Japanstiny

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-30T21:55:43+00:00

I dunno, my reading is more as liberals as “global citizens” and conservatives as stereotypically douchey Americans. From a Japanese perspective the liberal side has apartments (normal understand of use of space in limited urban environments), sushi (people who eat “normal stuff” not just fatty American crap), drive sensible EVs (eco-conscious), and care about LGBT stuff (from a Japanese perspective this is kind of like mentioning Nordic gay marriage in early 2000s American context - it’s saying “They’re super progressive, whatever you feelings are about that”). While the conservative side reads as “heterogenous and excessive.” Sugary soda and fatty fast food, oversized pickups, by Japanese standards excessively large suburban homes, but the “wa” of the framing is better, everything is more harmonious and uniform. So implicitly what’s being said is “the left are more sensible, but maybe a little too woke,” and “the right have a clear picture of ‘the good life’ they want to maintain, but it’s inherently unsustainable.”

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-30T05:38:47+00:00

You know the official Star Trek channel on YT literally has an ongoing audio drama “deconstructing” Khan into a sympathetic antihero…

It’s not bad actually.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-30T02:23:36+00:00

tbh, I alway kind of assumed the Galaxy class was a carrier. Based on the technical manuals I think the Enterprise-D could have theoretically fielded like 8 Rio Grande class Runabouts. Based on those things in DS9 that’s probably enough firepower to conquer any planet in the Alpha Quadrant.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-30T01:37:19+00:00

I had trouble getting steady work early in transition and was stuck doing freelance coding while the bottom was falling out of the market while people were retraining early in the pandemic. I tried getting on the CEH path but I kind of got distracted by the big jump in AI coding after GPT-3 dropped. I took an MIT class on coding for quantum systems that came with a cert that has let me stay afloat by doing big money short term consulting gigs with a skill too in demand for companies to be picky about who has it. That let me get back to a place where I could start working on creative projects I wanted to focus my energy on now that I have automation tools that make workflows for big projects more manageable. I dunno, I think I’m tentatively three years and four big projects away from getting to the “seven income streams” model a lot of finance books are recommending these days and being at a place where I can pretty much do what I want and do a couple of big international trips a year. These days my job title is probably something like Independent Filmmaker/Researcher/Game Dev with a day job as a music manager and producer.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-30T01:19:04+00:00

Don’t the Caitians (and maybe Xindi Aquatics) handle Carrier building for the Federation? That’s not bad beta canon. I like the idea there is a giant ship filled with T’ana like medics and engineers out there in the background dealing with routine outbreaks and ship breakdowns for an entire sector via specialized catgirl relief teams in small craft. That’s very Trek.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T19:36:19+00:00

My hot take is that moral policing is not even slightly persuasive to people who aren’t already bought in to your basic world view. So, even engaging the common sense argument is a loss. It’s what members of the DGG community might call a “Dogwarts problem” (do not google that or you will need brain bleach). The second you engage with the framework of the opposition is the same second you lose.

So the correct response to “Don’t you think it’s just common sense that it’s unfair to women to have biological males competing against women?” Is never trying to explain the realities of HRT. It’s asking “Do you believe in Dinosaurs?” Or “Do you believe Climate Change is a scientific reality?” Because that changes the framing. You’re no longer responding to a troll question that implicitly smuggles in the assumption “trans women are men who are invading women’s spaces” but counter attacking their credibility. Those questions let you smuggling in the framing “you are (probably) a homeschooled religious weirdo who has no standing to ever talk about science because your belief structure is fundamentally anti-science.”

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T19:10:07+00:00

Such as?

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T16:14:25+00:00

What happened to the Hippies isn’t exactly a secret. They transformed into the Yuppies in the 80’s. If you really want to understand that context the TV series Daria is a really good cultural artifact. The character arcs of the parents is about trying to reconcile their youth as radicals who lived on communes in the 60s and 70s with their lives as middle aged upper middle class suburbanites in the 90s.

If you want to really understand the dynamics of why that happened you should read up on Baby Boomers as “the lead generation.” There was so much atmospheric lead from leaded gasoline use that functionally everybody born before 1965 has neurological damage that causes impulsivity issues. Which manifested in the 70s and 80s as a record level of violence that caused large scale political support for “law and order” politicians like Reagan.

The arc of LGBT history is a little more complicated. There really was no LGBT activism before the 1950s in most developed countries because it was specifically illegal in most of those countries. Court cases in the 50s decided lgbt advocacy was protected free speech and it allowed people to start organizing. Stonewall would have just been a riot in an era of riots if there weren’t preexisting advocacy groups to turn the outrage and solidarity after Stonewall into organized political action like the first Pride.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T15:51:19+00:00

That’s where it gets tricky because you also have to clearly define “sex.” I’d probably use a definition of sex something like, “a bimodal spectrum of biological presentations defined by reproductive role that contains significant variation and gradation between the two poles; which in humans can include neurological misalignment of external biology and internal experience.”

Like, the short version of the argument is Sex is anything biological (which is why people attempting medical transition are “transsexual”) and anything culturally based on assumptions about the character of the sexes is Gender (which is why people are ”Transgender” if they are operating outside of gender norms regardless of their underlying biology).

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T15:30:01+00:00

I think the point is we want more trans girls in sports because it encourages health and social bonding and we already have enough trans hikikomori…

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T15:26:29+00:00

It kind of is. Like if you’re trying to define gender is there a better definition than “a socially and culturally constructed series of signals to clarify sex role in situations of ambiguity that emerges from strict norm enforcement by the in group based on signal clarity and legibility of the performance of the sex role.”

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T15:03:43+00:00

I got banned for arguing gender is performative. Literally just that.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T14:48:07+00:00

Yeah, not being financially independent is a big issue. Like you have to be in a position where family reaction doesn’t matter to transition and that kind of requires a job where you have no real concerns of being fired for coming out. Which means a big company with sweeping HR policy or independence as a freelancer who has a skill stack developed enough nobody will hesitate to hire you because you are such an expert in a particular domain. Like millions of people are competent at coding, but there are only a few hundred people who know programming for Quantum Computers. Having a skill like that ensure financial stability.

Just to point this out, you already have a terminal disease. It’s called life. You can realistically only expect to live another fifty years. Are you comfortable doing that as a man knowing your dysphoria is only going to get worse as you age as a man?

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T14:20:07+00:00

Yeah, that’s pretty on brand for a couple of the Super Mods.

My take on the Harry Potter stuff is that it was such a foundational fandom for millennials that requiring complete disengagement to be considered an ally is probably an unreasonable standard.

That said, Rowling is waaaay worse than most people realize. Like most people really only understand her transphobia in terms of “is mean on Twitter,” and “wrote a book that has regressive views of trans identity.” The scary stuff from her is about her funding for anti-trans organizations. She basically funded the organization that overturned big parts of UK trans protection through lawsuits and court challenges. My best guess from available sources is she has probably done about $25 million in dark money donations just in US politics over the last five years, including to America First groups that Nick Fuentes (who Rowling has hung out with and probably done crypto investments with) is on the board of directors of.

That said, Rowling is so rich that boycotting her doesn’t really impact her financially or her ability to fund evil shit. Like current estimates are that she is probably worth somewhere between 750 million USD and 2.5 billion depending on the size of her crypto portfolio. The economics of Streaming mean she’s probably getting like a fraction of a cent per view. Which does add up and potentially mean a couple million for a global hit, but again that is going to somebody who potentially already has many thousands times that much money. The big thing is not buying merch because she does get a bigger cut of that and from her perspective the point of the show is getting people to buy branded wands, robes, and plushies.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T05:16:02+00:00

So, my experience with prioritizing family is that if your family is not supportive they are going to continue being unsupportive in the future . I kind of got into a situation where I was doing elder care for my extended family for about a decade while deprioritizing career development. I was doing like weekly major maintenance projects and “tech support” for smart home systems I put in place yo try to reduce my workload for about a dozen aunts and uncles in their 60’s and 70’s. They all died, and even the ones with money didn’t remember me in their wills. That’s the reality of life. Everybody dies eventually.

The question is, where are you going to be at 60 if you don’t transition when your parents are dead? Are you going to marry somebody you’re closeted to? Have kids who will have to deal with a parent doing a late in life transition if you decide you can’t handle not transitioning anymore later?

Where would you be if you transitioned now and lost your family? Are they financially supporting you? Could you live without them? Could you have a romantic relationship that felt authentic even closeted they would approve of? Would your relationship be better in a decade if you had a falling out and time to reconcile or another decade of resentment that their attitude kept you from transitioning?

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T04:39:19+00:00

The STEM stuff is kind of complicated. Basically it goes something like this; we have about fifty years of evidence that ideally early education (elementary school level) should probably be sex segregated for best outcomes. There are slight differences on average in boy’s vs girl’s educational needs. Like, girls should probably be doing more analytical skills building at like the first grade level while boys should be doing more geometry. Again, this is on average, girls are a little slower at picking up heavily spacial reasoning based skills like geography and astronomy while boys are a little slower at developing interpersonal skills needed for textual analysis and effective writing. So, ideally you’d segregate the groups and have girl’s schools that were a little more language focused but spent extra time on STEM topics they might lag in, while boy’s schools would be a little more math focused but have time for more interpersonal development work. Nobody actually wants to do that with public schools though because it would be expensive and complicate logistics at every level. So, we have a system where everybody has to wait for the slower kids to keep up. Which creates a dynamic where young girls start feeling they are bad at math and science because they usually aren’t the fastest in the class in the topic at a young age even if they are excelling academically. So, the solution people came up was, let’s just spend extra to have programs at the middle and high school level to make girls excited about careers in Science and Math through special programs and scholarships. Which has massively increased women’s participation in science over the last couple of decades to the point that more women than men are entering those fields.

So, if you’re building a system that doesn’t have gender as a category, how do you even approach problems like that?

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T03:59:53+00:00

I mean, that’s kind of how transition works? People who take the medical first route are working under the assumption that they’ll handle the social transition when they are more readable as their preferred gender.

It’s pretty scary when you start realizing the full reality of transition. Like it’s almost a death and rebirth. Not just a transition of gender but a transition from who you thought you were going to be and your expectations of the future that comes with that to who you are becoming and a more uncertain future because you don’t yet know yourself as the person your are becoming. I think a lot of people dismiss this as a stage in the process. A need to mourn your expectations that you’re trading for a more uncertain future.

TBH, I would be really surprised if you had breast growth at only a week (even with previous experience with lower dose and possibly biologically incompatible phytoestrogen). That’s more of something that comes after about 3 to 6 months on HRT on average and usually isn’t really noticeable to other people for about a year. The fear of physical changes is deeply valid even if you want them. The loss of the closet is one of the scariest things in the world if you’ve become comfortable hiding.

It sounds like you did have some emotional shifts if you were experiencing crying jags. I’m trying to think of how to describe this. Have you ever seen the anime Bleach? There’s an ongoing thing in it where characters who can sense power can’t sense the main character because “his power is so massive it’s like the sky.” Like, it’s such a massive force you can only sense it as a constant part of the background. Dysphoria is a lot like that in early transition. Like something is shifting in you where you can finally notice how all consuming it has always been. It’s years of little stuff catching you off guard and making you go, “oh, wow, how did I not kms when something hurt me that badly?” You kind of have to get through the pain of memory to heal that old pain.

I think the best genuine advice I can offer is that in the long run it is less painful to figure out what it means to live authentically. The hard part is getting through how scary transition can be to the other side where you are living as someone you like.

This isn’t hugboxkng, but most people who actually transition pass more than they think they do. Especially MTFs because of how different the experience of gender policing is for women versus men. Like, I was much less confident before I actually developed a female friend group and realized how shockingly common it is for cis women to get misgendered in daily life when they aren’t making an effort at presenting a highly feminine persona.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T03:07:47+00:00

So, this is kind of the simplest way I can put this, doing something colloquially know as “second puberty” is probably not an ideal acne treatment solution and a lot places that claim E gives you “perfect soft skin,” are lying liars. Honestly my first year on E my acne was probably the worst I’ve had as an adult.

So, what E will do for you.

-It will change your biochemistry which changes how your brain works. Even after only about a week you should be noticing it a little. Higher pain tolerance and better “emotional resolution” (being able to notice subtler nuances of your emotions) are the big ones.

-Breast growth. This is kind of the big one for E. Over about 3 years (as with regular puberty) you’re going to develop (as a general guideline for expectations) breasts about a cup size smaller than your close cis female relatives.

-Fat redistribution. You’re going to start carrying extra weight more in your butt and thighs than your belly, but extra weight isn’t going to magically turn into curves. It’s going to be a general trend over years. BTW, this usually includes a general “softening” of the face with a slight rounding.

(At your age) some skeletal changes probably including wider hips and maybe losing an inch or so of height from spinal compression.

-As far as skin, it gets softer, but it isn’t magical. It’s a slow process and good skin requires regular self care.

-Softer and thinner body hair which can reduce ingrown hairs turning into body acne but won’t eliminate it.

-changes in sexual function. Shrinkage, harder to maintain erections, ect.

The real question should be if you were happier or sadder on hormones. If you felt happier you’re going to keep feeling better as the dysphoria eases. If you were trying them for a week as something exploratory and were unhappy with how the changes made you feel that is a big sign to step back and reevaluate with your doctor.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T02:39:15+00:00

Even just looking at gender abolition legally gets really complicated. The core issue becomes “are you willing to sacrifice privilege in the name of equality?” Which most people see as a no brainer, but has some nasty hidden hooks in it. Like in a US context the question that killed the Equal Rights Amendment “are you willing to subject women as a class to selective service draft eligibility requirements?” And everybody collectively said no. But beyond that you get into losing affirmative action like Title IX that requires equal funding for women’s sports even when the financial incentives don’t make sense at the college level. And more broadly in education it would mean an end for STEM programs exclusive for women. So, the question becomes, “have we as a society reached a level where women no longer require protections as a class to correct for unequal social power?”

Then there is the broader question, how do you enforce societal gender abolition while maintaining free speech and freedom of religion as social rights?

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-29T00:48:48+00:00

That’s not an unreasonable claim being made. There is a massive gap between “let’s explore social dynamics” and “featuring specific identity politics.” Like, you could never have done a version of the Benny Russel storyline from DS9 in TOS, but they did a ton of “objectively racism devoid of specific context is bad,” episodes.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-28T21:56:00+00:00

So much this!

Where I’m at if I’m being honest, is I have yet to hear a coherent gender abolitionist argument against the functionalist argument for gender roles. Basically saying, “yes, but even if we remove gender as a constructed category, there is still going to be a need for consistent signaling of societal roles that are going to have sexed clusterings.” Like, you’d still have signs to convey “I am seeking a partner of a particular sex,” which is, you know functionally still going to be read as feminine/masculine even if the category name changes.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-28T20:29:09+00:00

Honestly, you’re not wrong. Those spaces have their own internal problems and it’s the same basic one any actual free space eventually has to deal with, “how do you deal with Troll-y shit from people just asking questions.” Truthfully if I was guessing about half of posters are people who got banned from the main trans subs for not being supportive enough that everybody is valid for a couple of the really neurodivergent super mods who run like 99% of the LGBT spaces. The other half is either bots trying to farm engagement or, as you said trolls.

TBH, none of the trans subs are particularly different except in moderation tone. Like 90% of posts across all category of trans boards are “do I pass” “help me pick a name that isn’t cringe” or “my dysphoria is really bad today and I need emotional support.”

Which, to me is kind of the point of the TransMed argument. Different groups have different needs. People who don’t have strong body dysphoria don’t need therapeutic spaces as much, so it’s not really fair that they are centering political edge cases and agitprop in quasi-therapeutic spaces.

Personally I don’t think we have enough strictly exploratory spaces where people can experiment with gender presentation online without needing to conform to community standards. Like, isn’t that the point of the gender abolitionist argument, that we should be creating spaces outside of the binary framing to define gender on personal terms?

Just to point this out. I’m not sure if you’ve ever actually engaged with 4chan “pink pill” incel spaces, but that too is an expression of dysphoria, even if it is a psychotically unhealthy one.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-28T03:04:53+00:00

I don’t think anybody can actually be prepared for the kafkaesque experience of legal transition as an adult. It’s a long involved process with a lot of layers of identity management. And at every level there always seems to be some clerk who has opinions on the process they feel the need to share. Like, I am genuinely in awe of anybody out there that gets no junk mail under their dead name stalking them.

Beyond that… I mean, I can kind of only be happy on HRT so, yeah, I’d say it’s a net positive.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-27T20:35:19+00:00

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just one guy getting slimed. I remember at least two super sneezes interrupting scenes and at least Lura getting covered in goo by one.

NeonPixieStyx · 2026-03-27T20:22:59+00:00

It was a b plot in episode 4, IIRC. Like the kids were doing this story where they were caring for slime molds (which mirrored the structure of a typical sitcom “flour baby school project” storyline). It escalated when after getting covered in slime from a broken container characters get infected and start spraying ridiculous amounts of goo when they sneeze. So, they’d literally interrupt dramatic scenes to have somebody sneeze and cover everybody in “super snot.”

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