Have You Ever Been To Earth?

Tumblr Code.

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.

Black cats are lucky. (via leahweissmuller)

guys the consequences of inaction are noooootttt enough to motivate meeee

Hello, tumblr user. Before you is a tumblr post asking you to name a female fictional character. You have unlimited time to tag a female character, NOT a male one.

Begin.

Posting this to spread joy and whimsy don’t mind me

Rereading Battle Tendency and I'm shocked by how little the fandom discusses the family dynamics. Speedwagon and Erina have different parenting styles, and that has a huge impact on shaping who Joseph is. Joseph was raised to be a little shithead!

Open to read more! 👇

From the very beginning of BT, it's established that Joseph's attitude is VERY different from Jonathan's. We're shown a flashback of Joseph's childhood.

When I first watched jjba, this scene surprised me. Joseph acts so aloof!! But now that I'm rereading it, I think Speedwagon told Joseph not to get involved beforehand. Or, as one of my followers on Bluesky mentioned, Joseph may have been acting like a brat in order to draw the robbers' attention away from Speedwagon.

Joseph snaps when the clothes Erina had given him get ruined. Joseph tells Speedwagon he'd do anything to protect them, as they're the only family he has.

From here on, Speedwagon is shown enabling Joseph's behavior. He's aware of Joseph's temper and bratty habits. But never once do we see Speedwagon scold or reprimand Joseph in any meaningful way, even when he's being reckless.

Speedwagon consistently responds in two ways. Giving Joseph a sideways glance or raising his voice...

"JoJo!" "JoJo..." "🥺" "😨"

In contrast to this... Erina is shown PHYSICALLY reprimanding Joseph when he steps out of line after he jokes about the implications of Speedwagon and Jonathan's relationship / Speedwagon and Erina's relationship (varies by translation)

However, Erina ALSO enables Joseph's behavior. But instead of Speedwagon's method of letting Joseph do whatever he wants, Erina guides Joseph on how to beat up a racist in public with STYLE. Joseph's sense of justice makes him wild & careless, so she teaches him how to stay in control while still doing the right thing.

Erina's background of an upper-class childhood, nursing career / teaching career, and her experience living as a woman in the 19th century shaped how she raised Joseph. Joseph inherited Erina's social intelligence, class, and kindness.

Speedwagon lived the majority of his life in the slums of London and was involved in organized crime. Speedwagon was also an oil tycoon. He's mastered the art of bartering. Joseph "inherited" Speedwagon's rebellious nature, street intelligence, and loyalty.

Joseph has a strong sense of justice, something ALL Joestars inherited from Jonathan.

But that sense of justice is what ultimately killed Jonathan and George. Erina and Speedwagon knew that Joseph was destined to get into trouble.

I believe that Erina and Speedwagon raised Joseph in such a way that he could survive the worst. And he did. Joseph is the only Joestar in the entire series that is shown to live into old age. He survived all that because of Erina and Speedwagon's love for him.

When I'm in an edging competition and my opponent is a JoJo Event

I literally love Jobin not enough people talk about him. He’s so weird and silly. What kind of cartoon ass villain feeds people fried chicken by throwing it on the ground like they’re birds??? Also the entire beetles thing I feel like he’s gotten a bit too excited and eaten a beetle at least once. It’s manfreak Monday I’m going to make it everyone’s problem. Might doodle him later. I want to put him in a jar and study his behaviour. Bacterium.

steel ball fun

[ID: a digital drawing of the central characters of steel ball run, arranged in the shape of multiple golden, ornamented gothic church windows. in the central shape from top to bottom we have the corpse of jesus christ on the cross, johnny joestar reaching up with tusk act 4 behind him, gyro zeppeli with his steel balls, teddy, flowers, ancient greek columns and the fibonacci spiral pointing up, hot pants with cream starter and a bust of her as a nun, diego brando with his dinosaurs and at the very bottom lucy's face glowing and splitting into shapes love train style. on the right top we have johnny's old trophies, a portrait of his brother nicolas and mouse danny and the silhouette of his father. further down are the portraits of funny valentine, sandman, mountain tim and blackmore. on the left top we have the fleur de lis, symbolic of gyro's past, a portrait of marco imprisoned, and the silhouette of his father. further down are portraits of steven steel, pocoloco, wekapipo and ringo roadagain. end ID.]