Week 5 - Cracked Toof
I was planning to post on the weekend, but unfortunately on Friday night, I cracked a tooth. I ended up spending most of the weekend on pain killers.
Went to the dentist yesterday, have another appointment today, but things are under control now. It’s just a matter of getting tooth repair(hopefully) done. Dentist was optimistic that the tooth could be saved.
A lot has happened, some of it’s blurring together. But I’ll start with voice stuff.
My biggest hurdle, so far, has been maintaining my voice during extended conversations. When I’m not thinking about it, I sometimes slip back into my masc range. When looking at my vocal range, the average woman’s range has a mean in the 165 to 255 hz range. When running a test(Which means I’m actively thinking about it), I’m at 196 hz. With 73% being above 165, which it’s natural for voices to dip below that. Some people obsess over the idea of having their entire vocal range in 165+ range, but cis-women don’t.
When listening to Don’t Forget, it kinda clicked that she is kinda whisper singing. So I decided to experiment with my voice. It’s not perfect, but I think I’m getting there on matching her vocal quality.
Anyways on to the good news.
I found out, one of my friends in the McDonald’s corporate Tech team is also transitioning. So we bonded over that. I ended up coming out in a shared group chat of tech people while we were playing Meccha Chameleon. It was funny, because she wasn’t fully ‘out’ but one of them kept calling her by her new name.(I’ll call her Spring, but not her actual name. I don’t want to accidentally out her.) It was super sweet, but it kinda happened naturally. It gave me the courage to come out. I just kinda changed my name. When asked, Uh, I was like, I’m kinda bad at this, but since she’s going by Spring now, so I figure I’ll start going by Kat. Was a funny aha moment.
We started chatting about our journey, she started around the same time as my restart. We’ll be meeting at a conference in September, and she’s encouraging me to come out before then so we can meet up as ourselves. She came out to her boss a few days ago and encouraged me to do the same.
I came out to my boss. I didn’t give her my name yet, but I discussed it at a professional level. Like, just so you’re aware, I’m going to be having more doctor’s appointments on my calendar. I know I have the ability to flex my schedule around, and I’ll be sure to get my hours in. She wasn’t even worried about that, but she made sure to tell me that while she didn’t think I’d have issues with the leadership team, we have a huge organization. If I run into issues, that they’ll be behind me. Which I feel she prioritizes a safe and respectful workplace overall, a few mistakes have been made.
Then on the side of more fun stuff. I finally got my 3D printer working. Ended up having to cut the fan speed to 30%. Thanks random comment on a reddit thread!
A cute little 3D printed purse was my first use. Made from a glittery TPU. It’s pretty small, but I love it. I ended up printing a minimalist wallet, which isn’t much to write home about, apart from being pretty colors. It only holds like 6 cards. But that’s fine. Makes me work with what I have. I can rely on mobile pay more. Almost everyone is taking it nowadays. Next I’m looking into bracelets or something else cute.
Next up, Social Media changes.
CW: Politics and severe autism. With some hot takes.
Had a bit of a traumatic experience on Reddit. I made a comment on a trans thread, in which I used AMAB as a noun, which is apparently a big no-no. A few commenters were explaining it and I was trying to understand why. Basically boiled down to a prescriptive vs descriptive language argument. I was leaning against the argument I was having. While I was trying to hear them out and explain my position, to hear a nuanced critique, I started getting bombarded by negative comments. I ended up deleting all of my comments, unsubbing from the sub and just uninstalled Reddit.
It’s a cesspool of insane socialists anyway. I don’t talk about politics much but hey, this is my blog. It’s something I care about, despite having unplugged for the last few months. News cycle was making me way too doomer. I’ll focus closer to the midterms, when there’s a chance to make things better. Anyway, I lean towards a mixed market system, which either socializes or heavily regulates industries to account for externalities. Like, just because something is highly important, doesn’t mean it needs to be socialized. Like food industry does just fine with heavy regulations without being socialized. Sometimes corrections need to be made. But the American prison system has a lot of externalities that result in a high recidivism rate, but that could also be part of the the American preference for punishment. I unsubbed from a ton of subreddits after Oct 7th. Israel Palestine obnoxious. So much terrorist support. The problem is, that subreddits are infested by these communities. After October 7th, I understand people wanting to talk about it. By why the heck does r/Egg_IRL and a bunch of other meme subs need to fixate on that crap. Like, I was consuming too much political content at the time, and I just wanted to unplug and look at memes for a bit.
A very brief summary of my opinion on I/P: Both sides need to be ready to make concessions and come to the table in good faith, accepting political reality. Which is probably going to require a different leader in Israel and a replacement for Hamas, as both are bloodthirsty and have no regard for Palestinian lives. But, the moment I criticize Palestine, I get ‘History didn’t start on Oct 7th."‘ or “From the river to the sea.” Unfortunately, that leads to the status quo, which is that both sides seem to think that fighting forever will result in them taking land and making progress. And even more unfortunately, that’s only true for Israel. Ultimately, the status quo will lead to the eradication or subjugation of the Palestinians. Overall, I’m pretty doomer about it.
Another problem In a similar concept, I’m generalizing a bit here, but you have two types of online trans communities. Transmeds or ‘truscum’ and self-identification or ‘tucute’. It’s basically arguments over the definition of transgender. Again, I have a nuanced position here. I’m not as extreme as either side. I don’t agree with the idea that self-ID is all it takes to call yourself trans, but I also don’t agree with the extreme end of the transmed perspective, that you need to be pursuing a medical intervention. I would still likely fall on the transmed side of things. I think that some degree of dysphoria is a part of the trans experience. But I also agree with the tucutes that medical gatekeeping can be a problem. Mainly because dysphoria looks different in everyone. Much like depression. Sometimes people just have a lower baseline and think it’s normal, when they experience performing as the opposite sex, they call it ‘gender euphoria’. But in reality, I think that’s just an alleviation of gender dysphoria. But I’m also not trying to argue with people over what they feel. Similarly, I think there’s a valid non-binary experience, which a lot of transmeds reject. That said, when I’m looking for a space, I’m looking for a support space for MTF people. Preferably, people that transitioned at an older age. But I’m also trying to avoid hardcore ‘hon-posting’ communities as I get enough negativity from my own head, I don’t need to take on other people’s, I’m also not trying to be in a hug box where people are like. ‘You’re heckin’ valid for identifying as deergender’. Like, I want to be in a community where people are talking about their experience and giving each other advice. I’m still looking for a broader community like that.
Enter Pintrest. I tried a few other apps. Like, youtube shorts is okay. Instagram reels is okay. But Pintrest is perfect. It’s just an image board. There’s technically comments, but you have to click a button to see them. For the most part, it’s just memes with no commentary. I do miss some subs, but whatever. Unplugging from Reddit has been overall positive. I still look at it, but through google, rather than scrolling the app. The feed, in general, is my bane.
Hopefully, I can find a decent trans community. At the very least, I have some friends I can talk to now. Anyway, gonna go crash out.
-Kat