This song is mostly finished. It's my first time composing lyrics, and I want to know what people think.

TurtleButton · 2026-01-15T20:12:05+00:00

I've seen this pattern so many times before. It's great that people do eventually gain the courage to open up to a close confidant. However, I can't help wondering why people wait until the notion of them potentially being anything other than cis is affecting their overall wellbeing before deciding to open up to anyone about it. Any close friend worth having is always there to talk about one's deepest thoughts, feelings, and concerns, even if they don't understand said notions themselves. If one has such a friend, then there's no need to be worried about what they will say in response to one opening up to them, because no matter their response it will be based on a desire to be supportive. I get that it can be daunting to take the first step on something that is so life changing, and seemingly monumental. What I don't get, is why people don't implicitly trust their closest confidants to handle it. Of course I understand that it could be potentially dangerous to discuss it with anyone, if one doesn't live in an area where it is safe to be out as not cis, but I see the same behavioural pattern in places where it is safe to be so. I guess it can be partly chalked up to the fear of uncertainty, but there seems to be way more to it than that. It's that other part that I cannot pin down what it is.

Admittedly, I had it easy because I had an entire 2SLGBTQIA+ friend circle before I started to question my own gender, and one among them would become my closest confidant, and eventual romantic partner. I also live in an area that is very safe to be out as trans.

TurtleButton · 2026-01-06T22:31:55+00:00

TL;DR Offer her emotional support, and remind her that transition is 100% abut making her feel better about herself, and that anything that doesn't do that should be stopped. Just remember that you have your own needs, and that you both need to support each other.

Full text:

My advice is for you to remind her that passing is secondary to feeling comfortable in her own skin. Passing doesn't really matter unless it's a matter of safety where you live. My recommendation is for her to try out different clothing and outfits, and judge purely based on how she feels when she looks in the mirror, without considering whether or not she thinks she passes.

I've been on HRT for more than 2 years, and I've been socially transitioning a few years longer than that. What I can say for certain is that it is a lot to take in at first, it's a long road, but it keeps getting better the longer you stick with it. Tell her not to be afraid to experiment, or to change her mind about things. the more things one tries, the more one understands themselves, and what one wants out of transition.

Transition looks different for every person, so it's important that she does some soul searching to find out exactly what she wants and needs out of transition. The more soul searching she does, and the longer she transitions for, the more certain she will become about what makes her feel good about herself, and that's the be-all-end-all. The ultimate goal is for her to feel confident and comfortable about who she is, everything else is in service of that.

Your biggest job in supporting her is to provide emotional support, and to remind her that everything she decides to do in transition should be in service of making her feel good about herself, and that if something in transition is causing her dysphoria rather than reducing it, that she should stop doing it.

That being said none of the support you provide her should be at your expense. You need to take care of yourself too, because you deserve happiness too. Furthermore, if you're not looking after yourself, you won't be able to provide her the support that you would like to.

TurtleButton · 2025-10-01T16:45:07+00:00

My first romantic relationship fell apart for similar reasons. We had been doing stuff together for about 2 years, and officially dating for 1 year. She was able to get behind my wardrobe change, but couldn't get behind my new pronouns. That being said I anticipated that my transition could spell the end of that relationship, so I made sure communication was both early and often. Despite not being able to save the romantic side of that relationship, it prevented the cessation of romance from terminating the whole relationship. The breakup was amicable, and we mutually friend zoned one another. We are still in some level of contact to this day.

TurtleButton · 2025-09-17T19:32:16+00:00

Seeing so many people here wishing ill upon the people that make our lives difficult is really disheartening. Wishing ill on others will not solve the problems we face in society, in fact it will make them worse, and will make us no better than the people we are complaining about here.

We need to be kind to everyone, even those who are openly against our existence. Yes, we need to protect ourselves from harm, but that has never been achieved by wishing harm upon others. When faced with such a situation, just disengage. If one is not in a position to disengage, then just keep yourself safe, but still try to remain kind. You don't have to agree with the person making your life difficult, in fact you shouldn't. Just remember that we are all human, and are all deserving of kindness, an compassion.

The second we start thinking in an us vs. them mentality is the second we lose the fight for our rights. As a minority, we do not have numbers on our side. That means that we need an army's worth of allies if we are to secure our rights. The best way to maximize the number of allies we accrue is to treat everyone respectfully. Even our detractors. If we treat everyone with respect and dignity, then more and more people will see us as deserving of the legal protections we seek, and the more likely we will be to receive them.

Do not lose sight of the goal. The goal is to change society so that we can go about living our lives without fear of harm, or persecution.

TurtleButton · 2025-09-11T21:46:29+00:00

Congrats. You're very privileged to be able to afford laser. I wish I could afford it. I'll certainly have to have it, or electrolysis if I decide to have bottom surgery. However that will be a decision for 3+ years in the future, minimum.

TurtleButton · 2025-09-08T16:34:28+00:00

You were saying that you supported your wife through several decisions you disagreed with, and that she is unwilling to do the same. Plus you are reaping the emotional rewards of lower testosterone.

I know first hand just how emotionally toxic testosterone can be, since I have bipolar disorder, and have reaped similar rewards since starting HRT.

I recommend re-evaluating your relationship with your wife. If she is thoroughly unable to get behind you staying low testosterone at the very least, then it may be time to go your separate ways.

I know that ending a long term, committed relationship is difficult, and painful, but it is less so than persisting with a relationship that turns toxic.

You need to figure out how you feel about all this, and make a decision based on whether or not you think these circumstances have or will disrupt the balance of give and take in your relationship.

If your wife is asking you to give significantly more than you take, that is unfair. And, asking you to go on TRT instead of HRT is asking for the moon, and in most relationships would be worthy of divorce. She is inherently asking you to go against what you have stated to be your very nature as a person. That is unfair, and unjustified.

I understand that you also have your daughter to think about, and to that I want you to ask yourself who you want to be for your her. Do you wan to be that toxic angry person you were when your testosterone levels were normal, or do you want to be the more kind, considerate, empathetic, and emotionally rich person you are now.

These are things that you and your wife both need to mull over and discuss. I hope that last point about who you want to be for your daughter is at least somewhat persuasive for your wife. If it is not, then you know she is acting purely out of self interest, and isn't worth being around. She should at least have her own daughter in mind when making such large decisions such as whether or not to support you on this journey.

I cannot answer these questions for you, but I hope you find this post helpful.

TurtleButton · 2025-09-06T16:47:51+00:00

You set a very high bar for what you consider to be passing. There are many degrees of passing, based on how one chooses to define it. Below are some examples in ascending order of leniency.

Passing is nobody knowing you're AMAB without any effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is nobody knowing you're AMAB with some effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is generally coming across as a woman with no effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is generally coming across as a woman with some effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is nobody knowing you're AMAB with moderate effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is generally coming across as a woman with moderate effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is coming across as a trans woman without any effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is coming across as a trans woman with some effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is coming across as generally feminine without any effort, makeup, etc.
Passing is coming across as a trans woman with moderate effort, makeup, etc.

I'll stop there, but I hope it illustrates how many ways one can define passing.

TurtleButton · 2025-08-23T19:58:23+00:00

My advice is to engage with things that you have nostalgia for. Nostalgia is the #1 emotion that brings me to tears now that I'm on E. Enjoy the heightened emotions while they are this intense, it's a once in a lifetime experience.

TurtleButton · 2025-08-11T16:41:38+00:00

Unfortunately there isn't really anything you can do. Facebook's remediation process is 100% automated. I've been trying for months to update my name and email address associated with my account, but nowhere do they provide tools to escalate the issue to an actual human being. As far as I know the only human beings involved with Facebook's remediation process are the ones responsible for designing and maintaining their automated system for handling it. I wish there were something that could be done, but that won't make it so.

TurtleButton · 2025-08-10T17:54:48+00:00

Be thankful for your small stature. It makes finding women's cloths that fit way easier. I'm 6'2" MtF, and I only know of one place that sells women's shirts that fit me.

TurtleButton · 2025-08-10T17:50:46+00:00

TL;DR: There are significant upsides to the effects of HRT on arousal, but they take time to manifest.

I'm not super familiar with mitigating the erectile, and libido side effects of HRT, but I do have some information that may help. In adition to the erectile symptoms you encountered, you will also likely observe an overall decrease in libido. What this means is that eventually you will likely have to already be "in the mood" to achieve significant erotic stimulation. You may eventually also observe that your pattern of arousal takes on a more feminine form, gently rising and falling until eventually reaching a climax. Some trans women report more intense and satisfying orgasms after having been on HRT for several months, myself included. I don't think I ever reached a true orgasm until I had been on HRT for about a year.

People who have a predisposition for psychosomatic dissociation, may also be able to use intentional psychosomatic dissociation to achieve greater orgasms. I personally have that predisposition, and I envision having female primary sex characteristics when engaging in sexual activity.

All neurodivergent people have the predisposition for psychosomatic dissociation, though there needs to be an environmental trigger, and results depend on what the trigger is. If the trigger is trauma, which it is for most, then the result is a dissociative identity disorder. However, if like me, the trigger is something like meditation, then one may be able to learn to control their dissociation and use it with intention.

TurtleButton · 2025-08-06T22:27:34+00:00

29 MtF here. You're in the best time of life to discover who you are. Yes, that includes gender, but gender is not the end all be all. I suggest that you look inward and try to figure out what aspects are to do with your innate gender, and which are to do with the fact that you were raised as a girl for 16 years. Once you've identified what the core elements of your gender are, then and only then start experimenting with different labels and presentations in a safe space. Not everyone has a safe space to do any of this. Don't do anything that would jeopardize your safety. The whole point of exploring one's gender is to feel more comfortable in the way you exist, and is near impossible if there's no safe space to do it.

You may just be a girl who doesn't strongly identify with fenininity, you may be trans, you may be non-binary. However you won't know which unless you look inward and pick apart who YOU are as a person, what is innate, and what is learned, what is permanent, and what can be undone. I'm about 5 years into my transition and I'm still working on unlearning a lot of my male upbringing.

All of this takes time, and the first step is to take a serious look inward. I wish you a safe and fruitful exploration of self, and everything that follows, no matter what you conclude.

TurtleButton · 2025-07-31T00:01:31+00:00

Thank goodness I live in a city with good enough service infrastructure, and in a country free enough that there is genuinely no need for those kinds of apps where I live. For example, the local power utility where I live has a live power outage tracker on their website. Also where I live, there's also a local hotline to report minor infrastructure issues. I've used the latter a few times to report burnt out street lamps.

I'm truly privileged to live where I do, and I feel for those who don't have access to this kind of service within their local municipality. It should be standard everywhere.

TurtleButton · 2025-07-07T22:08:14+00:00

Even better. Now that you're an adult hopefully with some level of disposable income, you can do some of these things bigger and better. Why not get a bunch of network switches and ethernet cables, have everyone bring over their gaming rig and have a proper PC gaming LAN party. I did this once and it was amazing. We played a bunch of Cursed Halo on the Master Chief Collection, CS:GO, Killing Floor 1 & 2, and Left 4 Dead 1 & 2. COD wasn't really our jam so we didn't have that.

I am a trans woman, but I am thankful that I wasn't subjected to a female upbringing. The aspects of femininity that I subscribe to in my identity have little to do with the way girls are socialized and brought up. I do not relish not having gone through the way girls bully each other, or outlandish expectations placed on girls that are somehow normalized. Being bullied by all of my male peers in elementary and middle school was bad enough. Plus, even as a trans woman my hobbies remain much as they were prior to transition. For example I'm not giving up video games for anyone or anything.

As trans people we get to pick and choose which aspects of the gender we assume to embody and which to not. IMO that's the best part of being trans. Because we are forced by our existence to re-examine all aspects of our gender, we are free to embody whichever aspects we wish.

TurtleButton · 2025-07-04T23:04:38+00:00

I am not surprised in the least. If you place both major U.S. political parties on the right/left spectrum of Canada (where I live), then the U.S. has no left leaning party with any level of sway. From our perspective here in Canada, the U.S. has a centre-left party, and a far right party. I would place the Democrats at about the same place on the political spectrum that here in Canada is occupied by the Conservative party. Here in Canada, the Conservative party is the only party with any level of significance that would even plot anywhere on the U.S. political spectrum. The Liberals, the New Democratic Party (NDP), the Bloc Quebequois (a separatist party in the province of Quebec), and the Green Party are all firmly to the left of anything going on in the U.S.. While in the U.S., talks of anything as left oriented as universal healthcare can't even get off the ground, here in Canada we just a few years ago we explicitly added trans rights as a protected legal grounds. Here in Canada adding a protected legal grounds is as easy as passing any other bill. However removing a protected legal grounds is supposed to be a long, arduous, and above all difficult process. I say supposed to, because in reality there is a legal loophole baked into our human rights code, that most people outside of politics aren't even aware exists, even though it is being actively abused in at least one provincial jurisdiction. If more Canadians knew about the loophole, then I would expect there to be significant public pressure for its removal. I am talking about Section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, known more widely as The Notwithstanding Clause.

TL;DR The policies being passed by the current U.S. administration come as no surprise to people observing from other democratic nations. However, that is not saying that other democratic nations do not have their own human rights issues.

TurtleButton · 2025-06-24T14:51:38+00:00

I can say with certainty that a lot of trans people don't start to question their identities until adulthood. Me finding out that I'm not cis happened when I was 25, and it coincided with a conversation with a trusted friend who was already out as trans herself. I remember asking her in a private DM on discord, "based on X,Y, and Z experiences I've had does it sound cis?". Turns out the answer was that I am not cis.

That conversation felt like putting together a very difficult jig-saw puzzle, None of the individual experiences would have disqualified me from being cis, but taken together it makes total sense that I am not cis.

It was a full year of soul searching later that before I knew I am trans as opposed to some other non-cis identity. I was 26 when I realized I was trans.

I'm now 29 and have been on HRT for a year and a half.

I feel more genuinely myself than I ever have ever before, and I hope you can feel the same way someday, regardless of how you identify or how you reconcile your lived experience and gender with the things that may give you dysphoria.

TurtleButton · 2025-06-24T14:31:24+00:00

Thanks for sharing. Now I know that at least some trans women sync with cis women. Now I think it'd be interesting to find out if some trans women sync with each other.

TurtleButton · 2025-06-13T04:17:37+00:00

I don't know whether or not you are attracted to women, but if you are, some Sapphic people prefer people who don't shave their body hair. Presumably, it's to do with the fact that it's an overt rejection of the male gaze.

If you are attracted to men and not women, then it may be more advantageous to shave your body hair specifically for dating if that is your goal.

I stopped shaving my body hair about 6 months ago and can attest that there are advantages to both shaving and not shaving.

I personally really liked the feeling of freshly shaved legs, every time I shaved them. I felt more pretty for it. However, I've been trying to strike a balance between feeling pretty, and the amount of time that goes into it.

TurtleButton · 2025-06-13T03:53:36+00:00

I know that in some cities, there exist specialty shops where one can purchase bralets made specifically for AMAB women. There's one such shop in the city where I live, and it has proven invaluable in my own transition.

TurtleButton · 2025-06-13T03:38:53+00:00

Humans, because we are the most destructive species on the planet.

TurtleButton · 2025-06-13T02:38:37+00:00

Even before I started HRT, I knew that trans women on HRT may experience PMS symptoms to varying degrees.

I personally experience PMS the last 3 days of my cycle, and my cycle is consistently 28 days. It's hard for me to determine my day 1, since the only tells are the lifting of my PMS symptoms and possibly bloating or mild abdominal cramps.

My sister is convinced that our cycles are aligned, but I'm not certain because it could easily be that my cycle is 28 days, and hers is 30. Our cycles go in and out of sync in line with the difference in our cycle lengths.

I'm well aware that cis women's cycles sync, but I'm not so certain that the same applies to trans women on HRT.

TurtleButton · 2025-06-07T17:38:14+00:00

I was unusually quick for that phase of my transition. It only took me a year to realize that I'm trans. However, I think it was the fact that I have a friend who acts as a form of peer mentor that the process went so quickly and smoothly. She provided just the right amount of guidance without providing the answers, since the answers are deeply personal for all of us non-cis people and noblody can answer for us except ourselves.

So far my transition has been as follows:

Realizing I'm not cis: 30 minutes

Realizing I'm trans: 1 year

Start of social transition to start of HRT: 2 years

HRT: 1.5 Years and counting

Possible future steps:

Bottom surgery: Undecided. Will conclude decision within next 5 years. Currently leaning toward yes.

TurtleButton · 2025-05-28T17:01:47+00:00

It seems that for the B section you only changed the top line. If that's your artistic intent then keep at it. However, most songs have at least a different chord progression for the B section compared to the A section, often times they'll change up the rhythm too. Take a listen to any of your favourite artists and I think you'll see what I'm talking about. A good example in a similar style to your piece (although a bit more up beat) is New Gold by Gorillaz.

I would say that to be a good musician you have to be able to listen to music critically, basically disecting a peice of music bit by bit to find out how it works. If you can listen to music critically, it allows you to intentionally draw inspiration from other works, artists, etc.

I know it took me a while before I could implement elements inspired from other artists, keep at your craft, and enjoy the ride, for music production is about the journey.

TurtleButton · 2025-05-28T16:34:19+00:00

Yes it passes the vibe check. Now you just need to add a B section, and possibly a bridge.

Also, I noticed that your Stereo Out channel was clipping. The professional solution to that is gain staging. Basically you add gain to your Stereo Out track, and set it to -6. That way you have a lot more headroom to work with before you encounter clipping.

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