Hi everyone. Can you hear me down there? I have chocolate and #stormchips up here.
How lucky can a girl get? You are all so cool, I hardly know where to begin. I guess I'll try to reply to some of your advice. Sorry Laurie. It's going to be long...
Quote from: Charlie NickiSo sorry for that Steph! But this too will pass. Hugs!
Thank you, Charlie Nicki. I always knew it would, and it mostly has. But in the middle of it, the pain overwhelms any logic. Things have pretty much stabilized. More on that later.
Faith: Here I am. I was never very far away. Your ghost hug helped, but you know what made me happiest? Seeing your beautiful smiling avatar back. Please don't take her away from us again.
Jayne: You took time to help me out here and via PM when you should be enjoying your holiday. Thank you for being my good friend.
Dear Kendra: You've given me much to think about...
Quote from: KendraI admire you so much for relentlessly moving forward while at the same time admitting to being fragile and human.
Says the woman who is getting four surgeries in one year, and never seems to have a bad day. You're the one who deserves all the admiration, and you sure get it from this part of Florida.
QuoteIf someone is a repeat obsolete-name offender in your shop, maybe it's time to buy a roll of those corny conference "HELLO My name is" stickers and a Sharpie-wit marker. Just in case.
This was my solution, bought for when I hosted our fly-in last weekend (pen shown for scale, among other reasons!):
I wore it today, and may have helped force an uncomfortable but effective solution to the old-name problem. More on that below.
QuoteI am surrounded with people who would be shocked to know I started comp sci in college the year after paper punch cards were sidelined. It's possible the demographic and research for this app may contain age bias. I won't go so far as to say gender bias but the demographics for the entire tech industry are well known.
Heh. It must have been the winter semester, 1981, Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. CIS 101, and the first semester after they'd retired the card readers and installed terminals on the Multics mainframe. Programming in 6502 assembler, and fortran on the PDP-10(?) with storage on 8 inch floppies. I wrote my Creative Writing assignments with Emacs and got permission from the professor to turn in my assignments on greenbar. In my third and last semester before college and I gave up on each other, my friend brought in this incredible, boxy little computer in a cloth sack, made by some company with a fruity name, and named for a type of apple. This completely blew away all of us who were used to fighting for one of the few color Multics terminals instead of the amber screens. I fell in love with that fruit flavored company then, and have never changed my mind. More on
that later. And I digress.
The software... well, I didn't bother trying to figure out the logic behind their choices. I figured, being AI, that they fed it bunches of pictures, told it the age and gender of each, and let it make its own decisions from then on. That should have kept human bias out of it, but who knows? One thing I did notice was it did slightly better if I took my glasses off, for what that's worth. It was just unendingly galling that it seemed to be identifying everyone the way they'd hoped - except me. Meh.
QuoteI used Windows 10 facial recognition login until recently. I bought a Mac right before GRS and mostly use MacOS now - figure I might as well change everything at the same time. And no, WPATH doesn't require 12 months with a new operating system. Anyway... I found it amusing but annoying Windows facial login didn't notice when I transitioned at work and starting wearing makeup there, no increase in login errors after 6 months HRT. Not once.
OK, now you have me worried. Am I going to have to switch to Windows when I get my GCS? I will sacrifice almost anything to transition, but that's asking a lot.
It will be interesting to see if my iPhone X's facial recognition ever starts having problems due to HRT. I kind of doubt there will be enough changes at my age to fool it without FFS, which I hope to avoid.
QuoteTechnology needs to serve us, not the other way around.
This. Absolutely this. While some of you know my propensity for fruit flavored technology, and I joke about it occasionally, I never understood why people insist on turning it into religious wars. I've been through Apple vs. IBM, then Apple vs. Windows, now Apple vs. Samsung, and guess what? They're all just tools! Use what you like, and I'll do the same. Drive your Ford and I'll drive my Chevy. They both get us there. /soapbox
Most meaningful:
Quotemost important is to know we are all in this together - all of us on Susan's - and whether it's a minor language glitch (hey guys) or blatant misgendering the pain is genuine.
<big hug>
All of you replying to my meltdown make it so clear how important Susan's is to us. How else could we support each other and share the good and occasional bad times? The pain is indeed very real, and because every one of us has experienced it, we can support each other in ways that those who haven't gone through this fire could never possibly understand.
<BIGGER HUG> back at all of you.
Kathy: You and I have so much in common. As I've commented on before, I could have written so much of what you put in your thread, except you do it sooner and much more eloquently. I read your experiences and can only nod, yes, that's me. Like so many others here, I wish we weren't so far from each other. I certainly understand your not wanting to visit here right now, and unfortunately I don't see any opportunities for me to go north for a while. But someday I want to take you flying in an experimental aircraft I built, and I want to see Eta Carinae with my own eyes. We'll make it happen.
My dear sister Cassie: What would I do without you? As I said earlier, I was so lost last night when I couldn't get in touch with you. Today you made me laugh harder than I ever remember doing before. What incredible therapy you provided.
We were passing messages of support back and forth, and devolved into some of the most sophomoric humor you've ever seen, and I experienced something that proved to myself that I am indeed becoming female. It was what I can only describe as hysterical laughter and joy. I just couldn't stop laughing, to the point that it literally started to hurt, and as the laughing tapered off it evolved into a torrent of tears. It was joy and pain mixed, and so cathartic. I could only think of the scenes in
The Green Mile, where John Coffey expels all the pain as a dark cloud, and all is well again. The laughter and tears allowed me to rid myself of that dark cloud, and I have Cassie to thank for it.
QuoteYou know, I'm wondering if this notion that every happy moment must be paid for by a sad moment is some kind of coping mechanism left over from...before. The reason I say that is the whole thing sounds way too familiar to me. It's a way for a depressed person to deny that they can have any happiness, thus furthering the depression with what becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Does the universe demand balance? Is Sadness+Happiness=K built into our psyche or is it a male construct? Heck if I know. I only know that on our trip, and again last Wednesday, I was happier than I remember being before, and I don't think I was guilty about it. I certainly didn't consciously go looking for a meltdown or welcome it when it hit. Whether I brought it on subconsciously is beyond my ability to judge. It just hurt...
QuoteWith that said, I suggest you pick yourself up, put on your favorite outfit, and go do something fun for yourself. Hold your head up, tits out, back straight, and march forward. You know who you are and neither a piece of software nor an old man can tell you different!
Ummm... I
am standing up, and my tits
are out. It's the best you're going to get, both vertically and horizontally.
As for Old Dude, I guess the problem kind of solved itself today. I wore my name tag when he came over, and kept pointing to it (with a smile) every time he screwed up. He's one of those people who like using your name in sentences a lot, so there was plenty of opportunity. Well, my friend D was over, too, and while I was elsewhere, she had a talk with him, telling him that he really needed to figure out how to get my name and pronouns correct. She told him I was feeling down, and his constant previous-naming wasn't helping. Apparently he decided that his mistakes were the root cause of the depression, and he decided that for my sake, he should probably keep his distance. He left on good terms, but said he probably wouldn't be back, since he admitted to himself that he may not be able to teach himself to get it right. I had mixed feelings about it. I like him as a person - he had no problems at all with my transition, unlike the other guy who used to help out. He's very open-minded in his views about such things, and a very good person otherwise. The fact that he decided to step back for my sake speaks to the quality of his character. But it will be a relief to not have to be on guard all the time. I guess it's all for the best...
Laurie. Oh Laurie. We've each gone through so much since we met. So much pain overcome, and so much joy to look forward to. We each have our own very different mountains to climb, but I know your tough love is always out there for me, and I hope you know I'm there for you. I so look forward to the day I see a certain truck pull into my yard, to the point where I'll even allow your non-fruit-flavored computer access to my network. If that's not love, I don't know what is. I wouldn't be able to stop you anyway from up here on the fridge.
Tia Anne, while you haven't posted things publicly, our behind-the-scenes communications mean more to me than you may understand. I'll be writing more via email, but I need to acknowledge publicly that you've been such a help to me, and make sure everyone knows how thankful I am that I've found you as a new sister.
Bari Jo, please don't feel guilty for having fun with that software on your thread. Any pain due to it is all on me. As in all my previous meltdowns, it wasn't any one thing, it was a combination of small things adding up to more than I could bear at the moment. Your thread wasn't the problem, I was. I'm glad it's no longer being discussed, though. I've signed up for notifications again. I don't want to miss a moment of your progress. So even if we can't hug, here's a <fist bump>.
So I guess I'm feeling better. All of you contributed to the recovery in your own way, and I appreciate it all so much. As always, it seemed to be caused by a combination of small things, exacerbated by what may (or may not) be some sort of cycle - at this point theorized as 28 days. Backlash from a great day Wednesday? Too much old-naming and misgendering? Funky software misgendering me? Adjusting to the stresses of getting the business going again as my new self? This morning, dealing with the departure of Megan? I dunno. Any, none, or all of the above. I'm just thankful I have all of you to pick me up when I fall, even if I end up on the fridge.
Thank you. I love you all.
Stephanie