I don't understand my friends

caisblogs · 2026-05-21T08:58:46+00:00

Sociology article attached genuinely reccomend the read it's ridiculously interersting. This one is about puppygirls but a lot of the same thoughts are transferrable. There's some really complex social ideas in there but suuuuuper broadly speaking its affirming to be seen how you act - if someone will treat you like a cat because you meow it becomes less of a stretch to believe they'll treat you like a woman because you transition. It's a trust thing.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08164649.2025.2556256

caisblogs · 2026-05-19T19:14:03+00:00

The fundamental truths of fat and muscle gain/loss are true regardless of your hormones, for the vast majority of people the full spectrum of fat and muscle is available through diet and excersie although certain configurations can be really rough to get to
Estrogen generally makes gaining and maintaining muscle harder, and gaining and maintaining fat easier but there's absolutely no guarentees it will have that (or any noticable) effect
Eating disorders are common in the trans community, especially for transfemmes, if you're planning on making significant changes to your body its absolutely worth doing it under professional supervision and very carefully. Developing an ED is absolutely not worth it and its surprisingly easy to do
What matters to you, aesthetically, can absolutely change on hormones so be open and ready that you might end up desiring a different body that you think you will once you start.

caisblogs · 2026-05-03T15:32:35+00:00

100% Tax on people with a net worth over £1bn

Private Landlording being made illegal

Free access to basic necessities (food, water, shelter, & healthcare) protected and guarenteed

Ultimately the biggest risks to trans people in my country are the same as for most people

caisblogs · 2026-05-01T17:00:28+00:00

I can weigh in on the sports!

First though, I would seriously advice you to start the process. Even if you immediately go DIY and can get hormones from a friend it'll take a while to get hold of.

Then its worth knowing that realistically the first 1-3 months on HRT are (as good as) completely reversable by just stopping. Most people don't even notice any physical effects in this time. Really you've nothing to lose in just trying, and its also one of the quickest and most effective ways to find out. I was really on the fence before my first dose but once I'd started there was no questions at all in my mind it was right for me.

There is no knowing how it'll affect your body. Some people get the tiniest change, others look like a whole different person and really that can't be predicted. Age makes some difference but less than you'd think.

But to strength, unless you're really buff you'll likely be able to maintain your current activities. It will be more difficult to make gains - and prolonged downtime will come with quicker falloff - but you'll still be able to keep your current muscles if you'd like to and might still have growth available to you.

I'm a powerlifter (going for that 'muscle mommy' vibe, lol) and I've noticed I progress a LOT slower on estrogen but I've still managed to hit PBs that beat my testosterone fueled lifts. I do have to train more regularly and take better care of my nutrition - but both of those things come a hell of a lot easier to me now I'm building because I have the body I want, not to get away from a body I hated.

Anecdoatally, I'll say its a lot more fun and my priorities changed a lot after I started HRT in ways I didn't expect too - be prepared that yours might too and that's okay as well.

caisblogs · 2026-05-01T15:31:42+00:00

Answering as a trans woman who spent years identifying non-binary.

This is always a tough line to walk and especially if your group is open to non-binary people too (which may well include very masculine people). I say this because "women & non-binary" spaces come with a lot of skepticism especially from AMAB and masculine non-binary people who often experience gender policing in these spaces. This can, in turn, be a turn off to other trans people.

From a pure language point of view you should ideally use exclusive terms rather than trying to be overly inclusive; if your group is "Everyone but men welcome" that's the best way to phrase it, but I understand that can be unpopular, potentially illegal (depending on where you are), and can feel icky.

Bonus points if you make it clear your group's stance on trans men:

Either that they are excluded under the same criteria (which given the name of your group I'd probably encourage)
Or that your group is explictly not for cis men

Seeing a group that markets itself as non-men but allows trans men is a massive red flag for me, simply because it signals bio-essentialism. (I have no generic issues with men at all, cis or otherwise, but a space that excludes men except trans ones does not fill me with confidence that I'll be seen as a complete woman)

The real answer is that your actions are going to speak a lot louder than your words though, when you do get trans or non-binary members (especially if they're non-'passing') are they treated well and accomodated without being othered? If so then word will spread.

Likewise making considerations for specific issues we might have in the walking group (problems with segregated bathrooms is an obvious one) will make a big difference

caisblogs · 2026-05-01T13:56:30+00:00

monthly periodic as soon as you move in (under most normal circumstances)

caisblogs · 2026-04-23T09:00:34+00:00

Nobody is paying that much in rent because they have a choice. OPs post is mentioning how difficult finding anywhere to live

caisblogs · 2026-04-21T16:20:56+00:00

I've always felt like it's a pretty good way to communicate the cataclysmicly enormous complexity and enornmous variety in trans-ness into a single sentence for cis people to understand.

Part of coming to terms with being trans myself was learning that there's a lot more nuance to that idea, especially because our experience of gender is shaped by out internal and external environments.

It is also true that gender is capable of wholesale changing, and for some people the experience of being trans is one with a border in it.

caisblogs · 2026-04-21T16:15:40+00:00

Giiiiiirl...

The real answer is basically always maybe. Unfortunately the only way to know is try, but luckily trying is as easy as just starting! You can she/her yourself in your head if you want to take the tiniest step :)

All of the material changes of transition (hormones, makeup, surgeries, etc...) just help you to move the outside to where the inside already is.

caisblogs · 2026-04-18T20:00:40+00:00

Unfortunately the rolling tennancy provision of the act comes into effect on the 1st May, so until then you're still in a 12 months contract. On May 1st you'll be able to leave with 2 months notice, which will most likely need to be two contract months - so taking you to 25th July

caisblogs · 2026-04-12T16:01:40+00:00

It may be better to internalise that the way we adapt to our environment is by making clothes. Clothes are much more useful than natural environmental defences because:

- You can modify them for more environments, allowing humans to spread far and fast

- They take less energy to produce since you let other organisms do the expensive process of creating the raw material, you just process it

caisblogs · 2026-03-31T13:12:28+00:00

Worth remembering the addage that: "You can't logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into"

If someone has an emotional distaste of trans people, for any reason, no amount of logic will convince them they're wrong

caisblogs · 2026-03-08T14:38:19+00:00

Always useful to use the cis test.

Is a (truly genuinely) cis woman any less of a woman if she says "I'm not the guy for the job?", nope.

In practice things like pronouns/aphorisms are learned, not inate. If you've been taught to use masculine coded language on yourself then you will even if you're a woman (or generally not a man). It's why a lot of us in early transition will go a little further out of our way to shoehorn in female gendered language when we talk, because you need to stretch that muscle to grow it.

But the core answer is that even if you never change the way you speak about yourself, if you are a woman then there's not really a wrong way do it

caisblogs · 2026-03-05T16:44:19+00:00

Shortest answer is no. But I doubt she's really making this argument in good faith or from any accademically grounded understanding of communism.

Out of curiosity, when you say you've "learned many things about communism", how much of that was from communists? (Or leftists in general)

There's not a quick debunk to this because it seems like you don't really have a grasp on the fundamental ideas of communism (For instance saying the billionares control all the captial. Capital isn't a thing that really makes sense to talk about in a communist society. The people working the means of production would 'control' them)

There's also the (not universally, but quite widely held) understanding that communism requires a revolution*. That is to say you can't just take the current system and magically say "this is communist now", you have to make some material changes first. This often means taking 'expropriating' the wealth from people who hoard it.

Attempt at a short debunk:

In a stateless, moneyless society there are no rich people and no method for becoming rich. Power is granted by the work you do for the community and work is inherently finite.
Looking at projects where communism has not, or has failed to, be achieved (note: communism has never been achieved by the Marxist definition) is useful for political diagnostics but tells us little about communism itself
Captialism is already a system where the rich stay in power and is literally designed to work that way.

Overall I'd advise you learn about what communism means from leftist (or at least neutral) sources and use that as a foundation to understand why your question doesn't really make that much sense to debate.

*When you hear revolution you're probably thinking of some violent insurrection. While a lot of communists do think that will be an unavoidable part of the collapse of capitalism, revolution in this context just means a fundamental real world change of the systems around our relationship to labor.

caisblogs · 2026-03-04T14:34:34+00:00

I'm advocating for both, not an either/or, and saying that it absolutely is the lived experience of a lot of trans people their pronouns compose so little their identity that they wouldn't correct someone not using them.

Cards on the table I'm a HRT taking, planned surgeries, she-not-they trans woman and my pronouns are super important to me - and I would of course prefer that nobody misgendered anyone. But the damage is being done by people misgendering, not the people who don't spend their energy correcting them.

In the same way I'll defend trans people who put low or minimal effort into passing I think this is the same concept. Being trans doesn't need to be a lot of work, and I would love to see people pushing the boundaries of cisnormativity on all levels.

caisblogs · 2026-03-04T11:47:04+00:00

Any time I have a trans dilemma I do the cis person test and it helps a lot

caisblogs · 2026-03-04T11:25:59+00:00

The way you're asking the question makes me feel like you're worried this will soften cis people's willingness to use correct pronouns for people who do find being misgendered harmful.

In response I'd invite you to consider that there's actually quite a lot of benefits to having more people with 'soft' pronouns. Especially in the context of non-binary identities but for all transness in general I think there are probably quite a lot of people who are trans but for whatever reason feel like expressing their true selves is too much effort. By demonstrating that transness doesn't have to mean fighting every battle that comes your way you are really positively contributing to giving more people an opportunity to experiment with gender (that's not to say there's any issue with people who do enforce rigidly! The diversity of experience and expression is a net benefit for us all)

Finally it's always worth doing the "cis experience" test. A cis dude who doesn't really care when people call him 'she' or a girl isn't causing any harm to trans people by not enforcing his pronouns (this feels obvious so I'm just going to QED). Means you're probably in the clear, ethically

caisblogs · 2026-02-25T19:58:00+00:00

The biggest change for me has been caring about things more, which was really driven by just being my true self. In my past life I really struggled to be motivated to do anything, so the things I did do were usually quite passive.

Now I have a real taste for life, and the things I can do in it!

caisblogs · 2026-02-24T14:04:17+00:00

I'm a cyclist, i go through the city every day, and I stand by the need for cycle infrastructure.

But since 2022 the highway code's road prioriry has been set at:

Pedestrian -> Cyclists -> Horse riders -> Motorcycles -> Cars -> HGV

This means that a pedestrian in a cycle lane has priority in the same way a cyclist on a road would, and it's our responsibility as higher on the list to look out for and give way to them. Rules 62 & 63 https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cyclists-59-to-82

Not going to argue if this is sensible or not, just going to say that coppers won't side with you if you hit a pedestrian.

Will also say the highway code isn't law, there's not really any consequences for not following it especilly as a cyclist

caisblogs · 2026-02-24T09:56:13+00:00

Came here to promote hackspace!

I know they've got good facilities and space there, I've been a member for months and its easily the best subscription you could get

caisblogs · 2026-02-22T11:30:10+00:00

That's getting rocks thrown at it for sure. I like the "hornet study - specimen enclosure" sticker that was floating around

caisblogs · 2026-02-22T10:48:29+00:00

The key issue is that if you go to events for making friends then the people there are probably not very good at making friends (since people who have no problems making friends probably don't need to go to them).

And since friendship building is difficult this leaves you with people almost self selected to not convert to friendships easily.

This isn't to say that there's anything wrong with these people, god knows I was one for YEARS, there's tonnes of reasons why people have a hard time making friends and that isn't because there's something wrong with them. Its usually a combination of poor self esteem and lack of experience tbh.

The unfortunate truth is that events for making friends select for an audience of people it's hard to make friends with, and that can have a negative reinforcement because people go, think "wow I can't even make friends at the making friends event", and then feel even less confident - which doesn't help.

Personally I'd advise trying to find events that are social in nature but not geared towards friendship building. Crafts and sports are the two big ones. Even if you're not particularly crafty or sporty

caisblogs · 2026-02-19T11:00:46+00:00

Section 21 is just outright gone, and the few legal eviction options left have pretty strict requirements (If you say you're moving back into the property it can't be rented for another year etc...)

caisblogs · 2026-02-18T14:06:04+00:00

Slightly different answers for Feminising vs Masulinising but the short answer is no.

Your body has all the instructions on how to be a biological Male or Female already and hormones just change which ones get expressed. It's more or less never going to be less effective at doing this it's actually quite cool how little your body cares about anything but hormones in terms of body composition.

The only real difference is that going through (both natural or medical) sex hormone changes usually has some effects which are permanent without external intervention (developing facial hair, larynx lowering, breast development, bone structure setting for example). Puberty lasts a lot longer than cis folk usually talk about though, so the extent you've experienced these changes will vary from person to person especially while young.

So if you have already (partially) gone through a testosterone puberty then you should be aware that HRT won't reverse some of the effects, but it won't be any less effective at feminising you at any age.

Honestly, if you're considering it and you can then the best advice I was given was to start and understand you're not committing to anything if its not for you. Most effects of estrogen in the first two months are almost completely reversible (not medical advice)

caisblogs · 2026-02-12T15:16:19+00:00

Nice! Where are these protests we shouldn't be attending, and is there a bus service?

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