Doc ImpossiblePhD #trans girl! She/Her, thing explainer and technical writing scholar interested in trans usability studies and design theory. Gender questioning folks are very welcome to message me! Altersex trans lesbian. Opinions mine.
Nameless, my first novel, is out Feb 11! Preorder now: www.amazon.com/dp/B0GKGYZ2S8
Doc ImpossibleHi! 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!
https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com
Doc Impossible#StainedGlassWoman is entering hibernation.
There's a lot of reasons for this, but the one at the deepest root of it that I get my ideas for articles from being in community, and right now, the community is awash in rage and pain.
And I just can't take it.
Have a read for the details, if you want to know the full story.
https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com/p/hibernation
Doc ImpossibleI've been getting a somewhat mysteriously increasing number of Reply Guys on my Stained Glass Woman articles lately, so:
A little about me.
I'm a tenured, PhD-bearing professor of technical writing with a specialization in biomedical communication. When I was hired at my current university, the very first thing I was assigned to teach was a graduate-level research writing class for pharmacists. It was, on day one of my employment, my responsibility to train--
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Doc ImpossibleI know there are trans men out there feeling alone and shitty right now, so in case nobody else says it today:
You, and your masculinity, are beloved by this lesbian. To be frank, knowing trans men is what has given me hope that we can overcome all this.
Our enemy is patriarchy, not men.
Doc ImpossibleHi! 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!
https://stainedglasswoman.substack.com
Doc ImpossibleIf milling out your opponent in Magic the Gathering is the the gameplay equivalent of magically bimbofying them, self-mill decks represent a strategy whereby a player bimbofies herself to distract their opponent, which is narratively appropriate given how many trans women play. In this essay I
Doc ImpossibleWhat I've been up to the last couple of days.
The cats in this house live better than the humans smgdh
Doc ImpossibleToday is the first time I've gotten to do carpentry in years, and yeah it's mostly just assembly and polyurethane, but god damn it feels good to work wood again.
I've gotta do this more often.
Doc ImpossibleSomething to remember if you find yourself spiraling, as a trans person:
Until 1994, trans women were defined as a type of gay man, trans men were largely ignored, and nonbinary people were not considered to exist.
Its easy to forget how far we've come, and how recently.
We've got this.
Doc ImpossibleWhen I was in school for creative writing, our prof showed us a talk given by, I think, Stephen King (I could be wrong), and one thing he said really stuck with me:
"Nine out of every ten words I write in a first draft is garbage. The work of editing is to find the one, and then find its family."
Doc ImpossibleI teach writing. I love writing. And a lot of y'all have told me that you like how I write.
So, please understand where I'm coming from when I say that I want all of you with a story to tell to write it and share it.
And also that the first draft will be awful. And that's a good thing.
So many people get swept up in their first drafts, unable to see the darling ideas that are keeping it from shining. So many are afraid of the intensity of their own voice, their feelings, the close, thudding, bleeding heart that they need to put on the page, and so they hold it at arm's length.
Most of us don't really know where the story we want to tell actually begins until the first draft is on the page. Then, we have to go back and lay some extra track or pick it up, so we can start at the right spot for our story.
This is a good thing.
Doc ImpossibleWhen I was in school for creative writing, our prof showed us a talk given by, I think, Stephen King (I could be wrong), and one thing he said really stuck with me:
"Nine out of every ten words I write in a first draft is garbage. The work of editing is to find the one, and then find its family."
Doc ImpossibleHmm, what else...
I wish there was better access to surgeons, in terms of wait times and availability of surgeons. There just plain aren't enough surgeons who do this work, especially for phallo- and metoidioplasty. Wait times for medically necessary surgery that range into years is always wrong.
At the same time, I also understand why there aren't more. My mom teaches in a nursing program, believe it or not, and she's the only instructor who even addresses gender-affirming care. There's zero gender-affirming care on any med exams.
That's typical, and it's a big part of why trans broken arm syndrome is so common.
For someone to get into bottom surgery, they basically have to apprentice with an existing surgeon, and that training takes time, which decreases the number of surgeries the surgeon can complete.
It's a catch-22. Either we maximize surgeries now, and accept that as the trans population rises proportionally fewer of us will be able to get surgery at all, maximize training, in which case few people now will get surgery, or the system as more or less it is.
Until gender-affirming care is a significant item on the NCLEX and the USMLE (and equivalent licensing exams internationally), med schools won't teach gender-affirming care, and the problem will stay the same. Med schools crunch out everything that's not a major concern on those exams.
Doc ImpossibleHmmm... I dunno, I'm kinda running out of steam here.
Guess I'll open the floor. Anyone got a question about something I didn't talk about, or want to add a comment to correct something I got wrong?
Doc ImpossibleOne thing I feel that's less common in the trans community is that there does need to be some sort of "seriously, listen" before most bottom surgeries. The letter system is bullshit, for clarity--I feel this for the same reason that there are those kinds of meetings before other massive surgeries, like open heart, major organ transplants, or total knee replacements.
People who haven't had major surgery before do not understand how hard these are on a body. For a successful recovery, you need major support, lots of rest, and to follow your recovery orders to the letter.
People who're getting bottom surgery deserve to know in detail what that looks like well in advance--and for a vaginoplasty, that often looks like months out of work--so they can be financially, logistically, and socially ready for what that recovery means.
People have waited that long to get the genitals that are right for them. They deserve the very best shot possible at having an ideal recovery, and I've heard an uncomfortable number of stories of people like, turning up in Thailand for bottom surgery without having started short-term disability, because they didn't understand that three-day dilation for three months sometimes means a 4-5-hour-a-day commitment (for gals who have snugger canals and more inflammation, and therefore take longer to get to depth).
Its for that same reason that I believe our current financing/insurance and disability systems are fucking evil, because it's way too easy for the financial part of that recovery (ignoring the up-front cost of bottom surgery) to cost people their jobs and have major financial knock-on effects.
Getting bottom surgery should never risk financial ruin. Period.
Doc ImpossibleHmm, what else...
I wish there was better access to surgeons, in terms of wait times and availability of surgeons. There just plain aren't enough surgeons who do this work, especially for phallo- and metoidioplasty. Wait times for medically necessary surgery that range into years is always wrong.
At the same time, I also understand why there aren't more. My mom teaches in a nursing program, believe it or not, and she's the only instructor who even addresses gender-affirming care. There's zero gender-affirming care on any med exams.
That's typical, and it's a big part of why trans broken arm syndrome is so common.
For someone to get into bottom surgery, they basically have to apprentice with an existing surgeon, and that training takes time, which decreases the number of surgeries the surgeon can complete.
It's a catch-22. Either we maximize surgeries now, and accept that as the trans population rises proportionally fewer of us will be able to get surgery at all, maximize training, in which case few people now will get surgery, or the system as more or less it is.
Until gender-affirming care is a significant item on the NCLEX and the USMLE (and equivalent licensing exams internationally), med schools won't teach gender-affirming care, and the problem will stay the same. Med schools crunch out everything that's not a major concern on those exams.