+At first I was imagining a post on my existing blog, but a couple of my very smart and cowardly friends recommended a pseudonym, which I reluctantly agreed was probably a good idea. So I made up a pen name and [started this blog](/2016/Sep/apophenia/).
+
+[some misgivings about naming choices, but I don't actively regret it like my attempted nickname switch in the late 'aughts]
+
+[aside (footnote?) on pen name: hyphenated last name (a feminist tradition), abbreviated-first-initial + gender-neutral middle name (as if suggesting a male ineffectually trying to avoid having an identifiably male byline), "Saotome" from a thematically-relevant Japanese graphic novel series, "West" (+ an extra syllable) after a character in a serial novel whose catchphrase is "Somebody had to and no one else will"]
+
+[aside (footnote?) on the blog name: I had already claimed _ultimatelyuntruethought@gmail.com_ in 2014, to participate in [a contest](http://celebbodyswap.blogspot.com/2014/02/magic-remote-caption-contest.html) by one of the [transformation/bodyswap captioned-photo erotica blogs](/2016/Oct/exactly-what-it-says-on-the-tin/) / it's a little bit awkward having the blog title and URL be different, and people think "space" is a separate word]
+
+Besides writing to tell everyone else about it, another obvious response to my Blanchardian enlightenment was that I wanted to try hormone replacement therapy. Not to actually socially _transition_, which seemed as impossible (to actually pull off) and dishonest (to try) as ever, but just [to try as a gender-themed drug experiment](/2017/Sep/interlude-ix/). Everyone else was doing it—why should I miss out just for being more self-aware about the reasons?
+
+A friend who once worked for [our local defunct medical research company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaMed) still offered lit-reviews as a service, so I paid her $5,000 to do [a post about the effects of hormone replacement therapy](https://srconstantin.github.io/2016/10/06/cross-sex-hormone-therapy.html), in case the depths of the literature had any medical insight to offer that wasn't already on the informed-constent paperwork. Meanwhile, I made the requisite gatekeeping appointments with [my healthcare provider](http://kp.org/) to get approved for HRT, first with a psychologist that I had seen before, then with a couple of licensed clinical social workers before finally getting approved for an HRT perscription.
+
+I got the sense that the shrinks didn't quite know what to make of me. I was happy to sit through the sessions as standard procedure rather than [going DIY](https://diytrans.wiki/How_to_Begin_HRT), but I was pretty preoccupied with the thing about how _everyone had been lying to me about the most important thing in my life for fourteen years_, and the professional shrinks were _in on it_. Not in the sense that I thought they secretly agreed with me about the typology and were consciously lying, but in the sense that the whole paradigm of providing ["equitable" and "compassionate" "gender-affirming care"](https://thrive.kaiserpermanente.org/care-near-you/northern-california/eastbay/departments/gender-affirming-care/) is garbage-tier epistemology. Before one of my appointments with the LCSW, I wrote to the psychologist expressing frustration about this, and she wrote back:
+
+> I agree with you entirely, both about your frustration with people wanting to dictate to you what you are and how you feel, and with the importance of your being emotionally stable prior to starting hormones. Please explain to those who argue with you that it is only YOUR truth that matter when it comes to you, your body and what makes you feel whole. No one else has the right to dictate this.
+
+I replied:
+
+> I'm not sure you do! I know condescending to patients is part of your usual script, but I hope I've shown that I'm smarter than that. This solipsistic culture of "it is only YOUR truth that matters" is _exactly_ what I'm objecting to! People can have false beliefs about themselves! As a psychologist, you shouldn't be encouraging people's delusions; you should be using your decades of study and experience to help people understand the actual psychological facts of the matter so that they can make intelligent choices about their own lives! If you think the Blanchard taxonony is _false_, you should _tell_ me that I'm wrong and that it's false and why!
+
+[for however weird I am, I don't understand what anyone _else_ says in these sessions]
+[conscious that I could cherry-pick to create a trans narrative: Polly Pocket, a girl's scooter, ]
+