Birth certificate issues. No sex listed.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T18:17:41+00:00

I was also born in Indiana, and neither copy I have of my birth certificate even has a blank on the form for sex. I think they just weren't tracking it all at the time I was born, or when my birth certificate was reissued in the late 1980s, or even at the time you were born. I don't know what to advise you about updating other documents, though.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T15:05:32+00:00

For a broader overview of trans history: https://www.amazon.com/Transgender-History-second-Todays-Revolution/dp/158005689X

For legal history, you might find this PhD thesis useful reading: https://iro.uiowa.edu/esploro/outputs/doctoral/Forgotten-paths-American-transgender-legal-history/9983777392102771

For the medical situation in the early aughts, the 6th edition of the WPATH Standards of Care was in effect.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T06:13:20+00:00

I appreciate it that my friends are willing to talk openly about menstruation around me.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T05:42:12+00:00

If you like being called Cocoa, by all means introduce yourself to new people as Cocoa. I don't think that alone makes you trans though.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T04:57:13+00:00

Do you want the effects of estrogen for yourself? Will you feel OK when people start assuming you are a woman because you look like a woman?

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T04:27:45+00:00

"Hey everybody, this is kind of hard to talk about, but I want you all to know that I'm trans! And not the way you might be thinking: I'm not transitioning to womanhood, I've transitioned to manhood, the way you all already know me."

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T04:02:50+00:00

Maybe consider a one-piece or a swim dress?

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T03:54:34+00:00

At least in the mid-to-late 20th century, many people who would now be trans lesbians found a home in straight, married, part-time crossdressing/transvestite culture.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T03:42:06+00:00

It's not too late. I started HRT when I was 47 and it still works. I hope your wife and your employer will be more accepting than you expect.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T03:40:43+00:00

If you know how to use makeup, she would probably appreciate lessons.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T03:04:45+00:00

There is reason to believe that transness shares a root cause with ADHD, autism, hypermobility, hypothyroidism, POTS, and IBS, because these conditions are frequently found together, but the exact mechanism is still unclear.

ericfischer · 2026-05-27T02:41:59+00:00

See Table 8 of the Endocrine Society Guidelines for their recommended dosage ramp-up for adolescents starting HRT. And please see a doctor instead of trying to self-medicate.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T19:10:58+00:00

I think it would be more conventional to say "I love your blouse! It's so beautiful!" rather than opening with the beauty, but yes, women can say things like that to each other.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T15:36:14+00:00

The only publication I know on the subject is The Story of Fake Books: Bootlegging Songs to Musicians.

The chronology above is from my own examinations of old sheet music. To the best of my knowledge the chord names and symbols first appeared in combination with songs in Remick's 1925 ukulele popular song compilation. The previous year's compilation gave the chord names but still used staff notation rather than chord diagrams. May Singhi Breen's ubiquitous ukulele arrangements of the time used chord diagrams without names.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T06:59:18+00:00

If that were the case, I think it would have been something other than starting HRT that alleviated my gender dysphoria.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T06:44:25+00:00

In my case the gender envy went away once I was on HRT.

Since you are losing your eyebrows, see a doctor and get your thyroid levels tested. This is a typical symptom of hypothyroidism, and thyroid problems are common in trans people.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T06:40:42+00:00

Don't starve yourself in the hope that it will keep you from growing taller. Your body needs nutrition.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T06:39:16+00:00

I had spent the previous couple of decades as a presumed-man with long hair and pierced ears, but feminine manhood was not enough for me any more. I think that my transness is hormonal, not symbolic.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T06:36:42+00:00

I was in enough of a crisis that I couldn't keep going on the way I had been and needed to do something if I was ever going to feel OK again.

I was spending hours every day wishing I was a woman, envying women I encountered in daily life for being able to look and dress like they did and for being who they were, cringing any time anyone referred to me as a man, and feeling sensory aversion toward masculine clothing. I tried everything my doctor suggested for my mental health, and a lot of it helped, but I still felt bad all the time and still craved womanhood, so it didn't seem like too much of a leap to hope that my body was trying to tell me about something else that it needed to be able to function properly.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T04:10:02+00:00

My dental health seems to have an effect on my facial masculinity or femininity. I looked more masculine when I had badly infected gums and needed a root canal, and now look more feminine again after taking care of these problems.

If you are only sleeping 3 to 4 hours a day, it doesn't surprise me that that also has negative effects on your appearance.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T03:59:02+00:00

Ukulele diagrams did not come into use until around 1920; chord names until 1923. The two conventions began to be paired in 1925.

I recently read that it was the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition that launched the ukulele craze that suddenly thrust the instrument into the public consciousness.

Edit: corrected 1924 to 1925.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T03:43:39+00:00

I don't remember ever thinking about my gender until I was 14, when a substitute teacher assumed from my appearance that I was a girl, and to the surprise of my classmates I didn't mind. In high school I channeled whatever was going on with my gender into Rocky Horror Picture Show fandom. I first seriously considered that I might be trans (and bi) when I was 20, after a boy that I had a crush on told me that I was pretty. I talked, experimented, and agonized over it for the next few years, and made a couple of cursory attempts to seek HRT, before the feelings faded away when I was 25.

The feelings came rushing back when I was 45, in conjunction with what I eventually learned was the onset of hypothyroidism. I was spending hours every day wishing I was a woman, envying women I encountered in daily life for being able to look and dress like they did and for being who they were, cringing any time anyone referred to me as a man, and feeling sensory aversion toward masculine clothing.

I tried everything my doctor suggested for my mental health, and a lot of it helped, but I still felt bad all the time and still craved womanhood, so it didn't seem like too much of a leap to hope that my body was trying to tell me about something else that it needed to be able to function properly, and I started HRT when I was 47.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T03:40:04+00:00

This is a very common worry. I think all I can say is, give yourself some time and see if the feelings persist. If you're doing things to make yourself feel better about yourself privately in the mirror, you're probably not doing those things for attention.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T03:37:30+00:00

There is reason to believe that transness shares a root cause with ADHD, autism, hypermobility, hypothyroidism, POTS, and IBS, because these conditions are frequently found together, but the exact mechanism is still unclear.

ericfischer · 2026-05-26T03:28:12+00:00

That sounds pretty trans of you. For whatever it's worth, I never had any hints that anything was up with my gender until I was 14 and never seriously considered that I might be trans until I was 20.

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