Hello! I am a cis person who is close to the trans community. I’m happy to try to answer your questions a bit.

Question 1: Gender is a many faceted beast, but for now, let’s focus on two aspects: gender as one feels internally, and gender as outwardly expressed/perceived by others. An easy way to describe the trans experience to cis people is through internal gender, knowing that you are something other than your gender assigned at birth, turning into an externalized gender expression; wearing the right clothes, the right hair length, etc. However, not every trans person is going neatly from one gender box to another. Maybe they like a few certain things picked up from their assigned gender, maybe they’re nonbinary, maybe they’re gender non-conforming (think of feminine gay men and butch lesbians for examples of cis people like that). Trans people deserve to have at least as much range of gender expression as that! The reason you might not see a lot of people with conflicting gender expressions and gender identity, is, well, these folks don’t have to come out to everyone they meet. If you assume someone is a man and they’re not, often they won’t correct you.

Question 2: Previously (and similarly to homosexuality), being trans was categorized as a mental illness, but doctors took a closer look and found that was incorrect at least a decade ago in the 2013 update to DSM-5. Now, gender dysphoria (the diagnosis most trans people get) is described as an incongruence between the mind and body. Consider your limb example in the reverse: if someone were missing an arm and complained of feeling a phantom limb, you’d understand that to be an incongruence between the mind (expecting a limb) and the body (missing a limb). Most trans people are experiencing something like that, a desire for something positive (experiences of a “true”, or preferred, gender) rather than just something negative (removing the experiences of the gender assigned at birth). The best treatment for trans people’s mental health is to have a well-supported transition.

Not a question, but in regard to your intro, you don’t have to worry so much about pronouns, rarely are people going to get pissed at you for an honest mistake. Other people using the correct pronoun for trans people (even if it’s after correcting) can be very validating. As long as you’re trying and listening to feedback (like, not repeatedly using the wrong pronouns for someone who told you otherwise), you’re doing just fine, no need to be anxious over it!

Also, if you want to learn more in a casual setting, trans memes are 🔥, keep an eye on some of the communities around here!

It also normalizes the practice, the more people do it for just that shiny checkmark. Unless you are legit a public figure who could be impersonated, it’s actively detrimental to everyone else’s privacy to get verified.

Add SmartTube for androidTV and you’re set!

I use Blockada 5 and haven’t noticed any heating issues, it might be worth a go! I did have to enable most of the lists to get good coverage (and then a couple custom selected on/off over time) but I mostly don’t think about it after a little setup. The only thing I do have to worry about is swapping which VPN is on when I want a real VPN- but fortunately the VPN I like (Mullvad) has adblock built in too.

I love how easily you can make friends with chickadees! They’re brave little guys.

I can also vouch for FreeTaxUSA, I’ve compared it against a few major tax companies and at least for relatively simple stuff, they were totally identical results, and just as easy to use.

There are a few options for free filing based on income (generally, lower that $79k) here: https://www.irs.gov/filing/free-file-do-your-federal-taxes-for-free

And if you’re in one of 12 lucky states, there’s an IRS Direct File trial program:

Arizona
California
Florida
Massachusetts
Nevada
New Hampshire
New York
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Washington state
Wyoming

You can do this with certain apps, like Boost!

I checked and I can get Mango through my local library for free. Definitely worth looking into!

This video was soooo long and soooo good. I’d recommend watching on Nebula if you have it (since they could use some stuff that would get copyright strikes on YouTube) and it gets the creators more money, since YouTube demonitized them anyway.

I’d add Maggie Mae Fish’s series of videos on The Hero’s Journey as well!

Part 1 Part 2

(Religious) pacifists are required to fund wars under this system already. No one would argue for higher protections for vegans than religion, which is already better protected constitutionally in the US. So unfortunately I think this is a non-starter for legal determination. Morally speaking, you could have that conversation, but it wouldn’t slot in to our existing framework as it stands.

PBS Space Time

I’d recommend PBS Storied as well! It has a compilation of a few segments like Monsterum (folklore), Otherwords (etymology), Fate and Fabled (mythology), and more