I explain some of the first noticable effects of my hormone replacement therapy, as well as how I use that in an ongoing Dungeons & Dragons campaign, in which I base my character on a character from the Oz books by L. Frank Baum.
Here is the image I speak of (yes, the pants got ruined because they weren’t quite made for Sapphire’s new hips).
Left to right: Septimer/Sapphire, glamour bard & Keyrith, artificer. Art by LunaJMS.
In this episode I explain the best tips and tricks on how I work with my own voice in a way that I hope is easier to understand than much of what can be found online. I also explain how wonderful roleplaying can be for people who need a safe space to explore themselves and how important it is for all of us to provide a safe space for all our friends to be themselves and hopefully we’ll get to share the journey together.
Today’s sonnet:
Come follow me to distant lands, To worlds beyond what eyes can see. Where, as the dice fall from thy hands; Revealed our fates will come to be.
Through dungeons deep or battlefield, At court’s great hall or peaceful glade, Explore fantastic worlds unsealed, And every bond two hearts have made.
With shackles broken thee will see, Once free from prison of the mind, Become who thee were meant to be; A champion of greatest kind.
Take my hand, challenge the fates; The journey of your life awaits!
This is my second episode of my podcast and already I doubled the length of my last one If you have half an hour to spare I promise it will be worth it. I answer the question “What is a deadname” as well tell the story of the journey of my name and how roleplaying played a big and spectacularly unlikely part in how I ended up where I am today.
I speak about the game Västmark by Krister Sundelin, which exists as a free in swedish pdf here.
Well here I am, rambling away with no script, as will happen at times. I really want to podcast and I am just trying out how it feels. In this episode I introduce my thoughts and feelings on why I need to express myself in this way and I think it might be relevant to people who share my interests and enjoy my musings as well as follow my journey of voice feminization.
I will start with the great news. My rebel alliance in Denmark came through. I have my medicine in spite of my country’s efforts to stop me from getting the treatment I need. I am so grateful to my danish darlings for this. These past couple of months have been horrendously stressful, I have barely been able to function but the moment I had the package in my hands was such a relief, it felt like I could breathe for the first time in weeks.
For anyone in my situation, having the medicine shipped to a trusted friend or relative with an address in Denmark and then organize a pick-up was successful and is how I will be doing this from now on. Even if the situation gets better here it will take a long time for me to even consider trusting swedish authorities as they have proven time and time again that their prioity is not to help us or give us care, but to be rid of us. Stop our care, prevent our protection until we give up and just fade away.
So here comes the reality check.
I am currently waiting to see a doctor that can view my case and diagnose me with gender incongruence, which must happen before Sweden grants me ANY trans care, I don’t even get to see a speech therapist before being diagnosed. In 2017 the only doctor who could give such a diagnose quit his job and his replacement started working in october 2021.It took 5 years to replace him, during which time no one could get diagnosed and thus no one could get granted trans care. But at least we have a doctor now, right? Sure, she has a hell of a backlog to get trough but at least things are moving forward now, right?
No. The new doctor has quit the position after 6 months and we are once again without any way of getting diagnosed. They have begun the recruitment process and have no plans to solve things by bringing in outside consultants or doctors from other countries, which would be done if it was to help a group of people they actually cared about. They are back with the strategy that last time took 5 years because to them, that was great. Us not getting health care is not a problem for the powers that be, this is what they want.
Furthermore, I have found out that the care I would eventually get will have more mandatory wait times. Hair removal has to wait for 6 months of HRT (Hormone Replacement Theory) and breast augmentations 24 months. This might look reasonable on the surface, after all you want good hormone levels before invasive surgery but this rule does not count HRT that you have recieved from other countries. One might assume this is because they do not trust that other countries to know how to set a dosage, a little condesending but sure. This, however, is a false assumption. I have been monitoring my progress with blood works every three months and I have a paper trail showing my hormone levels throughout the whole process. I asked them about this and they said they honestly do not care about my hormone levels. The mandatory wait times are final. They recommend against self medicating, and as such the wait times can be considered a diciplinary action, to punish us for having the gall to spend all our savings and income on life saving medical care that should have been covered by our taxes, while they insist on withholding that care from us for the better part of a decade.
And by the way, their refering to me paying for foreign private medical care as “self medicating” is more than a little infuriating. I employ real doctors who analyze real blood works, monitor my progress, and sign real presriptions. Swedish authorities make it impossible for me to get care in my own country, and don’t lift a finger to improve the situation, then actively try to stop me from getting my medicine, hunting me like a criminal, only to punish me with extra mandatory wait times for having the gall to get my care where I can find it.
I want to state that my anger and despair is not with the medical practitioners. The ones that do practise trans care in Sweden are precious and as far as I understand, most of them do their jobs with great care and passion, and I love them for it. Unfortunetly that passion is not shared with the people who set the rules that the medical staff have to follow.
By the way, the new plan to “reduce the wait times” is to revoke the medical licenses of trans care facilities who cannot handle their queues, though they do not get any more resources to be able to actually achieve this. This means that facilities will start closing, and all those patients who have been desperately waiting in line have to be moved to the back of a new, now much longer line somewhere else, causing even more trauma and despair to people already on their knees. If any facility, by some miracle, manages to stay open, that facility or the few remaning facilities will be forced to take on the queues of all the facilities that were closed and in turn, be closed down as well. This is inevitable. There can be no other outcome. It is impossible to look at this plan and even begin to imagine it leading to anything other than complete eradication of trans care in Sweden. They are not even hiding it any more. The reason they are not trying to fix the system is that they do not consider it broken. It is doing exactly what it was designed to do; Prevent the care of trans people. The current system is doing this very well, and the planned changes will push this agenda even further. they will not stop until are all gone. The bright future they envision is one where everyone like me has given up and left this world. They hate that we exist. They want a world without us.
And yet, swedish people are walking around during pride month with smiles on their faces happily stating that they are proud of living in such a progressive and accepting society. And here I am, fighting tooth and nail for my right to bare existence against a system that, right now, seems to be winning. Please, everyone reading this, don’t let them get away with this! At least… I don’t know… talk about it? At least let the word on the street suggest that there are some people that in the very least cares about it.
