It Could Happen Here - Hormone Replacement Therapy: Part Two

Episode Date: April 22, 2022

Garrison talks about DIY HRT, and we continue our discussion with by Dr. Victoria Grieve on gender affirming hormonal therapy.  https://twitter.com/VixenVVitch [e-mail]  https://diyhrt.github.io/https://hrt.cafe/https://diytrans.wiki/Main_Page https://www.them.us/story/informed-consent-hrt-map-trans-healthcareSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, the podcast about things falling apart and sometimes how we can put things back together. I'm Garrison Davis, aspiring Rebus, and this is part two of my little two-part series talking about trans hormone replacement therapy. Last episode, we discussed

what HRT is, its various benefits as gender-affirming treatment, and the informed consent model of receiving hormones. Before we continue on with my discussion with Dr. Greve, I would like to talk a bit more about informed consent. So the informed consent option can be great for many, many people as it attempts to bypass some of the red tape around receiving gender-affirming health care. For informed consent, all you got to do is set up an appointment, sign the forms, maybe get some blood work done, and then pick up your hormones, right? You don't need to live as trans for like two years or have letters from therapists. It is just up to you. So it is really convenient if you can get that option. Some places even let you do it via telemedicine appointments. So you can just sit at home holding your little Ikea shark

and then get your hormones, which does sound very, very nice. Planned Parenthood offers informed consent trans healthcare in many states. And in the show notes, I will link a Google map of the informed consent clinics from across the country. Depending on your insurance, you can get hormones for little to no extra cost this way. It can be really convenient. no extra cost this way. It can be really convenient. The biggest asterisk for informed consent is that since it's based on, you know, informed consent, it often is just for humans age 18 and older, or sometimes teens a few years younger, but only if their parents or guardians sign the forms. Obviously, this is not ideal for a 16-year-old with transphobic parents who would

really be helped by receiving hormone blockers or something, right? Another potential drawback is that the clinics can sometimes have quite the wait list. I started off with the informed consent model because it was the easiest. But by the time I needed more blood work done and my prescription refilled, setting up more appointments at Planned Parenthood became kind of a nightmare. I was continuously having appointments being canceled on me last minute and just getting pushed back months and months into the future. Eventually, I just resorted to getting hormones through my regular doctor instead of just continuing on with informed consent. Now, this is obviously a regional issue, right? I don't know what it's like in Florida, for example. But the COVID-19 pandemic has stressed a lot of the medical infrastructure here in the States, and scheduling some appointments in these clinics can be still

quite challenging. And as you know, a big theme of this show is that maybe we shouldn't assume the structures that hold up our society are concrete permanent fixtures. The term the crumbles that we use to describe the slow deterioration of the systems that we rely on was initially coined in reference to our medical system by a friend of the show who works in the medical field. Listen to the first five episodes of the Daily Show talking about climate change for more on that. But a part of the Kreml's idea is trying to learn how to become less reliant on the systems that we take for granted, right? Trying to solve for the fallacy of misplaced concreteness before it's too late.

On that note, back to my discussion with Dr. Victoria Luna Brennan-Greave, assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. For places that are getting, you know, all of these anti-trans bills, criminalizing all of this stuff for minors, and then, you know, eventually maybe even, you know, my big fear is that, you know, first off, they're going to criminalize it for minors, then they're going to say the brain's not fully developed until you're 25, and they're going to criminalize it until you're 25, and they're just going to criminalize it for minors. And they're going to say the brain's not fully developed. So you're 25 and they're going to criminalize it until you're 25. And then they're just going to criminalize it for everyone after that. Um, so for all of these places that are making access to healthcare so much harder, what, what is, what is one to do? Like if these, if there's these kids

and then even adults who are like, just find it so much harder to get stuff. Like I know there's the informed consent clinics, but there's a few in Texas, but I don't even know what they can even offer anymore. It's really unclear. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you some of that fear is already becoming reality here in Pennsylvania. Just two days ago, I think it was HB 972 passed by the house down in Harrisburg that prevents... passed by the the house and down in harrisburg that prevents it's a ban on trans people playing sports up through the college level not just high school and grade school it's all the way up through you know secondary education yeah uh and even though our governor's like has vowed to veto it like who even knows what's going to happen? But they're already taking aim

at this higher level kind of thing. And there's a lot of precedent for that. But my goodness, there's a long and storied history of DIY hormone therapy. And it's easier for the transfeminine individuals because testosterone is actually a schedule two controlled substance. I think it's schedule two or schedule three. It might be a three. I think it's a schedule two controlled substance i think it's schedule two or three it might be a three i think it's schedule three steroid i'll i'll i'll write a little thing about it and i'll say it in the episode and it's such a funny reason too because it's just you can use it to dope for endurance based like like cycling and running because it will increase your red blood cell count. That's it.

And so it's a controlled substance because people can use it to dope for sports. So that's a little bit harder to get a hold of in a meaningful way. But there are a lot of different, allegedly, there are a lot of different places online that you can acquire estrogen or estradiol relatively easily. Now I'm going to actually pause the discussion with me and Dr. Greve to talk a little bit about DIY HRT, or for those anti-acronym people out there, do-it-yourself hormone replacement therapy. Now again, I'm not a medical doctor. Unless you have a problem regarding parapsychology, I cannot offer you any expertise. But I can talk about DIY HRT as it's existed for trans people for the past two decades. Because an unfortunate truth is, although it's gotten much easier to get gender-affirming care and hormones the past few years, even in states that aren't facing this wave of anti-trans healthcare bills, the medical establishment hasn't been the most trans-friendly place in general.

A recent Center for American Progress report found that nearly half of transgender people, and 68% of transgender people of color, reported having experienced mistreatment at the hands of a medical provider, including refusal of care and verbal or physical abuse, just in the year before the survey, which took place in June of 2020. So this is still very much an ongoing issue. One in two trans people reported that their access to gender-affirming healthcare was curtailed significantly during the pandemic, and nearly one in two transgender adults have had insurance providers deny them coverage for gender-affirming care. And very often, doctors don't even know how to properly treat transgender patients, and often it's up to the patients to educate the doctors on trans healthcare issues. The Center for American Progress survey from last year found that one in three trans people report having to teach their doctors

about trans people to get them appropriate care, and 15% reported having been asked invasive or unnecessary questions about being trans which were not related to the reasons for them visiting the doctor. The report cited a 2018 brief from the Kaiser Family Foundation that found that more than half of medical school curriculums lack information about unique health issues the LGBTQ community faces and doesn't cover treatment beyond HIV prevention and care. So obviously that leaves a lot to be desired for people wanting to receive transgender health care. Between medical mistreatment, insurance complications, and doctor ignorance, many trans folks have taken it upon themselves to get the drugs necessary for hormone replacement therapy.

Because the alternative is often just having to face not being able to receive the healthcare that in many cases makes it possible to live. The Center for American Progress survey found that 28% of trans folks report having postponed or not gotten necessary medical care for fear of discrimination. Taking your endocrinology and hormone treatment into your own hands has a lengthy history and used to be much more common in the days before informed consent. In a survey of trans people in Washington, D.C., circa 2000, over half of the respondents said that they had used non-prescribed hormones, also known as DIY HRT. So information on how to go about DIYing your HRT spread via online forums and websites in the early 2000s. And after some trial and error, the information is kind of consolidated into a few main information

hubs, that being the DIYHRT wiki, HRT.cafe, and DIYHRT.github.io. Now, obviously, when you're getting into taking drugs from online sources, you need to be extremely careful and cautious about what foreign chemicals you're putting into your body, including in trying to only acquire drugs from trustworthy sources, doing drug testing if you can, and doing your own blood testing before and after to keep an eye on your testosterone and estrogen levels. It is possible to order blood tests via online and send it through a lab that you have to ship your blood to, but often it's just easier to do it by going through the medical system. Now, one massive caveat with DIY HRT is, although it's more

straightforward to acquire estradiol and antiandrogens like Spiro from online sources, getting testosterone for masculinization therapy is much more tricky, because in most places, it's a restricted drug. Here in the States, it is a Schedule III substance. So technically, buying it without a prescription would be a felony. So for this reason, most DIY HRT stuff focuses on feminizing hormones since that is less legally complicated. Now, obviously, steroids exist, so it is possible to get them. But I will not be giving out guides on how to do that here on the pod. But, you know, you can look into it if you so desire.

For feminizing hormones, the main way of going about it requires obtaining bioidentical estradiol. It can come in a few forms. Pills, which are not difficult to acquire, and assuming you get the dose right, it's pretty easy because it's just a process of dissolving the little pill tablets under your tongue, and that's kind of it. Dosage is its own thing, which you can figure out if you do reading, but the actual taking of it is pretty straightforward. Transdermal estrogen, or transdermal estradiol, is kind of the new hot thing. Usually this has you taking weekly estradiol patches, which you just switch out every week. Or you can also do daily gels that you just rub on your body.

Although unfortunately for dosing gels, it can be more tricky if you go DIY because it's hard to know what concentration just the gel is if you're just rubbing a salve on yourself, if it's not already prepackaged. But the patches are pretty good. And lastly, the classic method is injectable estradiol at various concentrations in the form of some oil solution. This can usually be the cheapest option if you can figure out how to buy estradiol. And needles and syringes can be bought at any pharmacy just over the counter in most countries without a prescription.

For feminizing hormones, some people also take antiandrogens, aka testosterone blockers like Spiralactone, which can be acquired online and are almost always taken orally in the form of a pill. Now, when getting these drugs online, there are two main categories of purchase. There's pharmaceutical grade and home-brewed. Pharmaceutical grade refers to HRT produced by legitimate pharmaceutical companies that are licensed and subject to regulation. They should be of the same quality as those found in your local pharmacy, and they can be ordered without a prescription from websites based in countries that allow for the legal exportation of certain medications. These will almost always carry less inherent risk versus receiving and taking home-brewed hormones, which leads us to the second version that you can buy, which is home-brewed. This refers to HRT produced by individuals by

sourcing raw estradiol or whatever other chemical you're taking in the form of a powder and then compounding the medication themselves. They do not synthesize or correct from scratch these hormones, but they do use the powdered versions of them and they get them from sources from drug manufacturing companies to synthesize it into their own estradiol or whatever other drug you're taking. You know, in the antiandrogen list, there's too many to name. Now, while this concept does sound scary, and it can obviously go wrong if someone's not synthesizing it correctly, there are a couple well-respected members of the community that have been known to produce high-quality and safe HRT medications. But before anyone decides to take drugs that you get on the internet, please, please, please, please do lots of reading beforehand on dosage, effects, side effects,

and be very cautious with your drug sourcing, right? You should know who you're buying it from. You don't want to just buy from whatever sketchy website. You should make sure that what you're doing is other people are backing up on this decision. Make sure that you can cross-reference information here, because there's a lot of information out there online, and not all of it is good information, obviously, but really try to cross-reference information on any drug sources, on hormone dosage, and any possible drug interactions if you're taking multiple drugs or you already have prescriptions.

Now, I should note that supply chain issues that affect the medical system can even extend out to DIY HRT. There's no trueT. There's no true escape. There's no true other. One of the main pharmaceutical-grade online sites to source HRT from is currently out of estradiol pills. So there is no true escape sometimes. But to learn more about DIY HRT, you should check out diyhrt.github.io or hrt.cafe and the diytrans.wiki. And keep in mind, not everything you read on those sources is necessarily good advice or up-to-date with the current information on how these drugs work.

Recently, I was reading a guide I found via one of those sites on how to homebrew my own estrogen by buying the powdered version of it and synthesizing it myself to level up my alchemy stat. And I found the guide I was reading contained quite a bit of outdated misinformation about progesterone. So don't take everything you read as gospel, but those resources are at least a good place to start. Anyway, now back to the interview. The problem that you might run into with DIYing it is you might not be able to get the bioequivalent estradiol in some form. You might have to settle for conjugated estrogens or even something like an ethinyl estradiol, which is like hormonal birth control. something like an ethinyl estradiol, which is like hormonal birth control, which because they are synthetics, they actually have a much rougher time on your body. And that's where a lot of the

side effects, quote unquote, like come from, like all of the worry about like blood clots and things from taking estrogens comes from conjugated estrogens, ethinyl estradiol. I didn't know that. Yeah. The actual study that a lot of that is citing goes all the way back and it was studying the rate of clotting in cisgender women

taking hormonal birth control. Taking birth control. Okay. And it's just like, okay, so this is the wrong population with the wrong medication. Yeah, that seems like not a great scientific study.

Right. What do we do? I mean, it might be great to talk about for the rate of clotting for cis. Yeah, that seems like not a great scientific study. Right. What do we do? I mean, it might be great to talk about for the rate of clotting for sex. Yeah, right. But not for trans women or people who want to take estrogen. Right. It doesn't really help so much. And what I think is also pretty wild, I mentioned the progesterone thing earlier. A lot of that controversy comes from the fact that the original studies on whether or not it could be beneficial were done with medroxyprogesterone, a synthetic progesterone that has a really nasty side effect profile in a lot of different ways.

And now that we have micronized progesterone, where the evidence suggests that not only is it safe, it actually makes estrogen safer. And now they're like, no, we can't give that. That's just crazy talk. I will say, I have heard from people with more experience taking hormones than me that progesterone does make you way too horny. So just a heads up for side effects. Hashtag can confirm. But progesterone can have a lot of other really beneficial side effects. It can really increase the fat deposition to various places. It can help with your mood.

It can help with your sleep. It actually reduced the period symptoms that I was having because surprise, people on estrogen can also have periods because your body, again, knows what it's doing. It's going to modulate it through the E1, E2, E3 pathway throughout the month in a cyclical fashion, and you can get bloating and cramps. And I had really bad morning sickness for three days, every 28 days for months until eventually I started micronized progesterone and those symptoms alleviated, which makes a kind of sense if you know that progesterone-only birth control reduces periods. So there's a lot of precedent. It makes a lot of sense that it would work. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Don't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. God, I need to tell you, have you ever heard of the Powers method?

No. Oh, Garrison, I am so excited to introduce you to this person. is a fascinating grifter in the trans healthcare space because he is a, he's a physician who like has, has made it his duty to, to, to make sure that trans people, especially trans women, he actually doesn't like really have anything to say about trans men because the, the therapy is so like easy to, to, to do. Yeah.

That he has a wild postulation as to like better ways to give hormones and he has things where it's like well you don't need anti-androgens you just give really high levels of injectable estrogen which like i mean that'll probably work because it could work for some people but yeah yeah but but also estrogen is like really safe and safe. You can give it to an unbelievably high level. It's not really going to speed things up exactly. It will maybe a little bit, but not that much. Any of the side effects you might experience, which could also come from the excipients, the non-active elements of it, you can be allergic to those. If you have a really high dose, it could be a real problem. But the big thing for him is he pushes that micronized progesterone is not only necessary and good, especially for breast size, you should also stick the oral capsules in your butt. Oh, we are officially boofing estrogen now. Yes, yes. Okay. Well, I'm switching back to pills this sounds

very exciting well so well oh my gosh so the the the idea is his line is um that you know that the oral capsules you only get a tiny fraction of the total progesterone and you get a lot more if you stick it up you get the whole dose if you stick it up your butt, which like, if you know, literally anything about pharmacology is both right and entirely insane because anything that you take orally, there's a bioavailable like level of it. So oral micronized progesterone has a bioequivalence of, I think like two or 3%, which is why when you take like a hundred milligram capsule, you get like a certain blood level. If you take it rectally, it's like a 12%. It's still not the whole thing, which is why the micronized progesterone rectal suppositories are 25 milligrams to give you the same exposure. So it's four times the systemic absorption, which means that if you are boofing a micronized progesterone capsule, you are getting three to four times the dose that you should be getting.

to fight with people all the time about this. I pulled the original FDA filing for micronized progesterone, and they suggested that 300 milligrams is basically getting to what a cisgender person's maximum progesterone levels would be. Meaning that if you're boofing one or two, as some of his regimens suggest, you might be essentially overdosing on progesterone for no reason like there's no real reason to do that and it is just crazy when when i started this call today i did i did not think we would get to boofing progesterone it is a weird like a a weirdly large part of my twitter interactions have been fighting people to stop boofing progesterone. So I needed to say it. Unfortunately, you just exposed this idea to millions of more people.

No! Well, no, I'm saying don't do it! But you know that's not how that works. I do know that's not how that works. But, I mean, I tell you, if your friend Robert Evans were here, I could pitch a hole behind the bastards on this Dr. Powers guy.

He sounds fascinating. He has a subreddit, like all good physicians do. I love when my doctor has a subreddit. And my favorite post, other than recently, he's been pushing this miracle hair tonic that he made, which is like, come on, buddy. Now it's just obvious he calls it tonic yep yep the the verb he might call it he might even call it an elixir which is very funny but come on come on for my magical hair tonic exactly and it's so funny because one of the components of it i think is finasteride like i i looked at the door and i'm like, yes, that is something for male pattern baldness. It will probably work. Congratulations. You just remade Rogaine. But the single post that I feel like perfectly encapsulates this guy's mentality is there's this big post that went around through cisgender centrist spaces that every trans person i saw was just like excuse me

what the fuck where this guy was secretly microdosing injectable estrogen that he prescribed himself which sounds kind of illegal not gonna lie uh and messed up the dose by a thousand percent by a thought by a times thousand wait yeah yeah yeah and um like i can give you the link i i can i know exactly where it is i can give you the link if you wanted to read this it is buck wild but the thing is he goes on to describe this like acute dysphoric episode that he had from one high dose of subcutaneous estrogen a thing that is not physiologically possible and in completely insane. And he, but he was like, but I understand the pain, the trans women go through because I fucked up a dose where I was secretly

taking estrogen to make my face look younger. So I understand your pain and have so much empathy for, for the trans women's that I am trying to save. And it is so frustrating to me how many people give him like credence give him credit um because he he has he has claims like apply progesterone cream to the the smaller breast to even them out it's like okay my dude have you ever met like people with breasts one is larger than the other that's how breasts work and it And it's like, well, what's your evidence for that? Well, I had two people who did it and they said it worked. Okay, cool. Do you have those reports? No, no, no. They got

burned up in a house fire and it's very sad. And I can't give you that data. Did he actually say that? Yes. So he worked in a clinic that a friend of mine actually moved to after they got rid of him. Because he made all these wildly anecdotal claims. And then his house burned down. Which is actually very sad because his cats died in it. And he didn't deserve his cats because cats are perfect creatures. And this man is insane.

The cats did nothing wrong. Cats never do anything wrong. Cats are perfect magical beings uh i love yours so much as they keep crossing in front of the screen as they do they're perfect um but so whenever anybody challenges him on literally any of his claims he goes well i had all of that data but it burned up in my house and then he like makes it a sob story about how horrible this was, which I'm sure it was really bad. I'm sure it was really, really bad. But even his

PowerPoint presentations that he has that he goes through to really talk about the powers method and make it sound really, really good, has like fire safety section specifically so he can garner this like sympathy so people will not question his claims that have no evidence behind them. And so it's just such a fantastic examination. To me, it's just so weird seeing like a space that has historically been denigrated in the evidence. You had that whole episode on the Hirschfeld Institute, and we see all this anti-trans propaganda and legislation going on right now, that there's a lot of empty space in the medical record and in the evidence record for what to do in these situations. There's a lot of confusion from the guidelines in these other societies, like I was talking about. And in steps this guy who sees an opportunity to be a

popular, powerful individual in this space to give people hope that he can cash in on. And since the medications and since the hormone therapy is so safe, he doesn't actually hurt that many people. And it is so wild seeing this juxtaposition of individuals being like, well, this is unsafe experimental nonsense, and seeing this guy flagrantly overdosing people on hormones with no ill effects because they're that safe. That is pretty funny. Yeah, it's funny in that laughing until you're crying kind of way. Yes, yes.

Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What is a way that people can try to combat all the medical disinformation around hrt specifically uh because we do this specifically we see this a lot in the save the children rhetoric we see

this a lot for just anti-trans stuff in general um and like yeah just in terms of someone who has to deal with the stuff on a professional level, like when we're just faced with all of this, just blatantly, just like wrong stuff, uh, being treated as absolute fact when your experience, what's kind of the best ways to go about that in people? Oh my goodness. Um, it kind of depends on the audience. When I'm talking to other healthcare practitioners, I have historically, because I do a lot of teaching and advocacy in this area,

to other healthcare practitioners. And holding sessions, like volunteering to hold sessions of to educate on this and say, these are the kind of regimens that are commonly used in clinics. This is why these are things to look out for and to stress the importance of believing the patient and the importance of you don't want to gatekeep because if, which they're not that dangerous, but if there is to be a problem, you would rather have that patient want to work with you to solve it is like such a big part of it. Like even just understanding that from that level that you're not like delivering this kind of like life-saving medication to them as this like Lord on high. It's this idea that like, no, you should be working with this person. And if you're not familiar with it, you need to do your fucking research. And I will give you the resources for that. I will walk you through those resources. And that's awfully convincing

for the majority of healthcare individuals at any level. Because I've done talks for students in nursing programs and physical therapy programs, all the way up to actively practicing physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. And it's basically the same. You make the argument, you show the evidence, you give them the evidence, and you walk them through and then have a robust question and answer period where they will ask you those questions and you can explain why they are wrong. Having that kind of dedicated space can be really beneficial, but not scalable in a way that's necessarily helpful. I've made a positive impact on my city, but that doesn't really necessarily help if you yourself are not a healthcare

practitioner and want to explain this kind of stuff. I mentioned earlier that on Twitter, I've spent a lot of time arguing that people shouldn't be boofing their progesterone, but I've had to stop because it's exhausting. Every single person coming back, it's like the same conversations over and over again. And there's no good way to have a central location that just has all that information that anybody's going to believe because of the way the internet works. So I guess my answer is, I'm not sure. There's so much misinformation out there, and so much of it is so wrong and not in alignment with reality that looking at it at all, it falls to pieces.

And the idea of the majority of people... So I guess I could say, if a person is coming to you and asking legitimate questions and they don't really know, like they're just like parroting stuff that they heard, they're much easier to convince because you can show like, oh, well, like we have a long history of doing this. Like, look at, you know, I tell my students about how like 1952 was the first like recognized

hormonal mediated transition in the United States. Like she was like a movie star. And, you know, I talk about a lot of the history to be like, this isn't new. This is something like we have been here forever. My favorite story. Do you know about the story about the Scythian priestesses? Yes, I actually do, but I would love for you to explain it. But I found out about that a few months ago and I was like, oh my God, makes me so happy. So to explain very briefly, I think it's an old, I think it was like Herodotus. It's an old Grecian author, philosopher, whatever, historian. But they talk about, in one of the texts, the Scythian priestesses who essentially distill the poison of woman, they call it in one of the texts, which I think is such a great term, from pregnant mare urine, which interestingly enough, we actually still make today conjugated estrogens. The brand name is Premarin because it comes from pregnant mare urine. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's literally a thing that we still do today.

That is hilarious. It's beautiful. It's so good. And so they were priestesses. They were like, you know, people would come to them to seek out their wisdom and their like this spiritual thing. And it was like a bunch of trans women who like got high, told stories and probably fucked each other. And that sounds like a polycule to me. But the Scythians were like a nomadic group of people who would travel all around kind of what is now the Middle East. And yeah, I do love the idea of trans people having specific, more esoteric insight almost naturally. Because they've had to deal with ideas of ontology. And ontology is just like the nature of being.

And so having to deal with that, having to deal like the nature of being um and so having to deal with that having to deal with like the nature of reality from a much younger age because their whole perception of reality and self is obviously so different because of their experience of being what is now called trans um so it makes a lot of sense that a lot of these people would have been like basically different forms of shamans mediums or just have like esoteric insight because they've been thinking about these types of like reality altering topics for so much longer because it's so much more personally affecting to them. But yes,

what I specifically read about the Scythian priestesses, I'm like, oh my, they're just like doing the thing. They're just doing the thing. It turns out we've been doing this forever. My favorite account is one of the reasons they commanded just doing the thing it turns out we've been doing this forever my favorite account is a uh one of the reasons they commanded respect of the like masculine leaders that would come to get information was because they were all terrified that they would inflict the poison of

women which it does spread by the way it is oh it's highly contagious actually it is contagious but the idea that like there was like some of the respect was from like this fear of being force femmed is hilarious from like this early B.C. The primordial fear of primordial fear. I was going to say, Garrison, you mentioning like ontology. My original degree was in psychology and philosophy. So like, let's go, baby. We can go deep on some of this stuff. Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure. I'm sure we can talk about mysticism and magic and gender for a long, long time. Oh my God. That'd be a whole nother podcast. Those are big areas of interest. But I super agree with you because I've been thinking about this and I've ended up having conversations with a lot of my peers in pharmacy and in the university because people might not recognize this, but pharmacy is actually one of the more conservative spaces in healthcare. Like my, my school had a dress code for the students until two years ago when I fought hard enough to get it removed. Like it was wild. Like the code of conduct committee tried to get me, tried to prevent me from getting my ears pierced. Like it is, yeah, it's a wild

space for me to exist in um it's extremely conservative extremely traditional like the some like yeah i i got stories uh that i'd love to tell if you wanted to hear them but the the thing that i think is really interesting is when you look at me in comparison to my my colleagues who are predominantly Christian, predominantly traditionalist, predominantly capitalist. And I roll in as this anti-capitalist, anarchist, trans woman who's poly, who's pansexual, who's a pagan, all the Ps. And it's like, well, once I questioned gender, I started realizing all of culture and society is bullshit. It's all the same thing. And now I can tell you the truth. Come to me for the truth of reality.

No, it even makes sense in terms of like, you know, why did two trans women make the Matrix? You're like, yeah, no, it's like, it is the same thing. Your entire nature and basis of reality was severely questioned. So you're trying to trying to understand these feelings and for you know in modern days we have like stuff like simulation theory we have the matrix um and then you know but before before then you know it would have been taken out in like spiritualism and religion and you know the different levels of reality on like the whole like mystic side of things as opposed to to the more sci-fi side of things. Right.

But yeah, it's all the same stuff. You're playing with the same things. But yeah, it is just a funny trend that once you notice it, you'll start seeing it in different places. Yeah, so we are still mystics who understand the true reality of the world and will force them you if you don't give us respect. I just don't see what the problem is.

I believe that that was my takeaway from Matrix Resurrections. Oh, yeah. I mean, 100 percent. Well, is there anything else you would want to you'd want to add? Oh, my goodness. I don't know. Fight for trans people. One of the things that I end up always having to talk to my students about and colleagues and things is what ally means. Because I've literally gotten into arguments with people who are like, oh yeah, it's LGBTQIA because A stands for ally. And I'm like, oh, I will knife you. It doesn't stand for ally. It stands for asexual or aromantic or agender. Yes. All of the other A's.

Yes. But it's this thing where people think being an ally is just being like, okay with a person existing. The kind of like, well, if it makes you happy, which is like, okay, motherfucker, that's not like, that is so belittling of the experience. That's not allyship. To be an ally, you have to leverage your privilege by not being a member of that community to protect people in that community. You can be tolerant, but not an ally. And that's sort of where the old saying comes from that we, if that's what being an ally is to you, we don't need allies. We need accomplices. And with the current legislative push against trans people, I mean, like literally what I do is like a felony in three states now or almost a felony in three states. Oh, and it's going to be a growing number of states. Yeah. And it's just so unbelievably depressing. And there aren't enough, I mean, there's a lot

of trans and non-binary and every kind of expression you could want people in this country, way more than a lot of surveys suspected. But we're not enough to necessarily fight this in a way that isn't going to end up with increasing violence. I mean, the FBI statistics of random violence against hate crimes specifically has been rising against LGBT people, especially trans people, in the last couple of years. And I'm sure it's only going to get more in the next few years still with all of the wave of stuff happening the past few months. Yeah. So if you're a cis person and you want to be an ally, you've got to fight for us. And if you're a trans person, if you don't have other reasons why you can't, maybe arm yourself in some way at this point. If you feel mentally capable, then it's not

a bad idea to learn how to do things. It's not a bad idea to stop the bleed training. Not a bad idea to get emergency first aid training. All of the things. Absolutely. Because things are

happening and they're going to keep happening. One might say it could happen here. Wow. I know. We really pulled this together. Just pulled it back. Just really encapsulated it. So yeah, I think that does it for us today.

Do you have any pluggables that you would like to plug? Yeah, sure. So if you wanted to talk to me more, you can, I'm on Twitter for now, assuming that Elon Musk doesn't make it entirely unlivable at Vixen Witch, but the W is two Vs. I don't post a whole lot,

but you can find me there. You can also just straight up email me if you had questions. My like work email for that purpose is just victoria.grieve at pit.edu. I'd be happy to answer any questions that people have. And it's a robust university firewall. So if I get hate, that's fine. It won't get through. And then outside of my classes and stuff, the only other thing I wanted to plug because you brought it up uh i am a frequent guest

on a podcast that a friend of mine hosts called school of movies and we actually did matrix two three and four nice um and i was on those episodes and talked a lot about the trans narrative they're in uh we also did an episode on priscilla queen of the desert that i'm really proud of because it's great i was i was lucky enough to watch Priscilla Queen of the Desert a few months ago with some queer friends of mine with Hugo Weaving in both of those things so it's perfect it is pretty fun watching Hugo Weaving

go from Agent Smith to his character in Priscilla Queen of the Desert it's beautiful, it's a beautiful metamorphosis it is very good but yeah, thank you so much for coming on to talk yeah, thank you so much for coming on to talk. Yeah, anytime. Thank you for listening to my little two-parter on hormone replacement therapy. If you want to start reading more on the DIY and mutual aid side of things, check out

DIYHRT.github.io, HRT.cafe, and diytrans.wiki as a jumping off point. But obviously, don't take everything you read on the internet as gospel. I do think it is worth learning how to make your own drugs, possibly, and learning how to source your own estrogen from places that are not just a doctor. Because who knows what other states will start criminalizing getting drugs from a doctor, right? It is, there seems to be a trend of making HRT illegal via the medical system. So this is something definitely to look into, because it seems more and more people will

face restrictions in this vein. So yeah, that's kind of a big reason for why I wanted to talk about this today on the pod. So yeah, that's kind of a big reason for why I wanted to talk about this today on the pod. A big extra special thanks to Dr. Victoria Luna Brennan-Greave for coming on to talk with me about gender-affirming hormonal treatment. You can check her out or ask her questions on her Twitter, which can be found at vixenwitch, with two Vs for the W in witch. for the W in which. Or you can email her queries at victoria.grieve at pit.edu.

And that does it for us today, everybody. You can follow the show at Happen Here Pod and Cool Zone Media on Twitter and Instagram. And you can look at my late night

gender hostile tweets at Hungry Bowtie. See you on the other side. It Could Happen Here is a production of See you on the other side. and sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow Broth. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of rife.

An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of latin america listen to nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast