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nerdperson777
18 hours ago, Emery. said:

I like the transfeminine and transmasculine labels a lot. They leave some space, but tell how you feel at the same time or the direction of your "trans vector" :) . At least this is how I see them. The very definitive labels don't leave the room for some details not following the scheme. The descriptions are so detailed and the details are so complicated for many people!

 

I can't say I ever could do it. Puberty came early to me and one of the first things it did was giving me an alto voice. Well, I can hardly reach soprano if I put a lot of effort in it, and it doesn't feel too healthy for my larynx. Well, I can reach parts of base too, if I put a lot of strain into it... for comparison.

 

Lol, in the last karate training, there were some pubescent boys. We had to do some exercises and each member of the group had to count ten repetitions and lead the group. And my voice was so much lower than theirs xD Especially when I have to shout, it turns out what my natural range is, and it's raaather androgynous.

 

I think it's that a different mixture of pitches gives the same pitch. In the case of a guy, you can often hear some low sound resonating in the background or mixing in.

 

I was able to be both soprano and tenor before. I have to check where I'm at now. I might be the one below tenor now since my voice is unmistakably male. 

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18 minutes ago, Lirpaderp said:

I can already sing to a c6, how far should I stretch it?

I don't think there's a specific pitch to aim for in that regard. Just be willing to give the top of your register some love when you work on stretching your range. While I had to sing for ear training, I'm definitely not a trained vocalist, so any advice I give might not necessarily be good. I sometimes like to use basic vocal warmups and just transpose it until it edges outside of my comfortable ranges and linger in those uncomfortable zones. (A common one I use is "Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do, Sol Do.") That said, you're likely more familiar with vocal pedagogy than I am, so you might have better luck if you directly consult other vocalists about stretching your range.

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Calligraphette_Coe
On 11/22/2017 at 10:37 AM, Groovy Teacakes said:

 

I think it's mainly social dysphoria, as it's less bad singing up there when it's just me. Anyone have any advice for dysphoria and singing?

Practice, practice, practice! Just Lucky, I guess, but my voice naturally sounds contralto-ish, and oddly enough, singing helps with my dysphoria. I guess puberty never found reason to give me an Adam's Apple, so that may explain part of why I can do a wicked Debbie Harry/ Janis Joplin / Karen Carpenter.

 

Funny story? When I cast caution to the wind and go full-on femme with makeup and clothes, people never clock me until I open my mouth. But it's not for the reason you'd expect- I'm told I have a peculiar voice with lots of modulation and a higher register, so people who know me clock me because I sound like 'me', the gender non-comformist without the Adam's Apple. Think Debbie Harry doing "One Way or Another".....

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999papercranes

My mom just ordered two half-binders off gc2b for me as an early X-mas gift!!!! I'm so happy! :D

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Hey. Happy post. Some things have been bouncing in my head lately. And the desire to have a girlfriend formed out of it. And I concluded that who cares, I live here and now and if I won't have a girlfriend now - then when? I'm in college, I should be having fun. And what is later - is later. I'll think about it later. And I can have children with a woman in the end too. It's not dead set that I can't. It's not dead set either that I will be with this very same person forever. Or that I will have children with a man. So I sorted it out with myself... But then I began to worry what my parents are going to think, because they worry too. I mean, I think they mostly worry about the children part if anything... They've never been anti-gay. Nevertheless. I worried what they'd think about this. And it turned out that I talked today with my mom about that stuff... about having a girlfriend. And mom is like... totally fine and I'm relieved, and happy. She thinks I will have children, because I like men at least a little bit. I concluded also that it doesn't really matter if I have children or not. I myself can do without them, because I find personal fulfilment in many things, especially intellectual ones and art. 

 

So... are my problems solved now? I feel so frictionless lately. 

(Although I'm having the most powerful migraine I've ever had right now, I mean it doesn't hurt, but all sorts of aura things are happening and I'm trying to steer the pressure drop away or make it mild enough for the headache to not hit in)

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Groovy Teacakes

Thank you for all your advice! I think maybe calling it falsetto in my head might help, but since it's mostly social i.e. talking about singing and signing in choir I don't know how much. We do actually have a countertenor in our choir who also sings alto 2 so I might just call myself that in my head and see how that goes. I think I probably do dissociate a fair bit which is why it wasn't such an issue until I confronted it.

Also jeez @nerdperson777, how on earth do you have three octaves? I can do E3 to F5, perhaps a bit higher at a stretch but wow! 

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I love being called he/him, being called she/her makes me overwhelmingly sad. I know I'm not a girl. How do I know if I'm a man?

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I went to Lush yesterday with my mom and sister because I like the little pseudo-massage you get when they let you sample their products, and my mom kept wanting to get something for me. She ended up asking where the men's products were, and the employees told her that everything here is for anyone of any gender. It's funny because I'm on the same page as the employees and especially don't care for the gendering of soap/beauty products, but I still think it's cute how my mom goes out of her way to buy men's products for me. :) 

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butterflydreams
1 hour ago, Mezzo Forte said:

but I still think it's cute how my mom goes out of her way to buy men's products for me.

That's amazing. I'm so happy that your mom is supportive like that. 

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8 hours ago, butterflydreams said:

That's amazing. I'm so happy that your mom is supportive like that. 

I'm a very fortunate person to have the unconditional love and support of my family. :) 

 

Seriously, when my parents learned of my upcoming surgery, they both requested the week off work to care for me. Didn't give me a choice in the matter. Since the hysto is so much less intense than top surgery, I was just going to have my roommate/dear friend do some basic care and watch to make sure I'm not dying or anything. My parents shut that plan right on down though. :lol:

 

They're not perfect on their understanding of everything, but show their support in any way they can. I think my mom has a slightly better grasp on trans topics than my dad, but I think my dad has a better grasp of my asexuality than my mom. (Well, I guess it's more my aromanticism in this regard.) Still, those are minor gripes at worst, and they're pretty humble about the learning process. Like I said, I'm very lucky :) 

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I just have to agree that sounds amazing about your parents. 

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Hysto less intense? Nooo. It's a much heavier surgery than masectomy, because it enters the peritoneum - the sack in which all the internal and important sensitive organs are kept. While masectomy might hurt more and might have more to do with aesthetics, it is a lot less dangerous and has much less possible side effects, because it's just skin tissue. I'm deducing you're lucky enough to have the surgery done laparoscopically, so maybe it won't be this bad, because the cuts are the worst part. 

So, I'm afraid for you Mezzo :P 

 

 

I'm happy my parents are supportive too. And most of all, I'm happy they're open-minded clever people. 

 

Peeps. I have the most diccicult tests tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, because they are in my major subjects, not "filler subjects". They're worth half of the semester. I'm so stresed out. 

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nerdperson777
On 11/24/2017 at 12:13 PM, Groovy Teacakes said:

Thank you for all your advice! I think maybe calling it falsetto in my head might help, but since it's mostly social i.e. talking about singing and signing in choir I don't know how much. We do actually have a countertenor in our choir who also sings alto 2 so I might just call myself that in my head and see how that goes. I think I probably do dissociate a fair bit which is why it wasn't such an issue until I confronted it.

Also jeez @nerdperson777, how on earth do you have three octaves? I can do E3 to F5, perhaps a bit higher at a stretch but wow! 

I just played around with my voice a lot when I was younger.  I guess my brain unconsciously already had this idea that I wanted to be "both" somehow.  So I would try singing things in both a "male" and "female" voice.  I also didn't really use my lower voice for anything else until I found out that I was trans.  I was taught how to talk lower and I had almost no problem.  I guess I got really lucky in the genetic lottery, not just with voice.

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1 hour ago, Emery. said:

Hysto less intense? Nooo. It's a much heavier surgery than masectomy, because it enters the peritoneum - the sack in which all the internal and important sensitive organs are kept. While masectomy might hurt more and might have more to do with aesthetics, it is a lot less dangerous and has much less possible side effects, because it's just skin tissue. I'm deducing you're lucky enough to have the surgery done laparoscopically, so maybe it won't be this bad, because the cuts are the worst part. 

So, I'm afraid for you Mezzo :P 

 

 

I'm happy my parents are supportive too. And most of all, I'm happy they're open-minded clever people. 

 

Peeps. I have the most diccicult tests tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, because they are in my major subjects, not "filler subjects". They're worth half of the semester. I'm so stresed out. 

Actually, my surgeon says that the mastectomy is way tougher on the body than the hysto. Her patients who had mastectomies often act like they didn't even have surgery after the hysto. :P Plus, this is robo-laparoscopic, so it's by far the easiest form of hysto to recover from. (The average blood loss for this surgery is under 1 teaspoon of blood) For one reference: I had severe lifting restrictions for a month after top surgery; I have a less severe lifting restriction for only two weeks after this procedure.

 

I read up a lot on ftm surgeries quite a bit, and the hysto is by far the easiest of the surgery types to recover from. It's still major surgery, but it won't be as bad as top surgery and definitely not as bad as bottom surgery is going to be!

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butterflydreams
10 hours ago, Mezzo Forte said:

I'm a very fortunate person to have the unconditional love and support of my family. :) 

 

Seriously, when my parents learned of my upcoming surgery, they both requested the week off work to care for me. Didn't give me a choice in the matter. Since the hysto is so much less intense than top surgery, I was just going to have my roommate/dear friend do some basic care and watch to make sure I'm not dying or anything. My parents shut that plan right on down though. :lol:

 

They're not perfect on their understanding of everything, but show their support in any way they can. I think my mom has a slightly better grasp on trans topics than my dad, but I think my dad has a better grasp of my asexuality than my mom. (Well, I guess it's more my aromanticism in this regard.) Still, those are minor gripes at worst, and they're pretty humble about the learning process. Like I said, I'm very lucky :) 

Wow. This is so incredible. It's not even so much about understanding you. Maybe they don't totally get it, but god it seems like they sure do try, and where they don't, they fill in the gaps with unconditional love. I'd kill for that from my parents. I'm struggling to figure out how to do an orchiectomy. I can have it done locally, but it might be worth it to travel 4 hours so that I can have the support of close friends afterwards. I know it's a trivial procedure in comparison to other things, but I'm so spooked by any surgery after last summer. "Oh, it's so simple, we'll just do it and you'll be good to go." Months later it's finally healed and I have a scar that looks like a bullet wound.

 

Re: my family...

Spoiler

My mom told me I looked like a long-haired guy in a dress and I always would. Just like the "trans" she saw on TV. Then proudly proclaiming about all the "trans" she's spotted out and about. She kept telling me to cut my hair. I'd always be her son. And apparently, I have no idea how much the name they gave me meant to them.

 

It all really got to me. I'm already so afraid of just looking like a guy impersonating a woman...sometimes I feel like that's all I am.

 

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7 hours ago, Mezzo Forte said:

Actually, my surgeon says that the mastectomy is way tougher on the body than the hysto.

Really? :o I had a surgery in the abdomen when I was small, and obviously, I can't remember how long it lasted, but I wasn't allowed to lift things for what seemed to be whole spring and wasn't allowed to eat many things for that long too. It was horrible. My mom is considering hystectomy for health reasons, and doctors told her it has many possible nasty complications that have to do with the neighbouring organs. So... I hope nothing of that happens to you.

 

Bottom surgery is super scary, especially the one in which they take skin from a different part of you body. Do they replace it in this different place with artificial skin? Oh Jesus Christ. I'd never do it. Even at the cost of a smaller penis. I mean if I ever were to do any of this. I suppose I won't. 

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Calligraphette_Coe
4 hours ago, butterflydreams said:

Wow. This is so incredible. It's not even so much about understanding you. Maybe they don't totally get it, but god it seems like they sure do try, and where they don't, they fill in the gaps with unconditional love. I'd kill for that from my parents. I'm struggling to figure out how to do an orchiectomy. I can have it done locally, but it might be worth it to travel 4 hours so that I can have the support of close friends afterwards. I know it's a trivial procedure in comparison to other things, but I'm so spooked by any surgery after last summer. "Oh, it's so simple, we'll just do it and you'll be good to go." Months later it's finally healed and I have a scar that looks like a bullet wound.

 

Re: my family...

Well, that sucks. In some small way, in hearing things like this, I count my being estranged from my parents for decades as a plus. Whenever they came up with one of these comments, I figured "Well, there goes empathy down the tuves" and come back with something pretty snarky like "Ask God for a refund. I would, but I"m stuck this way so I decided to just be a rose's thorn."

 

Dunno if this will help you, but lately I've been reading Brene' Brown. Her latest, 'Daring Greatly' has quotes like these about how people use shame to hurt us and what we can do about it.

 

“Courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” ...

 

“Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

 

“Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing that it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.” 

 

“If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can't survive.” 

 

Dare Greatly-- Be who you are. Always.

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37 minutes ago, Calligraphette_Coe said:

Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

Maybe this is my problem with belonging? Who knows?

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Calligraphette_Coe
13 hours ago, Emery. said:

Maybe this is my problem with belonging? Who knows?

I think self-acceptance is one of those things that roughly follows The Ten Thousand Hour Rule.  That rule says to be a master of anything, you most likely have to spend 10,000 hours of deliberative practice to get there. Or close enough.

 

Since we are all mostly starting out as another example of The Uncarved Block in the Tao Te Ching, we have to break our fingernails climbing that Ten Thousand Hour wall. Or, as this  quote says:

 

Quote

“Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
you accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
you reconcile all beings in the world.” 
 Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

And when the student is ready, the master appears. You are the student and you are the master. You just have to give yourself time to practice smartly.
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nerdperson777
15 hours ago, Emery. said:

Really? :o I had a surgery in the abdomen when I was small, and obviously, I can't remember how long it lasted, but I wasn't allowed to lift things for what seemed to be whole spring and wasn't allowed to eat many things for that long too. It was horrible. My mom is considering hystectomy for health reasons, and doctors told her it has many possible nasty complications that have to do with the neighbouring organs. So... I hope nothing of that happens to you.

 

Bottom surgery is super scary, especially the one in which they take skin from a different part of you body. Do they replace it in this different place with artificial skin? Oh Jesus Christ. I'd never do it. Even at the cost of a smaller penis. I mean if I ever were to do any of this. I suppose I won't. 

My mom was offered a hysterectomy when she had uterine fibroids, but she heard that having it would make her age quicker, which she doesn't like looking old.  I guess that would be complete hysterectomy, or at least one that removes the ovaries.  She just ended up having her uterus contained by some rubber bands, I was told.  It's kind of funny how a lot of these surgeries start to make sense when trans.  Like, at work I read patient files and some cis women have hysterectomies and have low dose estrogen to keep their body going.  I remember reading that trans AFAB people should have some dominant hormone anyway, which then would give the choice of either T or E, but cis people choose E.  I have been thinking to look up what kind of procedure is used for breast cancer.  I would guess it to be a DI procedure just because tumors.  I haven't gotten the chance to look it up yet.

 

There was that one time in another thread where someone linked a video, but then I looked at their other videos to find their phalloplasty.  That guy did a skin graft from his leg.  There was a tattoo there so his new penis had some remnants of it inside.  I think that skin is just gone, until it grows back, if it does.  I just think a skin graft would be way too painful, and I don't seriously want one anyway.  I'm content with taking an STP to the bathroom every time I need to go.

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butterflydreams

Something I realized, from reading Whipping Girl is that my mom is dishing out cisgender privilege when she harasses aspects of me that she ignores about my sister. My sister can wear all the makeup she wants, and my mom won't say a damn thing, but if she can tell I'm wearing eyeliner, "that's weird, <birthname>, girls don't do that." My sister can do her hair any way she wants, but my hair is long, "that's weird, <birthname>, girls don't do that." So, there you go. That's what that is. Cisgender privilege.

 

Hey, you know what we haven't had in a while? A picture! See if you can impersonate r/transpassing and tell me how much I don't pass. lol

Spoiler

IMG_1737-e1511823895869.jpg

 

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27 minutes ago, butterflydreams said:

See if you can impersonate r/transpassing and tell me how much I don't pass.

If you’re trying to be female you pass

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Calligraphette_Coe
32 minutes ago, butterflydreams said:

See if you can impersonate r/transpassing and tell me how much I don't pass. lol

Will there be punch and cookies? See, I don't do Miss Thing jealous bitch very well without at least some calories for incentives.....

 

And BTW, what's a nice girl like you doing alone in the woods? Hmmmmm? And I'm not buying the explanation for camera shake.....

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butterflydreams
15 minutes ago, Calligraphette_Coe said:

And BTW, what's a nice girl like you doing alone in the woods?

Hehe, not enough local IRL friends to do things with. So I do them anyway, alone, at my own peril. I promise though, I usually text someone before I go. 

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nerdperson777

@butterflydreams I'd say you pass.  Maybe some minor facial features look masculine, but I would think there are cis girls out there that have that problem too.

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@butterflydreams Sorry your mom is so awful. And yeah I get kind of similar treatment from my brothers where it's like.. if I complain or "whine" about something then I'm doing things wrong because "men don't whine about things" and yet it's perfectly fine for them to complain about the exact same thing in the exact same tone. 

 

 

I had a really good day passing wise today.. As far as I know I always pass/ never get misgendered, but today there were several instances of people actually directly addressing me by male terms which was especially great since I wasn't binding (but I had to zip up my hoodie and probably hunch a lot.)

 

Also my girlfriend says that I definitely have male privilege now and I'm not sure what to think of that because from my perspective the way that random people treat me isn't really different.. or if it is it doesn't feel different as in that I "gained" anything. I guess this is also because I never interacted much before transitioning nor do I really interact that much now so I don't really have a valid frame of reference. And back then I also was never a typical or attractive "girl" so I never had any of a lot of experiences that a lot of afab people have had where they feel the lack of male privilege. To me it doesn't really feel any different and it's like... I know that if I pass that means I have it but I can't really tell that I have it. I don't really know from experience what male privilege is but neither exactly what it feels like to not have it.

 

I guess when I was little I used to think of it in terms of "men can wear men's clothes and I can't" and stuff like that but then it progressed to being more about things like "if I say I don't want kids people have a totally different reaction than if a boy said he doesn't want kids" and the reaction my family had to me not shaving and all that.. So I guess I do have a bit of experience with the feeling of not having it. It's just that eventually my family got used to the way I was so their reactions just kinda faded.

And I suppose I really just don't interact enough with people to experience male privilege.

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butterflydreams
42 minutes ago, Starbogen said:

And yeah I get kind of similar treatment from my brothers where it's like.. if I complain or "whine" about something then I'm doing things wrong because "men don't whine about things" and yet it's perfectly fine for them to complain about the exact same thing in the exact same tone. 

Yup, that's exactly what cisgender privilege is.

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12 hours ago, butterflydreams said:

Something I realized, from reading Whipping Girl is that my mom is dishing out cisgender privilege when she harasses aspects of me that she ignores about my sister. My sister can wear all the makeup she wants, and my mom won't say a damn thing, but if she can tell I'm wearing eyeliner, "that's weird, <birthname>, girls don't do that." My sister can do her hair any way she wants, but my hair is long, "that's weird, <birthname>, girls don't do that." So, there you go. That's what that is. Cisgender privilege.

 

Hey, you know what we haven't had in a while? A picture! See if you can impersonate r/transpassing and tell me how much I don't pass. lol

  Reveal hidden contents

IMG_1737-e1511823895869.jpg

 

well I think your hair's pretty :D

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