fracture

i was househunting for a while recently and i felt the same way about sending out viewing requests. i was wondering how many these people were getting from spam to begin with, and now ai generated. it didn't help that the messages were nearly identical despite handwriting them all... i really should have just made a template lmao

having a type is not the same thing, the essence of fetishizing is objectifying a body type without the consent or consideration of the person who owns the body

e.g. "it would be a shame to waste those great tits of yours" is a fetishization because it's only taking into account the viewer's perspective, not the owner's. a lot of trans men feel really dysphoric about having breasts and, quite frankly, it is only their business if they get top surgery or not. if they ask for your opinion, you can give it, but it should probably emphasize their happiness anyways because they're the ones who have to live in their body, at the end of the day

basically, as long as you treat the person you're seeing with respect and consideration for their happiness, you don't really need to worry about it

ayyy it's about time we got fetishized too (this is a sarcastic comment)

not that we should be equivocating meth and adhd meds in the adhd community 😭

but otherwise yea, very good point being made. i didn't realize that was a criteria

flail time

you're correct that the term normally used is "drop out". i think this article may be using "stop out" to specifically refer to people who merely did not enroll in a new semester (vs. people who e.g. failed out, or were otherwise forcibly removed from the school), but i wasn't able to conclude this 100% from my reading

huh, interesting. i mean that's awful for you and i'm sorry you have to deal with that, but it is interesting there's a place where that's the case

i can understand the second part of your statement, but the first part confuses me. are you saying that you'll be harassed more in public for being gender conforming vs e.g. wearing a dress? or do you mean something else?

i would have appreciated hearing how the author, personally, found capitalized pronouns to be affirming, because, absent that reasoning, it really does seem like it's to set up a deferential power dynamic. i don't really mind respecting the pronouns anyways, but it does mean i don't really want to be friends with Them until i understand what's going on there better

yeah and i posed both questions just to kind of allow for multiple possibilities because, y'know, i wasn't really sure what was going on in your head

but otherwise, i dunno if you're this comfortable with your dad, but if you are, maybe you could have a conversation about it. ask him if he knows about sex work and how workers in the porn industry are treated, ask if he's considered looking for ethical pornography producers, maybe suggest some (?) LOL

i understand this isn't a conversation everyone is necessarily comfortable having, but i think, if you can overcome the awkwardness, it's worth it to kind of reaffirm your dad's relationship with you and his shared values with you. fwiw i think a lot of people (men?) who are like, strongly feminist would be open to reconsidering this stuff and maybe just don't necessarily have the tools or haven't really had the idea to explicitly pursue more ethical porn. some of it is just accessibility, you know? like, everyone knows pornhub, but i can't name an ethical porn studio offhand

that said, this inspired me to google it (i know, what an idea) and i found a couple of article recommendations as a starting point:

https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a36465164/ethical-porn/

https://sexualalpha.com/ethical-porn-sites/

and then, just for full disclosure, some of the things that prevented me from doing that before were:

• i didn't (and still am not sure) that i could just trust a google search about this (it's still better than nothing and the second article lists some signs that you can look for, at least)
• conflating ethical with soft: sorry if this is too mcuh information LMAO but i'm kind of into people fucking hard (sort of regardless of gender), so it's hard to feel like i'll enjoy ethical porn. i think it's better now, i would have been a lot more concerned ten years ago, but there's probably something nowadays that is ethical and still caters to me
• there's also kind of the concern about like, getting my money's worth, because tbh ethical porn DOES mean paying for it. the money isn't really a huge concern (altho it could be for others), but it's hard to want to manage it without the sort of security of a good return. again, it's not a huge deal, it's a worthwhile investment to spend a few bucks to find out and i think these studios probably have enough available material to evaluate them
• similarly on the accessibility front, is being able to access it on my phone bc my pc is in the goddamn living room (another situation which has probably improved substantially over the last ten years)
• some of it is just like, it wasn't that feasible or good of a situation ten years ago and i just haven't sat down to think about it much since the last time i did until now. and your dad is definitely older than i am, i am not old enough to have a child your age LOL

notably, none of these are really about whether it's a (morally) good idea or not, it's a lot about the practicalities, but yknow not necessarily every feminist guy is on this page

i'm not gonna sit here and pretend these are the best reasons or anything, i'm not the best human being to ever live, but i try to do better than the day before, and i listed those reasons out honestly to hopefully help if you decide to have that conversation with... not even just your dad, but anyone

but you know, if you decide not too, obviously that's totally fine and understandable LOL, i think this was still good to write up and talk about

i had to think on this a little bit, and knowing you're a woman helped me see where you were coming from, i think

and i think you should reflect on what looking at porn says to you about a person. because there can be a lot of baggage attached and - at least for me, as a guy who likes porn - i've already had to come to terms with that stuff. but it's hard to know if someone else has done that kind of inner reflective work about what most people treat as a throwaway hobby

it's also kind of like, how comfortable are you with your own sexuality? are you asexual? how did your folks treat sex and sexuality growing up?

i don't have any answers for you, and you certainly don't need to answer any of these questions in a public forum on the internet. but hopefully they help you understand and resolve what's troubling you

fwiw, my dad is super careless about it LMAO i found his porn bookmarks by accident as a kid. and nowadays his steam notifies me when he hops on hentai games 💀💀💀 but yknow what, good for him, hope he's having a good time

not necessarily for you but for other trans people reading - transition isn't going to make you cis but it can help a lot of things. at the very least, hormones can potentially provide a lot of mental benefits, even if you won't get the exact body you want at the end of the day

and, y'know, if they don't, you can always stop taking them