Dina’s Diner 11/14/22

GENDER AFFIRMING CARE: GROWING AND IMPROVING WITH SOME CONCERNS

Ryace, featured in the article.

The international news service, Reuters, had a long special report about gender-affirming care for trans youth. It was headlined As More Transgender Children Seek Medical Care, Families Confront Many Unknowns. It appeared on their site October 6, 2022.

The report appears as the issue of trans youths from elementary schoolers to college enrollees has become a hot button political issue (for all the wrong reasons) and some professional concern for the reasons covered by Reuters. The sub-heading of the report said “Thousands of youths are lining up for gender-affirming care. But when families decide to take the medical route, they must make decisions about life-altering treatments that have little scientific evidence of their long-term safety and efficacy.”

The article reports some interesting numbers. “The analysis [by a health research firm hired by Reuters], the first of its kind, found that at least 121,882 children ages 6 to 17 were diagnosed with gender dysphoria in the five years to the end of 2021. More than 42,000 of those children were diagnosed just last year, up 70% from 2020. The number of children who started on puberty-blockers or hormones totaled 17,683 over the five-year period, rising from 2,394 in 2017 to 5,063 in 2021, according to the analysis. These numbers are probably a significant undercount since they don’t include children whose records did not specify a gender dysphoria diagnosis or whose treatment wasn’t covered by insurance.” Gender clinics treating youths in the United States went from zero to over 100 in the past 15 years, according to the report.

The explosion of numbers of children and parents seeking treatment for gender issues is concerning to some. It may be that the visibility of trans youth on social media and elsewhere is encouraging others with genuine gender issues to come forward or it may be that other issues (like mental health) may be planting the idea of gender confusion where it may not be the main problem. There are professionals who sit on each side of that issue. Reuters reported: “A growing number of gender-care professionals say that in the rush to meet surging demand, too many of their peers are pushing too many families to pursue treatment for their children before they undergo the comprehensive assessments recommended in professional guidelines. “I’m afraid what we’re getting are false positives and we’ve subjected them to irreversible physical changes,” said Dr Erica Anderson, a clinical psychologist who previously worked at the University of California San Francisco’s gender clinic.”

The article covered the issue of medical interventions like pharmaceutical puberty blockers. There are some side effects to these drugs (which are normally prescribed for young patients with abnormal glandular issues) and no studies to conclude what the long-term effects might be for trans youth use. Not enough time has passed for large scale studies of trans care and the results of treatment or non-treatment over time. And now there are growing numbers of kids and parents looking for answers and not in a position to wait for five or more years for studies to happen and conclude. Doing nothing is not an option; doing something too fast or done by guesswork could be damaging in the long-term.

It’s a very long article and uses a couple of individual stories to highlight the human nature of the problem. The lion’s share of the report, though, has a great amount of facts and thoughtful professional opinion. In ten or twenty years we may begin to know if the current treatments for trans youth were on target or misguided. Let’s hope for the best.

NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE SUCCESS

Lynn Conway

I saw an article headlined Transsexual Women’s Successes: Links and Photos recently. It appeared on a webpage created by Lynn Conway and hosted on the University of Michigan’s site. Lynn Conway is one of the pioneers of transgender success stories. She transitioned in 1968 and is a professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of Michigan.

Lynn has compiled a list of successful transgender women that is international in scope and includes some of the earliest trans women like Christine Jorgensen and Coccinelle to contemporary ladies. The accompanying text article is copyrighted 2001-2012, so it does not even include more recent trans women success stories.

Lynn explains her work this way: “My initial goal for this website was to illuminate and normalize the issues of gender identity and the processes of gender transition. This project began in the year 2000, as I struggled to “come out” about my past to my research colleagues. I wanted to tell in my own words the story of my gender transition from male to female three decades earlier, in 1968, and then of being outed by circumstances 31 years later, in 1999, while living quietly and successfully in ‘stealth mode’.” At the time of her writing, Lynn claims there are over 30,000 “post-operative transsexual women who live in the United States, and many thousands more are now in the process of gender transition here.” Apropos of my item above, that number will only increase faster in coming years.

The four page gallery of successful trans women on Lynn’s site is interesting to peruse and see the diversity of race, geography, and occupations.

Perhaps even more importantly, many of the trans women are living quietly whether they have entered the public eye or not. Living as they felt natural to do so despite all the obstacles they may have faced along the way.

GET A CLOSER SHAVE

I saw a teaser headline for an article on the Huffington Post site that trumpeted “More and More Women are Shaving Their Faces. Here’s Why”. The full article was headlined Is It Safe To Dermaplane Your Face At Home? It appeared on October 14, 2022

Dermaplaning has been around for some time but there are now some dermaplaning instruments being sold for home use. “Dermaplaning is safe to do at home,” said Dr. Daniel Belkin, a board-certified dermatologist at the New York Dermatology Group, with the goal being to “achieve gentle exfoliation, which can give the skin a glow and more luminous appearance.” During the process, Belkin explained, “a blade is gently passed over the skin to remove hair, debris and a bit of stratum corneum, the top layer of skin that consists of dead, flattened skin cells. These dead cells are protective, but when excessive can cause a dull appearance to the skin.”

The HuffPost article was targeted for women but I found sources elsewhere that said dermaplaning is beneficial for men’s skin too. Dr. Belkin quoted above advised that dermaplaning for most people will have “minimal impact.” However, it does give the skin “a more glowing and luminous appearance through gentle exfoliation.”

Another benefit, according to the sources, is that an exfoliated face allows your skin care products to work better without the natural barriers found on untreated skin. For men, that may not seem like a worthwhile benefit. For the ladies (and crossdressers, for this purpose) “Exfoliation can reduce the skin barrier such that topicals can penetrate more effectively,” Dr. Belkin said. “By removing peach fuzz and excess dead skin cells, the skin will be smoother and more light-reflective, allowing a more elegant application of cosmetics.”

I’m all in favor of a more elegant application of cosmetics. I’m not quite so sure about scraping off a fine layer of skin to achieve it. But if you want to glow, you gotta make that dead skin go.

GET IN TRAINING?

Training bras for tweens.

I saw an article on the Huffington Post site headlined Remember the Training Bra? It appeared on October 12, 2022. The article was sub-headed “What Exactly Was It Supposed To Train Anyway?”

As crossdressers, most of us skipped the training bra stage of feminine development and went right for the full-busted sizes, thank you very much. But it started me thinking about the concept of a ‘training’ brassiere. As a dumb kid, I thought the training bra was supposed to ‘train’ the girl’s breast to conform to the standard shape and lift of the ideal mature female breast. The article notes that the garment is more often provided for modesty as the girls develop: “As girls first enter puberty, the breast tissue is generally the first area to enlarge into what pediatricians call ‘breast buds.’ Sometimes training bras are used to help cover young girls’ nipple areas when their breasts are too small to fit a traditional bra, if the young girl or her parents feel embarrassed by the appearance of the breast buds through a shirt.”

We can all probably remember some girls developing faster than other girls during that pubescent period. The training bra may have been underutilized in some girls while noticeably filled out by other girls. It is usually around this same age period that crossdressers first begin to notice the desire to wear women’s things — panties, hosiery, and maybe Mom’s brassiere. Gotta love that puberty.

But the thing that came to mind seeing the article about training bras was imagining a world where donning a training bra could actually promote breast development. For example, for us guys who are so disposed to such things. You put the training bra on and voila! your breasts start to grow. Then comes the question, where would you stop if there was no limit? Some of us want to look like natural women and some of us want to look like the lead in a Russ Meyer movie.

If you want to go big or go home, you need to begin training.

WOMEN’S CLOTHES ARE FUN

I came across several items in various places that pointed out the fun – and in one case, the absurdity – of wearing women’s clothes.

The goldfish dress.

The first item was a photo of actress Emma Corrin who “appeared at the BFI London Film Festival on Saturday in a minidress designed to look like a goldfish in a plastic bag. The look came straight from the runway, as designer JW Anderson first presented the dress at his show in London last month.” Emma Corrin may be known to you as the actress who played Diana Spencer in The Crown television series. I’m not a big fan of Emma’s outfit in total (bare legs and ugly shoes) but the dress concept was pretty funny. The story appeared on the Huffington Post October 17, 2022.

I also saw a couple of items about women trying on old outfits to see if they still fit. One woman was putting on her old cheerleader sweaters and skirts; another was giving her old Hooters uniform a second chance. Both instances appeared in the U.S. version of The Sun tabloid’s online site. It turns out that The Sun has a sort of regular feature about women putting on their old outfits, uniforms, and costumes.

The short articles with photos are headlined to attract eyeballs by implying the mothballed outfits will reveal more skin on the ladies’ older bodies. One teaser link said, “I tried my old dance costumes — one pair of shorts and skirt barely fit me.” The stories never seems to work out that way although it’s fun to see a 40-year-old housewife who still looks damn good in her Hooters uniform.

The other category that seems to be a genre in its own right could be labeled “Inappropriate Outfits.” We’ve seen a bunch of these in the past few years. Women escorted off airplanes, being fired from jobs, sent home from school, ridiculed at the supermarket – all for the sin of letting a little too much hang out. The Sun seems to like these stories too. “I got sent home from work because of my inappropriate outfits” claims one blonde with a gorgeous rack who showed up in a cleavage baring dress.

Get in line, honey. I think there’s a time and a place for “inappropriate outfits” and a professional office or a crowded airplane may not be the place for a crochet bikini top. But the idea of being attractive and built enough to be accused of inappropriate sexiness is…kinda sexy itself to this crossdresser.

Finally, I came across a funny Reddit post showing a fellow who mocks runway fashion shows by filming himself sashaying while “wearing” various household items and toolery. The guy nails the whole self-important haughtiness of the runway scene. And proves that women’s fashion should be fun. But you knew that already!

Tags: featured, opinion, Transgender

Category: Transgender Fun & Entertainment, Transgender Opinion