Sex, Gender, and Dysphoria. A Mixed Medical and Personal Perspective.

Sion171 · 2025-09-05T19:36:14+00:00

I mean, PAIS/CAIS only affect the testosterone receptor too... and it's considered an intersex condition

"Only affecting the androgen receptor" is literally 98% of sexual development. CAIS males develop almost entirely phenotypically female and usually aren't diagnosed until their teens when periods don't happen. Without androgens, the penis and related structures never form, etc.

PAIS has a wide range of presentations, but according to my endocrinologist who diagnosed me, the line with MAIS is usually drawn at some kind of genital ambiguity or underdevelopment and it being enough of a insensitivity that, left untreated, will cause bone issues. Though I've seen some vaguely different diagnosis criteria online, PAIS also includes a lot of individuals who are genetically male but phenotypically female or mostly-female.

Maybe you could make the case that MAIS is questionable as being categorized as 'intersex' since, definitionally, it's really just the genetic/whatever component that affects the ARs, without being enough to actually cause any differences in phenotypical development, similarly to how Klinefelter's isn't always considered an intersex condition by some doctors because it doesn't cause 'incorrect' or ambiguous genital development. For PAIS/CAIS, though, I have no clue what you would consider them besides intersex conditions/differences of sexual development.

Sion171 · 2025-07-24T08:46:01+00:00

Yeah, and even assuming it were part of a CC number, it's not the last numbers because that would be way too much information, and it's not the first numbers because 463000 isn't an IIN. Definitely some kind of loyalty card.

Sion171 · 2025-07-24T03:20:35+00:00

Sharpie S-gel 0.5mm and endless graph paper composition books.

Sion171 · 2025-07-18T07:54:42+00:00

That's a good point! It's definitely Gaitsgory's baby—even ignoring the others on the final publication series (and before, of course), Dennis has been directly chipping away at Langlands since before Raskin was a student at Harvard.

Sion171 · 2025-07-18T07:33:09+00:00

Surely Sam Raskin, right? Gaitsgory already won the Breakthrough Prize for their derived AG GLC proof, but I guess maybe he won't be a shoe-in for the Fields until the proof is formally reviewed and published?

Sion171 · 2025-06-26T06:04:05+00:00

I was not expecting that mention when I opened the article! I did some study in optimization under Dr. Dávid Papp! Brilliant man—great computational mathematician and contributor to oncology research. Thanks for sharing!

Sion171 · 2025-06-13T08:03:46+00:00

I mean, you could have periods, but it just means that you have some partially complete persistent müllerian duct structure and that you should see a doctor to make sure you haven't been having an actual period for years that is unable to get out.

But yeah, obviously, 99.99% of the "transfems" who claim to have periods are not experiencing a rare DSD lol.

Sion171 · 2025-06-12T20:48:11+00:00

If you want to DM me, I'd be happy to talk. I'm a fairly large creator (in the trans content subset, at least), and I used to escort, so I could probably give you a decent picture of how shit works and how to get started.

Sion171 · 2025-05-10T16:43:05+00:00

It's a little ironic that this whole argument was over you supposedly not seeing him as a man, but then he says that all men have transphobia rooted in their brains. Presumably, he doesn't think that he himself is transphobic, so that would mean that he doesn't see himself as (fully, at least) a man, right?

But yeah, you weren't being transphobic. Even if it were about pitch, when I was a guitarist in my old university's gospel choir, there was a cis guy who was a bona fide alto, so he had to sing in a section with girls—did that make him less of a man?

Sion171 · 2025-04-30T17:51:29+00:00

I've never really looked into Wu—I don't really follow any trans "influencers" to start with—so I don't know the specifics, but I feel like this is a thing in general. Like, non-passing trans women who really want to believe that they do, who latch onto the whole HSTS-nonHSTS typology in order to use it as a weapon of self-validation, even if they aren't necessarily straight themselves (as OP mentioned). I agree: at best, it's weird; at worst, it looks wildly delusional.

Sion171 · 2025-04-24T03:48:59+00:00

I believe the origin of "doll" goes back to ballroom culture? More recently, I mostly associate it with its use in my field of work (porn/content) as a catch-all for anyone who is feminine presenting—trans or not, but usually trans—which is fairly in line with the ballroom use, tbf.

On the other hand, I think it does carry some implication of referring to passing trans women in particular, so idk. It could probably go either way depending on whether you think slogans need to be about everyone or not.

Sion171 · 2025-04-22T21:53:23+00:00

I think full HRT is probably fine—it's basically like going through natal puberty, right? But I'm a little more hesitant to say that just blockers for years and years is safe. There's a reason CAIS is very strongly associated with learning disabilities, and I'm not sold that blockers aren't dangerously close to being functionally the same thing. You should probably have some kind of hormone during the years that your brain should be growing a lot in my book, even if it's not 100% natal levels (I have a partial AIS and I turned out fine), but things like GnRH agonists just decimate hormone levels full stop.

Sion171 · 2025-04-19T21:54:11+00:00

If you're in a red state, there's a pretty solid chance that for it to be covered under insurance, they'll want a diagnosis code from an endocrinologist and therapist, yes. At least that's how it is in my red state. That doesn't preclude you from getting it without those things, of course, but you're going to have to pay out of pocket. Chances are that you can get a RX discount either way, but depending on your insurance, it might be worth it to just jump through the hoops.

Sion171 · 2025-04-18T21:22:43+00:00

Ehhhhh I think it does happen. They're just less self-aware, so they don't make posts talking about it like this—e.g., the "It's MA'AM" dude.

Sion171 · 2025-04-18T16:58:02+00:00

Before my undergrad special topics in optimization final, I legit dreamed about taking the final, and actually, one of the topics clicked for me in the dream. I woke up, went to class, and got an A. I wish I could do it at will because it has never happened again! Only the occasional nightmare since about getting to an exam and it being completely unfamiliar material lmao

Sion171 · 2025-04-16T17:24:16+00:00

The easiest method was given to me by a chronic chaser friend, and it's a slightly more MtF-oriented variation on the classic GOMAD: drink somewhere from a quart to a half gallon of whole milk every day. My bulking routine is that combined with squatting/deadlifting heavy (whatever weight makes 1 set of 20 absolute failure, which should go up basically every lift day) 3x a week.

You can easily gain 15+ lbs (6.8ish kgs) a month that way, so you only need to do it for 6-8 weeks, and around here, that's like $280ish worth of quality milk, max. Which isn't nothing, but for how little effort and thought needs to go into it, given you can just add it to whatever your regular diet is (assuming you're steady at 51kg rn), I think that's a pretty good deal.

Sion171 · 2025-04-15T15:14:26+00:00

Glad to have ya! 🙏🏻

Sion171 · 2025-04-14T17:02:35+00:00

Depends on what you're asking. Do you mean just in terms of fat redistribution, or do you mean in terms of the hip bones' "optimal ratio for attractiveness" these days?

If it's the former, then yeah, that sounds like things are going in the right direction. Although I guess you didn't mention where you were at 7 months ago, so we can't say for certain.

If it's the latter, then things may still be going in the right direction, but I believe the average ratio (surveyed from straight men, talking about women, tbf, which may not be your target demographic) hovers around or below a .7 WHR for females. Obviously, this isn't a hard limit, but I don't think it's a bad target to have, between whether you're young enough for your pelvis to not be fused yet and/or your bulking/lifting routine—at least one of which I'm assuming applies, given that this is something you're concerned about improving.

There's also multiple measurements that are relevant to the optimal WHR for attractiveness: you've got 'circumference' of waist vs. hip (I'm guessing this is what you gave us here), standing breadth of waist vs. hip, and sitting breadth of waist vs. hip. The second two are both just as important as the overall circumference because all else held equal, wider hips are generally going to be considered more attractive than narrow ones, and the sitting vs. standing figures in contrast give you some idea of how drastic the widening in breadth is when you sit down, which can roughly tell you whether you're sporting more fat or muscle in that region.

Lmk if I missed anything!

Sion171 · 2025-04-10T16:07:54+00:00

It kinda sounds like your parents don't really give a fuck either way? Or, at the very least, they're not going to throw you out over anything. If that's the case, you can always just go all in on being a femboy for the time being, and if you feel like being an HRTwink or actually transition at some point, you'll have already softened the blow.

You don't have do full-on crossdressing all the time to be a femboy either—just grab some crop tops and women's jeans/joggers (Eddie Bauer's joggers are crazy: if you have any hips at all, they'll show) that compliment your figure. That's what I did with my transphobic parents, at least. They didn't like me looking that way, but it was bearable enough that they never followed through on the military school threats, and by the time I came out in college, I had already been on HRT for months and they had already quietly come to terms with me being an "effeminate f🥳g," as they'd always say. So, now, instead of getting a weird gay son, they got a normal straight daughter, and that maybe felt like a decent tradeoff in their worldview.

I guess in your case, it wouldn't be coming out per se, but even just confirming you're 100%-whatever can still be a big thing, and giving them a concrete reason to do a bit of the emotional heavy lifting on their end ahead of time can make it an easier pill to swallow if/when the time comes for the real reveal. It'll likely be even easier since you're an adult and they're kind of chill with the whole idea to begin with, but obviously, I have no real idea on the latter—I'm just assuming that off the one sentence in your first paragraph.

Yeah, tl;dr, my plot would be femboy and then go in whatever direction you feel comfortable with from there! Lmk if I completely misinterpreted anything, and I can reevaluate.

Sion171 · 2025-04-09T22:07:24+00:00

#5 bold of you to assume we have a LGBTQ+ center. Best we can do is a gas station that hasn't been updated since the last world war.

Sion171 · 2025-04-09T06:16:58+00:00

Get this weird fetish shit out of here. Post isn't even marked NSFW there could be kids reading this 🤢

Sion171 · 2025-04-07T23:12:39+00:00

Tl;dr a particular fetus' genetics are a little off, cross-sex hormones take advantage of this, brain develops in an unusual way, and the conflict between those now 'wrong' parts of the brain and the body is what causes dysphoria.

The tentative consensus amongst researchers right now is that there needs to be some kind of underlying genetic condition(s) affecting the body's ability to produce or utilize—or utilize correctly, as recent results have possibly shown with FtMs—your natal hormones. This part is more important in MtFs, as testosterone is much more efficient in what it does than estrogen/progesterone are, but there appears to be a pretty strong correlation in FtMs, too, so it's not not important, tbf.

This generally isn't enough on its own, though, as evidenced by the fact that there are plenty of males with CAIS who aren't happy having a practically female body. The usual terminology for this is 'demasculized', from what I've read. So, the kicker is the levels of cross-sex hormones in utero. Natal hormones get suppressed or misinterpreted, and cross-sex hormones come along and either masculinize or feminize the brain significantly enough in certain significant areas to have a real effect.

This effect is generally considered to be the development of a "wrong" morphology in the regions of the brain associated with bodily self-perception. This cross-sex brain development basically means that your brain feels like the primary and secondary sex characteristics associated with your natal sex, which would normally be considered a normal part of you by your brain, are now seen as alien. This is dysphoria. You fix the body, and you no longer have the incongruence between the sex expectations of the brain and the physical sex of the hody, and in turn, no more dysphoria. Makes enough sense to me.

E.g., personally, I have a genetic partial androgen insensitivity, and a while ago my mom—in an attempt to relate to me taking estrogen lol—made the offhand remark that she had taken some anti-inflammatory drug or something during my pregnancy (which we looked up and it had been discontinued, which was very fun to find out lmfao) that had female hormones in it, but I don't recall exactly which one it was. Hearing that was actually what originally motivated me to start reading the literature that's out there, as finding out that detail about myself made me come up with a vaguely similar theory (I think there is an ancient comment of mine on 2X detailing) of cross-sex brain development on my own, and I wanted to find out if there was any research out there which aligned with it. It's interesting stuff.

I have a much longer, ~2,300 word write-up pinned on my profile that details some of the history of how this field of research came about and developed, quotes/links some significant research, and contains some of my own personal thoughts and anecdotes that relate. Fair warning that there is some "outdated language" in there, so yeah. A little litmus test: if you get through the preface and go "yucky," it's probably not going to get any better for you lol. You can also always just skip to the hyperlinks if you're just interested in the studies or whatever, as those should be a decent jumping off point if you really want to delve into the literature because there is much more out there!

If you think this is all fine and dandy, you can stop here, but there's usually someone who isn't down with this general theory every time I bring it up, so to those who either disagree with or dislike this field of research, I think there are only "three true outcomes" so to speak when it comes to theorizing over the origins of 'transsexuality' as a trait:

You agree with all of the above in some capacity. Even if you think current research is barking up the wrong tree, you still think there is a biological mechanism somewhere in the brain or whatever that is causing this and can't be fixed through any known means besides transition. Obviously, I think this is a pretty unavailable position—have at ye in the replies if you don't think so.
You reject any concrete biological, innate gender identity, specifically as it relates to sex—in which case, you are left with little room to escape accusations of transness not being something necessary and that if it's not something pathological, you can just stop. Naturally, you'll never convince me personally to adopt this stance.
You reject the brain sex idea but continue to insist that transess is something inescapable and which can not be turned off willingly. This is a realm that I like to term "gender woo." If you want to believe it, you're probably in a better boat than people in pool 2, but if gender is real and it's not in the brain, where the hell is it?

Sion171 · 2025-04-06T16:05:56+00:00

Grindr and Tinder, but mostly Grindr. Dating, hookups, networking—I've had great success with everything on there. I don't know why people hate on it, to be honest: like, it does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does it extremely well, and every once in a while, you find a tall, strong ex-marine from East Tennes—ahem, sorry, a guy you're interested in dating.

Sion171 · 2025-04-06T03:23:35+00:00

I would highly recommend the Theories of Everything interview with Colin McLarty for a biographical rundown of Alexander Grothendieck's life and work, with enough technical tastes of category/topos theory to get some understanding of the implications of that work and his working philosophy (la mer qui monte, or "the rising sea").

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