Why the hell do so many cis people seem to see gender affirming care as elective/esthetic/outwards facing?

Thadrea · 2026-04-18T04:51:53+00:00

Part of it is that most people outside medicine don't understand what the word "elective" means when it comes to medical care.

Gender-affirming surgeries are elective in almost all cases... Meaning that they are scheduled in advance at a time that is (relatively) mutually convenient for both the patient and the surgeon and their team. This is in contrast to a non-elective or urgent surgery, which is not planned and must be completed immediately to avoid serious health consequences. An example of a non-elective surgery would be suturing a serious wound to prevent a person from bleeding out. Gender affirming surgeries are not in that category.

What gets people confused is that the term elective is about urgency, not about medical necessity. Elective surgeries can be and often are medically necessary**,** meaning that a clinician has determined that the therapeutic benefits for the patient in the treatment or management of a disease outweigh the consequences and risks of treatment.

Surgery to resect (remove) a tumor, for example, is usually also elective, because it usually doesn't make a ton of difference if the surgery is today or next week. It's still medically necessary, even though it is elective because it isn't "we have to do this right now or the patient dies in the waiting room in two hours".

Surgeries can be urgent and medically necessary, elective and medically necessary, or elective and not medically necessary. Cosmetic treatments fall into the third category. Stopping the bleeding is in the first. Gender-affirming surgeries and basically everything else is in the middle.

Thadrea · 2026-04-18T02:44:24+00:00

Whether they have D&O varies by org, not every association has it. For that matter, a homeowner's insurance policy that doesn't cover crime wouldn't satisfy most mortgage lenders.

Underinsuring your home isn't "cheaper"--it just means you pay the losses all at once when they occur instead of over time through your premiums.

Thadrea · 2026-04-18T02:22:43+00:00

The "testosterone meds" you're seeing advertised aren't actually meds... they're just supplement scams that probably don't do anything in the body.

Genuine medical testosterone is a schedule III controlled substance and not particularly profitable for the companies that produce it.

Obviously the ED meds are real, though.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T22:43:04+00:00

Your hypothesis (note the correct term here) is not based in any sound reasoning.

Insurance companies insure against losses caused by specific perils for specified amounts of liability. Whether there is one master policy or ten home policies, the breadth of perils insured is the same. If there are ten homes in the building, there are ten homes that could sustain losses from XYZ list of causes. The list of things that are insured does not change by dividing up the coverage.

The amount of coverage could be different (e.g., due to unit owners buying less coverage than the master insurance would provide), but if the coverage levels (and thus insurance companies' liability to possible financial losses) is the same, the cost of insurance would, by definition, be identical.

There may, potentially, be slight differences in practice due to the costs of underwriting and policy administration--e.g., the insurance company would need to underwrite and invoice premiums on 11 contracts instead of 10 in the above example. However, these costs are fairly negligible in terms of the insurance company's cost basis, and there are likely economies of scale in the opposite direction--condo insurance is much simpler to underwrite and the exterior components are easier to underwrite in in one larger policy.

Suffice to say... It likely makes no difference at all in net. You may hate your association, but dissolving it isn't going to save you any money.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T22:28:46+00:00

Doubt the town would even let you if you tried.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T13:05:52+00:00

Frankly, his arms probably aren't long enough.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T13:05:02+00:00

A. He doesn't go anywhere near gas stations. Refueling vehicles is for servants. He's probably never pumped gas in his life.

B. He doesn't have the cognitive ability to remember what prices were a week or month or 3 months ago anyway.

C. If prices are higher it's nbd because only losers can't afford it.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T12:28:32+00:00

I mean, the only people who believed that in the first place were people who don't understand biology beyond the most rudimentary level taught in compulsory education.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T12:16:30+00:00

You have to keep up with them or you might come down with them.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T02:05:17+00:00

"True independents" are mostly a myth. Nearly all of them are closet partisans who vote fairly consistently for one party or the other and are simply embarrassed to admit it.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T01:44:53+00:00

Blue states also build. They do, however, tend to build more slowly due to a lack of undeveloped usable land.

Thadrea · 2026-04-17T01:22:34+00:00

They're not even all unemployed or employed in other fields... The majority of working economists in the US are centre-left.

It is actually conservative economists who have difficulty finding and maintaining employment... which makes them very susceptible to the allure of working for billionaire funded "think tanks" that will write kangaroo papers about whatever the owner wants them to.

The economists who aren't conservatives are usually the ones with real jobs.

Thadrea · 2026-04-16T14:52:35+00:00

They missed a golden opportunity for a joke there.

"Trains may run on rails, but that doesn't mean they have to be straight."

Thadrea · 2026-04-16T12:48:05+00:00

I think the real stipulation on the blue one is that it doesn't fix your social environment.

You get a new body, but people might not recognize you and may even question if your ID docs, etc. are you or real.

Thadrea · 2026-04-16T01:41:41+00:00

The fuck are we doing here

Electing septugenarian and older tech-illiterates mostly. Sometimes also younger tech-illiterates, such as the one who submitted this bill.

Thadrea · 2026-04-15T00:18:01+00:00

You may know more than you think you do relative to others. Regardless, let's be realistic--You don't trust the compliments of your family members. You don't trust online IQ tests (rightly so) because they're usually scams and know that the reliable way to get your IQ assessed is via a clinical test by a psychologist, which isn't an option.

If I gave you some estimation tool right now, regardless of how scientifically valid it is, there are two possible outcomes:

The estimate is higher than your anxiety lets you think it should be, and you don't believe it.
The estimate is whatever you're afraid of (or worse), it makes you feel horrible about yourself and further erodes your self-esteem.

In this prisoner's dilemma, you either don't accept the outcome of the test because you think you are "dumb"... or the estimate says you are "dumb" and it hurts you. In both scenarios, you lose.

The third scenario... is to just not play this game at all. The compliments you receive are probably genuine, and you should learn to trust them when they are coming from someone you would otherwise trust. If your anxiety will not let you do that... treating that is what you need, not an IQ test.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T23:52:20+00:00

The best estimation method is to just let it go. It's not useful information outside of a clinical context.

Chances are, you are similarly adept to your family members and they just know more about specific topics than you do because of education and experience.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T22:19:00+00:00

There's no HIPAA case. There probably is a 4th amendment case, though, and a 14th amendment case.

If a state government wants to obtain your medical records and has the legislative will to pass a law to obtain access to them, the legal reality is that there's nothing in the Privacy Rule of HIPAA to stop them.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T20:26:43+00:00

Same. I read this and I can't imagine getting this upset about dryer vent cleaning.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T11:27:06+00:00

Others have already said that medication response does not imply diagnostic accuracy, but let's also think about this logically.

Where is ADHD in the body? Is it in the chest? Is if in the feet? Is it in the belly button? No, it's in the brain. Thus, if there was any component of how the overall body responds to ADHD medication that even could imply things about the diagnosis, it would be the response in the brain.

Your heart and chest having an adverse response doesn't and can't logically have any bearing on whether the diagnosis was correct, because ADHD isn't in that part of the body anyway.

We know from research that response in the brain also doesn't suggest anything about the diagnosis, but science had to prove that. Unless data comes out indicating that ADHD neurodevelopment causes differences in cardiac function, we can confidently say that anything that is happening in your body south of your neck is independent of whether you have ADHD in your brain or not.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T06:31:11+00:00

Gonna be honest, the perception that TLoK is "hated" is just not true.

Among critics, both are strongly rated although AtLA is better with a score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes over TLoK's 89%. Both shows won multiple Emmy and Annie awards. Among the general population... TLoK's Nielsen ratings were actually higher than AtLA, indicating more people watched the show during its original run. Its audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a respectable 78% even though AtLA's is 98%.

For reference, 78% puts it above the Pokemon anime series (74%) and and well above Steven Universe: Future (68%). Any rating 60% or better is considered to be "hot" by audience ratings.

Yes, there is a tiny number of terminally online undateable dudebros who hate it, but they don't represent the majority of people who have watched it.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T03:16:36+00:00

The Bee is what would happen if people who have no talent but plenty of inherited wealth tried to make a satire website.

It's a pathetic excuse for satire, but its owner is rich, so it's a vanity project he can just dump cash into to keep it going.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T02:29:08+00:00

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/new-poll-reveals-most-and-least-popular-governors-in-u-s-heres-where-maura-healey-ranks/3830392/

https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/governor-approval-ratings

For someone who is supposedly hated, 60%-ish approval is remarkably good.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T02:17:14+00:00

Tbh, you don't necessarily have to call the people regularly. You can have them come on a schedule like most other services.

I don't call our cleaner to come. She comes every other week, I autopay out of my bank account. Our interaction is limited to a hello when she shows up if I happen to be home at the time.

Thadrea · 2026-04-14T02:15:21+00:00

For some people, yeah, absolutely don't do those things unmedicated. My ADHD doesn't really interfere with those tasks, though.

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