foxglove

While ignoring gender sounds good on the surface, I think by ignoring we default to the uncritical and unthinking status quo, which unfortunately is still gendered in nature, i.e. there is something called "implicit bias" where people have internalized biases and preferences that they are not even aware they are thinking or having.

Gender blindness can still be a useful tool, for example, instead of attacking OP for asking how to reduce gender bias, you could have suggested a HR policy that removes any gendered aspects of candidates CVs or applications so that decisions on who gets interviewed can't be subject to those biases.

ha, thanks for your comment - unfortunately, this is a women-only space. Hope you understand 💛

lol, I borderline worry I shouldn't talk to you because I think we have some similar afflictions and perspectives, and usually I steer things right into "yeah, why even be alive" territory ... that's not gone so well with some other folks so I try to be more ethical and aware about that potential now.

so yeaah, didn't expect happy - but I might have been trying to steer myself away from the dark places I typically would have gone, and it seems you got what I meant - the things that keep you alive. 😅

Music can be great, I taught myself the electric bass a couple years ago - that can be fun 😁

hey, thanks for your comment, but this community is intended for women only to comment and post. Hope you understand 💜

😩😩😩

I had to look up dysthymia, but it sounds awful, I'm so sorry 🫂

I don't have PDD, but I do have a variety of mental health symptoms that overlap with the symptoms of PDD, and while I'm doing a lot better these days, I have previously suffered decades of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation that I wouldn't want anyone else to go through. 😅

If not celebration, what are ways that you cope or find joy?

I remember through those times rewarding / tasty food became a bit like a lifeline. I do not know your depression, but my depression was very anhedonic, so as a baseline everything was less enjoyable.

So I had a lot of "craving" behavior, seeking easy and quick rewards because I couldn't motivate myself to do much else and nothing was enjoyable anyway.

Cooking for others became a major coping strategy, as cooking for others triggered my sense of responsibility, which helped with the depressive / motivation issues.

Basically I could leverage stress to animate my unwilling flesh (even though it was, you know, stressful and awful), and getting good enough at cooking then setup a reliable pattern of rewards.

Eventually I noticed if I ate at restaurants too much or outsourced my cooking to something like prepared or frozen meals to save time, I became much more miserable and sank more into my depression - honestly cooking kept me alive in multiple senses.

Anyway, I wonder if you have something like that, not necessarily celebratory - but like a spring bubbling up from the ground that sustains you.

chocolate is very important, lol

in fact, my main account may have been unconsciously named that way

thanks for your supportive comment! Unfortunately this is a women-only community, however. Hope you understand! 💛

yea, admittedly I don't see transfems wanting to hang around mens-only spaces the same way some trans men have trouble moving on from a butch lesbian identity, for example.

The closest I could think of is the way some transfems end up stuck in femboy or sissy cultures and they have trouble moving on from that even when they're dysphoric and suffering for it, but I still think that's a different experience.

That said, I don't know if you've seen Will & Harper (incidentally I hated this film and thought it did a terrible job at both trans representation and modeling cis allyship), but the film is about Harper, a woman who transitioned in her 60s, and she goes on a roadtrip with her friend Will Ferrell.

Part of the film is about Harper attempting to recreate the experiences she had as a man traveling freely through small towns and going to sketchy bars, and that felt a bit like the analogous experience to the trans man who feels connection to women community. Harper longed for a kind of belonging to a particular space that was largely male-coded ... not unlike the way Sylvia Plath, a cis woman, yearned for that nomadic adventurous freedom, "to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night", which was not accessible to her as a woman.

no worries that's very common, and thanks for being so understanding 💕

hi there, thanks for your humorous comment, but this community is for women only. Hope you understand 🧡

thanks for your comment, but this is a womens-only community, hope you understand 💛