Decision Trees

If you are human, the odds are very high you have baggage. Probably in excess of a hundred percent.

If you are trans, a lot of that baggage is probably related to the kinds of things I frequently talk about on this blog and odds are extremely high I say "Let me suggest ("half measure")." And you hear something like "At best, you will never get more than half a loaf, so shut up, quit your whining and pretend to be satisfied with being shafted every step of the way."

I'm not doing that.

If you do X and it is a partial solution to your problem without cutting off access to your end goal, that's not a problem. It's a stepping stone.

If you do ultimately get Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS), there are a bunch of steps between your AGAB state and post surgery trans you. 

1. Hormones will be part of that.

2. Body hair removal and other minor procedures will be part of that.

3. Acquiring clothes and learning to walk like a girl or guy will be part of that.

Those are all steps along the way and they further your goal.

One of the things I'm saying is get all the low hanging fruit you can get and I'm trying to make that easier for you. That's my primary point.

Secondarily, it's fine to get a few steps in and say "I'm good. This works for me. I am content to stop right here, at least for now."

That's not blocking you from anything. 

I'm someone who likes to keep my options open and I don't like feeling time pressured or forced to act. I like having the widest window possible so I can do important stuff at an optimal time to get best results.

The Internet is full of trans disaster stories and we don't really know what is going on in a lot of cases. Get the hormones you need TODAY with no gatekeeping, see how your body reacts to that, give it some time to shake out and see what hiccups arise. Address the hiccups.

After all your ducks are in a row on hormone replacement therapy and you feel healthy and mentally and emotionally stable for possibly the first time ever, then decide what you want to do next.

There's no need to commit to the whole deal. This isn't an all or nothing decision. 

Certain methods of hair removal are permanent. Cis women sometimes over pluck their brows and spend decades drawing eyebrows back on. 

So be conservative about your brows and consider seeing a professional.

But most men in the US shave daily. Who cares if you do hair removal in the beard area and change your mind later and now you have to shave or look like Shaggy on Scooby Doo (an adolescent with wispy whiskers)?

And, you know, I don't really see those discussions happening online. I see discussions with an all or nothing, this is about being trans full package deal mentality.

People remove body hair. This isn't a gendered issue. It gets done by millions of people daily, probably billions in fact, and if you have a parent or someone else in your life having a cow about that, well, parents tend to be hyper critical of their children. Stop telling yourself that's about you being trans. 

If you weren't trans, it would probably be something else. I don't smoke, drink, do illicit drugs, sleep around casually etc. and I was in my thirties when I finally got my mom to give it a rest. 

If you can handle it in a fashion that reduces social friction, cool. Because life is always better with less of THAT.

You want to know one of my mom's big bugaboos? Piercings and tattoos. Like even normal pierced ears for normal earrings was frowned upon and my sister never got her ears pierced. 

I got mine pierced in my twenties after moving away from my home town, rebel that I am. My mother never said one word about it and at some point supplied me with a bunch of earrings.

All people have their bugaboos. Stop taking it so personally that your parents have theirs and work on making it a non issue as much as possible.

No, it won't always work. Some people have bigger issues than others. But you won't know if you don't try.