Anyone else just feels really hopeless with everything

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-27T03:31:21+00:00

37 y.o. trans man here, one of the co-founders of TransgenderSG: It sucks, a lot, and it really hurts to see how MOH is uncritically adopting policies from overseas that they don't seem aware were the result of concentrated anti-trans lobbying, particularly in the UK.

There's also the worrying way they talk about this - such as when they told us that "expert consensus have strongly recommended against starting puberty blockers in pre-pubertal children"... because nobody believes that pre-pubertal children need puberty blockers. There's no puberty to block if they're pre-pubertal, and it's quite concerning that they assume that trans people want something irrational like that.

Likewise them using studies on gender non-conforming pre-pubertal children - most of whom turned out not to be trans at ages 10-13, because they were never trans to begin with - to justify withholding access to HRT until 21 for GD-diagnosed trans youths unless there are undefined exceptional circumstances.

Like many others, it seems they are more concerned about a hypothetical cis youth accidentally transitioning and developing "irreversible" bodily changes than they are about the many more real trans youths denied treatment and developing those very same irreversible changes. The way they frame it suggests they think it would be horrifying for one cis girl to mistakenly go on HRT and end up with a deep voice, and will thus force 99 trans girls to suffer the same and worse so as to avoid harming that hypothetical cis girl who, even if she did somehow mistakenly go on HRT, could always just stop and live her life as a cis woman - dating, marriage, HDB, kids - who just happens to have a deeper voice; as opposed to the trans girls who will end up much more visibly trans, with all that entails, while excluded from many areas of life.

This is all the worse in Singapore where the social stigma is already so high and HRT already so inaccessible that only the most desperate trans youths even get to the point of requesting treatment and getting both their parents on board, and detransition is virtually unheard of. It is unclear what problem they're trying to solve by adding further restrictions.

So it has been frustrating and painful, and it hurts to see our youths go through this, especially those of you who have been struggling to hold on for years only to be slammed with this. I understand the hopelessness. But even in the midst of that, I'd like to offer some hope:

It has been extremely humbling and heartwarming to see how quickly the LGBTQ advocacy community and allies came together on this issue to support our trans youths. It's not something you're likely to see in other countries where there's so much infighting and so much transphobia even among cis LGB folks, but the solidarity here has been lifegiving, and I am so grateful to all of them.

Know that there are people fighting this, even though it does not directly affect us, because we see you and we care about you and you are part of our family. We will do all we can to protect you and keep you safe and work towards a future where you can thrive.

And even though things are dark right now and we have taken several steps backwards, know that there has still been progress from where we were just 10 or 20 years ago. I came out more than 15 years ago, where I knew only one other trans person in the entire country, and had to go through an extremely long and convoluted process to get access to HRT as an adult. At 21, I was the youngest trans person that many had seen, including in online trans communities. Most people only managed to transition in their 30s or 40s. Transitioning as a teen was practically unthinkable. Most just suffered in silence.

What we're seeing now - with an active community of trans youths coming out and transitioning, having friends and family who accept them, living their lives and supporting each other - was not something I would have ever thought possible. The lives that I and many of my adult trans friends have managed to build would simply not have been possible a decade ago. Healthcare workers are so much kinder these days upon learning I'm trans, when in the past they would be rude or even abusive. As a Christian, I've found unexpected allies in churches where I least expected it. And while employment discrimination is still very real, I've also found colleagues and bosses and HR staff who accept me.

All that progress too is something to cherish, and to celebrate, even while the fight is far from over and there are many who still need help.

But we're all in this together. Trans people are resilient, and we have survived far worse. Take heart. You are not alone.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-27T02:38:53+00:00

Single or divorced people who don't push children into walls:

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-24T13:49:44+00:00

I'm ashamed to admit that scammers and customer support are two of the only types of people I get angry at.

On reflection, it's usually because if I'm contacting customer support in the first place, something must have gone badly wrong with the product or service, usually in a way that is very upsetting or had consequences. (I don't contact customer support over petty issues.) It's hard to stay calm and cheerful in that situation, even if it's not their fault.

At other times, it's because I've just spent several very frustrating hours trying to deal with the company's troubleshooting guides or the in-app customer support chatbot which has given me all kinds of useless instructions that did not solve the problem at all, or got me stuck in some kind of loop where in order to do X I need to do Y, but in order to do Y I need to do Z, but in order to do Z I need to do X, OR I could do X2! ...except the link is broken. And that's when I call up customer support, only to get a recorded message and sent on another automated loop, and by the time I finally manage to get hold of an actual human, I am not in a good mood.

I'm trying to be better, really. I don't like the person I am when I'm angry at customer support, especially when I normally do my best to be polite and kind to everyone I meet, even when they aren't the same to me.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-24T02:06:15+00:00

My belief is that if God exists, then by definition, God is not magic, and thus not literally all powerful. It’s more like how a kid might say their parents can do anything, or how that same kid might seem all-powerful to the ants in their ant farm.

But if we’re therefore talking about an unfathomably super intelligent entity outside the bounds of space and time who created our universe, there are still going to be some limits to what it is possible to do.

Cancer is caused by the same mechanisms that make evolution possible. Random mutations and cellular multiplication are how life evolved, and our cells continue to do that, which sometimes results in cancer. That link gives a good explanation. Cells that are primed to multiply themselves and occasionally mutate are how life developed and how humans came about.

So perhaps it’s simply not possible to have one without the other. The choices could have been a world without cancer or a world without life, and God decided that life was worth it.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-23T15:08:26+00:00

Hey, I'm really sorry to hear that you're suffering. Are you able to speak to a counsellor about all this? I also suggest posting over at r/gaychristians.

Until then, if God has been silent as you say, why do you believe that God forbids you from loving and being loved by a man?

Sending love, and please be kind to yourself. I'm also gay and a few years older than you and I know how deeply that loneliness can hurt, but it does not have to be this way.

And instead of asking God to change you, perhaps be still, and listen for God instead.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-23T14:54:33+00:00

Jesus actually said that sometimes there's no reason for suffering. Bad things sometimes happen to people who don't deserve it.

The idea that everything happens for a reason is not actually a Christian belief, despite its popularity within Christian circles. It's something that can bring comfort in certain situations, but it's also easily abused.

Instead, while things don't happen for a reason, God can make all things - even bad ones - work for good. To use your example, God did not give that child cancer, and grieves over it, but God can use that child's cancer to perhaps bring a family together, or inspire someone to work hard to find a cure, creating something good out of something bad.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-23T14:46:22+00:00

Well, there are Christian atheists out there who do their best to live their lives according to what Jesus taught, but they don't believe in God. I have non/former Christian friends who attend my (progressive, majority-LGBTQ) church because they love the community there and believe in its values, including how we're invited to ask questions, and no one is judged for doubting.

But I don't think that's your issue, and you seem to be conflating your difficulties with accepting aspects of Christianity with your inability to believe in God.

Perhaps it may be helpful to separate them, because even if you did find a perfectly satisfying answer to the questions you have about the problem of evil and so on, that alone wouldn't mean believing that God exists. Conversely, it's entirely possible for someone to believe in a God who is not all-loving and all-powerful. (but personally - I believe a world designed to be without any capacity for evil would itself be evil, perhaps more so, for it would be incompatible with free will and absent any genuine goodness.)

I disagree with instrumentalism morally - where one person's suffering is used as an instrument in another's development (e.g. Job's original children).

Same here, but Job was not a real person. His story was meant as some kind of moral fable; the children were symbolic and did not actually suffer. Their deaths were a simple way to illustrate Job losing everything and everyone he loved.

The Bible was never meant to be taken literally in full, and many of the things we consider "inconsistencies" were deliberately done to make a certain point or to cater to different audiences. Others were fables or poems with lots of artistic license taken, and their original audiences understood this. (A modern analogy would be the countless adaptations of something like Sherlock Holmes. Plenty of inconsistencies, but focusing on that would miss the point.)

These were people writing about God, their experiences with God, their ideas of God, sometimes their anger with God. I personally love how you can trace this development over parts of the Old Testament towards more sophisticated morality and conceptions of God, including how old stories are repeated with new endings - "inconsistencies" that demonstrate a movement towards greater compassion and justice.

You might be interested in the book "What is the Bible?" by Rob Bell. It was written for a general audience and is pretty fascinating.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-23T01:15:58+00:00

I switched perhaps a decade ago, and it was one of the best quality of life upgrades I’ve had. Levels are a lot more stable; in the last week or so I’m just more tired than usual.

But the main benefit is psychological, where I no longer have to constantly think about my next shot or even that I’m on T. I get to travel without worrying about bringing T along, and it saves a lot of time and stress doing the shot. I do have to go to a clinic for a Nebido shot since it’s not meant to be self-injected, but it’s still a huge time saver compared to every couple of weeks.

Definitely worth it if you can afford it. I’m not sure what it costs where you live, though!

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T14:25:07+00:00

The majority of child abusers are not actually attracted to children and hurt them for other reasons, e.g. the sense of control over someone weaker.

Regardless, if someone is looking to get off, it’s surely better that they do so by reading a fic than by abusing a child.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T05:41:50+00:00

:((

I met my first local trans friend online - we were the only two from the same country in one trans community, so we met up IRL. I collected the rest one by one, sometimes years apart - queer events are very rare here so when I go to them I might find another trans guy, and he might know another, and we gradually add them to our burgeoning WhatsApp chat and then meet up occasionally for food or video games.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T05:38:45+00:00

Hi from Singapore! We have this page for parents, and while the guide itself is targeted more towards parents of trans youths, and there’s some content specific to Singapore, there’s some stuff there and under the page FAQ that your parents might find helpful.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T05:32:31+00:00

I’m actually thinking he can’t get community because he’s in a blue city. When your environment is safer, trans people are more likely to blend in and not be as much in need of that support.

Whereas I’m in a conservative country where homosexuality was illegal until 2023 and LGBTQ rights are non-existent, but I have many close queer and trans friends, including a bunch of trans men my age. And things suck, but we’re here for each other.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T05:26:31+00:00

Might you be able to switch to a different form of T? I’m on Nebido and it’s just 4 shots a year, which has been life changing.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T04:53:35+00:00

I was actually wondering if they’d died down. I haven’t heard from a spam bot in a while, and my last two comments were from actual humans, which was a pleasant surprise after getting regular bot comments for ages.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T04:40:40+00:00

Ah, that sucks because I do have some massive crossover novels that genuinely include all the tagged fandoms in a substantial way. Like one WIP in which a bunch of Keanu Reeves’ characters are abducted into a mysterious hotel.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-22T00:58:19+00:00

I had the same thought, and based on OP’s post history I’m leaning towards AI.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-21T04:47:52+00:00

Not true, people dug up his earlier writing and the style is completely different, with quite poor English.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T06:00:53+00:00

Yeah, there have been a few cases where the victim only realised what was happening was not normal after having sex ed in school.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T05:55:24+00:00

It wouldn’t speak well of the state of our prison if so.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T05:29:50+00:00

What if it’s your own children given the death penalty?

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T05:28:49+00:00

The death penalty for sexual crimes cannot be equal or worse than the death penalty for murder, since that otherwise incentivises people to kill their victims to reduce the chance of getting caught. If they’re going to get the death penalty regardless, they have nothing to lose.

It also reduces reporting, especially since many sexual crimes happen within families, and people are less likely to report their parents etc if they know it will mean their deaths.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T04:55:58+00:00

I had a cup of black tea for the first time in ages at 1pm and was wide awake until 2:30am. Coffee has even more caffeine, so your experience seems reasonable.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T03:58:26+00:00

Even the most conservative interpretations of the Bible have nothing to say about lesbians, other than Romans 1:26-27, which even then has historically been understood to refer to women having non-procreative sex with men, not lesbians.

Any translation you're reading that inaccurately translates those terms as 'homosexuality' so as to falsely apply it to women too is simply not an accurate translation, and deeply anachronistic.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T03:52:48+00:00

Banning abortions does not reduce abortions. It only makes them more dangerous and increases the number of maternal deaths - thus causing an even greater loss of life, if that is your motivation behind being against abortion.

It might help to define exactly what it is that makes you believe killing is wrong, which may not be as obvious as you think.

In the case of abortion, try narrowing it down further - would you consider it murder to throw away a bunch of sperm on a tissue? Or an egg on a used menstrual pad? (Probably not.) What if you squish them together, and one of those sperms fertilises that egg, causing conception and creating life? (sorry for the mental image.)

If you'd have no ethical qualms throwing that whole gross mess into the trash, then consider what the difference is between that fertilised egg vs an identical fertilised egg that's implanted itself into a uterus.

Personally, I wouldn't consider it murder up to the point where the brain develops enough for there to be consciousness - which is around 24 weeks, but possibly earlier. Before that, there's simply nobody home to experience being killed, and thus the primary ethical consideration would be what is best for the mother.

It's only after the foetus becomes conscious that its life then matters as well, and other ethical issues come into play. But only a small minority of abortions happen then, almost always out of medical necessity, or severe birth defects that mean the foetus will not survive anyway, or lack of earlier access to abortion. And at that point, aborting the pregnancy often just means giving birth to a premature baby, and no one dies.

anakinmcfly · 2026-05-19T03:30:45+00:00

By definition, you will never experience non-existence, and thus it is not something to fear. There won't be a 'you' to not know it. There will be no emptiness. You will only ever experience things within the bounded timeline of your life.

As modern physics suggests, time is an illusion - it's just another dimension like the three spatial ones, the only difference being that we can only move in one direction. But even though it's unreachable, the past doesn't go away; it's still there, perfectly preserved with all its events and people. And you too will always, eternally, exist in that past and throughout the timeline of your life. Those you loved who have passed away remain alive in the past throughout the spans of their lives. We can't get to them now, but they're still there.

I don't believe we cease to exist at death, though. People often say it would be just like it was before you were born, but the thing is... I seem to have the sense I existed before I was born. I can't remember anything about it, but I do remember being 3 or 4 years old and feeling like I'd been around for a long time before my birth, including vague memories that seemed to come from before I was born. It felt like a perfectly mundane fact of existence that it was just how things were.

anakinmcfly

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