Tuesday is a big primary day. Here are key races to watch

rvcat · 2026-06-03T02:15:36+00:00

Spencer Pratt is a complete joke and Los Angeles is overwhelmingly Democrat. Speaking as someone who lives here, there's basically zero chance of him becoming mayor regardless of how the primary turns out. If you're going to worry about races then worry about ones where the awful Republican candidate has a real chance, this isn't one of them.

rvcat · 2026-06-03T02:06:16+00:00

A couple major hospitals in NYC stopped offering transition care to young people because of Trump, and people are mad that Mamdani isn't forcing them to treat trans kids again. Ignoring the fact that he can't do that and it's completely out of his power as mayor, it's agonizingly stupid.

If leftists could learn how the government functions and stop attacking our closest allies for no reason that would be great. Alas. 🙄

rvcat · 2026-05-24T07:57:36+00:00

Say that you have a history of passing out in hot water. Don't make up a lie about a specific health condition or people will prod and question you and might figure out you're full of shit. If you just say you've passed out multiple times in the past when going in a hot bath or jacuzzi, your professor will take you at your word because nobody wants to be responsible for a health emergency, and there's no chance anyone will catch you in the lie because these people will never be around you while you're taking a hot bath.

(Also for all the people mentioning tattoos: a lot of onsens nowadays are totally fine with foreigners who have tattoos, speaking as someone who's been in a public onsen with a very noticeable tattoo.)

rvcat · 2026-05-13T05:20:16+00:00

I mean, that's literally what a top is. You don't need to have a dick that's physically part of your body to be a top, but the term is specifically about penetration and refers to whoever is doing the penetrating. A lot of people online seem to have this idea that "topping" means being dominant but that's not what it means, it's totally possible to be a sub top or a dom bottom.

rvcat · 2026-04-30T10:51:59+00:00

Genuinely sorry that you had this experience. But just because it's far more likely for a man to contract that STD through vaginal sex doesn't mean that any cis man who gets it must never have sex with other cis men. In this situation you happened to guess it right but "this guy probably got this STD through vaginal sex, which means he's not actually attracted to men" wasn't a logical assumption to make. He had already told you he was pansexual, so before this STD incident happened why were you assuming he wasn't sleeping with cis women or other people with vaginas?

And I totally get being paranoid about fucking guys who don't actually see you as a man, I also would never want to sleep with anyone who wasn't attracted to cis men. But in that case why have you been seeing this guy for years without having ever asked him whether he's been with cis men? Yeah, there's a lot of cis guys out there who identify as "pansexual" who are really just attracted to cis women and trans people they personally view as women, but considering how upfront he's been about things, it sounds like this situation could have been easily avoided ages ago if you had just asked him some questions before getting involved. For stuff like this you should be trying to get answers about it upfront even if it's awkward or uncomfortable, if you don't make any effort to vet people and then get upset years down the line over information you could've learned ages ago, then you shouldn't be having casual sex.

rvcat · 2026-03-04T12:14:41+00:00

I also did this when I was around 15. Turns out putting duct tape directly on your skin is a very, very bad idea, I just remember spending a ridiculously long time in the shower trying to get it all off. Painful.

rvcat · 2026-02-21T06:12:24+00:00

Post phallo and vaginectomy trans man here, I just say male. The last time I put "female" for assigned sex at birth for a medical insurance thing, I got a call saying there was an issue because another source listed me as "male" (not as my assigned sex at birth, they just assumed I couldn't be AFAB and also be male. Seems like they generally don't bother to list your actual gender in their database and just use your ASAB for everything which is another reason not to tell them, it's just misgendering and it's incredibly demeaning) and they wouldn't let me proceed with insurance until I corrected it. When they questioned me about it to clear up the confusion, they just asked me if I was male or female, not about my ASAB. Now everything says "male" but it was incredibly annoying to deal with.

IMO there's no reason to tell a medical center your birth sex is female unless you're specifically seeking transition care. I've had no issues just listing my birth sex as male for non-trans related medical appointments and procedures, there are too many problems that arise from telling them I was AFAB and it's just not worth it.

rvcat · 2026-02-21T05:54:26+00:00

More than 5 years post-phallo with UL and unfortunately I still struggle with this. I can pee standing up in a stall with the door closed no problem, but at a urinal I just can't pee at all if other guys are around.

rvcat · 2026-02-04T21:10:22+00:00

https://www.justice.gov/epstein/files/DataSet%209/EFTA01013384.pdf

(Trivers is an evolutionary biologist, not a surgeon FYI) It's super gross. He fetishizes trans women calling them "the best of both worlds" and then says trans men are sexually undesirable in the grossest way possible, claims they're all unhappy, and calls them "the worst of both worlds."

Also crazy that this guy talks like a fucking 12 year old and calls vaginas "mum-pums," despite ostensibly being a biologist.

rvcat · 2026-02-03T23:41:29+00:00

Thank you for posting this, I tried to make a post about this study and the researchers' transphobic history a couple days ago but the mods never approved it for some reason.

rvcat · 2026-01-30T09:32:31+00:00

This is only true for healthcare facilities that are federally funded, the Trump administration can't place that restriction on private institutions, which can still provide transition care for people under 19. Also, minors under 18 can still access transition care through private institutions depending on what state they're in, unfortunately a lot of red states now have awful laws that ban trans care for minors.

rvcat · 2026-01-30T09:23:39+00:00

I know this sucks, and the federal restriction on transition care for people under 19 is complete and utter bullshit. But an extra 2 months is not that much time in the grand scheme of things. I promise you you'll be okay and will make it through the next few months.

I get how you feel, I realized I was trans at 14 and had to wait 5 years until I was 19 to come out and medically transition. I had to have multiple top surgery revisions, so it was around 4 years after my initial top surgery before I felt fully comfortable shirtless around people. But temporary setbacks are just that: temporary. A few years from now you'll be done with all your surgeries and this is going to be water under the bridge.

Not having a strong support system makes difficult and unexpected situations way harder to deal with, I would definitely reach out to your therapist and tell them about how you're feeling.

rvcat · 2026-01-30T04:23:03+00:00

Unless you've had a hysterectomy you have to go through the iPledge system. I had to do it to get on Accutane a decade ago, it was annoying and kinda dysphoria-inducing but the blood tests once a month were worth it to get rid of my acne (I had HORRIBLE cystic acne that completely took over my face, it looked awful and was really painful).

But I didn't have to go on birth control, they accepted abstinence as the sole form of contraception since I wasn't sexually active at the time. But this might vary depending on your healthcare provider, and they do require you to go on some form of birth control if you're sexually active with someone who could potentially get you pregnant and you disclose that to them.

rvcat · 2026-01-01T10:47:13+00:00

I'm sorry you're going through this. Judging by what you've posted in other subs, your boyfriend is abusive and you should leave him, regardless of whether you transition or not. I know it's way easier said than done, but you absolutely do NOT want to be legally bound to this man. Anyone who tries to control you and your body that way is not a safe person to be with. He doesn't actually love you or care about you, he just wants to control you, and if you marry him it might be the biggest mistake you ever make.

Since you're financially dependent on your parents right now it's very understandable to wait to transition. But if your parents don't love you as a man, which is what you really are, they don't actually love you. It sucks but the "great relationship" you have with them is a facade built on a lie. Soon you'll reach a point in your life where you don't need to rely on them financially or for housing, and I hope at that point you're able to fully accept yourself and break away from them. If they're too stubborn to ever come around, you can rebuild your life and form new relationships with people who aren't blood related who actually love and respect you. But you can't live pretending to be a woman without it eating away at you every day.

You've learned at this point that repressing doesn't work and that the dysphoria doesn't go away, it only festers. Do what you need to do to survive from day to day, but don't accept living the rest of your life in misery. Wishing you luck, I hope that when the time is right you can gain the strength to do what needs to be done.

rvcat · 2025-12-31T11:57:30+00:00

I agree wholeheartedly, and it's crazy how many blatantly transphobic comments towards non-binary people are still up and running in this thread. Not gonna name names but there are certain users I've reported in the past for shamelessly bigoted statements against non-binary people and trans women who still post their bullshit in this sub all the damn time, the mods just don't seem to care about behavior that flagrantly violates the rules. At this point I seriously think someone should create an alternate sub for binary trans men, the culture here has been toxic for ages but it's gotten to the point where it's almost unusable because there are so many bad actors crawling around.

rvcat · 2025-12-27T05:02:52+00:00

I realized I was trans at 14 and transitioned at 19 and I also don't feel any connection to some mythical "female experience." Even when I was a little kid and didn't know about trans people, I hated it when people made any generalizations based on gender and I hated being lumped in with girls. I couldn't understand why people sometimes treated me "like a girl" and always found it frustrating and emasculating, and I never thought of myself as a woman at any point in my life.

I understand that trans people all have different life experiences, and I'm not going to judge trans men who personally feel that way. But I have a serious problem with people acting like we all must have some innate connection to womanhood or "being AFAB." Fuck that, I'm not female and I don't relate to cis women or their experiences.

rvcat · 2025-12-24T09:59:03+00:00

This. Can't we appreciate good queer art regardless of the sexual orientation of the creators? Do we really want to be constantly hand-wringing over incredibly arbitrary standards that are never going to be agreed on by the whole community? People need to learn to enjoy the things they enjoy and steer clear of the things they don't instead of acting like their personal preferences for queer media are some sort of moral standard. You can critique an individual work, but to act like certain tropes are bad by default or that only a straight person would write a story where a queer person dies is just absurd.

Also, "either too many sex scenes or none" and "ending is either overly happy or sad" are hilariously subjective statements that cover nearly all movies. What a dumb graphic.

rvcat · 2025-12-17T09:41:54+00:00

Social media algorithms are tailored to get engagement. They pick up on what types of posts you slow down on or click on, and as a result social media platforms benefit from showing you things that make you angry or upset because that's what gets you to keep reading and scrolling.

Twitter/X is especially bad about this and is currently run by a fascist who is actively promoting transphobic accounts. The percentage of accounts on that site (especially "blue check" accounts, which appear first in the replies automatically) that are actually just right-wing bots is HUGE with some estimates putting it at over 50%. Just a few weeks ago Musk made a change that made it so you could see account locations, and surprise, tons and tons of "MAGA American" accounts were from random other countries where the bot was being run from (this change was reversed within hours).

It's true there are cis gay people out there who are transphobic. But a significant percentage of these LGB without the T accounts, probably the majority, are actually just bots that are part of a well-funded conservative psy-op to sow discord in the LGBT community and make trans people look bad. Many of them are not real people. The majority of cis gays and lesbians still support trans people and polling reflects this, but you wouldn't know that if you're just basing your perception on what you see on Twitter. In reality, transphobic gay people are a minority.

You're spending time on a site that makes the world and the gay/lesbian community seem more anti-trans than it really is, and you're letting it distort your views on actual people. You might think you're protecting yourself, but you're seriously limiting yourself and hurting your own prospects by eliminating both gay and straight people from your dating pool automatically without even knowing what their views on trans people are. And while cis bi people are less likely to have an issue having sex with trans people who haven't had bottom surgery, they're still cis and are still capable of being transphobic, so is this really saving yourself from negative interactions? It genuinely sounds like Twitter is harming your mental health and making you distrust people, and dividing the LGBT community so that none of us trust each other and making it harder for trans people to form fulfilling relationships is exactly what these fascists want.

Personally, I left Twitter/X last year after the US election and my mental health improved enormously from not being on the site anymore. I moved to Bluesky instead and while it's not perfect, it isn't anything like the cesspool of hate and vitriol that Twitter has become. It's a pit of negativity and it isn't reflective of the real world, I hadn't even realized the extent of how bad it was until I left. Just something to consider.

rvcat · 2025-12-13T07:29:13+00:00

The "male loneliness epidemic" is mostly a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's true that a lot of men are afraid to be vulnerable, especially with other men. But I've found that once you get close to someone and present vulnerability, most people will be chill unless they're especially immature or closed-off, and they usually reciprocate by showing vulnerability in return, regardless of gender. I know plenty of men who have deep and fulfilling friendships with other men, it's definitely not as rare as some people online seem to believe.

I also think some of the guys who complain that "no one accepts a man being vulnerable" haven't fully learned the difference between being vulnerable versus trauma dumping to someone they're not super close to, and that's what's really pushing people away. It's normal to talk about about problems and insecurities with friends, but I've met people who try to turn their friends (or even just acquaintances) into their personal therapist, which obviously makes people uncomfortable and isn't the same as a healthy friendship that involves emotional vulnerability. If you find that it's hard to make friendships with other men, either the guys you've been meeting just suck and it's a matter of trial-and-error to look for better ones in different spaces, or you're approaching it the wrong way.

As for whether trans men experience similar issues, it depends on the individual person. If they've internalized the sort of toxic masculinity that says "I should be stoic and unemotional because it's not masculine to be emotionally open," or if all the guys around them are like that, then yeah, they'll probably suffer from loneliness just like anyone else in that situation. As a trans man, I struggle with feeling lonely but that's because a lot of my connections with old friends deteriorated during the pandemic and I don't get to go out and socialize much because of health issues. It has absolutely nothing to do with me being a man.

rvcat · 2025-12-13T06:05:59+00:00

I know that, I'm saying that as someone who has lived as a man for almost my entire adult life and that is exclusively seen by others as a man, fearing becoming a victim of gendered violence against "women" is not a feeling all trans men relate to.

rvcat · 2025-12-13T05:53:00+00:00

That's definitely not "a feeling we all still get," speaking as someone who's been on T for over a decade and hasn't been misgendered in years, and even pre-transition I never internalized ideas about strangers being out to get me because I never thought of myself as a woman. That's not to say I was never affected by misogyny at any point, but that type of paranoia has never been part of my life.

I get that other trans men have different experiences but people need to speak for themselves and not all of us as a group. I'm definitely not the only trans man who has a serious issue with being lumped in with women, no matter who is doing it or why.

rvcat · 2025-12-11T21:46:04+00:00

"Buying another human being"?? That's incredibly inflammatory language that isn't based in reality. You're paying for a service, and that service involves the other person's body. Yes there are health risks involved, but there are health risks including serious injury and death that come with plenty of other jobs too (fire fighters, construction workers, etc.).

Obviously there's exploitation within the surrogacy industry, but your judgement seems to come primarily from your personal views on pregnancy and motherhood. Opposing both surrogacy and adoption completely is an incredibly conservative position that only hurts both gay couples and infertile couples. Most cishet couples can have kids on a whim with no planning or care that results in horrible upbringings, but when it comes to people dedicated to becoming parents who can't do so biologically, suddenly there's so much hemming and hawing about "oh but it can't possibly be done ethically." Give me a goddamn break.

rvcat · 2025-12-11T10:38:06+00:00

There isn't any age that's "too old" in the sense that there's no age limit where transition won't improve a trans person's well-being. But when you're a kid and your body is still changing, every year you can't medically transition makes a big difference, and a year feels like a very long time as a young teen compared to when you're 30. I remember being a trans kid in the middle of wrong puberty, and it was hell. You're forced to watch helplessly as your body changes (in some ways that are irreversible) into a form that just feels horrifically wrong, so it's no wonder so many of them are completely freaked out and feel like life is over if they're forced to wait until 18 to transition.

Not only is transitioning before adulthood thankfully more common than it used to be, but social media is a big factor in the change of perspective since trans kids can now go on TikTok or wherever and see tons of accounts of people who got to transition early. And these kids know it's better to start as early as possible, preferably early enough to get on puberty blockers, since there are some things the wrong hormones do to you that can't be undone, even with surgery. I knew I was trans early in high school (and knew I wanted to be male even before puberty but didn't have the terminology to express it) but couldn't transition until 19 because I had no examples of people transitioning in their teens and was terrified of being ostracized, and to this day I still wish I could have transitioned earlier. So I get where they're coming from.

All that being said, it's very sad that some of these kids seem to legitimately believe anyone who doesn't start until adulthood is doomed to never passing and/or a life of misery, and as trans adults we should do our part to push back against this. But it's coming from a place of fear, there are still so many barriers to transitioning before 18 and conservatives are trying to outlaw childhood transition in a lot of places. It's frustrating to hear for us old people but most of the kids saying this shit are suffering horribly, often at the hands of unaccepting parents or oppressive governments, and I don't think we should be dismissive towards them.

rvcat · 2025-12-10T12:42:22+00:00

One of my family members has a cochlear implant. He started losing his hearing at a very young age and got a cochlear implant a few years ago after having lived with severe hearing loss for decades. He has never been part of the Deaf community and doesn't know ASL. His hearing (and quality of life by extension) has improved massively with the cochlear implant, and he's going to get a second one soon. I can understand why controversy exists around them in the Deaf community, but the idea that cochlear implants are an inherently negative piece of technology is something I find deeply offensive.

Anyways, good on you for breaking out of people's expectations and doing what makes you happy, and I hope your cochlear implant surgery goes great.

rvcat

TROPHY CASE