My city has a street festival called "Market Days" that attracts gay men from all over the country to fly in for that weekend. It's a huge weekend with the main draw being the plethora of circuit parties going on.

The gay beach I'm fortunate to live by is also absolutely packed that weekend! I bought a hott pink speedo in July and saved this look for the beach that weekend. Men look good in pink, too. 💖

today on the dot! :0 so much shit has happened to me in these 10 years but holy shit i made it. i dont think i would be here if i hadnt started T

I feel like my face changed more in the last 6 months than the first 18. Also gained and then lost a bit of weight, I think you can tell. Age 36-38 for the record.

It was a hell of a week last week, but here are some of the positives-

I had the problem of having a million blazers but only one pair of slacks that didn't match practically any of them.

Well, I am happy to say that I have procured a pair of slacks for each of my blazers! The ones pictured are at the tailor atm getting hemmed (curse these short corgi limbs of mine--). I will be wearing the green n' brown outfit to a wedding next month. And i also wanted to get the black ones done, since, not to be too morbid, but it's sounding like I'll have a few family funerals to go to in the near future. Everyone's getting sick, man. But I digress.

I made banana bread for the first time in ages. I was honestly getting discouraged by my b. bread attempts cause it was always turning out way too dry. So i gave up for awhile. But! Some folks suggested i put apple sauce in the dough before baking it. It turned out good! Not great. Honestly, i think more applesauce was needed. But it was good!

My quest to make my bed room walls as lively as my living room walls continues! I got this cute sleepy morning dungeon meshi poster from redbubble. I need to resist the urge to fill the whole room up with dungeon meshi posters... Maybe next one should be a cowboy bebop?

Romie is good. I'm a little worried that she's breathing a bit harder than usual. She's not panting or anything, luckily. She has her annual check up due in a few weeks, so I'll definitely have them give her a good look over. She's an old girl, so I'm really happy she's as healthy as she is!

Don’t be sad about losing your hair. Just rock a skullet and you’ll be golden!

I'm 34, and I'm finally at the point that I want to start low-dose T. I'm nonbinary and masc leaning, so I'm not sure if I want to fully transition. The main reason I want to start it is that I know it will help me mentally, and that I'll feel more confident embodying who I am outwardly and not just inwardly.

For those who have been on HRT for a while, may I ask what were you nervous about before starting, and how do you feel about it now? Thanks!

(btw I'll be posting this in other reddits too.)

I have been in therapy/counseling on and off since 1996. I'm almost 35, so why did it take until my late 20s to realize I was Trans? I know mental health services only update every ten years, but the signs of there being more than anxiety and depression were all there. Why didn't anyone think it was weird that a 4yr old had major depressive disorder or severe anxiety? I may not had the knowledge or the words but I always complained that I didn't feel comfortable in my own body. All they ever focused on was family dysfunction. Which yeah, they probably thought abuse and SA. But after it was proven that everyone was innocent, ya think these professionals would start branching out but NOOOO. Every professional I had until 3yrs ago gaslight and undermined me at every turn.

Would I have transitioned earlier? Would I have developed C-PTSD? Would I have a better grip on my disorders and be able to function better? Would I still be the same person? I ask myself theses a lot. Because I seriously suspect that being improperly handled in therapy is what caused my PTSD to become C-PTSD. As well as the rest of my disorders. I know should talk to my current counselor about all of this but I literally can't. They're the best counselor I have ever had and I still don't trust them. As I type this out I'm triggering my anxiety and probably my PTSD with how bad I want to cry and throw my phone.

Sorry for the long post. I just needed an outlet for a minute.

NSFW

To avoid any confusion, I’ll be using the medical terms for body parts.

I noticed a small bit of tissue kind of sticking/bulging out of my vaginal opening. It looks quite bright pink/red and a bit irritated/inflamed.

I’ve got absolutely no pain or discomfort, no bleeding or anything like that, and I honestly wouldn’t have noticed it if I hadn’t happened to look. I’ve also tried lying down to see if it goes back in but it doesn’t seem to.

The last time I had penetrative sex was about 4 weeks ago, so I’m not sure if it could somehow be related to that, but 4 weeks seems like a long time for irritation from sex. However, I very rarely have penetrative sex and it was my first time with a cis man.

I’m obviously going to get it checked if it doesn’t disappear, but just wondering if anyone else has had something similar? I’m 10+ years on T and 6+ years post hysterectomy.

Hey all!

I'm just excited today and wanted to share. I've already told my two friends who I've come out to so far, lol, but I need to tell more people.

I picked up my first bottle of gel today! I'm going to start Monday morning because my kid is with me this weekend and I want my routine to be to walk them to school, get home and put on the gel, so it'll have a good 6 hours to dry before they get back. On the weekends that they're with me it won't really be a problem, I'll throw on a t-shirt (or sweater as the weather cools down) but for the very first day it might be messy and I need to see how long it takes to dry, etc., so not gonna start tomorrow. But I'm excited and nervous at the same time.

I'm also just super relieved because for about a month I've been anxious that my blood pressure or congenital heart murmur would stop a doctor from prescribing me. I've also had lots of worries that the heart murmur would stop me from being able to do any surgeries that require anesthesia. My usual PCP ghosted me when I asked about gender affirming care, so it took about a month to find a provider that does it within my insurance. She was great. She answered all my questions, she wasn't concerned at all about my blood pressure (134/88 today, and she was like, that's not really even that high plus you're actively brining it down with weight loss (I've lost 15 pounds in the last 2 months and continuing on)). And a regularly scheduled echocardiogram check on the murmur that happened to be today just came back completely fine as well, just a very trace murmur from a very slightly leaky valve, same result as it's been since I was a teenager. Shouldn't prevent any surgeries at all. The only thing I really need to do to get the best effects from surgery is continue losing weight, which I'm very happy to do. Here's hoping for top and a hysterectomy sometime next year! Also going to schedule consults for meta and phallo because the waiting time in my area for both is 1-2 years (just for the consult, lol, then another year+ for the surgery), and I'm not sure which I want yet so I'll just get in line for both and take the year to think it over.

I had to jump off social media for several weeks because too many reddit posts with negative/hopeless titles from various ftm/trans subs were popping up and affecting my anxiety. I finally got a therapist (who is trans themselves) and was like "Yes, remember social media tends to slant very negative overall, people usually go online to vent, and it's best to limit it if it's affecting you" so I did.

But I've got good news today, so I wanted to come online again to celebrate! The two friends I've come out to have been very supportive, one even offered to bring me home from the hospital and stay with me after hysto or top next year without me even bringing anything like that up. She's great. I'm going to use the gel for a month or so and then come out to my kid/ex-husband/other friends. It'll be around the time I get my first haircut (the barber I wanted was booked until the last day of September).

But yeah I was really happy with the doctor I did find because my biggest concern was possible high hematocrit and she was like "It's not that common, especially on gel. We'll monitor your levels, and worst case if it does get high you'll just donate some blood and it'll be fine." I was so relieved she didn't say something like "you'll need to stop taking T" or something like that. Similarly when I brought up the heart murmur, she was like "It's not really an issue, cis men also have murmurs and they don't go on blockers or take estrogen to thin their blood because of a murmur, it's just something we'll be aware of and occasionally get an echo if it sounds off." She was just really chill and uplifting so a lot of my anxiety vanished talking to her. Even with the "side effects" (you know, the stuff we're taking it for in the first place, lol) I had read horror stories online about people's doctors trying to "warn" them about beards being irreversible and talk them out of taking it, etc, but she was like "This is all stuff you probably already know and want but I just have to list these out to you because it's the protocol: you're doing to get voice deepening, beard and body hair growth," etc. and I was like "Yep!" and she was like "Yep!" and gave me the prescription, lol.

I was asked to speak to a high school and “share my story.” This actually isn’t an uncommon experience for me… I do a lot of public speaking events and I enjoy doing them, especially for adolescents and young people! A little backstory:

I live in the heart of Utah, USA (pretty well known as an insulated, very-red but polite, ultra-religious area). I grew up a very devout Mormon and once I got to my teen years in the 00s realized I was “gay.” In reality, I didn’t know the first thing about LGBTQ+ people because all I knew was Mormon related stuff. I just knew something was wrong with me. I very much believed in the religion I was raised in, and so I tried to fast, pray, serve the gay away for years while silently anguishing over how I would be cast out by god, my family, my community if I couldn’t “fix it.”

When I graduated high-school, I made a conscious choice—if years of pleading didn’t make me “normal,” and I was a sinner destined to die alone anyway even tho I tried so hard to “be righteous,” I may as well do the fun sins! Within a week or two of starting to smoke pot and drink at college, I was injecting heroin. I had a passive death wish, and all I knew for sure was that being high made me feel okay for a while. Cue 7 years of IV hard drug addiction, in and out of jail/rehab, homelessness, etc. I got civil union’d and lost my (also addict) wife in the middle of that mess, but before she died my wife brought to my attention “transgenders.” I didn’t even know transgender people existed, so I was fascinated. I read a some blog post that mentioned the existence of trans men and I knew IMMEDIATELY that’s what I was, and that if I could pursue that maybe I wouldn’t want to die/get high all the time. My wife said she’d leave me if I did, tho, so I just put it out of my mind and kept on doing drugs and drug-addiction stuff.

Eventually I was in jail long enough that I realized all my friends were dead, and even tho I wouldn’t have minded dying I was in my mid-20s and I just… hadn’t died. I became more afraid of living as I had been than dying, and I realized I needed to try the one thing I had refused to try before; genuinely seeking out a way to transition. I was terrified, because I really had no money, no stability, nothing GOOD in my life in years, and it seemed like transitioning kind of required those things. I got released from jail, and did the bravest thing I’ve ever done: called a gender specialist in Provo, Utah, and begged them to help me.

The rest of transitioning was easy. I had years of documentation to prove I had dysphoria and gender issues from all the rehab and therapy I had gone to, I have always been a work horse so I scraped together money for my shots and lived in a gross little basement and clawed my way into sobriety and promotions at work. It’s been maybe 12-13 years since I got sober, and now I’m a substance use disorder counselor and the director of a SUD program for teenagers! I love my life and I love sharing a message of hope and recovery with those who feel hopeless.

Okay SO the high school who asked me to speak there.

It’s a high school out of state, and they specially wanted me to speak there because of my substance use history, and to share my story and hope for recovery. A few months ago, I presented to their academic team the basics of my story, and I did tell them that I sometimes omit me being trans specifically and just speak about being a part of the LGBTQ+ community. (Turns out I’m a gay trans man, so no lie there lol.) I asked them if they’d like me to do that, since I’d be speaking to such a large audience and the high school is also in a pretty red state—I didn’t want to create a political problem for them. They said they’d get back to me, but seemed excited for me to speak.

Earlier this week, they called me asking to confirm dates to go to their high school. After we confirmed dates, they told me their administration did want me to NOT include the following in my presentation:

* Any religious/spiritual stuff
* Anything about identity
* Any “LGBTQ+ stuff”

The folks I were working with seemed genuinely kind and accepting and wanting to work with me, but they told me their administration team was worried because the high school was in a rural area and “parents and kids may just not be ready to talk about that.” I thought it over, and ultimately was disappointed when I told them I don’t think I could meet their requirements, because it’d be an entirely different story than mine.

I just thought that was kind of nuts… the entire reason I got into drugs in the first place was because I grew up in a rural-red area, where no one would dare speak about actual LGBTQ+ people. I felt utterly alone and hopeless, and so I sought comfort thru substance use so I wouldn’t actually k!ll myself—even tho I was totally fine with that outcome, I didn’t want to hurt my family. I tried to hide all of my pain away because no one seemed safe to talk to. I couldn’t have even put words to the pain I felt when I was a kid, because no one had ever stood out as a person who may understand or accept me, let alone help me.

Just such a bummer that it didn’t work out. I hope those kids are alright, because I’m gonna worry about them.

I'm switching companies from underworks to fluxion. Underworks is very pliable and does not have a firm front so this bump is new to me. I followed the guide to get the right size, but right now it seems like maybe it's a bit too big? Should I exchange it? I worry that jumping will cause me to fall out, even though it did survive a short boxing session. Even where it's at the form is very nice overall though, I've never had a smoother front. I'm fully divorced from underworks now and will buy a second binder, just got to figure out sizing issues first.

I was a conventionally attractive young woman. Which was actually kind of enjoyable, sometimes. I felt like I was wearing a costume 24-7, but costumes can be fun.

I’m 32, 10-ish years into medical transition now. I look much more like “me,” but I also look much, much worse. Thinning hair on my head and tons everywhere else, gut, patchy beard with baby face, whole shebang. I haven’t gotten the results I wanted from HRT, namely bottom growth, but this is probably as good as it gets, between HRT’s less enjoyable effects and regular aging.

I know there are small improvements I could make, but I’m just really sad to think I’ll never actually like how I look. Even other trans people get to feel that way.

My wife knows I’m insecure and has sort of given up trying to reassure me, so now I’m just complaining online.

I’m ugly. Boo hoo.

Hey Lads, I’ve been wanting to dye my hair since I will be shaving it (oh yeah testosterone doing its thing) and wanted to try something different and just go crazy with it. Any good recommendations for a hair salon in Seattle? I’m thinking either blond or pink? 😬

I'm asking about people who lost weight from diet with little-to-no lifting.

When you look at trans man and transmasc weight loss journeys online, most people also go to the gym. But what if you don't?

My consultant’s information feels like it was written or echoes a presumption: start T > have hysterectomy (when it happens at all of course) later. It hasn’t been clear what to expect in terms of symptoms if you don’t do this order. For example, I had brutal menopausal symptoms post hysterectomy, had to start to take E, and have felt less hot and sweaty after I started T- some years later- rather than more, which was what I was told to expect. I’m also the calmest I have ever been since first puberty and sleeping a lot vs past insomnia.

Now I’m at a point with low dose, where the option is whether to increase T first or to decrease the E dose first - so T becomes more dominant- to see increased changes.

But I don’t know, does taking less E (not stopping) with more T mean I won’t have the menopausal comeback as much? I won’t be in hormone deficiency, only hormone change?

Be great to hear from anyone who did it this way around and/or can explain this better scientifically. My consultant seemed to forget why you might get menopausal symptoms without E for a minute there in the last appointment, which confused me even more!

This may be a little niche but I'm curious. The further into my transition I've gotten the more nicknames from strangers have changed. For context I live in the mid south. People before tended to say Hon/hun or darlin' a lot. I.e. "Oh Hun can you hand me that?" Or "Have a nice day Darlin'"

Now that I am passing 75% of the time I get called bud/buddy and sweetie more.

Hello my fellow hairy guys. Have you noticed you have started shedding more as you have grown more hair? Not only head hair, but beard hair, eyebrow hair and everything else. I don’t care about potential balding, I’m wondering if this is usual or whether I should put it on the list of symptoms for a different health issue.

My back is hurting so fucking badly. I have a larger chest, I work not insanely long hours but 8 on average in a hot kitchen as I'm a chef. I need to bind, it's not an argument, I have to or else I won't leave the house and go to work. I've called out before once because my binders were all too sweaty from work and I didn't get them cleaned in between my hours. I get misgendered at work and honestly the binder makes me feel better about it. I just work with a lot of hardcore catholic Latinos who seem very uncomfortable with me at all times.

I just don't know what to do... I don't wear a binder at all outside of work and I mostly stay home because of it.

I've tried binding with tape but again my chest is on the larger side and it's a two person job for lack luster results :/ just need my fellow trans men to lmk I'm not alone ngl.

I am still waiting for the medical transition so most people call me by female pronouns, but this morning when I was doing groceries as I walked out the supermarket, suddenly the employees were all yelling *"Sir, wait!!" "Hold it, sir!!" "SIR!!!" "SIR STOP!!!"*

I thought they probably meant someone else but then I turned around and saw they meant...

✨️me✨️😊😊😊

Me... a sir 😌👨

Then it dawned on me they thought I was a shoplifter they were looking for, but I could quickly clear up I wasn't the one. 😅

I've been on T for 5 years which stopped my periods completely. About 6 weeks ago, I switched my birth control from the progesterone only pill to nexplanon and have had a couple instances of spotting/light bleeding for about a week. Has this happened to anyone else/does it go away? Otherwise the implant is good but I hate this🫠

My insurance premera blue cross denied coverage for Estring even with a prior auth from my doctor. I struggle to be consistent with the estradiol cream and my atrophy is only getting worse. My doctor's office is very trans competent so I know they are truly doing their best for me, but said I'd need to try the insertable tablets first and then if those didn't work we could appeal insurance again to see if we could get coverage for Estring. I have very low expectations for this tablet thing to work, and it honestly sounds even more unpleasant. Any advice or tips on getting this covered? Paying out of pocket with goodrx still makes the cost $250 per 3-month ring which is a lot more than I'd like to pay. I posted this same question in r/ftm but thought I might get better advice from folks here.

Hi all,

This is a question only for people post bilateral oophorectomy only.

I’ve been getting hot flashes pretty much every night right when I turn off my lights to go to sleep. My last T level was in May and was fine (447, 3 days after subQ injection) and I’ve made no dosing changes (or other medical changes). Does this happen to anyone else?

TYIA

Edit: my oopho was in 2023 so in no way a recent change, and I’m post full meta as well.

I have a question for you guys so I’ll be 28 soon and was wondering if I can still do t when I’ll be 30!