HOLDING OUR BREATH CHALLENGE!?!?!!! (GONE WRONG‼️) ((NARANCIA DIED??)) (((NOT CLICKBAIT)))

Yes I like fictional characters a very normal amount. Don’t look at my blog.

#...269...why...

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.

beanie baby dragon is crossing your dash

need a bi4bi t4t m/f pairing where the girl is a giant freak and not in the "cute manic pixie" way but in the "unethical experiments in my fucked up laboratory" way and the guy is a golden retriever who thinks he can fix her. and he brings her cute bento lunches and she's like "bradley shut up put on your fucking gloves and hold this possum down so i can graft these giant grasshopper legs to it"

Get real five nights at Freddy’s..

(Original post @/handji_kyle on Twitter)

Day 792

THE STEEL BALL RUN ANIME HAS BEEN CONFIRMED!

Please check out the official anime account which has posted a full teaser for the SBR anime. Here are also some standalone screenshots of what it’s gonna look like:

Thank you all for joining me on this journey! 💚 It has been a pleasure to be a part of the Tumblr JJBA community, as I did so many years ago when I was eagerly following the part 5 countdown account on here. I'm glad I was able to contribute back to the community in some way, as I have held, and still hold the Tumblr JJBA community close to my heart. I hope I've been able to make the long wait to get here a little more fun!

Now let’s go on an exciting new adventure. YEEHAW! Much Love, @issteelballrunconfirmed

does anyone wanna hold hands until we feel a little braver

ITS HAPPENINGMWJWNSWLQ

New JoJo event announced for April 2025 - JOJODAY

JOJODAY, a 'fan festival' event celebrating the history of the JoJo anime, has been announced for the 12th April 2025 by the official JoJo anime twitter account. More information, including a link to a JOJODAY website can be found here: https://x.com/anime_jojo/status/1867495556572213641?s=46

We currently do not have any ticket information or further details about the event, but we do know that this event will be focusing on the past and future of the JoJo anime, with the Japanese voice actors for Jonathan Joestar (Kazuyuki Okitsu), Jotaro Kujo (Daisuke Ono) and Leone Abbacchio (Junichi Suwabe) appearing on stage at some point during the event. The venue for this event is the Yoyogi National Stadium. That is all the official information we currently have. In my opinion though, this is the closest we have ever been to a Steel Ball Run anime announcement - Stone Ocean was announced at a similar event (in April 2021 mind you), and with this event specifically focusing on the past and future of the anime it would be the perfect opportunity for them to announce a Steel Ball Run anime. One of the key art pieces for JOJODAY includes all of the old universe JoJo's looking back at someone. Could it maybe be Johnny..?

jjba version !!