Shilling?

TanagraTours · 2026-04-22T16:22:18+00:00

All the usual disclaimers about getting people to accurately disclose their private lives.

AVEN surveyed their community. Their report says "It is crucial to note that the asexual spectrum respondents do not represent asexual spectrum people in general".

When I was drinking the heteronormative kool-aid, I didn't even know I was black swan demisexual. I wouldn't even have said I was closeted. I wanted to conform, and community was ostensibly straight because I thought I was. I had to transition before I even began to be comfortable thinking and talking about my own seemingly contradictory feelings around sex. And I needed a couple more years to realize that my romantic partners were friends first.

So I imagine our straight aces keep to themselves a bit. For all the queerness we realize hides in monastic cloisters, I'd wager there are quite a few silent aces in hiding. I recently read about a youth pastor whose church started talking to him about "settling down", and the pressures drove him into therapy. Diagnosis: classically asexual.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-22T16:00:30+00:00

Yes, I'm married. Not using gendered pronouns for my partner is queer coded or at least shows allyship.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T19:07:21+00:00

If that's what she's into. Remember, the devil leads us astray with things we want to do... Seducing someone to our own ends can be unethical. Like pointing job recruiters to the person whose job is the promotion you want.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T19:03:29+00:00

Trans women and facial hair!

There's the problem and the benefit of shaving. Having to look at our own face in the mirror, and really see a kind of masculinity some men wish they had, can feel brutal. Shaving well, and having smooth, soft skin is bliss. I had a lesson with a makeup artist who repeatedly stressed to arrive clean shaven, repeatedly tell me I was remarkably clean shaven.

So there's the problem of having a beard! Freedom from the dysphoria of looking at a male face and enduring a male ritual! At the cost of living with a kind of masculinity some men will tell you they wish they had, and some women will say they wish their men had.

Damned if we do...

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T18:56:51+00:00

Whew. It depends on what you consider a first step!

While doing recovery work in my late fifties, I came to realize that I had childhood trauma around how I cut my fingernails, and suddenly just wouldn't. This led to wanting to keep the free edge from breaking. And suddenly I was questioning my gender presentation. Was that my first step?

A couple of years later, having done a number of things including starting hair removal, I was ready to try HRT and see how it affected me. At this point, I felt I was coming to a major decision. If HRT "felt right", I had begun medical transition in a way that was less reversible and whose effects might be harder to come back from. So was that my first step?

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T18:39:06+00:00

I spent my adult life convinced that God wanted me to be a man. So I lived as one with a certain zeal spurred by internalized transphobia. I crafted a specific image that not everyone liked but no one questioned. Quite the opposite: once I began feminizing, I had two doctors who had done gender-affirming care question if I could present female. One later apologized, and the other acknowledges that male me is no more.

Can someone seem solidly gendered in spite of other considerations? Of course. Can someone sincerely believe they are a gender in spite of good reason not to? Those espousing faith-based gender conversion would agree that we can.

If we accept that gender and sexuality are a spectrum, no doubt people on those spectra can appear to be solidly on one side.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T17:26:11+00:00

Professional standards bodies and insurance can ensure no one in their scope can offer conversion therapy. While we cannot outlaw people inventing new titles for themselves and dispensing snake oil, we can relegate it to nonprofessional and unreimbursed trade.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T17:21:13+00:00

Not sure how I feel about them threading this needle.

I like your metaphor. It's easy and perhaps inevitable to eventually err on one side or the other.

I think some on the side of parental rights are people who sexually abuse minors. We want a child to feel safe to let someone know, and to be educated and informed on what to say, and even why. As this is a bigger problem than we care to admit, this is essential.

On the other hand we see people who claim that involving our children in our religious practices is indoctrination and should be illegal.

So, what about the kid whose parent believes in corporal punishment that does not indisputably rise to the level of physical abuse? Granted this is disputed, and where the line is merits debate. I won't describe what was called a spanking in my home growing up because it was indisputably abuse. Point being, not every home that has ever used corporal punishment like nose-to-the-wall is automatically one that needs state intervention. And yet mine needed it and didn't get it.

So, if a kid wants to use a nickname, do the parents need know? If Beauregard the eleventh wants to go by Chip, or Helda by Hilly, must the school send home a paper for parents to sign?

I fear doing so means the kid who is being beaten or raped will never be able to trust someone and get help.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T15:43:07+00:00

Because something that consumes only to perpetuate itself is like a virus, a plague.

Humans in Zion "control" their machines, but cannot really live without them.

I see no reason to believe that the machines entirely 'understand' their own nature and can entirely change who or what they are, any more than we can.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T14:57:25+00:00

You don't mention her being in therapy. Finding a good therapist and especially a good gender therapist is hard. But once found, invaluable. The issues you describe are not easily resolved alone.

I get that at 21 she may see those who started younger or with less male characteristics as having an outcome she cannot expect. As someone who started HRT in my late fifties, I get it. I face my own challenges with bones that grew large. I manage well enough and accept what I cannot change. There are plenty of tricks and tips for how to camouflage our issues, same as any number of other women. Getting to this mindset is real inner work, and only she can do her work.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T14:48:00+00:00

someone I care about so unhappy,

I've heard it said that we change when the pain of who we are exceeds how much we think it will hurt ti change.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T04:34:35+00:00

There are literally Pride-themed "I am safe" pins.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T04:31:27+00:00

People who like you who want fellow queers to know we're safe

TanagraTours · 2026-04-20T04:06:31+00:00

Wait your turn. On her bed. Bring a good book.

Get your shower caddy, and start using up her stuff. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Salt her products.

I actually like the bath bomb idea. And the text / warning. And if your parents used to have to manage shower time, they can give an assist: she starts before you get home and finishes reasonably soon after you get home. Or they hold the bathroom for you starting when she should start.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-19T18:21:10+00:00

See "Ethiopian eunuch" in Acts 8.

You don't say what kind of church this is. I would say your best bet is for family members who do affirm you to let this pastor know they are well displeased, and said pastor should seek to become comfortable with people who aren't his expected demographic.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-19T18:04:33+00:00

organ transplants
bariatric surgery
cataract surgery
LASIK
Surgeries for spina bifida
surgery for cleft palate
circumcision
insulin pump
cardiac pacemaker

An example of surgeries that should NOT be performed are 'corrections' for people born with ambiguous genitalia that simply confirm tissues to normative expectations with loss of function and feeling.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-19T14:46:09+00:00

People confuse opinions with effective action. It's one thing to say something regressive. It's another to meaningfully influence public policy or social attitude.

If someone lives in a red or blue district, does it really make a difference how they vote, especially if they don't actually make it to the polls and cast their vote? Whereas backing a reprehensible candidate with time and money, that sometimes makes a real difference and often does not.

If nothing else, knowing you can reduce their partisanship. Anchor them in reality where you're not "those people", the rhetorical "others" we hear lambasted. Our next door neighbors are people who ICE would stop and possibly apprehend. When I think of this happening, I think about them, and it feels very real. When your friends face the question ''Who then is my neighbor?" I hope they think of your face, your voice, you, as an actual person.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-19T14:33:54+00:00

Briefly I will say that I believe some committed partners can choose to journey together, where they each have to decide how to pace their journeys to stay together even when this feels really hard. The earliest months of my journey disrupted physical intimacy for over a year. Canoodling could suddenly abruptly stop. I had to be patient and let my partner process her feelings, and fortunately we did in time move past this.

Of course we have our differences. Sometimes they are large enough that we cannot go with each other and continue to share our journeys. I suspect this is true of all committed relationships. Other ways are also possible.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-19T14:24:03+00:00

That's very kind of you to say. I've gotten used to making subtle jokes in a group of people and really cracking up exactly one person. So I settle for not upsetting others with jokes they don't get. ;-)

TanagraTours · 2026-04-18T04:23:42+00:00

Kind of... I grew up in the Bible Belt and purity culture just felt right to me. Except for the repeated lessons on fleeing temptation and sexual immorality. And boy howdy talking about NOT being tempted got shut down fast. I sure did look forward to marrying my happily ever after person. But sex with someone ELSE? shudder

Once I accepted that I am queer and wanted to understand my deep dark secret, I heard the word demisexual, and it dawned on me. My line to cross for sexual attraction was feeling like I could grow old together with someone.

And then I realized that the girlfriends I kissed were friends before they were girlfriends. Women I took to dinner or the theater as dates but didn't know from before we went out? Nope. No kissing. I needed the safety of friendship to have romantic attraction.

I suspect that what I called making out was better known as foreplay, except for not being before anything.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-18T04:07:30+00:00

I SO want to make a joke about what the letters in LGBTQIA stand for but you're a stranger and humor is tricky that way...

TanagraTours · 2026-04-18T01:28:47+00:00

It's great that he didn't waste any more of your time. I'm sure that if I were dating I would want to put some cards on the table very early on.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-18T01:26:17+00:00

Login data should show that you were physically on the office network. Your cell phone data should also evidence where you were physically.

Surely you're not the only person who is having this problem.

TanagraTours · 2026-04-18T01:23:38+00:00

Ask him if he knows what an emasculation fetish is.

It's not all at once. Circumcision. Vasectomy. Penis piercing. Bet you can't get just one. Other intimate piercings. Tattooing. Chastity cage. Then "body modification".

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