LadyAutumn

If you're out of the loop or intentionally avoiding social media and the news cycle, then I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this. Two executive orders were written yesterday by Donald Trump that specifically target transgender rights and freedoms. One targeting the rights of transgender members of the military, another targeting the healthcare rights of transgender youth. These orders state in no uncertain terms that trans people are unsafe evil liars deserving of contempt and exclusion. This is not an exaggeration, and the shift in the narrative behind these executive orders is extremely alarming and likely to be seen again as the basis for further attacks against us.

There is a narrative created by these two orders. A narrative that trans people are dishonorable, that trans people lack selflessness and humility, and that we are liars. That we are wrong that our existence is wrong. That it doesn't matter whether transition decreases our suicide rate, whether it allows us to live happy, fulfilling lives. That death itself is preferable to the existence of an adult trans person. That being transgender is by itself wrong and makes us worth less than cisgender people. A narrative that children must be protected from becoming transgender people, even if it means they die. That no one can be allowed to think that being transgender is alright, that it's okay to be a transgender person.

This cannot go unchallenged. It's not enough for trans people to resist alone. This has to come from as man voices as possible. The writing is on the wall. This amounts to dehumanizing persecution intended to foster perceptions of us as inhuman. It is going to get worse. This is week 2. What awaits us in a year no one can say for sure. We need protests we need civil disobedience. We need to help our most vulnerable get out. We need to protect trans youth.

Please refer to the transgender resistance network for mutual aid and help. I had tried last year to organize something here but was not capable of it due to problems in my own personal life.

We need solidarity. We need to help each other. And we have to resist. Not just these orders, not just this narrative, but we have to resist the fall into hopelessness and acceptance. We have to fight. Our lives have value. Our lives are worth the same as anyone else. Don't let them get to you, don't believe in the narrative. Transition saved my life, maybe it saved yours too. Transitioning and seeing others transition has been the most beautiful and rewarding experience of my life. I refuse to accept a reality in which we are forced into closets, forced into hiding. I beg of everyone to join me in refusing that outcome.

I havent gone swimming in around a decade, and now that I'm a little over a year post up I really want to but I'm still so nervous to actually go and buy a swimsuit. 😅 there's something intimidating or nerve wracking about the process.

Anyone have experiences buying swimsuits? Is there any tips going in I should know? I think I know what style I want, a 2 piece with high waisted bottoms and a top with an underwire.

I was thinking of making a community engagement post last week in the run up to the Easter weekend and transgender day of visibility, but it got lost under a recent promotion at work and a few busy days.

So yeah how was your Easter weekend / TDoV? 😊 Most of my family is on vacation so I just had a quiet weekend at home with my partner. All the drama that went down with TDoV landing on Easter Sunday was.. unsettling to say the least. I hope everyone was able to weather that storm of hate and propaganda safely.

Hello everyone,

Just wanted to quickly add that the finalized format for requesting engagement has been decided. A commenter in the other thread suggested a similar format. (Thank you @Kayday@lemmy.world)

At the start of the body of your post, not in the title, the first line should look like the following.

[Requesting Engagement from _________]

For clarity purposes, this is the official way to request specific engagement groups. I'll respect other methods, but this way, it keeps things nice and transparent.

It's been a while since we've had a general discussions thread, and with the holiday season ramping up, I imagine a lot of us are feeling very stressed and worn out.

Spending time with family members is always a time, to say the least. Getting my family to respect my partner's they/them pronouns has been frustrating and exhausting. It enfuriates me that they can understand and respect my pronouns, but only because I'm binary gendered. Getting very sick of deconstructing the "them is multiple people" argument, as well as the "I'm still a lesbian even though my partner is transmasc non-binary" conversation. 😓

But aside from that, I'm actually excited about the holidays this year. And I hope everyone has something to look forward to, time with friends and family who love and accept us. We all deserve love, compassion, and acceptance, and to be able to enjoy a time of year that should be representative of all those things.

This space is 100% open and welcoming of venting, frustration, whatever you want to post here. And if you see cishet people disrupting you, disrupting the community, invalidating your feelings or opinions please report them and we will deal with them accordingly. I'm not handing out bans to every cis person who has an opinion on anything here, but this is not a space for cisgender people. If you're reading this and you're cisgender, you are welcome to post and contribute here. By all means, do so. But keep in mind that this space is not for you. You are a visitor in this community. How we feel, how we struggle, the experiences we as transfeminine people have come first every single time. I won't change that. And if you're going to participate here, you need to abide by that.

I just wanted to get that out of the way because occasionally we get an influx of people from other parts of the fediverse here and they are welcome but I continue to see cisgender experiences being used to invalidate transgender ones. And that's going to be a focus of mine going forward.

What are your thoughts on this time of year? What's been your experiences so far with family, the good and the bad? Let's all support each other through this. And what are your thoughts on how this community has been over the last few months? I'd love to hear it if anyone had any suggestions or thoughts on how our community has been operating.

I'm starting to hit a bit of a wall with voice training lately. I can find my resonance, I can adjust the positioning of my vocal cords and where my voice is coming from. I occasionally pass on the phone, and I work all day over the phone so I do get pretty regular indirect feedback in terms of how my voice gets me gendered.

But I am very much struggling with pitch and maintaining consistent pitch. It's just not happening and even when everything else is perfect my pitch will slip, and then I'll get misgendered. I cant seem to find a specific pitch and comfortably rest there. I'm also 8 years in at this point, I've been doing voice training for a long time and I just think when it comes down to it I might be one of the women for whom training alone just isn't enough.

I've done a lot of research into glottoplasty and find myself in a financial position where I could hypothetically afford it. Most accounts from people who've had the procedure seem to indicate they've had great results with it, but there's a lot of people who swear that it'll basically render me mute if I get it done. Its minimally invasive and the surgeon I'm considering has good rapport with his patients and I'm confident he'd do great. But on the whole I'm hesitating a little bit and curious what other people think. I do IT work that involves using the phone quite a bit, but if I had to take time off work for a little while that would almost certainly be fine. I don't sing and really don't have any concerns with regard to vocal range either.

Are you considering vocal feminization surgery? Why or why not? Have you experienced similar things with regards to voice training, or has training alone been enough for you?

Feel free to chime in with whatever thoughts you have on the operation or voice training in general.

I'd like to welcome @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone to the transfem moderation team! 🤗 Ada is one of the admins of the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance and a very active member of the transfem community. She has already been providing me with assistance in running the community and answering any questions that I have, she's a perfect fit for our second moderator.

The addition of Ada to our moderation team helps maintain the safety of our community and our readiness for more complex moderation issues. Please as always report any rule breaking you see and we will address it as soon as possible.

Thank you so much Ada for joining the moderation team! 😄

I hope everybody's had a great week so far. I wanted to make some kinda post to engage everyone in a casual context. I was originally going to ask in the title "who has been really supportive in your life recently?" So if you want to answer that I suppose you can lol.

I myself have to work all weekend but its the evening shifts so I'll be fine. My best friend has been especially supportive of me lately, she took me out shopping when I was in between paychecks and even bought me a couple crop tops I wanted. I really appreciate her being so willing to do those kinds of things with me even tho she has social anxiety. Having supportive people in your helps a lot.

Hello everyone! 😊

I wanted to make a post reaching out to the community after we recently passed the milestone of 2K subscribers! I'm very happy with how this community has grown and become a place for transfeminine people to vent and connect and share trans joy.

With the continued growth of the community and the recent wave of new subscribers we have been having some issues with trolls coming in to the community to bully or harass our users. Please be vigilant of transphobic trolls and report any and all rule breaking content that you see. That includes bullying comments, dismissive comments, gate keeping comments - even if those comments are coming from other trans people. Report them, this community is first and foremost meant to be supportive and maintaining that is a priority.

Along those lines, please don't overly engage with anyone coming here to cause trouble or to bully someone. It's not worth your time and just draws more attention to our community as a space these trolls are drawn to. Its entirely possible at some point in the future we may face brigading or other harder to deal with moderation issues. And to that end I will at some point in the future be looking to add another moderator. As of the moment I dont feel that's necessary, but as we continue to grow and our moderation needs expand I will continually reassess.

I'm also happy to allow image posts in this community, but I did recently add a new rule of no NSFW image posts. And we haven't had any yet, but bear that in mind as any that come up will be removed. I think that having image posts is fine in general, though I'm interested to hear if other people think this should be a text post only community more similar to r/mtf.

This place gets quiet sometimes... I hope everyone's having a good day!! 🤗

I'm having trouble finding good intro resources for parents of trans kids, so if anyone has any handy please send them my way.

I also added a hotline section based on !ftm@lemmy.blahaj.zone. If anyone else can think of any UK or other international hotlines you think should be listed, please let me know. I also tried to list times when 2SLGBT services are specifically available.

I looked into each resource to try and come up with rough descriptions for each of them, if you think I misrepresented or miscommunicated what a particular resource is or does - let me know :)

I also decided to add a specific rule against all forms of debate or gatekeeping. This group is and should be a welcoming supportive environment for all transfeminine people.

I'm LadyAutumn and I'm the moderator of this community. I hope everyone has enjoyed their time on Lemmy thus far. This space is very much still developing, but its nice feeling like a transfem community is developing here.

I myself migrated to lemmy from reddit just last week, and created this community initially to mimic the subreddit r/mtf. I used that subreddit a lot, and loved having a place to talk with other people who understand what I'm going through. I knew if I'm going to use this platform long term, that on lemmy I would want a community for transfeminine people.

This space isn't on reddit though, and isn't controlled by or related to the moderation team of r/mtf. So things here won't be exactly the same. I want this to be a community for news, for advice, for trans joy, for discussions and questions, and whatever else we want to have here. I want this space to be community controlled and for everyone to have an influence on what this community is and how it is moderated. That will mean polls and community posts and whenever they come up I'd encourage everyone to participate in them. This is a space for us, and we all should have a say.

Also thank you @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone for hosting the lemmy.blahaj.zone instance that is hosting this community. She's doing this without any profit motive and has been working hard to keep up with the huge influx of users around here lately. She's awesome and has already been an active part of this community.

I figured I'd make a post sharing my perspective on this community and what I think it should be. If you have any thoughts or suggestions please feel free to share them. :)