I appreciate the offer. I made SGW to be a gift to the community that saved my life. It will be free forever, and if there ever comes a point where it cannot be, I'll walk away before I monetize it.
PhD trans girl! She/Her, thing explainer and #TeamRhetoric technical writing scholar who loves explaining trans science! ⚢. Opinions mine. Don't crack eggs. Build nests. Kindness is a hard choice worth making. Stainedglasswoman.substack.com
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I appreciate the offer. I made SGW to be a gift to the community that saved my life. It will be free forever, and if there ever comes a point where it cannot be, I'll walk away before I monetize it.
I've said elsewhere, but proactive tools to dissuade and filter people who attack, and meticulous record-keeping and responsive agents for when things fail. When Problems started a few years ago, Substack T&S assigned me a dedicated team member real quick to deal with the situation, as an example.
Nobody does.
Patience. That it. That's literally it. You have to wait for fat cells to die off and new ones to spawn in different places. There is no way to speed this process, but more than a few times slow it down.
That's doable. Hmm....
What do traffic serving costs look like?
Hmm... I'll poke at it when I get the chance, see what it looks like. Admittedly, I haven't given WP a serious second look in about six or seven years because of the incident I mentioned. If they've streamlined things enough, maybe...
Drama aside, if I went that route, I'd probably use Wix. At least they're WYSIWYG.
Also, there was that time where they served hardcore porn ads on a student of mine's senior portfolio. During her portfolio presentation. In front of her parents. That was a not-fun talk to have with the WordPress staff after. They were really apologetic, but I've been gun-shy ever since.
That's been an emergency option, but I'm no coder. The labor intensiveness of building, running, and keeping updated a functional WP site would be a problem. Not insurmountable. But a problem.
Being mid-sized is the worst of all worlds. Big enough to attract the Bad Sorts of attention, too small to get prompt attention when that occurs in most cases. Unless the T&S team are good. Hence my insistence.
There are... A lot if behind-the-scenes things. Some if which I've been asked not to share publicly. But the bottom line is that they deter harassers and worse, and keep meticulous records for law enforcement when that fails.
Also, at my current size, they're $63/month, or about $750 a year, which is a pretty significant secondary problem. Regardless, without a really strong T&S team, it's not even an option.
Trust & Safety team is the problem there. If they had something robust, I'd be migrated by next week.
I will never get over how uncomfortable your Before pics look, Samantha, and how comfortable you look now. 💜
--on how good their T&S team and moderation tools are, though. Nobody I've talked to has had to deal with capital P-Problems with them.
The T&S team on Blogspot is the dealbreaker there for me. I've heard... stories, and I've already had a situation bad enough that the FBI had to get involved. I will confess I've considered Patreon for a while, and if I had to move today, that's where I'd go. I haven't been able to get info--
Absolutely agree. For the time being, I consider it a filibuster, waiting for something workable to appear. But at my size, every option that isn't a dumpster fire would cost me almost a grand a year to run. As a free newsletter, and as a teacher? I can't eat that cost right now.
That's (one of the) reasons I don't do paid subs and won't ever. Fuck those guys. Unfortunately, there's no other free-to-run option that offers a meaningful Trust & Safety team, which is non-negotiable to me for the safety of my family. If you're not doing paid subs, there are very few options. 😭
😉
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Pretty great, huh?
Actually, the one you read was a different one. 😉 Guess I've still got it, though. 😅
That's one I'm not an authority on. I was under the muscle, and I know a number of gals who've gone over the muscle, but only one or two who went dual plane--and their recovery stories were very different. I don't think I'm the right gal to answer this question.
Thanks, Mia. I really appreciate your prereading. 💜
Are you over or under the muscle?
Just finished revising a new article for SGW. I've got a couple in the hopper, ready to go, but this one... I think this one is the one I'm going to lead with. It's tough, in a lot of ways, but it also says a lot of stuff I'm really proud of--stuff I think, maybe, people need to hear, too.
AAAAAAA THAT'S SO EXCITING, MAUDE!!! Good luck, and safe passage through the OR. 💜
Be the change you want to see in the world!
Yup. That's why I use a pseudonym, but make no real effort to hide who I am. 99%+ of potential harassment can be deterred by the extra half hour of legwork it'd take to identify me in detail, and the rest wouldn't be stopped no matter what I did. Anonymity on the net is a myth. Always has been.
The last prof? The guy with the antisemitism? He'd been pretty damn good with hiding his identity. Our student newspaper just kicks ass. So, yeah. Even under a pseudonym, I'm not taking the chance.
Oof, I'm so sorry, hun.
Anyway, that's the story. This is why I'm more reserved on certain things than most other trans creators, despite the fact that I'm relentlessly sex-positive and have found a few ways to dance around the outside edges of those restrictions. One of the reasons I hate American puritanism. 😞
But it also means that there's certain subjects that I simply do not feel safe talking about publicly, especially in the current political climate. And then, when you add the fact that I'm on the ace spectrum and that sex is a very, very personal and vulnerable thing for me? Yeah. It's tough.
So like... I get it. That's a lot of very public embarrassment for one rural, mid-sized teaching university to deal with in less than a decade. The admin clamping down a bit and making sure there's a method to yeet profs who are wayyyyy out of pocket is basic institutional self-defense.
And one? One made *international-level news* for the scale and scope of his antisemitism and racism, when the student newspaper uncovered it. We're talking Jewish space lasers-level here, astrophysicist who denies black holes exist-level stuff. Yeah. *Yeah*.
--that they said and did. One prof got canned for screaming at students in the hallway & comparing notes with them on their respective weekend binge drinking. One prof got canned during lockdowns for calling his students "vectors of disease" & much, much worse, on camera and while being recorded.
And believe it or not? I don't actually blame my university administration for insisting on this as part of our union contract. Over the last decade I've been at my university, we've had not one, not two, but *three* tenured professors who were fired for cause because of absolutely batshit stuff--
The short version is that there's something called a morality clause in my employment contract. Basically, while academic freedom is absolutely a thing my university stands by, there are a few areas where they pretty explicitly say it doesn't apply. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morals_...
Since I can't talk about those things, I'm going to explain why not and, similarly, why I don't talk about my sex--and I mean that in both the verb and noun ways--on Stained Glass Woman. To put it simply: doing so would probably cost me my job, and my family relies on my income.
I've been sitting with Repression Queen, and it's left me wanting to talk about... certain parts of my own life in ways that I haven't before. The book is raw and vulnerable and incredibly personal about an important part of a very common trans experience. It's a shame I can't. Like, can't cant. 🧵
You can transition in your 30s. It's pretty awesome.
That was my first McCaffrey book! The cover was iconic as heck--your art really drew me in!
Yep, big band sizes often need big implants. The good news is that implant shells up to 1445ccs have now been approved for use in the US, so you've got more options than ever!
I'm glad to be a help!
I've got big boobies. You probably noticed, if you've seen any of my selfies. A lot of people ask me about how they can get them too. So, I turned a lot of those answers into a guide. Go get stacked! stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/jiggle-phy...
Slivers is part of an extended series on how the trauma of living in the closet shapes trans experiences in ways that hurt us long into our transitions. Its tough stuff, but we deserve to heal from our pain. stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/slivers
Have you heard a lot of stuff about trans people, and have questions? This is a pretty comprehensive q-and-a of most of The Big Stuff, with detailed sources. Consider it Trans 101. No shame. We've all gotta start somewhere. stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/what-does-...
Has your partner just told you that they're questioning their gender, or are trans? Are you freaking out and don't know what to do? This article has a lot of answers for the most common questions cis partners of trans folks have. It gets better. 💜 stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/oh-st-my-p...
Figuring out that you're trans can be... a lot. Like, A LOT a lot. This is the first of the seven-part story of how I began to question my gender at 35, and came to realize I was trans, over 11 panic-filled days. stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/part-one-a...
How HRT Rewrites Your DNA is probably my iconic biological Thing Explainer--it dives into how HRT physically changes your DNA, and how that means that sex is wayyyy fuzzier than people think. stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/how-hrt-re...
If you're questioning your gender, a whole lot of people have found this guide to be a really helpful way to get unstuck when you're spinning your wheels. It takes a scientific approach to try and focus on the very heart of what matters in questioning. stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/how-to-fig...
First, the big one: Beneath the Surface is probably my best-known work, and it explores the psychology of how many, many trans folks of all genders shunt their Gender Feelings into bedroom kinds of stuff, where it's safer to explore. stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/beneath-th...
Hi! I'm a technical writing professor with specializations in biomedical communication, page design, and trans stuff, and I do Thing Explainers on all that. This is a thread of some of my bigger pieces, for anyone stumbling across my profile for the first time! stainedglasswoman.substack.com
If you're struggling with your mental health, maybe save this one for when you're in a better place. But if you lived your gender through porn, as so many of us did, before you let yourself realize, and especially if you carry that shame now, this is a book that will make you feel deeply seen.
But it also has the guts to speak aloud a part of many of our experiences, especially those of us who don't realize our gender until later in life. A part, I think, that we keep too shrouded in shame. It takes incredible courage to own it so vulnerably, and great skill to write it this well.
As a disclaimer: this book is heavy, and deals explicitly with adult stuff. Pornography, abuse, substance abuse, emotional self-harming. I haven't had a read this emotionally-hard-yet-compelling since I read Transgender History.
Through an odd series of events, I find myself @imharperoneill.bsky.social 's Repression Queen today and, well, it's been a long time since I demolished 170 pages of a book in a couple of hours. This is a remarkable book. I wish I had the guts to write like this. www.goodreads.com/book/show/20...
I've been doing better lately, but some days the sheer terror at what's being done, right now, in my country really gets to me.
*Cholesterol, not blood pressure. Christ, what on earth was I thinking?
Thanks for the backhanded insult and the dismissal of my *checks notes* doctorate in technical communications with a specialty in biomedical communications and my *checks notes again* literal years of experience teaching pharmaceutical grad students how to do research writing.
Correct. I think they're also cleared for type 1 now, but don't quote me on that.
Its a very YMMV thing, but apparently it does that for some autistic people.
I could never find a chew thingy with the right texture.
It was mechanical pencils for me. Had to not keep them in the house, and I did my best to redirect to tortilla chips, which were close enough.
Just for a sense of scale, Topamax, which has been on the market for ages, causes significant to serious cognitive impairment in about 44% of users, a pretty good portion of which don't regain their full function even years after stopping. Still on the market and commonly prescribed.
We'd have to see probably a hundredfold increase in the case rate for regulators to take action, and since the pancreatitis seems to mostly happen right at the start of taking Wegovy and mostly resolves on cessation, it seems unlikely to me, just personally.
In fairness, the pancreatitis case reporting rate from GLP-1's appears to be in the hundreds to thousands, total, compared to tens of millions of users worldwide. That'd be a case incidence rate tracked in the single digits per ten thousand or less, which is *extremely* rare as side effects go.
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I've been on for a good long while, but I don't take it like other people do, or for the reasons. That part where it's good for addiction? Turns out when you have the tism and an oral stim, it can take away the urge to orally stim without the extra stress of masking. It's been a real relief. 😊
Yep. US patents are 5-10 years, but we allow extensions, sadly. We'll see how that all plays out.
We'll see. But yeah, hormone-tweaking drugs can be really astonishing.
Maybe my favorite example of all this: Every single world-class powerlifter (and most strength-based athletes generally) are "obese" by traditional weight tracking measures, sometimes "morbidly" so. Which is *ludicrous*.
--like blood pressure, lung capacity, A1C, and so forth instead, as they are far better measures of total-body health, are far less likely to cause prejudicial physician interactions ("lose weight and see if that solves it"), and are better at detecting underlying causative health problems.
Yeah, there's been some really fascinating research on weight, fat, the hormone processes involved, and what it all means for total body health in recent years. There's actually an increasingly-loud call to remove weight as a measure of health entirely, and rely on direct health metrics--
.......... No, it really isn't. It's saying exactly what I've been saying since my first Post's that it's a drug that does a shitload of things, *one of which happens to be* weight loss But whatever. You're dug in on your misunderstanding, and you can chill there. 🤷♀️
Put a different way: losing weight has a pretty middling effect on total body health, it's looking like, if the conditions causing weight gain are addressed. Actually, after about 60, carrying extra weight has been found to *extend* life, compared to being at a "normal BMI." (BMI is a junk measure)
Well, they're looking into that. It's likely that the answer is "both," but it's important to note that recent research on weight has shown that weight has a FAR smaller impact on cardiac disease than previously thought, and is in fact mainly a symptom, not a cause, of underlying causes.
That's a (poor and inaccurate) plain language explainer. www.drugs.com/medical-answ...
First of all: I did lead with "if confirmed." And second of all: its not a weight loss drug. It just happens to do that. You seem really hung up on that part.
To put it a different way: Wegovy it the estradiol valerate to the human body's estradiol. Same stuff, just lasts longer.
--is to tell other parts of your gut to stop producing ghrelin, the hormone that tells your body to seek food and makes you feel hungry, for a while. GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy, as you've probably noticed by now, are just a long-acting version of the hormone your body produces by itself.
No, that's not an accurate understanding of how the drug works. Like, not at all. When you eat, your body releases a hormone called GLP-1 from your gut. This is the hormone that the body naturally produces when it's been satiated. GLP-1 has a lot of effects throughout the body, but one of them--
--effects at every level of the body, kind of like how HRT can totally reshape the entire body off of a few milligrams of hormones a day. I'm normally very skeptical of this sorta thing too, but we have almost twenty years of safety data now. If something was gonna pop up, it would've by now.
--weight at healthy rates and keeping it off, so the manufacturer ran some trials at higher doses to see how safety played out. That's the story of how Wegovy came to be. The reason for all this is that GLP-1's are hormone-affecting drugs, and the thing with hormones is they they have MASSIVE--
It's not a diet drug. This is a common misconception. GLP-1's have actually been around for a decade or so--they were developed to treat diabetes and prediabetes, and were originally used at lower doses (1.0mg/week as the top dose, iirc). Doctors noticed, however, that people on it were losing--
--I could go on. The point: if this all is systematically verified and if no massive problems are found with the class, there's a very real chance that GLP-1's will become a drug that *everyone* is on, as a general life extension medication. After the patent runs out. Fucking drug markups.
And this is on top of a whole pile of humongously beneficial effects GLP-1's have already been found to have: they're our best treatment yet for addiction, they protect the kidney, liver, and brain, they're the best drug treatment we've yet found for sleep apnea, they're great for diabetes--
Like, read that again. This is saying that GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy are *twice* as effective as our current best treatments for heart disease. *And this is an "oh, also" effect.* They weren't even developed as heart meds. GLP-1's were originally made to be diabetes meds. This is a bonus.
So, let's get a sense of scale here real quick. If you have high blood pressure--super common--our current go-to is a class of drugs called statins. They're quite good at lowering blood pressure, have few notable side effects, and dramatically reduce early death. By about 25%.
First of all, fuck The Guardian. But second of all, *holy fucking shit*. A drug that HALVES the probably of early death among patients in a class is almost unheard-of. Like, I'd heard rumblings about Wegovy and co's heart benefits, but nothing like this. If confirmed, this changes everything.
This is an excellent reminder for any of you who are struggling with big decision or milestones in your transition, and especially from post-surgical depression. Its normal to feel bad at these times. You're not broken. You are trans enough.
Indeed!
DM me and I can send you some links for the garb and sword. 💜
Well, I told my tattoo artist and I think I made the hell out of her day. 🤭
I can point you towards several of those things, at least.
This is the single most amazingly iconic trans backstories I've ever seen.
It is indeed a small sword! A German variation on a colichemarde, to be specific--a thruster without the step-down shoulder early colichemardes had. It's my bridal sword. 🥰
That may have been part of the outfit design. 🤭
Also, I entered a tattoo contest on a whim with my one (1) Pride tattoo, and I not only placed, I had one of the judges ask me for my artist's info, because they were inspired.