HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas I need to ask you something weird

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas have you ever considered whether you might be

HypnospacePsychonaut: Hope you liked meeting the Cule! Everyone thought you were rad. Say, do you think

HypnospacePsychonaut: Have you ever felt that

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas, this isn't gonna be easy to hear so I'm just gonna come straight out with it: I think you're experiencing

HypnospacePsychonaut: fuck it lucas you have dysphoria lol :C

AlternianDidact: Myrrah, what does dysphoria feel like?

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas I literally cannot express how glad I am that you asked me this question

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Because I was like, really struggling over how to bring up the subject of dysphoria

 

AlternianDidact: Art imitates life, I suppose.

 

AlternianDidact: Wait, is that the correct metaphor? "Speak of the devil" doesn't feel appropriate in this context.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I didn't want you to feel like I was forcing a diagnosis on you

 

AlternianDidact: Myrrah stop fucking pre-apologising for shit you haven't even done or said yet, we've got more than enough of that with me.

 

AlternianDidact: Sorry.

 

AlternianDidact: Sorry.

 

AlternianDidact: I didn't mean to snap.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas you are fine and thank you for setting me straight (only time I'll ever be LMAO)

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Now stop apologising for speaking your mind :P

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: So you wanna talk dysphoria, huh

 

AlternianDidact: Yes. I need to know.

HypnospacePsychonaut: Okay like I'm not usually a fan of summing incredibly complex things up into neat little statements

HypnospacePsychonaut: But what if you could look in the mirror and get an incorrect answer

HypnospacePsychonaut: straight up you look at your reflection and you're like "nah that can't be right"

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: who the fuck is that i see

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: humans are quite distinct from other creatures in that almost universally we learn to identify ourself in mirrors from an early age

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: only like certain birds, dolphins, whales, elephants and certain higher primates can do that

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: (and MAYBE cats and dogs but the research is inconclusive)

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: it is kind of a warning sign when you look into a mirror, understand that it is a mirror, but do not fully recognise what you see

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: do you obsess over a feature of your appearance?

AlternianDidact: The grey shadow underneath the skin on my face. No matter how hard I shave it doesn't go away.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Hmmm yeah that's because you have dark hair and pale skin, so the hairs are partially subdermal

 

AlternianDidact: It won't ever go away. I can't get rid of it, no matter how hard I try.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You realise you can get laser for that right

 

AlternianDidact: What?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Laser hair removal. Like that will not only get rid of the shadow, it'll kill the hair follicles so your beard won't grow anymore

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: It's like one of the most common procedures trans women get because you don't need a prescription or medical approval

HypnospacePsychonaut: Heck it's one of the most common cosmetic procedures cis women get too!

 

AlternianDidact: Cis women get facial hair?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: lmao it's 99% the reason the treatment even exists, they sure wouldn't invent it just for us transes or the twinky boys

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Tons of older cis women get it during menopause

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But like even supermodels in their 20s get the whiskers sometimes, hormones are a minefield

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Literally every transfemme in the cule has had it done - me, Val, Katie, Jessie. Heck, Riley's not even transfemme and they had their face lasered when they started T cause they didn't like how the beard felt

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Riley's such a twink lmfao

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But yeah like the grey shadow is not something you have to live with, you can literally destroy it with lasers

AlternianDidact: And that'll make this... misery stop?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: are you only miserable because you have a beard shadow?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You're asking about dysphoria and that usually goes a little bit deeper than a single cosmetic feature

 

AlternianDidact: Do you think I'm trans?

HypnospacePsychonaut: when you first looked at my pictures, you had immediate intrusive thoughts about "chaser shit"

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: why was that?

AlternianDidact: Because I've

 

AlternianDidact is typing...

 

...

 

AlternianDidact is typing...

 

AlternianDidact: Because I've looked at pictures of trans women before.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And that makes you a chaser how?

AlternianDidact: Because I was sexually objectifying them.

HypnospacePsychonaut: Uh were you though

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Were you ACTUALLY though

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Were you going into our DMs and saying "hey shemale whore gimme some of that tranny dick"

 

AlternianDidact: Christ, of course not!

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Were you obsessively replying to every single picture of us about how much you wanted to fuck us

 

AlternianDidact: No!

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lmao then I fail to see how you are in any way a chaser Lucas

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Look trans women have this unfortunate habit of getting fired from our jobs due to shitty transphobes and then not getting hired again because of shitty transphobes

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Which means a lot of us have to turn to sex work because the one thing that trans women will never be short of is people who want to jack off to us

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And there are a huge number of issues with sex work! Don't get me wrong!

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But you are NOT a chaser just because you find trans women attractive Lucas, you are simply correct

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: We're hot as fuck lol

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I don't even need to ask if you know that there's a person with real thoughts and feelings behind those pictures

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I know you do

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Being a chaser (or sexually objectifying in general) requires a total lack of respect for trans people as people

AlternianDidact: You still haven't answered my question. Do you think I'm trans?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I don't think I can answer that

 

AlternianDidact: Oh bullshit. You've seen inside my head. You're trans, you know what it feels like.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas, no

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I know what being trans felt and feels like FOR ME

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Even having seen your memories I met you three weeks ago and change

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Even having seen your life story I cannot know you anywhere near as well as you know yourself

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I can only hint at the answer

 

AlternianDidact: Then start hinting.

HypnospacePsychonaut: Getting mighty fucking terse there Lucas but I understand you're stressed so I forgive you

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Let's put it in the easiest possible terms, the question every trans girl gives to every potential egg

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I put a magic button in front of you

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: This button, if you press it, turns you into a woman instantly

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Absolute transformation, down to the chromosomes, down to what's between your legs, your bones, voice, facial structure, the whole smack

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And all of your friends and family accept you so automatically, so much as if this was who you always were, they don't even notice

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And you can press it again whenever you want and go back to who you are now, no harm no foul, nobody will even notice

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Do you press the button?

 

AlternianDidact: Yes.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Hmmmmmmmmm pretty much no hestitation there 😉

 

AlternianDidact: Well, you said it yourself. There's no consequences. Why wouldn't I see what it's like?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Okay but you understand that even simply by doing that, you are admitting you'd want to see what being a girl is like

AlternianDidact: Curiosity is a natural human instinct!

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas it feels like you're busy inventing elaborate excuses as to why your specific brand of "hmmm wanna try being a girl" is not transness

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Which ~HINTS~ at something

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But okay, let's say the button can't change your chromosomes and I'm sorry, you can have a working vag but you'll never get pregnant

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Everything else you get, and you can still change back instantly if you want

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Still pressing the button?

 

AlternianDidact: Yes, probably.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You're not worried that you wouldn't be a "real" enough woman to sate your curiosity?

 

AlternianDidact: I don't particularly want to get pregnant, and anyway, lots of "real" women can't get pregnant.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Okay, so the button can't change your voice either. Still press it?

 

AlternianDidact: Maybe.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Okay, the button can't change your genitals at all. Voice, face, tits and skin you still get, but the junk is still what you have now. Still press it?

 

AlternianDidact: I think so?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Aha! So "having a dick" is not a dealbreaker to "being a woman"

 

AlternianDidact: Well you're a woman and you have a dick.

HypnospacePsychonaut: I am very pleased to see you're so open-minded about gender identity!

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: so despite my manly-ass john cena jaw and being tall as fuck and having a dick and my voice kinda not passing because voice training's so fucking hard lol

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I am a woman?

 

AlternianDidact: Of course.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Ah so what is a woman?

 

AlternianDidact: I don't know.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: No no no that's not a good enough answer

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I have XY chromosomes and a dick and a square jaw and TMI warning I had to shove pills up my ass to get decent tits but I'm still a woman

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: So what defines me as a woman?

 

AlternianDidact: Because that's how you choose to define yourself.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: So could you define yourself as a woman?

 

AlternianDidact is typing...

 

...

 

AlternianDidact is typing...

 

AlternianDidact: No.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: LdflskkldlfkdsskldflksdflkdfKL AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

HypnospacePsychonaut: WHY NOT

 

AlternianDidact: Because there's no way I could make it work!

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lmao Lucas nearly every trans girl says that about herself

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: What makes you so uniquely fucking manly you think estrogen and laser hair removal can't touch

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Fuck I can trust you with this

 

HypnospacePsychonaut sent a file: the_darkest_and_dorkest_of_days.png

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Doesn't exactly look like a fucking supermodel does he

AlternianDidact: That's you?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Yeah that's me

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: 2010 was a dark fucking year my dude, I had not yet accepted nu metal was never coming back

 

AlternianDidact: That can't be you.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Don't look at the hair or the skin or the band shirt that was tragically irrelevant even at the time

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Look at the jaw, look at the eyes, look at the nose

AlternianDidact: Holy shit.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Look at this fuck-up, he's never gonna make it, he'll never look like a girl

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Except guess who he turned into

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I hate this photo but I also love it

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I hate to imagine I ever looked that way and was that miserable but I also feel so much love for it because I know what's ahead of him

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And I can use it to prove to other people like him that radical change is possible

AlternianDidact: But that's different. You were, what? 2010, you must've been in your early twenties. I'm 31.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Do you think Katie looks like a girl? That she "passes?"

 

AlternianDidact: Of course, I wouldn't even have known she was trans if she hadn't told me.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: She only started transitioning 2 years ago

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And she's a year older than you

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And she said some of the same things to me that you are now

AlternianDidact: You STILL haven't answered my question.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Do I think you're trans? I'm not answering it because I don't think the answer will help you

 

AlternianDidact: Tell me.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Okay

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: In as much as there are patterns of behavior that I have seen in other people who came out as trans

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You match those patterns very closely

 

AlternianDidact: Then what's wrong with me?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: What do you mean, what's wrong with you?

 

AlternianDidact: Why don't I feel trans? Why can't I admit it to myself?

 

AlternianDidact: If I'm trans, why do I keep finding excuses not to be?

HypnospacePsychonaut: Okay this is gonna sound like a BUCK WILD tangent but I promise it's relevant

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You said the Matrix was one of your favourite films

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You know Morpheus says that as a general rule they don't pull people out of the Matrix as adults

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Because they can't cope with the shock, they've become dependent on the manufactured reality to make sense of existence

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Well the Matrix is actually a giant trans metaphor and the Wachowskis literally said so

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But like it's also a metaphor for any insidious oppressive system

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Propagandized false consciousnesses are specifically designed to create dependency

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Gender is basically such a bedrock foundational aspect of how we perceive the universe that we don't even realize it

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You can't see yourself as anything other than a boy or a man because you have been told your entire life that's what you are by EVERYTHING

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: The clothes you wore, the toys you played with, the books you read, the classes you took at school, your parents, your friends, EVERYTHING

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: If that cornerstone of your identity falls apart what's left? What else did they lie to you about?

HypnospacePsychonaut: Gender's not a fundamental fact of the universe it's a classification system we use based on a bunch of arbitrary shit

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Bird chromosomes don't work the same way human chromosomes do

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: In the 18th century the height of manliness was to wear a ton of makeup, powdered wigs, tights and high heels

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Indigenous societies had words for genders that literally couldn't be translated into English, there was no even remotely matching word

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Do people think that if we found alien life out there in the galaxy, that had evolved on a completely different planet, under completely different conditions, that it would perfectly reproduce the same specific sexual dimorphism we see in humans?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Shit that doesn't even happen ON OUR OWN PLANET

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Bee sexes are basically "does work, lays eggs" "does no work, lays special eggs" and "does no work, does not lay eggs, fucks all day"

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: We force them into "male and female" because of extremely rough resemblance to human social roles

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: it's kind of on the nose that "does no work, does not lay eggs, fucks all day" is "the male"

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Sorry bro, you were born a drone, you are condemned to servitude in the Royal Manslut Harem for life

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But this is all just stuff we observed and decided to call male or female based on our own standards

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You think a crow cares about human definitions of gender? Lmao no it's gonna go caw caw and steal your french fries like a boss

HypnospacePsychonaut: Once you realise that it's basically a fucking scam everything falls apart

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Like if you can just decide to be a woman what makes "woman" meaningful anymore?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And what made your previous identity as "man" meaningful?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: When people with vaginas can be men what does it mean to be gay?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: There are answers to these questions but not easy or quick ones

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: A world with rules, even BULLSHIT rules, is less scary than a world without them

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Or suddenly EVERYTHING is arbitrary

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Why do new years start on January 1st? We decided they do, except the US financial system disagrees, because a fiscal year begins on October 1st

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: What is money actually? Do nations actually exist? Why does a day have 24 hours?

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Your brain has been conditioned to think these immutable truths, and when you try to pull out one of the biggest ones, it rebels against you

HypnospacePsychonaut: and like, the simple truth is, Lucas

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Transphobes act like you being able to decide you're a girl will bring about the death of society

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And they want you to believe the same so that you're too scared to ever do it

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But in the kindest possible way

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: you're not actually that important

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Accepting yourself as trans will not affect the world, it will keep on keeping on just as it always did

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: What it will affect is YOUR life, YOUR happiness

AlternianDidact: Then even knowing all of that, why can't I just say to myself "I'm trans?"

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Because it would obligate you to do something about it.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: So long as you can just be dysphoric and miserable and suspect but never actually acknowledge why, you have plausible deniability

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: When you just hear a distant cry you can tell yourself "hmmm well that could just be a bird" and you can walk quickly in the other direction

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But once you hear "help, help, somebody help" you're making a decision to continue ignoring it, you're being asked a moral question

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Not doing anything about the problem becomes an active choice rather than a passive act of ignorance

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And I know that you are not the kind of person who would allow yourself to commit injustice

AlternianDidact: Hypnotise me.

 

AlternianDidact: You do hypnosis, right?

HypnospacePsychonaut: No.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Whatever you're about to ask, don't

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: Because I will not

 

AlternianDidact: Hypnotise me. Make me stop having this hesitation.

 

AlternianDidact: I've spent 31 years trying and failing to know myself.

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: What, and you want someone else to do the final work for you?

HypnospacePsychonaut: Lucas, I promise, cross my heart and hope to fucking die, that if YOU work out that you're trans, I will do WHATEVER I can for you

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I will find some way to get you hormones quicker than 5 years on the shitty British trans healthcare system

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I will find trans people in your area to help you with anything you need help with

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: And if you ask for it I WILL hypnotise you to deal with your dysphoria in the meantime

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I will move heaven and earth to help you

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: But I will not, CANNOT go into your thoughts and drag the answer out of you, because it will not be your answer

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: It will be the answer you think impresses me, or pleases me, or that you can tell yourself that I forced on you

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I have an ironclad rule and I have never broken it, I do NOT hypnotise people to help them discover their gender

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: This is the ONE thing I cannot help you with

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I cannot tell you the answer even if I think I already know it

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: You have to decide for yourself

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I refuse to take your personal identity into my hands and decide that I know better than you who you are

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: This isn't a kink, this isn't a fetish, this isn't some fun roleplay, this is your innermost soul

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I am willing to decide, with someone's consent, what they wear, how they act, who they fuck and how they feel about all of that, that is fun kink headspace stuff

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: I am ABSOLUTELY NOT willing to decide who they are and who they should be, that is too big a responsibility for anyone else to be entrusted with

 

HypnospacePsychonaut: and you could not possibly give informed consent to that in any form I would accept

HypnospacePsychonaut: But I might be able to do something else for you.