I'm like. CONSTANTLY advising people to take self defense classes and learn how to use a weapon of their choice. I myself carry at least one knife no matter where I go???

When discussing packers there's concerns about the glance test, the squeeze test, how real it looks and feels, whether it would get you clocked in a bathroom or in an assault situation. Like every site that rates packers that I've ever been to discusses these things for safety.

It's not my fault if the very real physical and sexual violence we face is erased from knowledge, and it certainly doesn't make it any less real.

Glad you mentioned the squeeze test, this is something I've had to teach other trans men, to make sure we don't get clocked in a club, bathhouse, or any other place where a cis woman or cis man thinks it's OK to grope our crotch because consent doesn't count when you pass as a man. I've been gropped, touched without my permission, and hit far more as a man than I ever was as a woman.

For trans men who don't know about the squeeze test. When you get a soft packer, you should put it on adjust it, so it sits right in your boxers and then squeeze your packer, grab it like someone is gropping you, you want to make sure it doesn't feel rigid, squeeze the fat on your stomach (or if you have breasts, that fat) it should feel similar to that. If you have a partner with a natal phallo, and they don't have bottom dysphoria, ask if you can cope a feel to compare.

If someone grabs your crotch at a party, and it's obvious that your packer is not a natal phallo you can get clocked, especially in a bathhouse (an issue I have had before, and I was removed from the bathhouse by security, because the man who gropped me left to make a complaint about a "female" being in the gay bathhouse). I was lucky that it was anonymous, cause if that guy wanted to he could have charged me with Sexual Assault for not disclosing that I was transgender despite the fact that he gropped me without permission while i was giving oral to another guy.

Hard packers and semi-soft packers are harder (no pun intended) to past the squeeze test, so I don't recommend wearing a hard packer out to the club and only wearing a semi-soft to a straight nightclub or a strip club, where you'll be less likely to be touched.

And in regard to violence, there are trans men murdered every year with their corpses genitals mutilated, frequently they are transmasc children.

Other fun issues include: forced detransition, having our bodies weaponized as the reason why trans children shouldn't get to transition, the highest rate of sexual assault among all trans people and all other demographics, the highest rate of suicide among all trans people and all other demographics, the highest rate of medical abuse among all trans people (the only demographic higher is that of black women), the highest amount of abuse during pregnancy of all demographics, no legal protections to abortion even in states that have abortion protection, no legal protections to birth control pills in any state, forced detransition to get access to an abortion, forced detransition to get access to homeless shelters, forced detransition to get any "female" medical care in many states, being denied surgery if you are autistic in several states, being denined surgery if you are mentally ill, depressed, or suicidal (even if not having surgery is what causes those issues), out HRT is only possible through either medical professionls or the black-market (no grey-market or DIY of our hormones are allowed, and can result in being sent to federal prison), speaking of prison - we often fear changing our gender marker because a "M" can get us sent to men's prison -- and not one wants to be the man with a vagina in prison, and MUCH MUCH more!

newly out trans women are getting a crash course education on safety in a misogynistic world. anyone that grew up seen as a woman has lived this reality their entire life, so things that seem like pressing & new information to transfems & trans women who've only been out a few years at most are common knowledge among trans men. the importance of learning basic self defense skills is already a given. people posting information targeted at trans men are not going to focus on something trans men will very likely already know. (edit bc some people have misunderstood my meaning and i want to be clear: misogyny & transmisogyny start well before many people even realize they're trans, but the difference is what information people think you need to know when you start puberty. if you're not seen as a woman at the time, safety information targeted towards women likely won't be shared with you. it's a difference in information access & education - see also gender-divided family life & sex education programs.)

fun fact (/s), it's more dangerous to carry a knife than to go without if you are untrained due to the risk of a more skilled attacker commandeering the knife from you! now your attacker is stronger than you and has a knife. don't carry a knife unless you know how to use it, and don't take self defense weapon recommendations from people who aren't trained well enough to teach someone how to use those weapons.

also, carrying a weapon makes you a threat in the eyes of the legal system & the public, especially if you're Black or brown. you open yourself up to additional risk of arrest & assault the minute someone identifies a weapon on your person, and concealed carrying of weapons can bring increased charges in the event you're arrested. changing gender markers automatically outs you as trans when you seek healthcare, especially reproductive healthcare. it also outs you to the state. murders of transmascs & trans men aren't even reported as hate crimes due to deliberate erasure of our transness & gender identities.

and finally, i typed up a whole thing to talk about this but i think it'll be more concisely explained by just saying this: trans people who get periods can't always avoid public restrooms. look up toxic shock syndrome.

to the people saying shit like this, please stop acting like trans men have zero real issues when you don't listen to them to begin with. oppression of transmasculinity is largely based in erasure, fearmongering, and misinformation; i beg other trans people not to reinforce or ridicule this reality by framing it as though trans men don't talk about any real issues. you don't know what they're talking about precisely because of that erasure.

additional edit: i do not intend for any of this to come across as combative or argumentative, i am simply trying to provide some explanation and additional context regarding the specific issues the two original posters mentioned in the screenshot, & some of the ways transmascs & trans men face those issues that might differ from their own knowlege and experiences. i want the original posters to understand why different communities of trans people might have different priorities than they do.

Posting again because of the fire situation up in Canada and resulting smoke. If you're dealing with wildfire smoke, these are surprisingly effective and relatively cheap.

Just tape the filter to the fan, making sure the air can't sneak around the edges. I used painter's tape, but I'm sure duct tape or similar would work just as well.

If you were/are not active on COVID prevention social media, you may not have seen the better version of the box fan filter: the Corsi-Rosenthal Box (named after the environmental engineer and the filter manufacturer who worked together to improve on the concept). I started with the above kind of filter with the "box fan filter bands" to attach it for wildfire smoke, but then I upgraded during the pandemic as more and more people started testing and using CR boxes and I recommend it!

A HEPA air purifier can easily cost USD $100-500 and even cheaper ones can be $$$ to replace the filters, which you're supposed to do every 2-3 months. A Corsi-Rosenthal Box can last for months or even a year depending on use, takes about 15 minutes to assemble, and costs between USD $50-150 for materials. If you can tape up a package, you can make a CR Box – the hardest part is cutting the circle in the cardboard shroud.

Instructions: https://cleanaircrew.org/box-fan-filters/

Diagram by Shiventaneja • CC BY-SA 4.0

Another diagram:

👉 Do not put it against a wall - it needs to be as close to the middle of the room as you can get it, but at least with space for airflow around it.

👉 You can design it with the fan on the top or on a side.

👉 Even if you already have a box fan, if it's cheap to buy a new one, it will be cleaner and also comes in the cardboard box which is already the right size to make the base and shroud needed.

👉 Make sure the filter arrows are all pointing to the inside of the box! (It's a big pain to remove the duct tape if you did it wrong.)

👉 The "Filterbuy" brand "MERV-13" filters that are everywhere on Amazon are not the best ones to buy, they don't perform that well in tests compared to other brands of MERV-13 filters. Still: better than nothing if that is your only option!

They take up about a 22" cube of space. They are lightweight to carry and pretty sturdy. They are also good at preventing airborne diseases if you are using the MERV-13 level filters (lower grade filters are not recommended because they can't catch the fine particles). I run mine during pollen season and at indoor gatherings, too, and they are great for classrooms. Good luck! 🍀

https://forge.medium.com/get-the-most-from-your-limited-free-time-84de1bc3096

the trick is to recognize that there’s nothing intrinsically exhausting about reading a book or painting a picture or doing any of the activities that are meaningful to you. What makes these things seem exhausting is the fact that they’re now competing with cheaper stimulation. In a paper published in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a group of psychologists suggested that the feeling of effort is a sensation of opportunity costs. When you’re doing something and an alternative activity promises to be easier and more immediately rewarding, the original activity feels effortful.

Therefore, if you want to do the things that matter, you need to make the alternatives less salient. Reading will be hard when Netflix is always an option. Family time will seem boring if your phone is always within arm’s reach. Easier will beat better if it’s always available.

I’d have trouble keeping that in myself.

i love how 100k of us feel the same need to tell everyone that she felt

This was the single most important thing for me to start understanding re: my undiagnosed ADHD, and it's the thing no one tells you except other ADHD sufferers. My brain's reward system is so broken that boredom rapidly becomes indistinguishable from a depressive episode. There's no healthy, normal ability to experience something as simply being a little dull--as soon as my brain isn't getting regular hits of stimulation, I start clawing at the walls. This is what makes working in a structured environment and initiating tasks so difficult for me, not malice or other character flaws.

What makes it worse is that, if you're like me, when you were growing up, the only way your authority figures knew how to perceive this was "they're just goofing off," and therefore, would deprive you of anything remotely stimulating until you'd done your work, thinking that -- if it worked like it would with an NT kid, you'd do your work faster so you could get back to having fun.

Instead, they just pulled the plug on any tiny bit of power you had running to your necessary brainwaves and put you into longterm shutdown mode.

But then....you grew up...with only that method for coping ingrained into you. So no matter how much you may know logically, now, that you have to have the "fun/interesting/challenging" cord plugged in for your brain to have any juice at all, you feel guilty for having to plug that in FIRST instead of as a reward for doing Adulting. So you just sit there, unplugged, not getting anything done.

Or maybe that's just me.

even the most supportive and well meaning people in my life struggle to understand how painful lack of stimulation is, how immobilizing executive dysfunction is, and how i cannot feel satisfaction the way they do. the number of times i’ve been told “won’t it feel so nice to accomplish it and have it off your plate?” and having to explain that i don’t feel relief or pride when i finish a task, just exhaustion, and that’s part of why it’s so hard to even start it