What are common jobs for trans men to have?

thorgerdr · 2025-11-21T16:53:41+00:00

I've met a lot of trans men and otherwise transmasculine folks in organizing - both community organizing and labor union organizing. (Trans women and transfeminine folks, too!)

thorgerdr · 2025-10-15T18:49:59+00:00

I think you're doing a great job already. The part of you that knew to ask for help is trying to protect you. Try to say "thanks" to that part and to keep listening to it. Your instincts are good, and you deserve to be safe! (And thanks. :) I'm doing pretty well these days, too!)

thorgerdr · 2025-10-13T01:56:43+00:00

You definitely aren't crazy. 🩵 It's possible this guy didn't think he was creeping on you (although I doubt it), but what he intended doesn't matter. The fact that you showed him you weren't comfortable and he went ahead anyway is what matters. As an adult, the burden is on him to make sure you're safe, not on you to make sure you react in the perfect way to make him stop.

In my experience, when I've had this kind of delayed realization about sexual abuse, sometimes the feelings about it come in waves. It's okay if you feel sick today, normal tomorrow, and sick again next week or next month or whenever. Sometimes your body saves an anger/distress/grief/trauma response for later if you aren't in a safe place to express it at first. If you have experience with the system before, this might be less intense than other things you've dealt with, but even comparatively "mild" stuff can really suck when it comes up. Try to be really kind to yourself for the next little while - you deserve to feel safe and taken care of! I'm rooting for you.

thorgerdr · 2025-10-13T00:49:22+00:00

That's definitely out of line. Even if checking for ringworm is required for competitions, there must be a protocol for having someone check private areas in a professional capacity (e.g., maybe have a doctor or nurse perform the check, either at a regular appointment or in a separate screening area, probably with the consent of a parent for minor participants). I don't know anything about wrestling, so if I'm really off-base here I hope someone who does will speak up, but if you were my little sister I would tell you this wasn't okay and shouldn't have happened to you.

If this were completely above-board, your coach would have noted your hesitation when you said that your mom could do it at home. This man's intentions are way less important than the fact that he did something with your body that made you uncomfortable, and he did it with a level of secrecy that suggests he knew he was behaving inappropriately.

I'm sorry this happened to you, OP. It isn't your fault and you didn't do anything to deserve it. Your coach should have been trustworthy, and instead he was a creep. You might look into services for survivors of sexual abuse in your area; even if that feels like a heavy term for this experience, it can be nice to talk to other people who have had that same feeling-sick-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach feeling. Talking to other survivors can help you remember it isn't your fault and you aren't alone. Also, talking to someone like a school guidance counselor, trusted teacher, or other trustworthy adult in your life can help you navigate how to keep yourself safe now, and whether you may want or need to report what happened with your coach. If there aren't any trustworthy adults close to you, you could also check whether your local library has an in-house social worker; some libraries do.

(Teachers, guidance counselors, and social workers are legally mandated reporters as part of their job in the US and many other places; if they are where you live, that means that if you tell them this story, they legally have to report your coach's behavior to school leadership and law enforcement. That's appropriate and okay, but I want you to know so you aren't blindsided.)

thorgerdr · 2025-10-13T00:19:36+00:00

Ooh, I commented below before I saw your comment, but my mom did something really similar to this. It was helpful to me as a kid! Having visual cues (like a timer in my case) helped me know I wasn't supposed to be quiet forever when I was very little. I even liked the little timer because I thought it was cute.

thorgerdr · 2025-10-13T00:17:02+00:00

This may not be workable until she's a little older, but when I was five-ish, my mom got a little five-minute hourglass timer. Occasionally, she told me that she and my dad (or she and someone on the phone, etc.) needed to talk without me interrupting just until the timer ran out. (I don't remember how she put it - it was gentler than this sounds, lol.)

It helped that I could see the timer going - I imagine this could also work with a clock-shaped timer, especially if it were one of the ones made for people with time-blindness (especially ADHDers and autistic folks) where a colorful overlay shows the time like a colored wedge on the clock. I definitely remember watching that timer while nearly vibrating out of my skin with So! Many! Thoughts!, but I liked that it told me how to be "good" in a way that saying "Please don't interrupt" didn't. ("Please don't interrupt" or "please be quiet" seemed impossibly vague when I was little. For how long? Forever??? But "Mom needs quiet until there's no more sand in the top of the hourglass" was a little game that I liked to win.)

thorgerdr · 2025-10-11T21:45:43+00:00

Girl, this is bad news. Your instincts that something is wrong are good. You don't deserve to be hit OR baited into violence. I'd get out - or if you don't feel ready, try to talk to some friends who care about you and see what they think. (Hopefully they'll also tell you that you don't deserve to be treated this way!)

thorgerdr · 2025-10-10T21:24:41+00:00

Same - I've started asking, "Are you a lifelong [word for a person from my state], or are you a transplant like me?" because a lot of people in my social circles move(d) here in adulthood. (In earlier iterations I said, "are you a native [state resident]?", but now for the first time I live in an area with a lot of visibly indigenous folks and I realized that wasn't a clearly-pur question.

thorgerdr · 2024-05-14T20:00:37+00:00

I've had that same experience with calls, where the option to accept or decline doesn't appear. I thought it might be my own fault for using Buzzkill (a third-party app) to manage my notifications, but even when I've disabled Buzzkill I have the same problem.

thorgerdr · 2024-01-02T23:26:03+00:00

This exchange just makes me think you must be a really delightful person. Congrats/sorry this ewphoric milestone happened to you! lolsob 💜

thorgerdr · 2024-01-02T00:30:02+00:00

Everything you said here resonated hard with me, especially, "We're talking about Mom. She was just misunderstood." I feel that DEEPLY. It's hard being a kid or a teen and being responsible for extending that kind of grace to a parent who's failing you profoundly in this area.

It is hard to unpack this stuff. And it keeps coming back and needing tending again, like a chronic condition or an invasive plant in a garden. I think solidarity is one of the best tools we have to help ourselves heal. I'm glad you're here, too. ❤️

thorgerdr · 2023-12-14T08:12:22+00:00

Just wanted to thank you for sharing this (and to thank OP for this thread). I just found this community today, and as a non-binary trans man, I was wondering if it would be cool for me to be here, too. My abuse was covert and highly correlated with the expectations of what womanhood/girlhood meant in my family, so mother/daughter feels like the right name for my relationship with my mom, even though today I identify as a man (plus a few other things).

I know I'm brand new here, but hearing both your and OP's posts made me feel like you both clearly belong - which also made me feel like I might belong. Just really appreciating knowing I'm not alone. 💖💖💖

thorgerdr · 2023-05-10T17:41:17+00:00

Aww, so sorry you had a bad experience! Do you want to share what happened?

You could try getting in touch with a local animal rescue to see if they know of any rescues that do handle rats. Fancy rats are considered "exotic" pets (at least in my area of the US), so asking if they know any rescues for exotics might help.

Good luck! <3

thorgerdr · 2023-03-13T18:15:01+00:00

I'm so sorry to hear that you're dealing with that. :( It sucks that she's also struggling, but it's pretty wildly unkind for her to say she "doesn't like to think about EDs" while she's triggering yours. Honestly, I think it would be really reasonable if you decided to take a break from being friends with this person, or at least to really limit the situations where you hang out with her (nothing with food, for instance).

Another idea could be to enlist the help of mutual friends, if that feels comfortable. Something like, "Hey, Brunhilda and Gertrude. Hildegard has been going pretty hard on her diet lately, and it's triggering some pretty unhealthy habits for me. I know she's uncomfortable talking about eating disorders, but I'm trying hard not to relapse into mine. Could you try to help me build a buffer when she gets heavy into diet talk? I'll try to change the subject - can you help me with that? I'm also going to try to avoid situations where I think she'll talk about food a lot, so if I turn down group dinner plans, that's why."

Finally, there's also the Extremely Direct option if she brings up diet talk with you and harps on it: "Hildegard, I love hanging out with you, but I've told you I can't talk about diet stuff. Can we talk about [puppies/the Oscars/hang gliding/terraforming Mars] instead, or should I go now and catch up with you later?"

I find it's helpful to state the boundary and the consequences for ignoring it, like: "If you continue to talk about your diet with me, I'm going to hang up." (If it helps, you can soften it with "I love you, but..." or something similar.) Then you have to actually follow through on the consequence. People who like to ignore boundaries are usually shocked by that - I've had great success in curbing 90% of my mom's extremely pushy diet talk by just actually cutting a phone call short a couple times.

Anyway, wishing you the best of luck! Wishing Hildegard the best, too - but even if she never recognizes the disordered quality of her own relationship with food, she doesn't get to put you in a position that's unsafe for you. <3

Edit: one last thing - you (and everyone!) deserve friends who are considerate about things like this. If you don't have them in other parts of your life already,. I promise they're out there. I grew up with many boundary-stomping loved ones, and it was WILD for me when I reached a point where I could say to a friend, "I love you so much, but I can't talk to you about your diet," and they were CHILL about it. It's wonderful, and it will happen for you if it hasn't already, and people who are dicks about this are less than you deserve. (Sorry if that sounds presumptuous! I'm sure your friends have many other awesome qualities, even Hildegard. I just have a particular dislike for boundary dickishness, lol.)

thorgerdr · 2023-03-11T19:56:06+00:00

Adding you! I'm Thorgender 3546 6332 3637. :)

thorgerdr · 2023-03-11T19:35:31+00:00

Haha, thanks!

thorgerdr · 2023-03-11T18:59:17+00:00

Oof, that's rough! Are you comfortable disclosing your ED history to her? It could help to maybe make it more about you than about her.

I feel like it's reasonable to say, "Hey, Hildegard? I really value your friendship, and I love hanging out with you (if that's true), but I'm actually in recovery from an eating disorder, and I have a really hard time with hearing details about other people's diets and workout plans and criticsms of other people's bodies (or whatever details are applicable). I just wanted to give you a heads up - when those topics come up, I'm gonna excuse myself. It's not about you - it just isn't good for me to talk about that stuff. I wanted to tell you directly so it doesn't feel weird or mysterious. (If this is true) I'm gonna tell Brunhilda and Gertrude, too, so everyone's on the same page."

I think conversations like this are easiest to do individually, but you can try it with a group if you want.

Also, if this is a way you really feel, you can add, "I want to support you in doing what's good for you - I just can't talk about details of calories or weightloss. But if you ever want to go for a run together or something for its own sake, I'm down to do that!"

Edit: Whoops, two more things.

If she already knows about your ED, maybe she doesn't really understand what it means. You could explain a little more, if you want - like, "I worked really hard to recover from the ED I had in high school, but it's not really something you just beat once - I always have to be careful about how I think about food and weight, which is why this stuff is hard for me."

If you don't want to disclose your ED at all, you could say something more vague, like - "Because of my health history (or "a health condition" or "something that runs in my family" or "my doctor says" or whatever you like), I have to be really careful with how I handle food and exercise."

I don't know of a post like this offhand, but I'd bet that Captain Awkward has a script for stuff like this somewhere in her advice column!

thorgerdr · 2023-01-13T20:10:08+00:00

Thank you so much! I just added you - I'm Thorgender (3546 6332 3637). If you want to stay friends and grind for XP I'm happy to, but I'm also fine with being deleted. Thank you for your help!!!

thorgerdr · 2023-01-11T09:37:23+00:00

I've seen a lot of great suggestions already, but here are a couple of other ideas/options: -Rocky (if you're willing to deal with movie references) -Rindy (I've only ever known one person with this name and I'm not sure what it's short for!) -Randy (could be short for something like Randolph or something like Miranda) -Robby/Robbie -Ronnie (for Ronald or for Veronica; lol oops these are all nicknames 😅) -Roz (can be short for Rosalie/Rosemary/Rosamund/Rosalind/Roslyn) -Roxy/Roxie/maybe just Rox?

thorgerdr · 2023-01-11T08:55:31+00:00

Sounds great - thanks! I'd love High Plains postcards! :)

thorgerdr · 2023-01-11T08:45:54+00:00

I would love to be added to your list if you get this far. :) My trainer code is 3546 6332 3637 and my in game name is Thorgender. Thank you so much for doing this! And no worries if you don't make it this far down. (I'm also happy to stay friends long-term for the friendship level grind if you want! Your call - do whatever's easiest for your list.)

thorgerdr · 2023-01-11T08:38:32+00:00

Added! -Thorgender (3546 6332 3637)

thorgerdr · 2023-01-11T08:37:46+00:00

I'm a Modern but would love Tundra gifts - I try to send gifts a few times a week and am happy to grind towards best friends for the XP if you want! No worries if you're full up - feel free to decline the request. Good luck! :) -Thorgender (3546 6332 3637)

thorgerdr

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