dandelion

The reason cats can't be vegan is that they cannot produce an amino acid called taurine, which is something dogs and humans can produce (but which we also get sometimes from dietary sources).

Most dietary sources of taurine are meat. This is why dogs and humans "can be vegan" but cats "can't". However, vegan taurine is made and can be bought as a supplement, both for humans (if you want to ensure you get some taurine in your diet), but also in properly made vegan cat food.

It seems to me then that cats can be vegan, just not without intentional effort to ensure proper supplementation of taurine. That is, they couldn't be vegan in the wild (where the only source of taurine is meat) and you can't just start to feed them a vegan diet without taurine and expect the cat to be healthy and survive.

In fact, cats fed a proper vegan diet tend to have better health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499249/

I think the question is really what you are feeding your "vegan" cat: if you have managed to find (or make) a properly fortified vegan cat food it is theoretically possible to feed your cat a vegan diet.

This all feels a bit like the "controversy" around feeding young children and babies a vegan diet: done poorly it can be catastrophic (pun not intended), but it's entirely possible to have a healthy vegan diet when enough effort is put into ensuring nutritional needs are actually satisfied.

That said, I also know of two other vegan responses:

1. for some vegans, having pets is not vegan to begin with, so a "vegan cat" is a contradiction in terms even if you fed them a vegan diet, you still wouldn't be an ethical vegan by owning a cat. This is admittedly a less commonly held view which centers ethical veganism on the rights of animals to have autonomy, which if plausible in some ways seems at least impractical in the case of domesticated animals. There are questions of the harm that might be caused by choosing to treat cats not as pets but as autonomy-rights-bearing "wild" animals, but those ethical vegans might rightly point out this doesn't undo the cat's rights and the practical questions should be handled separately.
2. most vegans I know IRL just feed cats a non-vegan diet, acknowledging it is safer and more reasonable for their cat than trying to figure out a way to feed them a vegan diet. Good vegan cat food isn't that common or easy to find as far as I know, and I assume it would be outrageously expensive.

That's awesome, thanks for sharing! ❤️

so beautiful 😍

🫂 we love you - take care of yourself!

so happy to hear that - incredible! 🥰

aww, glad you're feeling gender euphoria - if you have the time, I would love to hear more details 👀

Sorry you got COVID, tho - that sucks. It seems like everyone I know is getting COVID right now.

damn, that's brutal - it sounds you you need to take care of yourself! 🫂

I started progesterone yesterday and it's already giving me better sleep, allowing me to sleep a little more deeply and longer than before. I had been having trouble even catching up on sleep on the weekend because I was just doing estrogen monotherapy, I would sleep like 6 hours and the body would wake up and I couldn't fall asleep, even if I felt tired.

I am on-board with taking multiple strategies, any political strategy that categorically ignores electoralism or militant direct action are likely making some kind of strategic error. However, this zine does not take that position. Some more context around the quote you provided, first it is under a heading:

Rejecting settler colonial authority, aka not voting.

The surrounding context of the quote:

Voting will never be “harm reduction” while colonial occupation & U.S. imperialism reigns. In order to heal we have to stop the harm from occurring, not lessen it. This doesn’t mean simply abstinence or ignoring the problem until it just goes away, it means developing and implementing strategies and maneuvers that empower Indigenous People’s autonomy. Since we cannot expect those selected to rule in this system to make decisions that benefit our lands and peoples, we have to do it ourselves.

They are saying we shouldn't ignore the problem that voting is supposed to reduce harm from, but directly address it with direct action. It is not saying we should still vote and participate in electoralism. Nowhere in this zine is it implied voting is any form of legitimate political action, and everywhere it implies it is 1. unhelpful and 2. wrong.

For example:

Consolidating the Native vote into a voting bloc that aligns with whatever settler party, politician, or law that appears to do less harm isn’t a strategy to exercise political power, it’s Stockholm syndrome.

To organize from a position that voting is an act of damage limitation blurs lines of the harm that settler and resource colonialism imposes. Under colonial occupation all power operates through violence. There is absolutely nothing “less harmful” about participating in and perpetuating the political power of occupying forces. Voting won’t undue [sic] settler colonialism, white supremacy, hetero-patriarchy, or capitalism. Voting is not a strategy for decolonization.

Even if I agree that voting won't undo colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism it is clear that voting can reduce the harm of this system by avoiding some electoral outcomes and prioritizing others. This zine would be in a much stronger position if it were willing to take a slightly more nuanced position that voting should merely not be the top priority or focus for political action, which seems exceedingly reasonable and well grounded, but instead it argues the absurd position that voting and participating in electoralism can show any benefit or lessen any harm.

I can understand frustration with liberals and the dominant prevailing political culture in the U.S. which makes voting seem like the only legitimate form of politics, and so perhaps they feel the need to exaggerate or take a more extreme position as a counter-weight, but it needlessly weakens the position and will only effectively work as rhetoric for insiders who largely already agree and who will simply entrench themselves in symbolic positions like this against good sense, which primarily fractures the left and makes coalition-forming more difficult. I'm not calling for blind, authoritarian left-unity but politics are too important to not be smart and strategic, and I don't see arguing for not voting as the zine encourages helps on any front. The value and necessity of direct action can be demonstrated adequately without making a case that voting cannot reduce harm.

There is nothing intersectional about participating in and maintaining a genocidal political system. There’s no meaningful solidarity to be found in a politics that urges us to meet our oppressors where they’re at. Voting as harm reduction imposes a false solidarity upon those identified to be most vulnerable to harmful political policies and actions.

Perhaps some liberals feel when they vote they participate in a solidarity with the poor and oppressed, but this would be deluded thinking. I don't see why this negates the value of voting for other reasons, however.

The logic of voting as harm reduction asserts that whoever is facing the most harm will gain the most protection by the least dangerous denominator in a violently authoritarian system.

Is it true that some groups are endangered by one party such that voting for the other might be protective? I cannot tell if the author denies this is true, or that it doesn't do enough to protect and thus should be discarded as "too little, too late". The question is fundamentally whether voting has any benefit or political relevance at all, or whether the benefit and relevance is simply considered too little compared to the moral risk of participating.

This settler-colonial naivety places more people, non-human beings, and land at risk then otherwise. Most typically the same liberal activists that claim voting is harm reduction are found denouncing and attempting to suppress militant direct actions and sabotage as acts that “only harm our movement.” “Voting as harm reduction” is the pacifying language of those who police movements.

I don't see how voting, and particularly voting as a "harm reduction" strategy, poses greater risk than refusing to vote. Liberals suppressing direct actions and sabotage is not the same thing as voting as harm reduction, even if some of those liberals will argue for voting instead, that is not the only way to approach voting, i.e. they are clearly not mutually exclusive (you can engage in militant direct action, and vote). If anything, policing militants to not vote is some of the same policing of strategies that the liberals do, just in the other direction. I still don't see a pragmatic justification for refusing to vote, even if I see pragmatic justifications for refusing the calls to not engage in direct action or sabotage (even if sometimes activists blunder in their actions and fail to reach their political goals because they did not assess the situation properly, it is clear that militant direct action can be useful and even necessary in achieving certain political ends, see: the Magna Carta, the liberal revolutions, the Haymarket Affair, etc.).

Direct action, or the unmediated expression of individual or collective desire, has always been the most effective means by which we change the conditions of our communities.

Even if this is true (which I personally think it is), it does not demonstrate that voting isn't also a form of political action that can have consequence (and for many, is less demanding of time, energy, and risk than direct action). I don't see a pragmatic argument in this paper for refusing the strategy of voting, even if I see plenty of reasons here to do much more than vote (though as usual we are left with vague notions of "direct action" and not specific calls-to-action, which is fine but might be unsatisfying for some who might agree and want to take the next step).

What do we get out of voting that we cannot directly provide for ourselves and our people? What ways can we organize and make decisions that are in harmony with our diverse lifeways? What ways can the immense amount of material resources and energy focused on persuading people to vote be redirected into services and support that we actually need? What ways can we direct our energy, individually and collectively, into efforts that have immediate impact in our lives and the lives of those around us?

The resources put into getting out the vote are not resources that would necessarily otherwise be used for good. I would think the liberals and corporate PACs are primarily funding those get-out-the-vote campaigns, and that money isn't going to go where we want if we Just Don't Vote (if anything, I would think not voting would increase the amount of money being wasted on trying to get out the vote, as low voter turnout would on paper justify further increased funding).

Of course, the money could & should be put to better use, but the framing implies collectively refusing to vote will ensure this happens, and I don't see anything that makes this seem like a likely outcome.

What strategies and actions can we devise to make it impossible for this system to govern on stolen land?

Not too long ago socialists and anarchists collaborated in suffragist movements precisely to help increase the political power of oppressed groups like women, not just out of capitalist identity politics, but out of more radical political commitments. Voting, and getting groups like women the right to vote, are precisely some of the strategies that have been used to disrupt the patriarchal system. We should not throw out a political tool simply because it does not fill all purposes.

In our rejection of the abstraction of settler colonialism. we don’t aim to seize colonial state power but to abolish it.

We seek nothing but total liberation.

That is great, will liberation be achieved in the timeline of elections? Will it be possible to avoid the harm of refusing to vote, demotivating liberals from forming coalitions with the left by depending on leftist votes, and allowing those elections to be won by increasingly right-wing political actors? I am for total liberation, but until it is here there is a lot we care about, a lot worth defending.

What real risks of not voting if total liberation is not here soon? What pragmatic political outcome is gained by not voting? Do the benefits of not voting outweigh the risks?

Usually the blood work will vary heavily depending on when you last took a dose. When I get blood work, I do it right before I am going to inject so that the blood levels are at the lowest they could be (the "trough"). With oral I would imagine your E blood levels will fluctuate significantly, so when you last took a pill will make a big difference in terms of what your blood labs show.

The problem with taking larger and larger oral doses is that it doesn't absorb better and you are just potentially taxing your liver. At the very least I would try out sublingual route and see if that helps 🤷‍♀️

I wish you luck dear, it's not easy figuring this stuff out (esp. with clueless doctors).

So your testosterone is really low !! But I would personally consider estrogen too low, though you know your own body best. When did you get the blood work done compared to the last dose you took?

I think the common conservative recommendation is to have between 100 - 200 pg/mL so your blood work looks good on paper, but I personally found below 300 at trough was mentally difficult for me. I use estrogen as my anti-androgen ("monotherapy"), so I take a larger dose than most.

You might consider aiming for higher blood levels of E and with a better & safer route of administration.

I am a wuss too, it was extremely difficult for me to overcome my needle phobia (I mean, literally breaking down crying after some injections, taking a long time to overcome the mental block to actually push the needle in, just so so so hard for me). But you do get used to it, and it's not bad after you get some practice.

Also, I inject subcutaneously, so I use really small needles that don't hurt at all (literally, I sometimes can't feel the needle). That was crucial for me in overcoming needle phobia, I think it would be much harder to inject intramuscularly (IM).

Even if you still can't do injections, I would encourage doing something to avoid oral, even sublingual troches which have their own problems might still help with absorption, and even better would be patches or gel.

If you haven't already read it, I highly recommend reading this: https://transfemscience.org/articles/transfem-intro/

It's a bit long and technical, but it might help (it certainly helped me).

You've been on HRT for a decade? If you don't mind me asking, what ester & dose and what route of administration? Do you get blood tests and if so what are your levels like?

IRL I met some trans elders who had been on HRT for a while and didn't see any effects from it (almost no breast growth or much change to their face beyond skin softening some, etc.). I think they were taking the estrogen orally, and they weren't sure exactly about their blood levels, but they thought they were fine.

When taken orally, I think around 80% of the estrogen is filtered out by the liver, so it can be hard to get enough estrogen that way and there are peaks and troughs multiple times a day (it is ideal when taking oral to dose 3 - 5 times a day to ensure even and adequate estrogen through the day). Patches & gel are all better than oral, but injections seem the best in terms of getting a consistently high enough level of estrogen.