Alternate pathways to transition
My journey
The discourse surrounding transition usually centres on medical affirmation through hormone therapy and surgeries. Depending on when this is administered, the results will vary wildly. Before puberty it can work wonderfully. Afterwards? It’s anyone’s guess how it will turn out. (Your mileage may vary.)
Most of us are painfully aware of the cost benefit ratio when contemplating whether to come out of the closet or not- which is a stifling place to be. it means trade authenticity and happiness for stability and security.
It’s a way of not having to face the judgement of others or the social ostracization that often comes with it. To be frank, transphobia has reached a fever pitch. We’re on the brink of genocide at the moment. Don’t believe me? Suit yourself. Ask literally anyone in this community and they’ll tell you the same thing. Or be a Transmedicalist who decides to throw everyone else under a bus and claim that we’ve brought this on ourselves with our activism and they’re to a “transsexual and not trans.”🙄 I digress. Hope it works out for you. Spoilers: it won’t.
It’s a hard place to be. Anyone who has lived experience of being trans or gender diverse knows how hard it is to pretend. It’s like a colourless haze surrounds everything that you do. So it’s more or less inevitable that some of us will end up transitioning anyway. This is usually because trying to be something we’re not eats away at us until it reaches a crisis point where we’d rather die than keep on pretending.
It happened to me as well. I guess I was stubborn and didn’t want to go on hormones. I didn’t believe in western medicine or anything unnatural. (I have since changed my mind) So I looked into alternatives. I stubbornly decided I was going to will my body to produce female hormones. The funny part? It worked. My chest hurt constantly and I became quite moody as a result. Sure, it didn’t work very well- but hey! I was very impressed that it worked at all.
Eventually I got disheartened and kept on looking. Why on earth would I want to become some twisted facsimile of the opposite sex? Who would willingly destroy their body like that? Yes. I genuinely thought that. I would never have transitioned knowing that I was going to be ugly or masculine looking.
I tried wearing women’s clothes before I had done anything to myself. The result was me slumping to the floor sapped of the will to live. It had been easier when I was younger. But by the time I was 18- it was far too late. I had gone out shopping with a woman that did reiki. She was really nice but just didn’t get it. None of them did. You’re a spiritual being right? Why can’t you just accept the way you were born?
Sure. You’re a bunch of damn hypocrites. I had tried. I did try. I STILL TRY. I can’t help but hate being a man. My bones jutted out at strong angles, ruining any chance of a feminine silhouette being reflected back at me. The only thing I could call mine was my eyes. The soul never lies. I became a recluse after school. My coping mechanisms included excessive exercise and starving myself. I even deliberately deprived myself of sleep. My dysphoria was bad enough to nearly drive me mad. I couldn’t bear to look at myself. The rest of the time I was escaping reality and latching onto the avatars I had created online.
To be frank the only way I survived was keeping myself in a constant state of dissociation. So I started searching for answers. I would start imagining that something within the occult might have the solutions to my problems. If I could make my body produce hormones (in small and rather useless amounts) by willing it to do so- what else could I do?
So I decided to visit the local market. I had grown disillusioned with modern society and wanted to live a simple life. So I started looking for second hand books. I picked up a few good ones- most of them for 50 cents each. I found an old copy of Dracula and some books on greek mythology. Amongst all the other bargains one book in particular caught my eye: Studies in occultism- by HP Blavatsky. It turned out to be snippets from an 19th century Theosophical Publication called Lucifer. I guess it was a newspaper or something similar.
Blavatsky was one of the founding figures of the theosophical movement- and perhaps a bit of a hack. Does it matter if she was or not? If they were ideas worth stealing I’m sure they were good ones. It’s a shining example of the opposition that was held against science in it’s infancy. We wouldn’t dare question it now like she did then. It’s not anything special as a book. It just served as a gateway drug for me to enter into a new way of thinking about things. I guess I’m somewhat lazy and disinclined to do extensive reading. Here is the link to the book on archive.org for anyone interested.
I oft have heard, but ne’er believed till now, There are, who can by potent magic spells, Bend to their crooked purpose Nature’s laws. -- MILTON (Studies in Occultism Page 8, Chapter 2- Occultism Versus the Dark arts- HP Blavatsky.)
To be blunt, she writes like an autistic person with a rather annoying fixation and the book drones on and on…
“In our highly civilized West, where modem languages have been formed, and words coined, in the wake of ideas and thoughts --as happened with every tongue -- the more the latter became materialized in the cold atmosphere of Western selfishness and its incessant chase after the goods of this world, the less was there any need felt for the production of new terms to express that which was tacitly regarded as absolute and exploded "superstition." Such words could answer only to ideas which a cultured man was scarcely supposed to harbor in his mind. "Magic," a synonym for jugglery, "Sorcery," an equivalent for crass ignorance, and "Occultism," the sorry relic of crack-brained, mediaeval Lire-philosophers, of the Jacob Boehmes and the St. Martins, are expressions believed more than amply sufficient to cover the whole field of "thimble¬ rigging." They are terms of contempt, and used generally only in reference to the dross and residues of the dark ages and the preceding aeons of paganism. Therefore have we no terms in the English tongue to define and shade the difference between such abnormal powers, or the sciences that lead to the acquisition of them, with the nicety possible in the Eastern languages -pre-eminently the Sanskrit. What do the words "miracle" and "enchantment" (words identical in meaning after all, as both express the idea of producing wonderful things by breaking the laws of nature [!!]” (-Studies In Occultism- Page 9, Chapter 2: Occultism Versus the Dark Arts)- Hp Blavatsky
See what I mean? She more or less says the same thing over and over again. I’m just trying to get you to understand where I’m coming from. The chapter that really caught my interest was about hypnosis. Why hypnosis? Because it’s saying that the modern explanations for it doesn’t account for the phenomenon.
Q. What is Hypnotism: how does it differ from Animal Magnetism (or Mesmerism) ?
ANS. Hypnotism is the new scientific name for the old ignorant "superstition" variously called "fascination" and "enchantment." It is an antiquated lie transformed into a modem truth. The fact is there, but the scientific explanation of it is still wanting. Studies In Occultism- Page 18, Chapter 4: Hypnotism, and Its Relations to Other Modes of Fascination.
Here’s another paragraph I found really interesting: (ramblings about Egyptian priesthood removed)
Animal magnetism (now called Suggestion and Hypnotism) was the principal agent in theurgic mysteries as also in the Asclepieia — the healing temples of Aesculapius, where the patients once admitted were treated, during the process of "incubation," magnetically, during their sleep.
This creative and life-giving Force -- denied and laughed at when named theurgic magic, accused for the last century of being principally based on superstition and fraud, whenever referred to as mesmerism --is now called Hypnotism, Charcotism, Suggestion, "psychology," and what not. But, whatever the expression chosen, it will ever be a loose one if used without a proper qualification. For when epitomized with all its collateral sciences -- which are all sciences within the science - -it will be found to contain possibilities the nature of which has never been even dreamt of by the oldest and most learned professors of the orthodox physical science. The latter, "authorities" so-called, are no better, indeed, than innocent bald infants, when brought face to face with the mysteries of antediluvian "mesmerism." Studies In Occultism Page 23, Chapter Five: Black Magic in Science.- Hp Blavatsky
Even now when experiment has amply demonstrated that “Mesmerism” or animal magnetism, now known as hypnotism (a sorry effect, forsooth, of the “Breath of Cybele”) is a fact, we yet get the majority of scientists denying its actual existence. Small fry as it is in the majestic array of experimental psycho-magnetic phenomena, even hypnotism seems too incredible, too mysterious, for our Darwinists and Haeckelians. One needs too much moral courage, you see, to face the suspicion of one’s colleagues, the doubt of the public, and the giggling of fools.
“Mystery and charlatanism go hand in hand,” they say; and “self-respect and the dignity of the profession,” as Magendie remarks in his Physiologie Humaine, “demand that the well informed physician should remember how readily mystery glides into charlatanism.” Pity the “well informed physician” should fail to remember that physiology among the rest is full of mystery -profound, inexplicable mystery from A to Z — and ask whether, starting from the above “truism,” he should not throw overboard Biology and Physiology as the greatest pieces of charlatanry in modem Science. Nevertheless, a few in the well-meaning minority of our physicians have taken up seriously the investigation of hypnotism. But even they, having been reluctantly compelled to confess the reality of its phenomena, still persist in seeing in such manifestations no higher a factor at work than the purely material and physical forces, and deny these their legitimate name of an im al magnetism. But as the Rev. Mi — . Haweis (of whom more presently) just said in the Daily Graphic . . . “The Charcot phenomena are, for all that, in many ways identical with the mesmeric phenomena, and hypnotism must properly be considered rather as a branch of mesmerism than as something distinct from it. Anyhow, Mesmer’s facts, now generally accepted, were at first stoutly denied.” And they are still so denied.
I’m probably losing you. I’m just trying to get at the idea that all of this is much older than you think and that magic isn’t the kind of thing that goes on in a harry potter movie. You’re more than welcome to keep reading but I doubt you’re interested. Why do I mention this in a post about gender transition?
Well… I have a guilty confession to make: I didn’t want to transition and look or feel like a freak. I even tried to be manly and not be “perverted.” It lasted about 3 months until I started being pestered with constant dreams and eventually my egg cracked and every day was constant agony filled with unbearable dysphoria. I was being a stubborn moose that didn’t want to take hormones. 😤 Past me was an idiot. What I did do was start begging the universe for a way to change my fate. “Please! I don’t care what I have to do. I’ll stare at a wall for 6 hours and go hungry if I could just change how I look!”
This is why I feel guilty. I don’t feel like an ally to my peers because I don’t believe transition will work with just surgery and hormones. (Shoulder reduction, anyone?) It’s… Just not enough. The science isn’t there yet. Which is why I turned to magic instead.
I’ve always liked to use the Iceberg analogy when talking about the subconscious mind. It’s what makes up most of our habits and beliefs and is also much more receptive to instructions. Freud, S. (1915). The unconscious. SE, 14: 159–204.
I’m sure you’ll laugh if I told you I ended up listening to subliminal videos on YouTube. That’s why I’m trying to make you understand something. They’re not “from YouTube". They put them there because it’s the most popular video platform. In essence a “subliminal" is a recording of someone willing something to happen that’s been hidden into another sound like rain or white noise so it’s able to bypass the resistance of the conscious mind and go straight into the subconscious. (Which is far more powerful)
More or less the individual cells of your body are able to receive the instructions from your subconscious mind and rearrange themselves in order to create physical changes in the body. I’ve found that this has limitations. Body hair for example seems to respond by becoming thinner and growing more slowly but actually removing it usually requires more immediate physical measures like laser or electrolysis. This is also true for attempts to influence the hormone levels in the body. For Example: my attempts to block testosterone using this method were wildly successful. (I even managed to make myself sick doing it after it dropped to 0.) Making Female Hormones? not so much. It worked? Just like willing it to happen did. And better than that. But was it good enough to transition on? Long story short: No ovaries, no E! I’m not an authority on this. I’m just saying I don’t trust it enough to abandon my HRT.
I don’t understand why people think this stuff is laughable nonsense no sensible person would buy into. It reminds me of how people perceive movie or anime soundtracks. Do people forget that an artist composed the soundtrack and that it was still made with love and passion? It’s still art. And frankly? I think it’s beautiful. You know how people say those videos are fake and don’t work? Well… can you sit down on a piano and play a grade 8 piano piece without years of practice? Why would this be any different?
It took me 3 months of practice to train my brain to be receptive to this kind of instruction. During that time, I listened with no results whatsoever. It was pretty disheartening. I started in July 2016- I wrote about it here on my WordPress blog. I decided to play Runescape while listening to make it easier to bear. I found it was dreadfully boring and playing a tedious game made it easy to practice emptying my mind so that I could get this to work. I didn’t manage to completely change everything. To be frank, it was such a gruelling effort that I gave up after my it alleviated my dysphoria. I couldn’t do it anymore. I wrote about my results here.
I spent 2 Hours Every night for About 6 Months to achieve that result. What can I say? I could bear to look in the mirror again. What I’ve found is that when you finally get these to work it feels a lot like going through puberty all over again. You’ll get growing pains (or shrinking pains) as well as these tingling/burning sensations on the areas that are being targeted. I’d also suggest not doing any physical activity if you plan on making significant changes to your body. (mostly your legs and arms) I’ve found that the process makes my bones quite fragile as well as being quite exhausting in general. Please be careful if you end up attempting this yourself. I don’t want you to cause permanent damage to yourself. And the best part? I didn’t have to part with 30,000 dollars/Euros or have my forehead removed and screwed back on again by some plastic surgeon. Have you seen the surgery pictures? Nightmare fuel.
I ended up doing much more over the years after this, But for clarity’s sake let’s just say I changed the rest of my bone structure and called it a day.
I’m sharing this because I think people need to know about it at this point in time. Transphobia is getting worse than ever. Discussions about gender and identity are being had much more frequently. And maybe they are right in some ways. HRT makes me incredibly sick at times. it’s not great. Bottom surgery can go wrong. I still don’t think Transitioning itself is the problem. It’s quite clear that the current research into cross-sex hormone therapy is deeply lacking. They can’t even measure progesterone levels in a blood test for goodness sake! and they STILL prescribe people Spironolactone. (ugh.) The ways of monitoring hormone levels don’t even seem to account for the Estrone and Oestrogen Being different (E1 and E2)
The Oestrogen Patches don’t even use the Estrone at all! Shots are better. And I’m deathly afraid of needles. So no. Trans healthcare has a long way to go. I’m just saying. There are a few people innovating but all in all they’re still using research from the 80’s with Stuff distilled from Horse Urine! (ugh, Premarin.) Whatever, WPATH. GO AWAY.
I want people to know that this is possible. We are not slaves to our biology. We can do more than change our hair or take hormones. I just to give you a word of caution: remember how long puberty takes to finish? Well.. this is more or less the same. Don’t expect to be able to do anything in a short period of time. It’s just as slow as hormone therapy it’s just that anything is game. Shoulder width, height, face length, skull shape, skin tone- you name it, you got it. Just try and remember to make a plan if you’re going to change your body. Please think it through. Maybe you start with your height or skeletal structure like I did. Then the shoulder to hip ratio facial features voice etc and go from there. It might take you 2–5 years to finish. Like the hormonal transition.
Don’t Let them win. Don’t let them tell us we’re wrong or perverted. they’re only saying that because we make them uncomfortable. The Body is just a shell. It doesn’t define who we are.
It’s getting worse. Way worse. For everyone. They’re wrong. Oh so wrong. We’re all human. But sadly, People are shallow. All I’m offering is a way out of this disgusting predicament. I don’t know what to say. I wish the world was a better place. But it’s not. What else can we do but survive? Every single person who I’ve met while shapeshifting has become an ally. It’s actually quite sad. I even had one person ghosting me until they saw that I could change my appearance. Then she was the biggest ally ever.
I honestly think most people just don’t believe that we can actually change our sex or gender and that transitioning is like folly against god. Some dumbass trying to pervert the natural order of things and making people really uncomfortable in the process.
I wish you well. All the best.
Inari.
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