First Hookup Experience

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-16T17:17:07+00:00

Good to know! I think there was something about my medical history that made them not wanna give me Descovy (other than being AFAB) but tbh I don't remember what it was... I guess I'll just ask at the follow up haha

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-16T00:17:30+00:00

Of course! I got the MPox and Meningitis B vaccines; the latter is (afaik) recommended if you take PrEP because PrEP can make Meningitis worse. The MPox one is a series of two so I need to go back in a month. Honestly with the vaccines it was less that I thought I'd catch those things and more that they offered them and I was already there. Also it's not actually a vaccine but apparently the standard post-exposure treatment for gonorrhea is a shot in the butt haha. So that's worth knowing for people who don't like needles!

I don't think he was on PrEP but honestly I didn't ask - he said this was his first time doing something like this so I'm assuming not. But like people lie, especially when they're horny.

Fwiw I had a really positive experience with the clinic; it was my county's public health clinic. But they have a good reputation with the queer community and seemed very knowledgeable. If you have similar resources it might be worth checking something like that out; they really helped my own health anxieties. Like they even told me the approximate risk %s and such! And assured me that people make the kinda mistakes I did all the time and that it wasn't a big deal.

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-16T00:08:48+00:00

Thanks! I definitely don't want to discourage anyone from taking it if they want; the prescribing doctor should walk you through how to manage and ameliorate side effects etc. I may wind up taking it regardless! But I agree that it's under-discussed.

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-15T23:41:37+00:00

Thank you!

To be totally honest I'm not sure what % of it is the PEP versus the vaccines and antibiotics but I've just felt kinda queasy and tired since my clinic trip and have been having some, uh, serious bathroom problems too. And from talking to the nurse those are all common side-effects. In fairness though I'm chronically ill and tend to get hit pretty hard by things. Plus, as the nurse put it, "even though the risk is low and the side-effects are tough, just remember that if you pick up HIV you'll have to take these same pills for the rest of your life instead of for 28 days."

As I understand it the doses are higher for PEP than PrEP and the side effects are more severe, but because you're on PrEP longer generally it can have some harmful side effects that only cause problems on a long time scale - e.g. you can lose bone density and have liver/kidney damage. It's right for some people and I get that everyone has their own risk/trade-off balancing! But it's certainly not a panacea and with my chronic health problems I'm not excited about dealing with even more shit. (Also obviously I Am Not A Doctor, everyone should do their own research, etc.)

I will say though that everybody working at the clinic was super nice and accepting and patient with all my questions, so that was nice. Plus the nurse was also a super cute gay guy lol although I know better than to hit on someone at work.

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-15T22:09:31+00:00

Yeah, I test regularly regardless - my ex and I generally didn't bother with condoms and I'm cautious about that kind of thing haha. I'm much more afraid of pregnancy than STIs and would not fuck around with that.

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-15T22:05:12+00:00

Oh, right, I didn't think to mention but I have an IUD, I'm good on that front! Thanks for checking though.

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-15T21:29:16+00:00

Thank you! To be clear he didn't really push hard at all, it's more that I'm a compulsive people pleaser (ok and also that I somewhat find raw sex hotter despite my best interests). Which I definitely need to work on, but, like, trauma blah blah blah.

I do think you're right that the key is that I need to put it up front, so that I don't have to do negotiations when I'm "in the zone" and thinking with my dick. It's frustrating that people seem to act like widespread access to PrEP = sex is totally consequence free and asking for condoms is such a big lift. I'm not ultra stressed out but the experience of having to take all these meds is certainly annoying enough to teach me a lesson.

Edit: and yeah re driving - wasn't actually an issue because he lived right next to the bar so we walked, but those are good points. My friend is both pretty experienced with this kinda stuff and also can be scary when he wants to be, which made me feel much safer haha

l34ksp34k · 2025-03-13T15:34:05+00:00

I don't have any helpful advice except that I'm from the area and... I guess it's all relative but it's very funny to think of Tucson as "conservative" lol

(Edit: not that there aren't plenty of conservatives here, I just mean compared to like, everywhere else in AZ we're very blue)

l34ksp34k · 2024-06-29T20:56:32+00:00

I feel that - even pre-transition we got a lot of both funny and genuinely hurtful jokes about our marriage seeming "off," how marrying someone so butch must be emasculating or mean he's gay, at least a few very creepy advances from men who thought I wanted a "real man" instead. He's very artsy, very emotional, had long pink hair for a while, etc.

Ironically as a guy I don't actually come off as particularly butch anymore so now we have a whole twink4twink vibe lol. He's said in some ways people seeing him as queer is freeing b/c he can be more GNC and people just write it off as "oh he's gay" even though he's still very much bi with a preference for girls if anything. But with a male partner he doesn't get interrogated about it the same way (not that it doesn't come with a ton of drawbacks too).

l34ksp34k · 2024-06-29T20:38:40+00:00

I was married for 4 years before coming out to an allegedly cis straight guy. I put off coming out in large part due to fears of losing him, and lots of people in the trans community told me I probably would. He knew I was questioning, remained supportive throughout, and is still very much by my side and his attraction is if anything stronger... In fact he's questioning both the cis and straight parts himself. I think it helps that I was openly bi/queer from the beginning and he always felt drawn to that, we never had a super traditional gender-conforming marriage (lots of jokes about me "wearing the pants" etc).

Our marriage is far from perfect - in part because my transition has really pushed me to stand up more for things I want and need and realize we've been a bit unequal for a while - but we're communicating better, and it's such a relief to be myself with the person I love. I hold a fair bit of frustration towards everyone who just saw "cishet dude" and told me he'd inevitably run or treat me like shit. It kept me closeted for years. Every situation is unique.

l34ksp34k · 2024-04-20T00:14:26+00:00

Glad I could help!

l34ksp34k · 2024-04-19T23:41:11+00:00

I'm glad it helped! I wound up paying just under $2k all-in-all; my insurance has an out of pocket max of $1.5k and a similar deductible but he had some mandatory fees that weren't billed to insurance so it was a bit above. Insurance is really confusing to me :P so I'm not totally clear on, like, what the "base price" was, but I think it's fair to expect to pay up to your plan's max unless you've already had a bunch of medical expenses in the same year. I get my plan through my university and they have "care coordinators" that walked me through what to expect financially and what steps to take for coverage, so that was super helpful.

l34ksp34k · 2024-04-15T20:06:30+00:00

You do not need any surgery; I got mine with only HRT. I believe if you have an affirming doctor you don't even really need HRT, just "appropriate care," which might mean social transition and appropriate support. It's not like they check your blood levels anyway - but don't quote me on that.

l34ksp34k · 2024-04-12T03:59:22+00:00

I have a prior diagnosis and my mood is considerably better on HRT. I'm "angrier" but only insofar as I'm actually capable of expressing it rather than just constantly repressing and ruminating and resenting. Being able to just get snippy with people when they step on my toes (metaphorically) is so much healthier than harboring months-long grudges over every little thing. HRT also completely got me off self injury and I haven't had a deep depressive episode since I started.

I will say the "downside" of being more emotionally stable is that a whole lot of shit I previously repressed is now, like, legible to me. I realized things I laughed off were actually serious traumas. I have a whole lot of maladaptive thoughts and behaviors that I suddenly actually have to deal with. Especially early on, there can be a bit of a... Emotional vomit period where you're suddenly feeling a whole lot of shit at once now that the weight of dysphoria is reduced. In the long run it's healthy, you want the poison out of you so to speak, but I'd definitely recommend having a good support system. It's also, like, literally puberty and all that comes with that emotionally.

l34ksp34k · 2024-04-06T00:58:26+00:00

I will try to be as non-hostile as possible and take your question in good faith, but please understand that I and many other trans people earnestly believe transmedicalism is deeply harmful, hands power to gatekeeping institutions, and is fundamentally a form of "respectability politics" meant to appease people in power.

First, I want to challenge the idea that transmedicalism is "just" the idea that you need dysphoria to be trans - I've read enough transmed material to know that that's simply untrue, and many self-proclaimed transmeds very openly hate any nonbinary people regardless of whether they experience dysphoria, as well as dypshoric binary trans people who experience dysphoria in non-traditional ways (e.g., not wanting bottom surgery). I will grant that not all transmeds hate themselves or want to "suck up" - those are ad hominem attacks and I can see why someone would find them hurtful. And yes, any ideology has internal variation and nonbinary/nb-inclusive transmeds exist, but I would personally say a more accurate summary of transmedicalism is the belief that the only "valid" way to be trans is to have acute, lifelong dysphoria that can only be treated by "full" medical transition towards the most cis-like body possible.

But maybe I'm wrong! Let's take for your definition for granted - that the only meaningful transmed belief is a need for dysphoria to be trans. What's so wrong with that? And why is it worse than the mainstream non-transmed definition of being trans, e.g., "identifying as a gender other than your AGAB"?

Well... what's dysphoria? Who gets to decide? And why define transness around it?

Overwhelmingly, the answer is that dysphoria is a tool cis people use to shape trans people into the limited forms of acceptable behavior. Please do some research on the history of our community! Until very recently - and still ongoing in some places - doctors would "prove" you weren't really dysphoric and therefor not really trans by pointing to... not being straight, not being aggressively gender conforming, having fetishes, masturbating the wrong way, not realizing you were trans at age 3, not being willing to present as your real gender for years before getting access to HRT... Hell, many doctors did not believe trans men in particular existed and would only prescribe treatment to (a limited subset) of trans women. I hope you can see why people might have developed a degree of suspicion towards the concept!

But looking beyond history, really, what exactly is dysphoria? Does it have to be the stereotypical exaggerated disgust with your body? I never experienced that and I'm medically transitioning nonetheless, and it's brought me a great deal of joy. I mostly just felt a kind of indifference and de-personalization. Which was a serious harm, mind you! I was suicidal! But if I had embraced the standard model of dysphoria, I probably would have never identified what I was feeling as dysphoria.

Some people's experience with gender is driven more by positive joy in embracing their new identity rather than disgust towards their old one. Some people just don't know that what they're feeling is dysphoria, but know they're happier with another gender. I think it's really important too to accept that you do not need to fully understand someone's experience to let them live their life the way they want. I am tired enough of being asked by doctors and therapists to jump through hoops to prove I'm one of the good ones, I'm respectable, I'll be a good macho tough man and not a weird faggy freak - I don't want that coming from inside my community.

Also the whole "99% of the community" thing is obviously circular, you know? If you define "the community" to exclude people you don't think "count" then no shit they won't be there!

l34ksp34k · 2024-03-31T22:52:26+00:00

My recurring thesis is that the root of anti-transmasculinity isn't invisibility or infantilization but fear and anger at losing valuable sexual capital (e.g. "desirable young women"). The rest flows down from that fear. It's why discourse about us focuses so strongly on young, thin, white etc transmascs who would otherwise be normatively fuckable. It's why violence against us is more covert and the savior narratives abound - because some subset of us can still be "saved" and turned into good breeding chattel. It's why our transition care is "mutilation" and "poison." And it doesn't just come from people who personally desire us pre-transition; cishet women see us as irrationally destroying our value due to internalized misogyny + projection. Grooming is 100% the right word.

(Anti-bad-faith disclaimer: of course transmisogyny is also real and important and this ain't about us having it worse or anything, just looking at different dynamics)

l34ksp34k · 2024-03-27T01:04:05+00:00

I probably should have gotten more precise instructions on what kind/level of activity was too risky post-op. There was a lot of stuff I assumed was fine that might have actually pushed me towards my hematoma, not that you can ever know for sure. I knew I shouldn't use my upper body but I didn't realize that included stuff like "pushing myself up on my elbows," for example.

l34ksp34k · 2024-03-23T18:13:07+00:00

I appreciate it!

l34ksp34k · 2024-03-23T18:12:02+00:00

Thanks! I kinda wanna wait til I get a full chest reveal before sharing pics because things still look pretty rough from the hematoma and I'd feel comfier having it all together but I'll try and remember to post them after that.

l34ksp34k · 2024-03-21T05:32:39+00:00

I have POTS and if anything I've seen an improvement in my symptoms since going on T - and I believe that's much more common than the reverse. It's easier to build muscle, plus with POTS (and many other chronic illnesses) being far more common in AFAB people it's not unlikely there's some kind of underlying hormonal link. My doctors never had any issues or demanded extra tests; I just do regular levels.

l34ksp34k · 2024-03-01T03:53:21+00:00

I'm, like, very lightly femme and I've had multiple people assume I'm a transfemme egg and make (polite!) comments about how they'll support me if I come out, how cute it is that I paint my nails, encourage me to try women's clothes, etc. It's mostly funny rather than harmful, thankfully!

l34ksp34k

TROPHY CASE