoming a sore topic.

More common in rural areas were women can easily be kept very isolated where high speed internet and public transportation is not available and “traditional family values” are enforced by the small communities. And I hate to say “not all men”, but it’s not even the majority in this case in modern times of the internet and such. However, it’s definitely not uncommon, at least in the US, and is becoming more common with the political shift to fascism removing programs that used to help women in those kinds of situations.

I would not want to be an astronaut in these days of corporate run NASA. Where science and engineering is shunned as “woke” and flashy PR and using tax dollars for corporate profit are all that matter.

She violated a boundary you set. It sounds like it was a legitimate boundary that wasn’t restricting what she could do with herself or what she could like, just what she could do to you. That’s unacceptable no matter what.

I have around 3500 liked songs on Spotify alone just from the last 5 years or so and just stuff that Spotify chooses to plat for me. I have about 9,000 tracks in my primary collection from old ripped CDs and purchased MP3s/FLACs. This is without stuff that I dont really like that much anymore or stuff that I would only listen to in specific circumstances, like Mozart or something. It’s over 100GB. There is definitely some overlap there, but definitely less than 1/3 of the Spotify likes I also own. So probably I’d end up somewhere in the 125-150GB range. If phones still had SD card slots I could do it, but that’s not that common anymore since they want you to buy streaming and backup services.

I could probably pare it down even more without missing out too much, but it would take a lot of time and it would be removing stuff I like to listen to. And I wouldn’t have room to add new stuff.

I listen to a pretty wide variety of genres and I listen on my phone often, pretty much anytime I’m driving or on a bus/train, and I dont like hearing the same songs repeated too much unless I’m just getting to know the song. I’ve thought about writing a script that automatically randomly replaces files when I’m on my home network to take a smaller set with me, but that’s a lot of work. The other alternative is creating playlists of a few hundred songs each and switching them out when I’m home, but again, lots of work.

Streaming just covers it well for my use case, if it was reasonably priced and did it’s job well to help discover new music, but seems that’s not what they’re selling anymore. I also don’t have a data cap anymore, or at least it’s a soft cap and not ridiculously low, but not sure how long that will be the case either.

Radio only plays a few dozen songs or only “classic” stuff, so I never get to hear new stuff. Having streaming audio was always my way to find new music. That said, Spotify has started doing the same, just playing the sponsored songs and the themes they have generally only play stuff I’ve heard a million times. Rarely “b-sides” or new stuff based on my actual interests.

I miss the days of the original Pandora service with its database of music elements, and it would go across genres to find things with similar elements and didn’t have any influence from the recording industry sponsoring songs because they were actively destroying their own industry fighting to kill off streaming, instead. I found a bunch of new stuff I never would have heard otherwise. It totally changed my listening habits.

So with the streaming services consolidating and raising prices as a result, I likely won’t stick with it anymore. My music library is too large to store locally on my phone and I like variety rather than making playlists. I’m thinking of setting up my own streaming server, but music discovery is still an issue I need to solve.

Attraction greatly depends on the other person’s presentation. Also, heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual are terms that exclude non-binary people and the fact that both experienced gender and gender presentation are typically spectrums, not extreme binaries.

So it depends on your definition of bisexual and what aspects you’re looking at. What I think people often mean is that almost everyone finds some aspects of both stereotypical femininity and masculinity attractive. Primarily that’s because most of that stuff is learned, not instinctual, otherwise how can you explain changes in those stereotypes across generations. But also because the way people choose to express gender is dynamic and varied. Labels are fine for personal identification and communication, but not for imposing restrictions on others.

Hope if comes in the next decade because I’ve needed knee replacement for decades due to tibial stress fractures from military service tearing up my cartilage and can’t afford it, the time off, or someone to help during recovery. American healthcare sucks…

Um…Koch Industries donated tons of money to politician to not retaliate against Russia when they invaded Ukraine, and they refused to pull out of Russia when lots of other companies were. And that’s just one small, recent example of their connections to Russia. Google can find lots of others. I mean go back far enough and their family had close connections to Stalin as well.