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Interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky
ruticker 06.01.2025 12:35:51
Interviewer: I hope the key of the airport will open soon. Then it will be easier to fly in. Yes, I think that the war will end, and President Trump may be the first leader to travel here by airplane. I think it would be by airplane again around January 25th, right? Flying in, meeting the Air Force One. That would be cool.
Zelensky: There is a perception of corruption. People like Donald Trump and Elon Musk really care about fighting corruption. What can you say to them to gain their trust? That the money is going towards this fight for freedom, towards the war effort. In most cases, we did not receive money; we received weapons. And where we saw risks, something could be a weapon, we would slap everyone on the wrist. Believe me, this is not only about Ukraine on the supply chain. Everywhere there are some or other people and companies who want to make money because everyone makes money on the war. We did not profit from the war. If we found someone, believe me, we slapped everyone on the wrist. And we did that. We did that. And we will continue to do so because to this day, when someone says that Ukraine was selling weapons—and by the way, Russia was the one pushing this narrative—we always responded: our soldiers would kill such people with their own hands, without any trial.
Do you honestly think anyone could steal weapons by the truckload when we ourselves don’t have enough on the front lines? And yet we have to provide proof to defend ourselves because when there’s an abundance of such misinformation, distrust starts to grow. And you’re right, people listen to various media outlets and lose faith in you. In the end, you lose trust, and with it, you lose support. Therefore, believe me, we are fighting more against disinformation than against particular cases. I still emphasize once again that at the everyday levels, such things are still important. We catch these people, and we fight them.
As if Putin wants to sit down and talk, but Ukraine does not. This is not… I think that yes, he is in fact ready to talk. Did you talk to him on the phone or what? Do you normally talk to him? I don’t know, normally by the sea. The same is with you; he invites you to the sea with me. Just the three of us. No, one of us may drown. Who are you, good at swimming? Yes, I’m a good swimmer. You’re a good swimmer? Well, if you think that the president of a country… it’s completely crazy. It is really hard to come to an agreement with him. You have to look at him as a serious person who loves his country.
Interviewer: The people in his country?
Zelensky: Yes, and he conducts…
Interviewer: Who are you talking about now? Who loves his country?
Zelensky: Putin. Do you think he doesn’t love his country?
Interviewer: No, what is his country? He happened to consider Ukraine his country.
Zelensky: What is his country? Do you think there would be presidential elections in Ukraine?
Interviewer: The following is a conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, the President of Ukraine. It was an intense, raw, and heartfelt conversation, my goal for which was to understand and to do all I can to push for peace.
Allow me to say a few words first about language, then about the president, and finally about history. Please skip ahead straight to our conversation if you like. We spoke in a mix of languages, continuously switching from Ukrainian to Russian to English. The interpreter was barely hanging on; it was indeed, in many ways, a wild ride of a conversation. As the president said, the first of many.
Language, like many other things in a time of war, is a big deal. We had a choice: speak in Russian, Ukrainian, or English. The president does speak some English, but he is far from fluent in it, and I sadly don’t speak Ukrainian yet. So Russian is the only common language where we’re both fluent. In case you don’t know, the Russian language is one that the president speaks fluently and was his primary language for most of his life. It’s the language I also speak fluently, to the degree I speak any language fluently, as does a large fraction of the Ukrainian population.
So the most dynamic and powerful conversation between us would be in Russian. Without an interpreter, who in this case added about 2 to 3 seconds delay and frankly translated partially and poorly from me at least, taking away my ability to feel the humor, the wit, the brilliance, the pain, the anger, the humanity sitting before me that I could clearly feel when he was speaking fluently in the language I understand.
But all that said, war changes everything. The Ukrainian language has become a symbol of the Ukrainian people’s fight for freedom and independence. So we had a difficult choice of three languages and faced with that choice, who said yes to all three? To the consternation and dismay of the translators.
Make captions and voice-over audio tracks available in English, Ukrainian, and Russian so you can listen either to a version that is all one language or to the original mixed language version with subtitles in your preferred language. The default is English overdub.
On YouTube, you can switch between language audio tracks by clicking the settings gear icon, then selecting the language you prefer: English, Ukrainian, Russian. To listen to the original mixed language version, please select the English UK audio track.
A big thank you to 11 Labs for their help with overdubbing using a mix of AI and humans. We will continue to explore how to break down the barriers that language creates with AI and otherwise. This is a difficult but important endeavor. Language, after all, is much more than a cold sequence of facts and logic statements.
Words, when spoken in the right sequence and at the right time, can shake the world and turn the tides of history. They can start and end wars. Great leaders can find those words, and great translators can help these words reverberate to the outskirts of a divided civilization.
Another note: let me say that President Zelensky is a truly remarkable person and a historic figure. I say this as somebody who deeply understands the geopolitical complexity and history of the region. I am from this region; my parents were both born in Ukraine, Kyiv, and Kharkiv, both my grandfathers too. I was born in Jikishan and lived for a time there, then in Kyiv, then Moscow, then the United States.
And while I am now for almost 30 years, and to the day I die, I’m a proud American. My family roots go deep in the soil of nations that comprised the Soviet Union, including Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Tajikistan. I’ve gotten to know when I’ve spoken for hours with members of the president’s team and people close to him. I spoke to hundreds of Ukrainians since 2022, including soldiers, civilians, politicians, artists, religious leaders, journalists, economists, historians, and technologists. I listen to hundreds of hours of programs that both support and criticize the president in Ukraine and Russia, in the United States.
I’ve read countless books about this war and the long arc of history that led up to it. If forced to recommend two at this moment, I would say The Russo-Ukrainian War by Sir Heplohe and The Showman by Simon Schuster, which is a good personal behind-the-scenes biography of the president focused on 2022. But there are many, many more.
This is why I can comfortably say that he is a truly singular and remarkable human being. It was an honor and pleasure to talk with him, honoring off the mic.
Now, it is true that I had planned to travel to Moscow and to speak with President Vladimir Putin. And I hope to be back in Kyiv as well, as President Zelensky said this was our first of many more meetings. In all these cases, I seek to do my small part in pushing for peace. And in doing all this, I’m deeply grateful for the trust people have given me on all sides.
For the people attacking me, sometimes lying about me, for the critics in the stands chanting the latest slogans of the McCarthyist machine like the sheep in Animal Farm, I love you too. And I assure you that drawing lines between good and evil on a world map is easier than seeing that line between good and evil in every human being, including you and me.
This is what I try to do. I am simply a human being who seeks to find and surface the humanity in others. And as I’ve said, no, I’m out of money. Power access can’t buy my opinion or my integrity.
Now, finally, let me briefly overview some history to give background for several topics that President Zelensky references in this conversation. I recommend my conversation with Sori Plokhy and many others about the history of the region. But here, let me start with 1991, when Ukraine declared its independence and the Soviet Union collapsed. From this point on, Russia-Ukraine relations were defined in large part by whether Ukraine aligned more with Russia or with the West, the United States, NATO, and so on.
In 2004, with the Orange Revolution, a pro-Western candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, became president. In 2010, it went the other way; a pro-Russia candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, became president. The internal tensions grew, and in 2013, the Maidan protests broke out over Yanukovych’s decision to suspend talks with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia.
This set forward a chain of important events. In 2014, on the political front, Yanukovych was ousted and fled to Russia, leading to the election of a pro-Western president. In 2014, on the war front, Russia annexed Crimea, and war broke out in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which eventually killed over 14,000 people and continued all the way to 2022, when on February 24th, 2022, the Russian forces initiated a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This is when the world started to really pay attention.
Now, some history of peace talks: Vladimir Zelensky won the presidency in 2019, and he discusses in this conversation the ceasefire agreement with Vladimir Putin in 2019, one of many attempts at peace from the two Minsk agreements in 2014 and 2015 to a series of ceasefire agreements in 2018, 2019, and 2020, all of which failed in part or in whole.
All this shows just how difficult ceasefire and peace negotiations are. They are not impossible; it is always worth trying over and over again to find the path to peace. I believe that Presidents Zelensky, Putin, and Trump should meet soon after January 20th this year and give everything they got to negotiate a ceasefire and security guarantees that pave the way for a long-lasting peace. We discussed several ideas for this in this conversation. As I said, this was one of my main goals here: to push for peace.
This trip to Kyiv and this conversation was a truly special moment for me in my life. It is one I will never forget. So to reflect, I say a few more words and answer some questions at the very end if you like to listen. But here, I must say thank you to everyone for your support over the years. It means the world.
Interviewer: This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and now, dear friends, here’s the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Zelensky: If we can explain why the Ukrainian language is very important, our conversation will be most effective and impactful if we speak in Russian. I speak Russian perfectly, of course, and I understand everything you are talking about. However, I can’t respond in Russian the entire interview. This is how it is today; I am not making anything up. You can see it all for yourself; you can feel and hear it.
There were 73 missile attacks against us, and people were killed. There were over 100 drones today, and this is a daily occurrence. The people who attack us, they speak Russian. They attack people who only recently told that this was actually in defense of Russian-speaking people. And this is why I respect neither the leader nor the director of today’s Russia, nor the people. I just… that’s it.
And I don’t think that you can just pretend that nothing’s happening and give Putin a pass once again for saying that we are one people, that we speak one language, etc. They speak the language of weapons; that is a fact. And we are peaceful people, peaceful people who want to protect themselves and defend their freedom and their human choice.
You know, at the beginning of the war, I addressed Russians in Russian. Zero effect. They’re mute. They do not listen. They did not listen. Some are afraid; some have other issues; they have different reasons. It’s like when a person is drowning, and people walk by because they can’t hear them, and someone walks on by crying, afraid to save them. It doesn’t change anything for the one drowning; they need someone to help them.
This is why I honestly despise these people, as they are deaf. They began the occupation in the supposed defense of the Russian language, and that’s why, with all due respect, I would like to give an interview in Ukrainian. This is very important to me.
If there are some points that you want me to explain, I can certainly do that. I can certainly occasionally speak Russian, but in general, no. I’m not sure that you will understand me completely.
Interviewer: Despite your Ukrainian roots, you are a citizen of the United States, right?
Zelensky: Yes, that’s why I’m surprised that you don’t understand.
Interviewer: Well, it was a long time ago. I understand that it was a long time ago.
Zelensky: Moreover, a lot has changed. A lot has changed.
If I may, please allow me to say this in Russian. Yes, many things have changed. But I have hope. I hope that today many Russians will hear this, that Vladimir Putin will hear this, that the American President Donald Trump and the American people will hear this, that everyone will hear this.
And yes, the Ukrainian language is an important symbolically, but what is also important is that we understand each other well. For Donald Trump, it’s important whether I speak Russian or not. Yes, because unfortunately, and it hurts to admit, but I cannot speak or understand Ukrainian yet. So your wit, dynamism, and your humanity will not come through as well and as quickly.
Remember, I need to wait for 2 to 3 seconds to hear it. You have a great sense of humor, great stories. With an interpreter translating, I simply won’t see this. But I understand that it’s painful.
Another reason is that I hoped we could show that even though it is sometimes said that Russian is banned in Ukraine, this is not true. I’m speaking Russian now, right? We have people who speak Russian. This is not true, really, it’s not.
It’s really not true.
Yes, I’m speaking Russian now because of Russians. Russian speakers, many people who actually, many of whom are in the East, right? In the East, lived in the East, they destroyed their houses, destroyed their lives. It’s not a rhetorical thing; it’s not all talk and blah blah blah. I don’t have time for blah blah blah.
Yes, so it’s a very, very, very important and sensitive moment. The message is that we are not one nation.Interviewer: Yes, different countries, and I think what is most important is | what we're talking about | not how we're speaking about it. This is what I think. You're a smart guy, so you have a lot of experience in dialogue of this kind. That's why I think you will understand me.
Interviewee: Yeah, I… Anyway, I think it is far better for Donald Trump to hear my English, not my Russian. English is much better than my Ukrainian. You're getting better and better. I'm a very honest guy, that's why I will be very honest with you. Okay, your Ukrainian is not very good, but we will work on it. Yes, I have many flaws; that's one of them. Sometimes I can speak English, sometimes… As I understand, we can be very flexible, right? Very flexible Spanish.
Interviewer: You see? Yeah, Javier Malay needs to understand this. By the way, Javier understood me without having words—the language of love.
Interviewee: Yeah, maybe of respect. I respect him. I had a very good conversation with him, really brilliant. I sometimes speak Russian and sometimes English. Yes, you can use any language you like. And I think that’s a very good rule for this first meeting between us. As you said, maybe we will meet in the future for the second time, second and third and fourth. Yeah, this is good. You can ask questions in the language you’d like, and I will answer in the language I can.
Interviewer: Well, you said you wanted to meet by the sea at some point. So, our next meeting, let’s meet by the sea.
Interviewee: With pleasure! Next time it would be much better to meet by our Ukrainian Black or our Azov Sea. You know, I’ve been to a lot of cities in Ukraine, but I have never been to Odessa, and everyone tells me that. And I don’t know why.
Interviewer: Can you explain to me why everyone loves Odessa so much? What’s there?
Interviewee: You know, Odessa—that’s how they say it. What’s there? You know, Odessa, we’ve got it all. Okay, Odessa, I love Odessa because of its particular temperament. People have their own accent, and it’s so… There are many nationalities, you know. There are a lot of authentic Odessa cuisine, by the way. The cuisine is very different from others; the dishes are not like any other dishes, and everything is very tasty also. There are beautiful people, and today, you know, you understand people very well, especially after the attacks on Odessa. You understand what the people are like. Just how our death sites are Ukrainian, and that’s very cool. Odessa, I go there several times a year.
Interviewer: I go there several times a year now because… Well, now because of the strengthening of air defense systems, because of this grain corridor, etc. I go there more often. They have the sun there. They have the sea. It’s Ukraine, and it’s very cool there.
Interviewee: Well, when you come and visit me in Texas as a guest for the third time…
Interviewer: With pleasure! Let’s do this. How about you, my friend Joe Rogan and I will go get some Texas barbecue together?
Interviewee: Who will pay?
Interviewer: It’s a good question. Putin! Putin for everything, he has to pay.
Interviewee: Well, yes, we’ll invite him to… No, no, no, no. Okay, without him. Okay, I get it, understood. But if the Rome Statute will be accepted by your government before this moment… Okay, by the way, I don’t know if you know this, but Joe has a great comedy club in Austin.
Interviewer: Joe Rogan?
Interviewee: Yes! And I think that as a person who respects comedy and stand-up comedy, it would be interesting for you to have a look at it.
Interviewer: No, no, I know him, and I saw a lot of different videos. He’s a very talented person. So, it would be a pleasure if you invite me, and I’m able to do it. I may… I am a little bit busy, but if I’ll be in the United States, hope that I will have a conversation and a meeting with President Trump. And, of course, during my visit, if I’ll have the time, it would be a pleasure if you’ll invite me.
Interviewee: With pleasure! You know what? I will pay.
Interviewer: You know, I had to think about it, but you know you are the president. Yes, with you, with pleasure. When the war is over, please come.
Interviewee: That’s one of my last busy… Thanks so much. Um, if we can go back many years to World War II, tell me the story of your grandfather who fought in World War II.
Interviewer: My grandfather, he graduated from the military academy, and from the very beginning of the war, he went to fight. He was in the infantry, and he fought through. He had many wounds. As they used to say back then, his chest is covered in medals, and it’s true—he had more than 30.
Interviewee: Yes, more than 30. He was the kind of man… He was such a serious man. I loved him very much, and we had a very close relationship. Um, he didn’t like to tell details about the war; he never boasted, although I asked him as a boy, “How many fascists did you kill?” He never talked about it. He believed that the war was a great tragedy—a tragedy for everyone. And, er, Ukraine was occupied, and it was a tragedy for Ukraine, a tragedy for Europe, and a tragedy for the Jewish people. His own brothers, his entire family were executed. They were thought to be… by fascists who had occupied Ukraine and their village. His father was the head of the village, and he was killed. They were shot. It was a mess—a mass grave, right? It was a communal burial. Some of them were killed outright, and others were buried alive. His four brothers, they all went to war. The war began; they were all there. Um, he was the only one who had a military education, and they all died in the war. He was the only one who came back. He had nobody. He came back and found my grandmother, his future wife, and she managed… What was it called then? I don’t know; they don’t have them anymore. It was a child care facility or orphanage, so to speak—a place where orphans lived. Children who… who don’t have… children of war. And she managed this child care facility with difficult children, as they used to call them—difficult children who went through the war, who saw their parents killed. And this is how they met. Because, um, these difficult children, well, sometimes behave differently. They could steal something, do something bad. There were many, many children in the orphanage. Yes, that’s how she met my grandfather. And I loved him very much. And I think that my grandfather, frankly, would never have believed that this war is possible. He would never have believed it because he worked in the police after the war. He was a colonel. He worked in, uh, criminal investigation all his life. So he fought with bandits all his life after the Second World War. But also, I believe he fought for justice all his life. And we all lived in one apartment. And even after his death, I lived with both of my grandmothers and my parents—two grandmothers who both lost their husbands. Both of them died. Well, it was an ordinary family—a family that lived like everyone lived back then in the Soviet Union. After the Soviets, in the nineties, we lived in one apartment altogether. What else is there to say? I think the most important thing was values—respect. They gave me an education. My parents gave me an education. No one left me money or apartments, so I didn’t inherit anything material. But I believe that our real inheritance is here, in our minds and in our hearts. I believe that.# Interview Transcript
Interviewer: The 1 2nd lab so if uh I'm sorry if you it's fine tell a joke I will laugh about 1 2 or 3 seconds later.
Interviewee: There’s a delay. So, an ordinary family but not an ordinary time, a World War 2. Speaking of mass graves, I was at Bob and Jar yesterday. A large part of my family died there. In moments like this, such a place serves as a stark reminder of the profound historical gravity of the 2nd World War.
I remember this song from my youth. On June 22nd at 4 o'clock, Kiev was bombed and the war began.
I always wondered how it would feel to live in a moment when everything changed. When humanity completely shifts in a single moment, just like that. Uh, what do you think?
What do you think about that moment in 1941? Now, after the 2022 invasion, how do you perceive the 2nd World War after you have witnessed all of it?
Interviewer: Well, um…
Interviewee: Well, firstly, the war actually started earlier. It started here in Ukraine. Kiev was bombed, as you quoted.
But the war had already begun before that, and I think I perceived it as a start of the full-scale invasion.
Well, I think it’s hard to understand why nobody wants to listen. Look at and analyze history: war, the rise of fascism and Nazism, the emergence of Hitler, Goebbels. The entire team at the time, this wasn’t just about one party or even one country. It was essentially a wave—a wave of hatred.
A wave of one race above the rest. They were, in fact, constructing and ultimately implemented a theory around this idea, later seizing Europe. Um, they created a theory of one nation, one race, one world—their world.
Of course, this idea is absolutely senseless, but it has become radicalized over the years and even gained support. A vision of one world and, in principle, the so-called Russian world—the ideology Putin promotes and imposes.
It wasn’t originally like that. He was a different person back then, or maybe he was always like this, but his rhetoric was different at the beginning. Remember? He talked about the EU and even about Russia’s future being tied to NATO. There were even talks of joining the European Union, NATO. He spoke about shared values with the West—that’s how it all sounded back then.
And we must also look at Hitler, who was serious before the radical idea of taking over the whole world. He actually made certain steps, and everyone believed he was helping the economy. And to be fair, he did take some steps in that direction. But he was a terrifying person.
None of those actions justify him, nor do they excuse his actions. And that’s why we cannot look at the 2nd World War as if it started in 1939. It didn’t begin in 1941 either. We need to draw conclusions about when it started—with the weaknesses of the world, the division of European states, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. All of this happened before 1941.
People who were more informed, those who dug deeper, whether they were politicians or not, whether they were from different walks of life, including business—which was different back then—were speaking about all of this.
Hitler won’t stop. Turbim—a world war. Hitler will destroy nations. Nations. And that’s what happened. Some looked the other way. What I told you about Europe was thinking then. I gave you an example of it. But the whole world looked the other way and didn’t pay attention and said, “No, we can negotiate with him.” I’m telling you, he is okay; we can negotiate with him. He’s just more right-leaning, or it does not matter what they said. He’s just pro-very pro-nationalist.
Interviewer: Nonsense.
Interviewee: And this is not the first time, and Hitler isn’t the first such case in history where dealing with a person who is allowed to destroy. He was consumed by it and enjoying it.
And what happened to Hitler? Now, what about Putin? This invasion was also at 4 in the morning. At around 4 in the morning, there were missile strikes on…
This is the same. I believe that intentions are also the same, but more on that later. By the way, you tell me if this is too long. You can again stop me.
Interviewer: Never long enough; it’s beautiful.
Interviewee: It happened here, around 4 in the morning. Before this, I must honestly say, everyone said something, predicted something, etc. But I asked only for one thing primarily from the United States: if you are sure, if you have the evidence, if you talk to him and he tells you that there’ll be an invasion, if all this scares you, I only asked for two things: send us weapons or, better yet, strengthen us with preventive measures so there would be no war.
It wasn’t the weapons that I was asking for. I asked for sanctions. Intimidate him, please. Don’t say that if he comes, if he crosses borders, if he kills, we’re imposing sanctions. Well, this is complete bullshit. Sorry, but really, I understand this 0. Wonderful, yes, I understood one word.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Interviewee: So they did not help, I believe that no, and this is the fact. We didn’t receive help. If we assume that words are help, well then yes, plenty of words. Even more than plenty, yes.
At 4 in the morning, there were strikes. Morally, is it possible to prepare for war? No, it doesn’t happen like you read in books, see in movies, and so on. What happens to you? I was just looking at my wife and children. My children were asleep, but my wife was awake. There were strikes—missile strikes. We heard them.
To you, as a living person, now how can this be? You just can’t fully believe this. You just don’t understand why now, given everything that happened in World War 2, when millions of people died, none of it mattered. Still, at 4, 4 in the morning, around 4:30, 4:45, remember around this time? Yes, there were missile strikes.
And later, by the way, a few days after the first days of the war, I spoke with Lukashenko on the phone. And he apologized. And he said that it was not me. Missiles were launched from my territory, and Putin was the one launching them. These are his words; I have witnesses.
And I apologize, but believe me, that’s what he told me: “Volodya, this is not me. I’m not in charge,” he told me. “I’m not in charge; these are just missiles. This is Putin.” I told him, “Don’t do that; this was done without me.” That’s it.
He just, on the phone, I remember this conversation. I told him that I believed. I told him, “You’re a murderer too, I’m just saying.” And he told me, “You must understand, you can’t fight the Russians.” I told him that we never fought them. I said, “It’s war. The missiles came from your land, from Belarus. How did you allow this?”
Then he replied, “All right, retaliate then.” I still remember him telling me, “Hit the refinery.” You know how much I care about it—Moser Oil Refinery, is that it?
Interviewer: Moser Oil Refinery?
Interviewee: I told him, “What are you on about? What retaliation?” Forgive me, Valeria.
Interviewer: Yes, yes, this was at 5 in the morning.
Interviewee: No, no, this was during the first or maybe the second day, second or third day of the war. Ah, yes, I see. Well, after that, I went back home. I was home with my children, with my wife. I just went to my wife very quickly that night at 4 o'clock and just told her, “Get the children, get ready; you’ll probably need to go to my office very soon.” And I left. That’s it.
At this moment, you’re no longer a father. What happened to me? Unfortunately, because I believe that this is—and not only do I believe, I understand especially now that all of this is the most important thing because your country is your family.
Interviewer: Strength is in your family.
Interviewee: And this is the most important thing, and I’m the president, and therefore I had to stop being a father in my own family. And my wife had to do everything. She had to do everything regarding children, regarding safety, and I had to deal with the state because I’m the president, and this is my duty.
And I, by the way, I’m taking this very seriously. I went to the office, and here we are now. You’re very welcome.
Well, at that moment on February 24th, 2022, everything changed again. Just like in June 1941, everything changed. And history took a turn—the history of humanity took a turn. And for you too, well, you were the president.
You were talking about fighting corruption, about the country’s freedom, about interesting and innovative reforms. But that morning of February 22nd, everything changed. Could you tell me about that morning, the details of your actions when you had to quickly make difficult decisions?
What was the process for you? How did you make these decisions? Did you discuss them with people you trust to understand how to respond to this invasion in every technical, political, and military aspect? What was the process for you? How did you make the decision?
Interviewee: According to our legislation, in principle, I’m the supreme commander of the armed forces of Ukraine, so I had to give corresponding orders, yes, a military office. And then later, there was a military headquarters where all key people gathered. This is not only about the military; it’s about energy, etc.—all key things.
But at that moment, I made the decisions quickly and without a doubt. And I cannot say that I am just that kind of person. I’m just a living person who believed that if help is needed right now, to help, to help evacuate people, help with children. Several cities were blocked. I was only thinking about how to deliver food there.
Within a day, we did a lot of things, although we understood that they would occupy part of our state. And we distributed weapons to people. That’s how it was. Trucks came, distributed weapons to people so that they could defend the capital—to ordinary people, just on the street, to ordinary people who understood that if the Russians entered the city, then we would have the same thing that’s happening in other cities, per information we received.
Thanks to digitalization, by the way, we had very good digitalization before this, and we preserved a lot. And even when they were surrounding certain cities, a lot of things still worked—system, internet, we had television. And thanks to this, I made several decisions to ensure that people are united and have all the information.
Russia is very good at spreading large-scale disinformation. I have, uh, two decades of experience—two decades of experience managing a production studio, channels, and large media resources. I understood that we needed to build an information network very quickly.
Thanks to this, I began to address the people constantly. This happened several times, 3 to 5 times a day. In fact, I became that information source for people who were in cities that were cut off from other information, and it was very important for me to keep all things digital, to keep the internet, to stay in touch with everyone, with all the people.
Initially, that’s the contact we had. And then we also built a media platform where we had all the news agencies of Ukraine. The network was called Marathon, and it was also very important for the people to trust us. And people had to receive information.
Why? There were waves. There were waves of Russian on the first day who said he ran away. I had to go out into the street. I left the office and went outside. I had to do this because I was showing that this was no green screen, you know, to show that it was the street.
Some digital manipulation—I did these things. Then I touched various objects. Now people might think that these are small things, but I was actually showing that I was in a real place. All of this had an impact. I was absolutely sure my actions—these contexts, several contexts.
And then I spoke to the Russians. I addressed Russians; I really did. And then only after that, I gathered—it was the first day when I invited all of the journalists here, wasn’t it?
Interviewer: The first day?
Interviewee: I think, well, not here, here, to the press center in this building. I talked to journalists. I asked them not to leave because we needed weapons. At that moment, they were handing out rifles to people.
And for me, journalists, media platforms were essential voices. There were various journalists from different countries here, and they were essentially stuck. And I asked them for those who had access to Russians, Belarusians, Cossacks who understood everything—the same information.
And I spoke to them. And I spoke to them and spoke in Russian. I told them, “You must stop Putin. This is horror; this is war. You must stop him. And if you stand up now, if you speak out, and if you go out into the streets.”
And this was very important. I spoke to them in Russian to show them that there was no problem and that all of these pretexts were made up.
This is why it’s so painful to talk about the Russian language too because look, if the person does not want to listen, they will not listen no matter what language we speak.
Interviewer: I disagree with you here. I think and hope that many people in Russia will hear us today.
Interviewee: They blocked YouTube recently. Are you aware of this in their country?
Interviewer: I know. And I simply guarantee that this conversation will travel fast on the internet. Everyone will hear you; they will hear you, including the president of Russia will hear you.
Interviewee: This is why I have hope.
Interviewer: He is actually deaf, even if he speaks to you.
Interviewee: He is deaf by his very nature. Do you understand the difference? You know, for instance, when you talk to Musk, you’re talking to an innovator, a scientist about rockets. You talk about how to save on costs and how they land.
And on the other hand, Putin doesn’t launch rockets to save money but to kill people. Think you can talk to Putin about technology? Your guys were interviewing him, and he told them about tribal history.
Do you understand? Imagine a Russian man in his country listening to him. You know what Musk is about—technology, Mars, artificial intelligence—and this guy, Putin, is standing there, bear asked, pontificating about tribes.
You’ve got to understand. You think that when you do interviews like Mr. Tucker, who did an interview there, that you’re about to make them friends? How could you? What does this have to do with friends? He’s different. He is simply different.
But it’s still necessary—a mammoth stands before you. By the way, I must say that when you said “bear asked,” it was not translated. Could the interpreter please translate this so that you can understand?
Interviewer: Now he explained everything to me. I understand.
Interviewee: That’s great, but we still need to talk. One should always speak with someone who listens, and you must speak when you know that this will benefit you, bring peace and calm to the world, not the other way around.
I love President Trump’s message when he speaks. I think that we share a position: peace through strength. That is very important. It means that if you are strong, you can speak.
And we need to be strong. And Ukraine has to be strong—strong enough. Otherwise, what for?
Interviewer: So he—
Interviewee: You know who—like Voldemort—who must not be named. Yes, he’s like Voldemort. He thrives, subsists, and lives on being subjectivized instead of isolation. He is offered to step out into the light. He’s darkness personified, and you offer him, as it were, to be subjectivized.
Why? There’s only one reason: fear. And you say, “We need to talk.” Listen, we need to be in a strong position and not talk, but in the war.
Interviewer: Yes, yes, it is possible through dialogue. We’re not opposed to it.
Interviewee: You just need to be in a strong position. Make the other person want it.
Interviewer: Do you think he wants to end the war?
Interviewee: That’s what you suggested. Think this is naive. I’m sorry, with all due respect, it’s naive to think he wants to finish the war.
Interviewer: I’ll tell you what. Sorry for interrupting. There’s something we need. I think that President Trump not only has will; he has all these possibilities.
Interviewee: It’s not just talk. I really count on him, and I think that our people really count on him. He has enough power to pressure him—to pressure Putin—not into wanting to stop it. No, he will not want to.
To pressure him to actually stop it—that is the difference. Don’t rely on his will, Putin’s will to stop. You won’t see it.
Interviewer: That’s what I think. Sorry.
Interviewee: No, sorry, I interrupted you first, but what I would want—I do have what some might call a naive dream of you sitting down with Putin and Trump and negotiating a deal about a ceasefire and together finding a path to long-term peace.
And I think this requires strength, requires negotiations. There are a lot of carrots and sticks here that can be used to make a real deal. And Trump is very keen on making a deal and ready to negotiate.
Interviewer: Can I ask you a question?
Interviewee: Yep.
Interviewer: I just really want you and I to be on the same page.
Interviewee: Ah, it’s very important to be in the same information space—extremely important.Interviewer: Let me describe the situation to you. In December 2019, in Normandy, in Paris, at the Elise Palace, Macron, Merkel, Putin, and I agreed on the ceasefire. The US wasn’t there, and this, by the way, was a weak point of the meeting. If you’d like, we can later discuss why they weren’t there. It’s a security guarantee thing in general; it’s Germany’s position, etc.
Interviewee: We agreed on an exchange of hostages, an all-for-all exchange. We made a deal to exchange everyone for everyone. I think you know that. There was also a meeting that lasted many hours, a meeting where we made a deal with him. Everyone was tired; it was just the two of us in the end. I proposed a ceasefire, by the way. No one in Ukraine believed it. Have you believed the ceasefire? He wanted troop withdrawal. I calculated that if there were a withdrawal of troops from the line of contact, the way Russians proposed, it would take 20 years. I proved it to him just in terms of time, square kilometers, namely the length of the line of contact or delimitation line. And we agreed on what I told him: it will not work out.
But I had many points because I was deeply involved in the issue. I was involved very deeply; it’s my thing in general. If I start doing something, I can’t stand there like that guy I spoke about with my ass out. You know, I must be dressed, I must be prepared, I must be prepared better than anyone in front of me. You do sports, right? I practiced for many years, and we know what fights are like, what boxing is, what Thai boxing is. This is what I did, and I loved it very much. When you step into the ring, you understand everything pretty much. And so I stepped into it, and I was definitely well prepared. But he wasn’t. No, he was not deeply involved in the process.
Interviewer: What border? Where is it? How long will it take to disengage troops?
Interviewee: And why wasn’t he involved? You want to know? Because he wasn’t going to do any of this. This is what confused me. If you are not deeply involved in the issue, well then, it’s as if you don’t really need the result. That’s what I think.
So what happened? We agreed that there will be gas continuation, gas transit. In 2019, we agreed with him; this was the security for Europe. Merkel asked me for it, and this was extremely important for Germany. We agreed with him. Secondly, we agreed that for him it was just money. So, secondly, we agreed on an exchange. For me, this was the most important thing. For them, gas was. For me, it was the people. And this is a fact because I wanted to have a humanitarian advantage so that there would be further meetings that would lead to sustained peace.
And the third, ceasefire. The ceasefire you spoke about. What happened? The gas contract was signed because he needed it, and by the way, he knew everything about it. As for the exchange, we took the first step and exchanged the people. Regarding the ceasefire, well, they started killing us in about a month. So I called him, and I told him, “We agreed on a ceasefire.” Well, it wasn’t a piece of toilet paper, was it? This is serious business, or so it seemed. It really was serious. Merkel, Macron, you, and I, we all agreed on this together. A ceasefire is important, isn’t it? Not for New Year’s because everyone was celebrating New Year’s. Now they’re offering us a Christmas ceasefire. It’s all the same—a ceasefire for 2-3 days just to get some praise. But this isn’t a performance; this isn’t some kind of theater. No, this is about people’s lives.
And that’s what happened. After that, I called him a few more times. I think I only had 2-3 calls with him in total. I asked him for a ceasefire. He told me, “It could be; we will figure it out now.” People from the occupied territory, Russians and separatists, they were all there together. They continued to shoot and kill our people. Yes, the front lines, but they killed people. They were killing people, and I kept calling him. I called again and again, but there was nothing. Until after a few months, the Russians stopped answering the phone. We did not have any contact since.
I wanted another meeting like we had in Normandy. I wanted the next meeting; I wanted to find a solution, but the Russians refused. We tried to make it happen through various European countries, not only European, but the Russians refused. They passed along some kind of made excuses; they didn’t want it. Meanwhile, they were sending their snipers. We had evidence, leaving proof, even video evidence because some of them were captured back then. Those were the snipers in training; they were training them. And late to those snipers, they operated in Syria and Africa. These snipers were training in our country. In the east, Ukrainians were living targets. They were shooting from the other side, killing people—women, children—they were shooting. It was a hunt.
By the way, it was in the Russian-speaking region in the east, where, according to him, everyone is speaking Russian. That’s where they were shooting, where the situation currently is the most tense. They killed people. We sent this information, sent pictures; we sent them to the UN. Everywhere we worked very hard, very persistently. I met with everyone. But who thought of Ukraine back then? They didn’t notice it much; they didn’t pay much attention to it. To Crimea being illegally occupied either, and to be honest, the States of America too. Everyone was somewhat silent about this issue. That’s how it was. It was like that before a full-scale war.
I want to ask you a question about the ceasefire. For example, in Mariupol today, there are American and Ukrainian journalists, and everyone will tell you who had contact, who has contact now with Mariupol, who fled from there in the last minutes just before the occupation, or who was able to leave, to escape after the occupation. Chernov, who won an Oscar, was among them, and the journalist that left Mariupol. They are here, by the way; we had a conversation. They will tell you that 20,000-30,000 civilians were tortured and buried there. We do not know the number of victims—people who didn’t want to work with them, who refused to cooperate with them, people who went on strikes to protest, people who did not want to work with the Russians who occupied Mariupol.
And this is one example, just with this city. And I have a question for you: What about the millions of children? And I will ask you in Russian so that you hear this without delay. About the millions of children over there, what if we just arranged a ceasefire without understanding what would happen next? Without understanding what will happen to Ukraine’s security guarantees? What about the millions of children in the occupied territories? What should I tell them? What am I to tell them? What is it I should tell them? Whatever. Hey, all of you over there, and those tens of thousands of people buried there, they were. Is that what we want? Are we ready to forgive them for this?
We must at least take the first step. If this is a ceasefire, we must know that there is a security guarantee for the part of Ukraine under our control. We need it so that he will not come back. This is very important. And what do we say to the people who live in those territories? These are millions of people. Did you know that since 2014 in Donetsk, in Crimea, this is happening in Melitopol as well, as in Berdiansk now? They are making all these kids of drafting age go and fight. And if they don’t go, they will be killed. This is—do you understand what’s happening?
That is why a ceasefire—everything I said—what I wish for. And I believe in President Trump’s power to use all of this information to come up with a way to make Ukraine strong and be strong. Why am I saying that? I will give you an example. President Trump will be in the same situation as I was in 2019—precisely the same situation. I want to end the war. We want a lasting peace for Ukraine; we must do this. The ceasefire, exchange people, and then diplomatically return all territories. And we will do this through diplomacy.
What will happen next with President Trump? If the ceasefire happens without security guarantees, at least for the territory we control, what does he get? He manages to make a ceasefire deal, and three months later, Putin launches a new wave of attacks. What will Trump look like? What will Ukraine look like? What will everyone look like? Putin will just do it. And why would Putin do it? Because today he’s afraid of Trump. But once Trump manages, for example, to do a ceasefire deal without serious security guarantees for Ukraine, he will give a pass to Putin. Not that he wants to; no, he does not want that. I believe in what he says, but he will give Putin an opportunity. Because in Putin’s head, he wants me to fight with Trump.
Putin’s plan is to end the occupation of our territory. This is in his sick head, and I’m absolutely sure of this. That is why I told you: don’t wait for Putin to want to stop the war. Pressure him so that he is forced to stop the war. That’s important. It’s important to say that what you said about the children is a tragedy. War is hell. But let me say again, we must find a path to peace.
There is one—what is it? There is one before the ceasefire: strong Ukraine, strong Ukraine’s position. Yes, we can speak about it with Trump. We can speak about security guarantees, but a quick step—a quick step is NATO. Yes, I understand. I understand Trump’s feelings about NATO. I heard him; he’s thinking through all of it, of course. But anyway, yes, NATO is a strong security guarantee for all the people, for us. Part of security guarantees. The second part is the arms aid package, which we will not use if a ceasefire works. Nobody will use the weapons for what, but it has to stay.
But with all due respect to the United States and to the administration—not like before. I don’t want the same situation like we had with Biden. I ask for sanctions now, please, and weapons now, and then we will see. Start it again, of course, we’ll be happy if you’ll give us more and you will stand with us shoulder to shoulder. Of course, that is right. But it’s different when you have weapons. Putin wouldn’t have been able to occupy so much territory. It was very difficult for us to push him out, but we didn’t have weapons before. And that is the same situation. It can be the same situation. I’m just sharing this with you.
Like I said at the very beginning, I want to be very honest with you and with your audience. Yes, it’s true: if we do not have security guarantees, Putin will come again. To make it clear, let’s describe the idea that you are speaking about. I would like to offer you other ideas too. But right now, your idea is that NATO accepts Ukraine minus the five regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, Kherson, and Crimea. Just so you understand this situation, the invitation to NATO is legislatively issued to Ukraine. So to us, all those territories are still Ukraine. But NATO so far can only act in the part that is under Ukrainian control.
Can be negotiated; I am sure about that. Yes, this would not be a great success for us, but if we see a way to end the war, this is one of the ways. So it is sorry that is a start. Secondly, weapons—arms aid package. I’m not ready to discuss this publicly right now. It’s all written down, and President Trump might have seen it or not, but we’ve got no secrets from him. Yes, so but mostly it depends on the willingness of the United States because some of it will come from the EU, some from the United States, of course, together. So not just from the United States. No, no, no, we need unity with this package.
So the package and sanctions—yes, sanctions. But I think it’s in the interest of all the smart people to not have Russian energy on the market in general. So he— that’s all. It’s fine. American oil, American gas is okay; why not? And it’s cheaper. It will be cheaper for the whole world. The money will go to the United States, and I think he will be happy, and the president and your people will be happy. But it’s your decision; I’m just sharing. Yes, in cheap oil, so Putin won’t have so much money for the war.
That’s it, but this is difficult because it’s a lot. You’re saying to continue the sanctions on Russia, to accept Ukraine into NATO. I need to ask you some difficult questions about this.
Interviewer: Yes, go on. I trust and respect your words today. Many people respect and love you in America. Trump respects you.
Interviewee: Love me? Come on now! Remember last time you corrected me when I said that you love Javier Milei? He said, “No, no, no, respect him.” Let’s not talk about love today. But could we talk seriously about guaranteeing Russia’s security?
Interviewer: Okay, can I interview you a little?
Interviewee: Question is, what land is the war happening on, and where did it start? On our soil, on our territory. International law was violated; the sovereignty of our country was violated. Civilians were killed—tens of thousands of our people were taken hostage, and everyone will tell you this happened. This is what happened.
When I speak with the global south, trying to balance the two sides because of the history, because of their roots, and because of their shared economic interests with Russia in the past. And now, of course, when you talk to them, they are speaking a little bit like you. I mean, they’re balancing a little bit, you know?
Interviewer: Yeah, a little bit in between.
Interviewee: But we will work on it. It’s our first meeting; during the second one, you will be more on our side. Yeah, but it’s just—you’re very convinced. We will be very charismatic.
Interviewer: Yeah, thank you.
Interviewee: But I speak with them. When I speak, it’s very important, even with their attitude towards the war.
Interviewer: Beyond recognizing that this is a war.
Interviewee: This is not just an internal conflict. This is a fool’s war that began. Putin began, and all of them, if you talk to them, they say, “But then they all recognize that it’s his mistake, Putin’s mistake, and that he’s not right.” That’s why I said, “No, no, he’s not right.” And you have to begin from this. If you begin, you are in the middle between Ukraine and Russia. Of course, we can speak like this. You are in the middle and say, “Okay, what’s going on there is a fight?” Where is the fight? It’s not the fight like in Europe when Napoleon is fighting against somebody in the middle of Europe. No, but this is not in the middle of somewhere on the planet. Not the planet; it’s concretely on our land.
So one country with one army, one person came to another. It’s very clear. Again, I would like us to find a path to peace. So let us nevertheless try to start in the middle. What other ideas do you think might work?
Interviewer: You are a very intelligent person.
Interviewee: And your Russian isn’t that good either, huh?
Interviewer: Yes, this is only our first meeting. My English is not very good either.
Interviewee: Your English is very good.
Interviewer: Thank you.
Interviewee: To be honest, I’m terrible at speaking in every language. Well, there are other ideas, for instance—sorry to say this, it sounds crazy. What if both Ukraine and Russia are accepted into NATO? Putin himself spoke about Russia maybe about NATO.
Interviewer: What you just said is very correct. What are the guarantees for Russia?
Interviewee: It’s not like I’m even interested in what happens to them, to be honest. I don’t care what will happen to them in the future after the war ends. But these are our borders, and we must understand what is going on there. Well, the NATO guarantees for your grain—actually, this is also a security guarantee for the Russians.
Frankly, I talked about this many times before. Sorry, I’m speaking figuratively, but as an example, if you were a father who lost his children—a grown man, a grown man, an adult—and the war has ended, and he never got justice. For a real example, somebody decides to free support. We won’t give you anything; you can’t fight; you can’t continue, so we stop. When we stop without any guarantees, without any support, without financing, without okay, and nobody is held accountable. But the man lost his children. He will not get anything. None of the killers will be in prison. All the sanctions will be removed, and he lost his children.
And if there is no justice and the killers are not punished, why wouldn’t these people come back with hate? They will definitely come back. So when we talk about NATO, NATO is not only stopping Russia. Do not forget NATO is stopping us too because there will not be justice for everyone. We know that NATO does not have the right to solve certain issues with war. NATO is a security alliance; it is protection, not brainwashing. What Putin claims that this is offensive is not true. NATO is a defensive alliance, a security alliance, and it is security for Russia.
But unfortunately, there are many options for peace that don’t involve NATO inviting Ukraine as a member. Can you imagine security guarantees without NATO membership? For example, if America simply leaves NATO, I believe there is a high likelihood that Donald Trump would do such a thing. I think it’s very bad for NATO. That’s the end; that’s the death of NATO. It is a pity because I think that it’s a very good alliance. Maybe not everything is good there from the bureaucracy or money, etc. But countries who are in NATO, they don’t fight. There is no war on the land of any of these NATO countries.
I think that is the answer. It works or not; it works politically or militarily, I don’t know. But it works. So without Trump, without the United States of America, there will not be NATO. That is the first. So, and you say, can we imagine that?
Interviewer: That what?
Interviewee: That there could be security guarantees without NATO membership? No, we don’t need that. Guarantees without the United States—that’s it. Because the United States is a very strong, powerful country. The United States—the point, of course, Putin said that it’s just the Soviet Union, where, by the way, Ukraine was the second strong republic militarily. Yes, by the way, but he, of course, always forgets about it. But during World War II, without the help of the United States, support of your troops, support of your industry, industrially, military, without your money, without your people, Hitler could win.
So the United States helped a lot, of course, Europe, the USSR, and of course, everybody fought. Everybody did a lot, but the United States—it couldn’t be such. I don’t use the word success because I think that there is no war. Because this is a war—seven-figure losses, heavy losses in World War II, millions of people. And that’s why without the United States…Interviewer: Which can prevent Russian aggression? Of course, we have security guarantees bilaterally with some countries, financing support of our internal military and defending humanitarian issues, and demining, which is very important, and helping our children in the school networks. By the way, this is a very sensitive point. Amani, how many bomb shelters have we built with the partners for the children? It's a pity that they are underground.
Interviewee: Can you imagine their eyes when they came after COVID? You understand what it means, COVID, but they had COVID in the war. And together, they didn’t see each other for so many years. And when they saw each other, even underground, they were very happy and smiling.
Interviewer: We have such security guarantees, but it’s not enough to prevent. Yes, preventive measures also work to prevent the aggression of Putin.
Interviewee: Your English is better than my Russian. This is wonderful.
Interviewer: I'm not sure, I'm just giving you compliments. Thank you.
Interviewee: No, no, thank you. That kind of thing to a president, thank you so much.
Interviewer: Okay. Once again, come on, without NATO guarantees, I have a dream that, let’s say, on January 25 or sometime at the end of January this year, you will sit down with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and together negotiate a ceasefire with strict security guarantees. An agreement will be signed. What will this look like without NATO?
Interviewee: I will make it clear. First of all, I think January 25th or some other day, well, you just call it January 25th, and I don’t mind, it’s my birthday. And we sit down, first of all with Trump. We agree with him on how we can stop the war, stop Putin. It is important for us to sit down with him.
Interviewer: Secondly, it is very important for us that Europe, which is very important for us because we are part of Europe, not only geographically, geopolitically, but also in the European Union, where we will be. For us, it is very important that Europe also has a voice.
Interviewee: It’s the second thing. It won’t be long because Europe will be looking at us, and we’ll be looking at Trump. And by the way, I now see when I talk about something with Donald Trump, whether we meet in person or we just have a call, the European leaders always ask, “How was it?” This shows the influence of Donald Trump. And this has never happened before with an American president. I tell you from my experience, this also gives you confidence, you know, that he can stop this war. That is why we and Trump come first, and you will support Ukraine’s position because they understand that Ukraine has every right to have its voice heard in this. Because we are at war, Trump and I will come to an agreement.
Interviewer: And then, if, and I am sure that he can offer strong security guarantees together with Europe, and then we can talk to the Russians.
Interviewee: That’s right. Not just three of us sitting down at once. And you still talk to me like that. Do you know how? As if Putin wants to sit down and talk, but Ukraine does not.
Interviewer: This is not… I think that yes, he is in fact ready to talk. Did you talk to him on the phone or what? Do you normally talk to him?
Interviewee: I don’t know, normally by the sea, the same as with you. He invites you to the sea with me. Just the three of us. One of us may drown. Who are you, good at swimming?
Interviewer: Yes, I’m a good swimmer.
Interviewee: You’re a good swimmer? Well, I would like to add that if you have any contact with them, I just want to hear what happens then. I have never talked to Vladimir Putin, but I have a feeling that he is ready because Donald Trump is ready. I hope you are ready.
Interviewer: And this is not just a feeling, but a dream. I have a dream here that the three of you will get together in a room and make peace. And I want to understand what it looks like. What security guarantees look like that would satisfy Ukraine or satisfy Russia?
Interviewee: Ukraine needs security guarantees first and foremost. We are in danger. That is why they are called so. This is no joke to me.
Interviewer: Let’s take a few steps back. Interesting. Why are security guarantees, a strong position of Ukraine, strong weapons, and so on so important? I will give you a little history lesson, although I think you have prepared yourself and know everything perfectly. Well, you can correct me on that. Yes, Ukraine had security guarantees, the Budapest Memorandum, nuclear weapons are the security guarantees that Ukraine had. Ukraine had nuclear weapons. I do not want to characterize it as good or bad today; the fact that we do not have them is bad. Why? Because this is war. Today we are at war because you unleashed… we… because you have unleashed the hands of a nuclear power. A nuclear power is fighting against us and doing what it wants.
Interviewer: By the way, even you are now talking about a ceasefire. Just a ceasefire. Maybe give flowers to Putin, maybe to say thank you so much for these years. That was a great part of my life.
Interviewee: No, we are not just ready for this. Why? The Budapest Memorandum, nuclear weapons, this is what we had. Ukraine used them for protection. This does not mean that someone attacked us; that doesn’t mean that we would have used it. We had that opportunity. These were our security guarantees. Why am I talking about this in detail? Because if you take the Budapest Memorandum, by the way, I discussed this with Trump. We have not finished this conversation yet; we will continue. The Budapest Memorandum included security guarantees for Ukraine.
Interviewer: At first, three, three of the most important security guarantors for Ukraine, three strategic friends and partners of Ukraine.
Interviewee: This was in agreement: the United States of America, Russia, Britain, France, and China joined. There were five states that… these are not even security guarantees. We now understand that this is not a guarantee of security because, on the one hand, these are security guarantees, but there was an English word, as far as I understand, assurance.
Interviewer: It is translated as assurance.
Interviewee: Assurance, right. And in Russian it will be… and what assurance? That is, give up nuclear weapons because you were under pressure of the US and Russia for Ukraine to give them up. These two powers were exerting pressure. These two states negotiated to ensure that Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons. Ukraine agreed. These are the largest states; this is the nuclear five that does not even provide security guarantees. We just need to find these people, and we just need to put in jail all of those who frankly invented all this.
Interviewer: So confidence, so confidence, assurance, assurance that Ukraine will be territorially integral with its sovereignty.
Interviewee: It was a piece of paper. If you are curious, by the way, that after occupying part of our Donbass and Crimea, Ukraine sent diplomats three times. I don’t think I remember three times within a few years. We sent letters to all security guarantors, to all members of the Budapest Memorandum. What did they send? What was written on the piece of paper?
Interviewer: Consultations.
Interviewee: Ukraine holds consultations if its territorial integrity is violated, and everyone should be in consultation. Everyone must come. Everyone must meet urgently: USA, Britain, Russia, France, China. Did anyone come? You ask. No. Did anyone reply to these letters, official letters? They are all recorded by diplomats. Did anyone conduct consultations? No. Why not? They didn’t give a… this is understandable in Russian, right? That as Russia didn’t give a damn, neither did all the other security guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum. None of them gave a damn about this country, these people.
Interviewer: Security guarantees, etc.
Interviewee: We take a break. This will be a Budapest Memorandum. The last time with me, imagine how many years it was with me in February 2022. In February 2022, the war began. A full-scale war. Let us for consultations have been sent. No one answers.
Interviewer: Next, we are taking a break from the Budapest Memorandum. The question is simple about Budapest: can we trust this?
Interviewee: No. Whichever country out of these five sat at the negotiating table, just a piece of paper. Believe me, we will save you. Not another. This is a train. This is a drain with waste paper, with security guarantees which Ukraine has been writing for many years.
Interviewer: The second car on this train is the Minsk agreements, the Normandy format, and the Minsk agreements where it was written.
Interviewee: Where the signatories were. The United States of America was no longer there. I understand that Obama was here at the time, and as far as I know, I think they were simply not interested in what happened to Ukraine and where it was in general, where it was located. Well, somewhere there, part of something. People, well, people, and let it be, let it be with these people.
Interviewer: The United States simply did not participate in the Minsk agreements.
Interviewee: There are no claims to the US because they were not guarantors. Where is the claim? A step back. 2008, Bucharest. Everyone has already learned from the Budapest Memorandum. Bucharest 2008. Mr. Bush, President of the United States, Republican, says that Ukraine should be in NATO. This is the voice of Republicans. Check it out. Ukraine should be in NATO. Everybody’s looking at the US. Always. All in favor? Who is against? Merkel. So she opposes. Forced everyone not to give Ukraine an invitation to join NATO because that would be a step. Seriously, Republicans were in favor. The US was in favor because Republicans and Bush were not afraid of anyone. They were not afraid of anyone, and they knew that Ukraine rightly wanted to join NATO. She chooses so, and what is the question? Well, people made their choice. Well, and the Russians will not look that way. That was not the case then. Why? Because the Russians were different.
Interviewer: Next, Minsk.
Interviewee: We didn’t succeed. After the Minsk agreement, I told you, hundreds of meetings were held. I have had hundreds of meetings since 2019. We could not think about a ceasefire. A ceasefire is our offer. This is not somebody’s suggestion. This is mine. I would like… I want to. In Ukrainian society, it was divided. Not everyone wanted to. Half did not want to, half were against, half were in favor. Some of them shouted, “Do not believe it.” Some of them shouted, “Believe it.” I am the president of Ukraine. I was given a mandate of trust by 70 percent of the population to take appropriate steps, and I made them.
Interviewer: This is not a joke. We’ll just sit the three of us.
Interviewee: I am simply telling you what is. This is how can I tell you. These meetings must be serious and prepared, and prepared with those who want peace. We want peace. We have to sit down with Trump, and that is hundred percent, first and foremost, number one. Moreover, me on the phone, he is waiting for us to meet, and there will be an official visit. My visit would be the first or one of the first to him, and for him, this topic is very important. I know that he has his own matters, American issues. I understand, I heard his election program, but regarding international affairs, I think our issue is one of the most pressing issues for President Trump. Therefore, I believe very much, I trust his words, and I hope we will meet again. We need to prepare. We have many plans to build on, and they exist and they are supported by many countries, but we need his vision. He needs to look at all these details, but his vision, please, because he can stop Putin, because Putin is afraid of him. That’s a fact.
Interviewer: But Trump is a president of a democratic country, and he does not come for life. He is not Putin; he will not come for 25 years. He will come for his term.
Interviewee: Please tell me, well, for example, he came for four years, and for the fifth year, Putin came with a war. Will it make Trump feel better that there was no war during his time and that Ukraine was destroyed after him? Why destroyed? Putin is whoever a killer, whoever, but not a fool. He will be prepared. He knows all mistakes. He understands how we defeated his army after the invasion began. He realized that this was not a Soviet war and that this would not happen with us. He will prepare. He will let everything into arms production. He will have lots of weapons, and there will be a very large army. And you think that after such humiliation, four years without a war, he did not finish us? He will return and fight only against Ukraine. He will destroy everything around.
Interviewer: And if you say there is a risk that Trump, President Trump, will withdraw from NATO, for example, this is a decision of the United States.
Interviewee: I’m simply saying that if it does, Putin will destroy Europe. Calculate the size of the army in Europe. It’s just that I say it for a reason. Do the calculation. Why did Hitler conquer all of Europe then? Almost. Just count. Remember his armies of millions. Calculate what Europe has, what are the largest armies. We have the largest army. The Ukrainian army is the largest in Europe. The second place after us is four times smaller than us. France, yes, 200,000. I think the French have about 200,000. We have 980. So this powerful coalition of European nations, that will not be enough. It’s not going to be enough, but you’re a smart man. There are a lot of ideas, partnerships with the Global South, India, the Middle East, Saudi Arabia.# Interview Transcript
Interviewer: It all protects you. First of all, look at one example: North Korea. Just look at this example: 12,000 has arrived today. 3,800 killed or wounded. They can bring more: 30, 40,000 or maybe 500. They can bring many people. Why? Because they have order, autocracy. And everything. Can Europe bring people together?
Interviewee: No. Will Europe be able to build an army consisting of 2 to 3 million people? No, Europe will not want to do this. And for what? We definitely don’t want a world war with you. There is no such purpose. There is no such purpose as gathering everyone. We do not want any war. We want to stop the Russians, and they invite North Korean soldiers.
Interviewer: Invited?
Interviewee: Their faces are burned. They themselves burn their faces. Those who cannot escape are injured or killed. There’s a video; everything I’m telling you, there is evidence of this. So that they are not recognizable, right? It means, what does it mean? It’s out of values which share Europe. Europe counts.
Interviewer: It means that those guys…
Interviewee: They don’t count. Yes, they don’t count the number of people. Can they move more? Yes. Can they move dozens of thousands? Yes, because we see what they have. Last year, for example, Europe gave us 1,000,000 artillery rounds. Oui, we produced a lot ourselves, but they gave us initiative. It was initiative: 1,000,000 artillery rounds. And of 155 and etc. We produce more. But North Korea gave Putin 3.7. Just gave him. So he also has a deficit for today. It means he needs what? He needs time. The number of soldiers, yes, and the number of artillery rounds is not everything.
Interviewer: But as you have said, let’s say Donald Trump guarantees security for it for 4 years.
Interviewee: You can form partnerships with India, with Saudi Arabia that enforce punishment, the stick on oil prices, for example. If any aggressive action is taken, you can actually even build. I’ve met a lot of incredible Ukrainian tech people. You can build great companies that form partnerships with the United States, that form partnerships with China. And that is a big leverage against aggression of…
Interviewer: However, many million artillery rounds and that a sheet of paper. You don’t need a sheet of paper of protection.
Interviewee: Ah, that’s you. You, um… Well, when you speak English, in English, yeah, you don’t even need answers because when you now are talking, you’ve already answered all the questions. The first one is that during this time, you need just cooperation, a lot of money for this military industry in Ukraine or in Europe. With India, Saudi Arabia, and the United States, you need a lot of money. So the question is, where will you get it?
Interviewer: So my answer was to Trump. I said this is one of the security guarantees: take 300 billion of frozen Russian assets. We will take it. Take money for what we need for our interior production, and we will buy all the weapons from the United States. We don’t need gifts from the United States. It will be very good for your industry, for the United States. We will put money there: Russian money, not Ukrainian, not European, Russian money, Russian assets. They have to pay for this. We will make it. This is one of the security guarantees.
Interviewee: Yes, of course, because this is a military guarantee. Yes, but then the second you said that energy price and a lot of sanctions on products and the Russian shadow fleet, etc. That is the second answer we spoke about before. Yes, put more sanctions on them. More sanctions, it’s okay. But not to take off sanctions, that’s okay with you, but it’s not a good bit going to be okay with the president of Russia.
Interviewer: Yes, but I’m not thinking how it will be very good for him.
Interviewee: Istil akilla. But unfortunately, the reality is needed in order to reach in a game, and you’re understanding the fact that he is not jailed after all the murders. He is not jailed, assuming all the murders, and no one in the world is able to put him in his place, send him to prison. Do you think this is a small compromise?
Interviewer: This is not a small compromise.
Interviewee: To forgive him will be a small compromise. To forgive? No one will forgive. This is absolutely impossible to forgive him. We cannot get into the head and soul of a person who lost their family. Nobody will ever accept this. Absolutely impossible. I don’t know, do you have children?
Interviewer: No, but I would like to.
Interviewee: Yes, God bless. And this is the most important thing in life. And they simply took away the most precious thing from you. Will you ask who ruined your life before going to rip their head off? Just curious. They took your child away. Are you going to ask who did this? And they will answer that that dude did this. You will say, “Oh, well then, there are no questions.” No, no, no. You will go to hell and bite their head off. And it will be fair.
Interviewer: Can murders be forgiven? That’s why you make guarantees.
Interviewee: What I told you for those who are here and what we control and what will not happen, and that those who lost, we will never forget.
Interviewer: Of time, but you gave us NATO. I just said this means that after a while, everything I said about NATO, after a while, Ukraine will not go against Russia. Russia will not go against Ukraine because you are in NATO. I am just saying, is not that a compromise?
Interviewee: NATO is a compromise. This is not just a security guarantee, in my opinion. Look, when rockets were attacking Israel, and Israel is not in NATO, NATO countries' aircraft were deployed. Air defense. The air defense worked, operated by different Middle Eastern countries. These are also security guarantees.
Interviewer: And by the way, Israel has nuclear weapons. So why do they need NATO when in fact they have more than NATO has? The American, British, and French aviation stepped in.
Interviewee: There was Ada, I don’t remember, from Jordan. Listen, thousands of missiles were shot down that way. This is what? This is a guarantee of safety. It’s just that it’s not called NATO. Is some uncle vulva irritated by the word NATO? There’s a problem with the word.
Interviewer: And I think he’s simply irritated by people who are alive and living here. If you believe this, it will be very difficult to negotiate. If you think that the president of a country is completely crazy, it is really hard to come to an agreement with him. You have to look at him as a serious person who loves his country.
Interviewee: The people in his country, and he conducts… Yes, who are you talking about now? Who loves his country? Putin? Do you think he doesn’t love his country?
Interviewer: What is his country? He happened to consider Ukraine his country. What is his country? Explain it. Tomorrow he will say that it’s America.
Interviewee: No pity for the Chechens. Do they look like Russians? Do they speak Russian?
Interviewer: Of course.
Interviewee: Of course, they learn in schools like anywhere. There’s been Russification. Who are the Chechens? A different people. Another faith. Other people. Another language. A million eliminated.
Interviewer: And eliminated how? How did he kill them?
Interviewee: With love. I know, fuck, by hugging. Ukrainian, as we say, strangling by hugging. “I love you so, so much. I love you so much that I want to kill you.” That’s his love. And that’s not love. You’re mistaken. He does not love his people. He loves his inner circle. It’s only a small part of the people. He doesn’t love them.
Interviewer: Why? I’ll explain. You cannot send your people to another land to die, knowing that they will die.
Interviewee: Children. My daughter, my daughter, she is 20 years old. For me, this is a child. She is already an adult, of course, but she is a child. The boys, the boys he sends are 18 years old. They are children he sends. It’s not that fascists came to his land and he needs to defend it.
Interviewer: He came to ours.
Interviewee: And he sent them to Chechnya. He sent them to Syria. He sent them to Africa. He sent them to Georgia. His sentence: Moldova, Transnistria, that was before him. Fine, we can leave that aside. He has enough sins of his own. And then there’s Ukraine, the largest part: 700, 788,000 killed or wounded Russians. He caused them all, Russians. Even those who don’t know how to speak Russian on his territory of Russia. Everything they’ve enslaved. Yes, proud verangens. So I wonder, is that love? What love is this? And for what? Does he love his people? No.
Interviewer: Does he love his land? His country is bigger than America. How much land do you need? America is huge. America is simply an outstanding country.
Interviewee: Outstanding country. Russia is bigger.
Interviewer: Well, just bigger.
Interviewee: So, ask yourself, does he love them? What is he doing? And what does he love? Do you think he’s been everywhere in his Russia? It’s impossible to get around it. He hasn’t been everywhere. He just hasn’t.
Interviewer: Well, I believe that Donald Trump loves America, and I don’t think he has been in every single American city.
Interviewee: No, no, no. I saw his rallies.
Interviewer: Let’s be honest. Let’s be honest. He had it, and I saw it, and it’s very difficult. He’s not, I mean, he’s not 18, yes, but he’s strong. And this is his will.
Interviewee: Everywhere where the war is, I’m sure. I pray to God it never will be on your land, yes, and I’m sure that it will not be. But I’m sure that if you have in some region the problems, how to say, earthquake, hurricane, you have it all.
Interviewer: Well, I’m sure that President Trump would be there.
Interviewee: After one day, two or three days, I don’t know the secretive, all these things, but he will be. Otherwise, how will people look at him?
Interviewer: Yes, of course he will. Of course. The same about me. I’m not comparing myself with him. I’m just where it is difficult for people, I have to come.
Interviewee: The question, the next question is very simple: Region, Kursk region. The operation there. Did Putin was put in Kursk during four months?
Interviewer: No. Listen, I have tremendous respect for you, admiration for many reasons. One of which is you stayed in Kyiv, and another one is that you visit the front, and then you talk to the soldiers in the front, and you talk to people all across Ukraine. Absolutely tremendous respect for that. So thanks, and not enough people say that.
Interviewee: You know, I had a conversation with Tucker Carlson, for example, and I said that you’re a hero for staying.
Interviewer: Give.
Interviewee: And he said, “Well, he just did a thing that every leader should do.”
Interviewer: But I think not enough leaders do the thing that every leader should do.
Interviewee: So tremendous respect. I think I agree with you totally. Yes, a leader should go to the front of a war. You know, that said, America has waged wars all across the world. That has the war in the, you know, in Afghanistan and Iraq costs 9 trillion dollars and killed over a million people. Wars, hell. And that just because war is waged in terrible ways that it is does not mean the leader does not love their country. But I take your point.
Interviewee: I once again have a dream that even if there’s hate that you said down, well, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and you find a way to peace.
Interviewer: Lamiadski ukoshi. What do you think? Will there ever be a day when the Ukrainian people forgive the Russian people, and both people will travel back and forth again and marry each other, rekindle and form friendships?
Interviewee: History has long answered this question. I don’t know how it will be for us. It will be in the future, without a doubt. History has shown this time and again. After every devastating war, one generation, one country recognizes.
Interviewer: Dal et.
Interviewee: Aha. Aise was an aggressor. And it comes to realize this is impossible to forgive. This is precisely the kind of education they’ve had in Germany for many years, even though these children had nothing to do with it. It was their grandfathers who participated. And not all of them were participants of Nazi Germany’s war against essentially against the world. Yes, and against life. And therefore, they’re still apologizing.
Interviewer: Apologizing is not easy.
Interviewee: That they were the aggressors. They were guilty. They do not look for compromise in history. Compromising itself buys time. And they understand this. There are convicted murderers condemned both historically and by their own people. Reparations have been paid, and security guarantees have been established, by the way. And all this is done, and when all this is done and recognized, in any case, people develop relations with each other. That’s clear. But it can only happen the way it always has in history. Russia will have to apologize.
Interviewer: It will.
Interviewee: This will happen because they are guilty. They are guilty, and as I told you, the guilty are different: both those who participated and those who remain silent because silence is also about participating.
Interviewer: In my opinion, can I ask about Donald Trump? We’ve already mentioned him a lot, but let’s focus there. What do you admire? What do you respect about Donald Trump?
Interviewee: Uh, and also maybe why do you think he won overwhelmingly the election in 2024 that the American people chose him?
Interviewer: He was stronger. He was much more stronger than Kamala Harris, Biden first, and then Kamala Harris. Yes, he showed that he can. He can intellectually and physically. It was an important point to show that if you want to have a strong country, you have to be strong, and he was strong.
Interviewee: And this number of…
Interviewer: He showed that he can. He is strong. So he doesn’t have any questions with his, I mean, this age and etc. Nothing. He is young. He is young here, and his brains work. So I think it’s important, very important. And of course, a lot of interior questions. I understand the prices and etc., economic questions, questions of you have the questions with other things, immigration, yeah, a lot of things I understand.
Interviewee: So maybe he answered on those questions which people had. One of the questions that he will finish the war, that he will finish the war.
Interviewer: Yeah, for me, the main question. But I said that for him, he’s the president of the United States. For him, his priority questions in the United States, and I understand and I respect it. But the second, he was speaking about the world. Yes, he said that he will finish the war, and I hope very much because I think that our people really support his idea. And that’s why I said it is for me. It’s very, very important to have enough people around him who will have connections with him with the right things.
Interviewee: For me, the truth is very right things. What’s going on really? The battlefield. What’s going on really with Putin and Russia? What he really wants? And that is just to have it. You know, before any decision, you have to be at the same level of information. And we need really, we need him to know everything from us, from you, from people in Ukraine, from people around who are really afraid, afraid that Putin doesn’t want to stop the war, afraid that he will come back with his aggression.
Interviewer: So, first of all, I should mention that our conversation today will be translated and dubbed into Ukrainian, English, Russian, other languages, Spanish. So you’re in your voice. So there are great guys originally from Poland. It’s a company called 11 Labs. They use, they’ve trained an AI, artificial intelligence. Sounds truly remarkable in your voice. You have the freedom to speak in any language you choose, but no matter what, you will always find yourself returning to speaking in Ukrainian.
Interviewee: That is when you talk about Donald Trump, you can do it in Ukrainian or Russian. Everybody understands it.
Interviewer: Um, but you said that there are some things about the war that maybe Americans don’t understand. So we talked about Putin, we talked about the security guarantees, but the reality of war, what’s happening on the ground, what do you think that people should understand?
Interviewee: First of all, they have to understand the idea of Putin’s war. It is very important for him. I consider this process, I think it is very important for him not to give Ukraine independence, to prevent Ukraine from developing as an independent country. For him, influence on Ukraine cannot be lost. And for him, it is, you know, like, I think for him, Dengiz, such a goal. In this last mile, Nancy Ottenham, the last mail.
Note: The text has been punctuated and formatted for clarity, with participants identified as "Interviewer" and "Interviewee."Интервьюер: Of his political life. And I think that this is, for him, the second story. I do not want to talk about these banalities that he wants to return all the territories of the Soviet Union, influence over them. He does this little by little. I just don’t want to… people need to know details. For example, Georgia, which was headed towards the EU and NATO, completely turns towards Russia.
Эксперт: Regardless of the fact that they have frozen conflicts, they have in Abkhazia, what we have with Donbass, which is controlled by militant rebels. Abkhazia is not developing. It’s just a part, a very beautiful part of Georgia that has died. And if you have the opportunity, then go there someday. You will understand, it simply died because Putin wanted to. He wanted not to allow them to develop because a frozen conflict means that you will not be accepted in the EU and certainly will not be accepted into NATO.
Интервьюер: Because right now, yes, they do not take you because of a frozen conflict.
Эксперт: And this is what Putin did. It’s very important for him not to lose this influence. He turned back Georgia. Young people, students — everyone leaves, and this is a fact. Georgia is quite small, and they will leave. They want to live in Europe, they want to develop. Somebody in the United States, somebody in Europe, somebody in the EU, somebody in Britain.
Интервьюер: He will now fight for the Moldovan parliament.
Эксперт: This is his second step. You will see in April what happens. You will see. He will start turning Moldova away from Europe, although they want to go there. He does not care. There will be a pro-Russian party, and they will do something with the current president because she has won the elections. She is pro-European, but he will turn this back.
Интервьюер: Next steps are completely clear.
Эксперт: He will do everything wherever he has lost influence, where there was influence of the Soviet Union. Turn it back as much as possible. And we understand at what price. You have seen Syria. You saw these tortures, what we saw in Bucha, what we saw everywhere we came and where we were occupied. In Syria, the same happened. There were a thousand people there, and you have seen it. Scientists were found, doctors were found. It is clear that any people are capable of generating their own opinion, showing their skills.
Интервьюер: Developed society…
Эксперт: Every one who can express an opinion, everyone who can shape the independence and maturity of society — such people are not needed. And he wants this in Ukraine. And therefore, everyone should understand that Ukraine is like a large wall from that Europe. And if God willing, President Trump does not withdraw from NATO, because again, I believe that this is the biggest risk.
Интервьюер: I think two steps…Интервью с Президентом Украины
Участники:
- Интервьюер
- Президент Украины
Интервьюер: 2 steps then | Putin would like to see is a weak NATO and this without Trump | And | A weak Ukraine, which cannot survive on the battlefield, simply cannot survive and prevent me from building a strong relationship with Trump. I think these 2 steps, leaving Nestor and Ukraine's weakness, will lead to a large-scale war | Which Putin will wage on all the territories of that Europe, post-Soviet Europe. I mean Soviet Europe, not post-Soviet, but post-World War II period, that is, Soviet-era Europe. In order to | Control everything there. This is what he will do. And besides this | Vice will happen in any case, even if the US is thinking about leaving NATO | This war will affect the United States because North Korea is the first sign | North Korean skills, Korean knowledge, which they are now gaining from this war, these include mastering new technologies, large-scale drones, missiles, how it works, the kind of technological war we have today, cyber war, etc. All these skills Korea will bring home and scale up in that region, and this will be a risk for the Pacific region security, first and foremost for Japan | And for South Korea. They will face these risks 100 percent. And it will be | Will also I have to face them | Without this | It is impossible. This is already happening | Already happening | Therefore, I think that President Trump has all power to stop Putin and give Ukraine strong security guarantees.
Президент Украины: We've been talking for 2 hours. At the pause, you want to take a pause? Yeah, we will make a pause | We can have coffee, right? Config | And give the interpreter | Yeah, he’s struggling. He | Who keeps switching languages like a dragon, you know, 3 heads, 3 translators.
Интервьюер: So, one of the difficult decisions you had to make when the war began is to enact martial law. So, when you won the presidency, you are the warrior for freedom. In fact, this war is for freedom | Freedom of the individual, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom | But a lot of freedoms had to be curtailed, sacrificed in this fight because there’s so much focus on the war. Do you see the tension? Do you feel the tension of that, the sacrifice that had to be made | In democracy, in freedom | And fighting this war? In any case, this war is for | Our freedom. Generally speaking | To be honest | When you understand over time, when the war passes, you understand that your main values are | This is your home, your children, your love. God willing, they are alive | And if not alive, then their memory, visiting their grave | Choosing how to work, how much. Preferably choosing where to work | All this is freedom. Freedoms are not just a desire; they are an opportunity. In any case, you are right because war is a limitation of opportunities | In any case, fight for these opportunities. Your parents, your parents and God | Gave you life, right? You fight for your life, your life | But we need to understand that first there is a war, and then martial law is introduced. Law is not introduced because someone wanted to. You say this is not Pinochet, this is not Pinochet and so on. This is a completely different story. An aggressor came. And according to your legislation, if the border is violated, if there is armed aggression, you have all this written down long ago, written out in legislation. You introduce martial law, and the introduction of martial law everywhere at all times means, in any case, a restriction of opportunities. If opportunities are limited, rights and freedoms are restricted. Therefore, the war itself restricts rights and freedoms, yes, and you can’t do anything about it. We try honestly to balance. As much as I believe that the business sector works despite the difficulties of the war, and we do everything, you know, they’re somewhere to reduce some load. Unfortunately, we cannot reduce taxes | On the contrary, a military tax is used for war. You need to take money somewhere. This, by the way, is about the fact that the US gave us a lot | And Europe too. But compared to how much we need it for the war, this is not all. As for military salaries, you know that we could not pay the salaries of a strong army. We could not pay it using the money from our partners. These are all | This is all the money that the country and people have accumulated | You can do anything. I really want to reduce taxes. I will tell you frankly. Well, I think that the whole new tax system, new deregulation, new steps, new reforms, all this will be after the war. Хотя есть чем похвастаться. Это доказательство | And | This | Дейсиз. A document. Because if you want to get her | For the European Union, you must implement the appropriate number of reforms. We do everything. During the war, we voted for many reforms, including anti-corruption, banking reforms, land reforms, major reforms. We started a large privatization, and the war did not stop us. Yes, it slowed down, but we went through a lot.
Интервьюер: When do you think you’ll hold elections? Because for people who don’t know, part of the martial law elections were suspended, and they were delayed and delayed and delayed. And I think the next sort of plan is in February | 2025. When do you think there would be presidential elections in Ukraine?
Президент Украины: The elections were postponed once. They were not delayed, to be clear. Elections did not take place in 2024 that year. First of all, we need to understand the constitution. They were scheduled to be held in the spring of 2024 | Due to martial law, under the constitution, you cannot do this. These are the presidential elections. The parliamentary elections did not take place in the fall of 2024 according to the constitution | Yes, there are security things, there is the constitution. But there are security things. That is, everyone in Ukraine understands that this cannot be done until the war is over, or legislation needs to be changed. I believe that elections will take place immediately after the end of martial law. This is according to the law, or members of the parliament need to get together and change legislation, which will be very difficult to do because society is against it.
Интервьюер: Why society against it?
Президент Украины: It is understandable why | Because we want elections, that we want to trust | 8 point 5 million people went abroad | The infrastructure needs to be created for these millions of people to vote | Millions of people in the occupied territories. I’m not even talking about the occupation of 2014. I’m talking about the occupation right now | What to do with these people? This is a difficult question. And one of the most unfair ones is how to vote without having a million soldiers | That is, it is impossible. We need to think about how to change the system if the elections are held in times of war, change the legislation, which should include changes to the voting system, to think about online voting. Everyone is afraid | Because of certain attacks, like cyber attacks | And so on, but we need to think about it. I really think that it’s possible. That we can | And the war in 2025 | In January 0, we’ve already agreed on it. I would very much like to. Wasn’t it? I would very much like to after the war | And immediately | Yes, immediately. In the year of the end of the war, it’s a fact. Why? | When martial law ends, you can immediately vote in parliament to hold elections | And then everyone will vote | Because there are no restrictive measures, and after they vote, I think elections can be held in 90 days, something like that. Yes. And this means that immediately after the end of the war elections may take place in 90 days.
Интервьюер: Are you running for re-election?
Президент Украины: Even I don’t know, really. I don’t know. I don’t know | It is a very difficult question | It depends on how this war will finish. It depends on what people will want | Mostly it depends | On people, first of all, and of course my family | We had no time to speak about it with my family, and of course, have a chance because we don’t think about it now. I mean, it’s something, you know, there are a lot of some, not a lot of, but enough voices in Ukraine from politicians, opposition, etc. about this, sir. Yes, but we don’t | Think really seriously. Didn’t think seriously with my family about it. So, this is war. I mean, how to think about what will be after, it’s very difficult, really very difficult.
Интервьюер: If we look at the field of candidates, I just | You can give your opinion about the set of ideas you see out there, including your own about the future of Ukraine. As I understand, the candidates include Poroshenko, Zelensky, a storage of many others. This is the internet speaking to me. What do you think of the space of ideas that these candidates…
Президент Украины: You know, I think it can be, and there can be even a bigger number of candidates. Yeah, I don’t really know what will be. They have rights to participate if they want to. Yes, if they really want to and can they | And do what they want. Honestly | Most important is what are they doing now. I think that all these people are the famous Ukrainian people, and it’s important for them to do everything they can today, not begin any election campaign. I think this what can divide our people, to have the elections, you know, during the war. I mean, this makes steps speak about elections a lot, you know, make a big mess about it. I think this is not right. That’s why I’m not agreeing with some of these people. But | They can, and I think that they can, and maybe some of them will, and it’s okay. It’s normal. Our system differs from the system in the United States. You have 2 parties, and the parties decide who will be the leader, and in Ukraine, everybody can participate.
Интервьюер: You think you’re going to win the debate | You versus resolution Poroshenko, is storage | And you decide to run. Do you think you’re going to win the debate?
Президент Украины: You’re again focused on the war, and everyone, I’m really focusing on the war, and I understand, I think, uh, I think the most difficult debate is what will be to the table. And we spoke about it. It will be during the war how to finish the war. I think that is my goal because it will be one of my most complicated debates | And for any president who is in a war, of course, but I think this is my goal to win those debates. And the other things are not for today. As I said, the dream I have is | It’s a historic opportunity to make peace, to make lasting peace.
Интервьюер: So, let me ask a question about that. A lot of people in the United States think about | Uh, and I care a lot about the future of Ukraine, is corruption. This is something you will have cared a lot about for a long time. You won the presidency in 2019 in big part | Your message of fighting corruption. But there are a lot of accusations that during war | I mentioned 9 trillion dollars in the United States, war breeds corruption. So can you speak to that? How you have been fighting corruption, and can you respond to the accusations that there has been corruption in Ukraine?
Президент Украины: You know, it’s very simple. First of all | We really have a very sophisticated anti-corruption system. Sophisticated not in the sense that it’s difficult to understand, but in that it really consists of many elements. It’s the most difficult in all of Europe. This is another requirement of the European Union. It was a requirement for Ukraine. And for many years, Ukraine was not trusted. I want to tell you that under me, we all voted for bills | All day anti-corruption reforms, all well, almost all reforms, and all anti-corruption bodies today are independent. They work as requested. I still believe that they are not perfect yet. There are many issues. There is a judicial system, but also a judicial reform that our partners, the United States plus the EU, demanded from us | This is all written out. This is written out in specific laws, in specific decrees, in specific decisions. We did this. Uevden | 99 percent of this. If something has not been done, it means that it is on the way. But in principle, all this exists, and there is no such system as we have in Europe. To say that we do not have corruption would be lying. We just talk about it openly. Are genuinely fighting against it. Look, we have sitting in our prison, Ihor Kolomoisky | Who is the most influential Ukrainian oligarch since independence. And no one could do anything about him. The United States of America wanted to have Kolomoisky, and they went to great lengths because of money laundering, etc. There are criminal cases in the United States | Something like that. Neither Europe could do anything about it. That is, we did a lot with oligarchs, Russian oligarchs. Sanctions were imposed. They were thrown out. Some of them fled the state, but they are all under sanctions. We exchanged some of them for our soldiers, such as Medvedchuk, to whose daughter Putin is godfather | That is, we fought against the strongest influential oligarchs | Which | And we’re in Ukraine, and we eliminated a lot of corruption. Of course, corruption exists in everyday life. It exists in | But institutionally, I am sure that Ukraine will overcome all this. This takes a little time. I would say honestly that | Listen, what we call corruption | And in some state of the world is called lobbyism. But this does not mean that there is no corruption there. Let’s take | Paid. You mentioned during the war. First of all, we have no money | We have | No money except for the war. We received weapons from the United States of America, from Europe. If we take, for example, money from the United States of America | During all this time of the war, around 177 billion dollars have been voted for or decided upon | 177 billion dollars. Let’s be honest | We have not received half of this money. The second point, which is very important, just as an example, is it corruption? The first question | Whose corruption? This is the second. Here is just one small example for you | When the United States began to transfer us weapons, it was American money | But American weapons, money for these weapons | I had, as a president, I had cargo jets | Not in Ukraine because of the war. We moved them very quickly to Europe. I had cargo | A very good fleet. Because of Antonov. So I asked | The American side to grant me the opportunity because our jets are there. Another | And I asked America to give me the opportunity to use our jets for transfer | Not to pay a lot | To whom? To your companies? To American companies? No, I didn’t get this opportunity | My jets stayed put. And the United States jets, cargo jets, move these weapons. But everywhere you have to spend money | So | We could get more weapons, but we have to pay for this very expensive fleet. My question | Is this corruption or not? Or lobbyism? What is it? Corruption on the part of the US companies, yes, making such decisions, yes, I got the lobbying for such decisions. It involves some companies that make these decisions. I can’t be open about it, and I couldn’t speak loudly about it. I didn’t want, didn’t want, nor did I intend to cause any scandals to arise because otherwise you can freeze the support, and yeah, that’s it. And that’s why when we talk about corruption, we must ask who is involved | If we had 177, and if we get the huff, where’s the huff?# Interview Transcript
Interviewer: If you will find the 2nd half, you will find corruption. There is a perception of corruption. People like Donald Trump and you all must really care about fighting corruption. What can you say to them to gain their trust?
Interviewee: That the money is going towards this fight for freedom, towards the war effort. In most cases, we did not receive money; we received weapons. Where we saw risks, something could be a weapon, we would slap everyone on the wrist. And believe me, this is not only about Ukraine; on the supply chain, everywhere there are some or other people and companies who want to make money because everyone makes money on the war. We did not profit from the war. If we found someone, believe me, we slapped everyone on the wrist. And we did that. We did that. And we will continue to do so because to this day, when someone says that Ukraine was selling weapons—and by the way, Russia was the one pushing this narrative—we always responded: our soldiers would kill such people with their own hands, without any trial.
Do you honestly think anyone could steal weapons by the truckload when we ourselves don’t have enough on the front lines? And yet we have to provide proof to defend ourselves because when there’s an abundance of such misinformation, distrust starts to grow. And you are right; people listen to various media outlets, fade, and lose faith in you. In the end, you lose trust, and with it, you lose support. Therefore, believe me, we are fighting more against disinformation than against particular cases. I still emphasize once again that at the everyday levels, such things are still important. We catch these people, and we fight them.
I mentioned Elon Musk. I would be interested to hear what you think of him. Why do you respect him as a person?
Interviewer: As an engineer, as an innovator, as a businessman, I would just like to hear from you what you think about Elon Musk.
Interviewee: First of all, I had a conversation with him at the beginning of the war. I talked with him. I respect him first and foremost. I respect the self-made man. Right? In English, I love such people. You know, no one and nothing fell into their lap, but the man did something; he did it all himself. I worked myself, created a big production company, and I know what it means to make money, to select talented people, to impart knowledge to them, to invest money, and to create something important for certain people. And I’m not comparing myself to Musk; he just—well, the man is a great leader of innovations in the world. And I believe that such people move the world forward. Therefore, I respect the result of his work. And we see this result.
For me, it has always been important that your result can be used; that these are not words. Let’s take the war. We are very grateful for Starlink. It has helped. We used it after Russian missile attacks on the energy infrastructure. There were problems with the internet, etc., with connection. We used Starlink both at the front and in kindergartens; it was used in schools. It helped children. We used it in various infrastructure, and it helped us very much.
And I would very much like Elon to be on our side as much as possible to support us. And yes, I’m grateful to him for Starlink, truly I am, first of all, so that our guys have a connection and children too. And I’m really grateful to him for that. I think we need—I would like him to come to Ukraine to talk to people here and to look around.
Interviewer: Has Elon visited Kyiv or Ukraine yet?
Interviewee: No. I hope the Kyiv airport will open soon. Then it will be easier to fly in. Yes, I am looking forward to it. Maybe we will open it, but only—and you must understand—if the war is over. There must be sustainable peace and air defense systems, to be honest. And we must ensure that they are long-lasting and effective.
Let’s take the airport, for example, and let’s focus on the airport in Jeshu, which you know very well, as it is handling cargo for Ukraine in Poland. There are Patriot systems there because everyone understands what the risk is. Well, Russia is a risk. And therefore, we need air defense systems. Today, take for example the air defense system of one city or another that is being shelled and move it to the airport. Well, that would be dishonest. People are more important than planes.
But there will be a moment. And Trump, by the way, I think that the war will end, and President Trump may be the first leader to travel here by airplane. I think it would be symbolic—by airplane again, January 25th, around that date, right? Flying in, meeting the Air Force One. That would be cool. Elon Musk, I will meet you there for the second time too, on the plane, with pleasure.
And you, by the way, before I forget, let me ask: Are you coming on January 20th for President Trump’s inauguration?
Interviewer: I would like to, of course. I will be considering what is happening then in the war because there are moments of difficulties, escalation, many missiles, etc. But honestly, well, I can’t come, especially during the war, unless President Trump invites me personally. I’m not sure it’s proper to come because I know that in general, leaders are, for some reason, not usually invited to the inauguration of the President of the United States of America.
Interviewee: Well, and I know that there are leaders who can simply come, want to come, and will come. Yeah, yeah, I know. And I know the temperament of some of these people. They can come at their discretion. This is very, very difficult for me. I am the kind of person that cannot come without an invitation. This is Putin; he did not invite him; he came to us, so to say. And me, I can’t do that.
Interviewer: No, but didn’t he publicly say that it would be great if you came to the inauguration, or you mean did he invite it officially?
Interviewee: Wait, look, look, look. Listen, I am against any bureaucracy; I get rid of it as much as I can. But, well, you know, there are some complexities involving security. I decide, and I fly, and the United States of America provides security. Now, I need this, mind you. I do not ask for helicopters to fly around and protect me, but they will simply do it themselves. The security service itself, they had to do it. I don’t want it, and sometimes I don’t need it.
And I’m asking—it was, for example, before the war. Yes, I think it was before the war. I just—I just had a meeting, yes, with President Trump. It was in 2019. I wanted to just go for a run early in the morning because I really wanted to exercise. And those tall bodyguards, a lot of them, they decided to join me. I couldn’t really do it because they were in suits, and I was in sportswear. I said, “No, I can’t.” It’s always funny. I don’t want to disturb anybody, and of course, anyone—the problems with me, and that’s why if he will invite me, I’ll come.
Interviewer: I thought he invited you.
Interviewee: Yeah, yeah, I thought he publicly invited you, but okay. I hope to see you. I think they had to do some of their steps. I don’t know, but the step, yeah, and the stamp was missing. Yeah, but with pleasure, with my wife, of course. And I think it’s important. It’s important.
Interviewer: Alright, let’s get back to a serious question. Sometimes they say it in America, this question of who is really in power. So let me ask: Is someone controlling you? For example, oligarchs, American politicians, Germak?
Interviewee: I wanted to bring this up because I have been here in Ukraine twice since the invasion of '22, and one of the things I’ve learned well is that actually nobody controls you. And this is one of your strengths as a president, as a person, that oligarchs and other rich and powerful people like that cannot control you. Can you explain why that is, how you see it?
Interviewee: I think—and it is indeed true—that I’m generally difficult to deal with. I am an ambitious person. I can’t submit to anyone. I can live by rules. I believe that this is the only thing that can control any person today. These are the rules and laws of the society or state where you live. And I believe that this is the most important thing. No person could control me, as I once told President Trump when we had a meeting. By the way, he influenced me during the phone call. I told him, I told the journalist the truth then: Who can influence me? Only my boy, my son. This is the fact. When he calls asking for something, well, then I lift up my arms. Yes, and I cannot do anything about it because children are children. I have so little time with them, and therefore when there are these moments, they are precious and important to me. I am ready to do anything.
Also, probably my parents; they are an authority for me. Beyond that, I view it more as a system that can control the president. Therefore, we have oligarchs who either fled or are in prison because oligarchs usually control cash flows, people, and influence politics. And we have concrete examples with sentences. They are not just under house arrest; just that there are some judgments under which their assets were frozen or sanctions were imposed. There are specific people who are behind bars. I think this is the answer regarding the influence. Would they like to influence me in the same way as any president of Ukraine? Because finance and cash flows always influence politics. Well, at least they want to do this.
This is regarding the influence. And other people on the vertical day perform tasks as my managers. You mentioned is one of those managers. Well, I am glad that I have such people. Well, probably there’s nothing else to add here. I will just say that your team that I spoke with is an excellent team.
Interviewer: Ok, one last question: the future of Ukraine. If you look 5, 10, 20 years into the future, what can help Ukraine flourish economically, culturally, politically in the future?
Interviewee: Digital. Very important. Digitalization of all the processes. We began this work; we have a special ministry of digital transformation, right? Yeah, so it’s very good. And we also have our DIA; this is the name for all of these services. Yeah, so I think that is the most important. This is, again, this is not only convenient; that will cancel all the possibilities for future corruption because you don’t have any personal connections with people in the government or elsewhere. So you’re just on your phone or any other device. That’s it. And I think we are doing very well. We are the best in Europe. All of Europe recognizes it. Some countries of the African Union asked us to provide this same service, and we will do it after the war immediately.
And I think that we can bring money to Ukraine from this. And I think what we also need, we need a tax reform. I think it will be very important for the businesses to return. A lot of support will come, I think, from USA business investment—not as direct aid to us, just to the private sector and resources. And I mentioned this to President Trump and to some European leaders who are our key strategic partners that will be happy, especially with the Americans, to sign these contracts and engage in joint investments in many areas.
And I think we can develop oil, gas, green energy, including solar power, and we already have the resources. We can invest money into this. We have oil reserves in the Black Sea that we can exploit. We need your expertise and the investment of your companies. We have gold and uranium reserves—the largest in Europe, by the way—which is also very important. France, out of Africa, they urgently need uranium, which we have. So we are ready to open up for investments, and this will give us, of course, opportunities, jobs for people, revenue.
I don’t want your labor, honestly. What I truly want, especially after the war, is to open up for those people who can really contribute and earn. Yes, and give a reason to the 8 million people to come back. Yes, it’s so important. And they will come, and we will recover and rebuild. We will be very open to companies, and of course, we will welcome our people back. It’s so important.
Culturally, I think the most important thing is to remain open and not change our direction because culturally aligning with Russia is one idea, while aligning with Europe is another. Our people have chosen Europe; it’s their choice; it’s our choice, the choice of our nation. And I think it’s very important, but first, you have to end the war.
Interviewer: Yes, you’re right. And we will. We want peace, you know. I mean, just to make it clear, we want peace. Just what I always say: you have to come to Ukraine and see for yourself, and people will tell you, “No, we can’t forgive those murders who took our lives.” But we still want to make peace.
And honestly, I think that the highest approval rating of the President of the United States, of Trump now, is in Ukraine. People really believe that he can truly help bring peace. Now they have faith, faith that he can make it happen, that he can support Ukraine, and he can stop Putin. And that he will make sure Putin doesn’t get everything he wants. This is very important, and it’s why we believe that we must not lose this opportunity.
I hope you find the path to peace. Thank you.
Interviewee: Thank you so much. Thank you for coming.# Interview with President Volodymyr Zelensky
Lex Fridman: And go very much. Thank you for listening to this conversation with the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. And now let me answer some questions. Try to reflect on and articulate some things I’ve been thinking about. To submit questions, including in audio and video form, go to lexfreeman.com/ama or to contact me for whatever other reason, go to lexfreeman.com.
Lex Fridman: First, a bunch of questions about this. So let me chat about the topic of language. Let’s say the mechanics of multilingual conversation. Perhaps the details are interesting to some people. It also allows me to reflect back on the puzzle of it in this episode and what I can do better next time.
I already explained in the intro the symbolic, historic, and geopolitical complexity of the choice of language in the conversation with President Zelensky. As I said, language is one that the president speaks fluently and was his primary language for most of his life. I speak Russian fluently as well; it’s the only language we are both fluent in. Any other combination of languages required an interpreter, including when I spoke English. He did need an interpreter when I spoke English. Just like I was visibly encumbered and annoyed by the process of interpretation, this is why I tried to speak in Russian to the president instead of English, so that he can directly understand me without an interpreter.
I’m willing to take the hit for that, as I am for everything else. I’m not trying to protect myself; I’m trying to do whatever is best for the conversation, for understanding. Though it has been getting harder and harder to stay open, vulnerable, and raw in public while there are swarms of chanting internet mobs up with their torches and their color-coded hats, flags, frogs, pronouns, and hashtags. Anyway, there are a lot of nuanced aspects of the conversational language that I would like to explain here. I’ll try to be brief. I can recommend a lot of books on this topic of language and communication that reveal just how amazing this technology of language is. For example, for a good overview, I recommend John McWhorter’s books and especially his lecture series for The Great Courses on language that are several in the story of human language series. He gives a great discussion on spoken language versus written language and that spoken language often relaxes the rules of communication. It uses shorter packets of words, loads in a bunch of subtle cues and meanings.
Like I’m trying to describe our loss when there’s an interpreter in the loop. Let me also describe some relevant characteristics of my language abilities. I was never good at speaking. I listen to think and understand better than I speak. For me, this is true for both English and Russian, but it is especially true for Russian. It’s a wonderful language, alas, with much more room for wit, non-standard terms of phrase, metaphors, humor, rhyme, musicality, and let’s say deforming of words that create a lot of room for creativity in how meaning and emotion are conveyed. You can do the same in English; it’s harder. I actually find that Brits are sometimes very good at this. Like one of my favorite humans to talk to is Douglas Murray. Sending the content of the conversation aside, the sheer linguistic brilliance and wit of dialogue with Douglas is a journey in itself.
I think Christopher Hitchens had the same, and many others, like I said, especially Brits. Anyway, I’m able to detect and understand a lot of dynamism and humor in the Russian language, but I’m slow to generate it, in part because I just don’t practice. I have very few Russian-speaking friends. Funny enough, most of them are Ukrainian, but they speak with me and each other in Russian. But of course, as I mentioned, this is slowly changing due to the war. But I tried to speak to the president in Russian so he would avoid needing an interpreter as much as possible. One of the things I want to improve for next time is to make sure I get very good equipment for our interpretation and arrange for an interpreter I trust and to be exceptionally good. The dynamism and the endurance of a three-hour conversation in the style that I tried to do.
Just to give you some behind-the-scenes details of the experience. So, equipment-wise, funny enough, it’s not actually so trivial to set up wireless connections from us, the two people talking, to the interpreter and then back to us in a way that’s super robust and has clean audio. The audio I had in my ear from the interpreter had allowed background noise, so the whole time I’m hearing a voice of the interpreter coming in very quietly. What a wonderful experience! Whole life is frankly plus his translation was often incomplete, but at least for me, so I had to put together those puzzle pieces continuously. Again, it worked out, and hopefully, our constant switching of languages and having a meta discussion about language provided good insights as to the complexity of this fight for our nation’s identity and sovereignty that Ukraine is going through.
Behind the scenes of Mike, on a personal level, President Zelensky was funny, thoughtful, and just a kind-hearted person. And really, the whole team were just great people. It was an experience I’ll never forget. After the conversation was recorded, the next challenge was to translate all of this and overdub it and do it super quickly. Like these words I’m speaking now have to be translated and dubbed into Ukrainian and Russian. Eleven Labs were really helpful here, bringing the president’s voice to life in different languages. But even more than that, they’ve just an amazing team who inspired me and everyone involved. Please go support Eleven Labs; they are a great company and great people.
The translation is separate from the text-to-speech and was done in part by AI and a lot by human. This is where the fact that we had constant switching between three languages was a real challenge. So there are six transition mappings that have to be done: English to Ukrainian and Russian, Ukrainian to English and Russian, and then Russian to English and Ukrainian. Continuously, sentence by sentence, sometimes word by word. The combination of language-to-language translation is best done by a person who specializes in that kind of mapping, so it’s all a beautiful mess. On top of all that, translation is super hard. For example, I’ve read and listened to a lot of the CFS game, both English and Russian, and studied the process of how these books are translated by various translators. You can spend a week discussing how to translate a single important sentence well. Obviously, in this situation, we don’t have weeks—hours.
One of the things I regret is not putting enough time into the hiring and selecting great translators from Russian and Ukrainian to English, especially. I think translation is an art. Getting a good translator that works well with us is a process that needs more time and effort. I’ll be doing that more this month. By the way, we have a small but amazing team. If you want to join us, go to lexfreeman.com/hiring. If you’re passionate, work hard, and everyone on the team loves working with you, then we’ll do some epic stuff together. I’d love to work with you.
I said about Eleven Labs; there are a few things as awesome in life as being able to work hard with an amazing team towards a mission all of us are passionate about. Anyway, I’ll probably be doing a few more interviews in the Russian language. I do have a lingering goal of interviewing the mathematician Kagore Prowman. There are also others. I will also work on improving my whole pipeline, both equipment-wise and interpreter-wise, in doing these conversations in other languages. Because there are many that I would like to do in languages I don’t speak at all, like Chinese, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese, French, and German. I see language as both a barrier for communication and a portal to understanding the spirit of a people connected by that language. It’s all a weird and beautiful puzzle. I’m just excited to get the chance to explore it.
Lex Fridman: All right, I got a question on how I prepare for podcasts. So this has evolved and expanded more and more over time. There are some podcasts that I prepare hundreds of hours for. In AI terms, let’s say first I’m training a solid background model by consuming as much variety on the topic as possible. A lot of this comes down to picking high signal sources, or there’s blogs, books, podcasts, YouTube videos, ex-accounts, and so on. For this conversation with President Zelensky, for example, since February 2022, I’ve spoken with hundreds of people on the ground. I’ve read Kindle or audiobook about ten books fully, and then I skimmed about twenty more. That doesn’t mean books about Zelensky, although he does appear in some of them. I mean books where this conversation was fully in the back of my mind as I’m reading the book. So for example, Red Famine by Anne Applebaum. It’s about Baltimore. Does it directly relate to Zelensky? Not on the surface, no, but it sort of continues to weave the fabric of my understanding about people and the history of the region. But it’s really important for me to read books from various perspectives, and I’m always trying to calculate the bias under which the author operates and adjusting for that in my brain as I integrate the information.
Applebaum’s book Gulag is very different from Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. The former is a rigorous, comprehensive historical account. The latter is a literary, psychological, and personal portrait of Soviet society. Both, I think, are extremely valuable. On the biased front, for example, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer is a good example. It is full of bias, but he was there, and to me, he has written probably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, book on the Third Reich ever. But like I said, it has a lot of inaccuracies and biases. You can read about them online if you like. But my job in this case, in all cases, is to adjust based on my understanding of the author’s biases and take the wisdom from the text where it could be found and putting the inaccuracies aside into the proverbial dustbins of history.
So I’m reading, I’m writing down my thoughts as they come up, always digging for some deeper insight about human nature. If I’m at my computer, I’ll write it down in Google Docs. Sometimes I use Notion or Obsidian. If I’m not on my computer, I’ll use Google Keep. So for example, if I’m listening to an audiobook and I’m running along the river, if a good idea comes to mind, I’ll stop, think for a few seconds, and then do a speech-to-text note in Google Keep. By the way, I listen to audiobooks at 1x speed. Eventually, I get a gigantic pile of thoughts and notes that I look over to refresh my memory, but for the most part, I just stream out. It’s a background model-building process. By the way, LLMs are increasingly becoming useful here for organization purposes. They have not yet, at least for me, and I do try a lot for insight extraction or insight generation purposes. I should mention that my memory for specific facts, names, and dates is terrible. What I remember well is high-level ideas. That’s just how my brain works, for better or for worse. And the words needed to express them make me sound simplistic and even unprepared. I’m not, but that’s life; we have to accept our flaws and roll with them.
Aside from books, I also listen to a lot of podcasts and YouTube videos where people are talking about the topic. So for the President Zelensky episode, I listened probably to hundreds of hours of content from his supporters and from his critics from all sides. Again, I choose who to listen to based not on their perspective but based on SNR—signal-to-noise ratio. If I’m regularly getting insights from a person, I will continue listening to them, whether I agree or disagree. And this turns out to be a lot of hours of prep, but to say that it’s six hours per episode is not accurate because a lot of this preparation transfers from one guest to another. Even when there’s an insane level of variety in the guests, we’re all humans after all; there is a thread that connects all of it together somehow.
For more technical guests in STEM fields, I read papers—lots of papers—and also technical blog posts and technical tweet threads. This is a very different process. For AI or CS-related topics, I will run other people’s code; I will write my own, implement stuff from scratch. If it’s a software company, I’ll use their tools and software for elements. But in the actual conversation, I constantly am searching for simple but profound insights at various levels of abstraction. Sometimes this means asking a trivial question in hopes of uncovering the non-trivial, counterintuitive, but fundamental idea that opens the door to a whole new way of looking at the field.
And actually, every guest is their own puzzle. Like preparing for Regurlin was me listening to hundreds of songs he produced and even learning some on guitar, like Heart by Johnny Cash. Preparing for the Cursor team episode meant, obviously, I had to use Cursor fully. All of its features. For Paul Rosely, Round 2, I literally went deep into the jungle with Paul and almost died—fully taking a leap toward adventure with him. When it gets close to the conversation, I’ll start working on the actual interview questions and notes. And there I’m asking myself, what am I personally curious about? Like I love podcasts; I’m a big fan of many, many podcasts. So I ask myself, what would I want this person to explain on the podcast? And maybe what aspect of their thought process or their humanity do I want to be surfaced or have the chance to be surfaced?
In the actual conversation, I always try to put my ego aside completely and do whatever it takes to have a good conversation and serve the listener. This means asking questions simply, being open-minded, vulnerable, curious, and challenging a guest when needed. Despite the claims on the internet, I do ask a lot of challenging questions, including follow-ups, but always with empathy. I don’t need to be right; I don’t need to signal my moral or intellectual superiority to anyone. I try to do the opposite, actually, because I want the guests to open up. And I trust the intelligence of the listener to see for themselves if the guest is full of shit or not, to detect the flaws and the strengths of how the guest thinks or who they are deep down.
A lot of times when interviewers grill the guest, it doesn’t reveal much except give a dopamine hit to the echo chambers who hate the guest. As I said in the intro, I believe the line between good and evil does run through the heart of every man. The resulting conversation is sometimes a failure because they’re too short, sometimes because the chemistry was just not working, sometimes because I messed up. I try to take risks, give it everything I got, and enjoy the rollercoaster of it all, no matter what. And as I said, I trust the listener to put it all together, and I trust the critic to tear it apart. And I love you all for it.
Lex Fridman: I gotta biff a fun question; it’s a long one. So Delian, cool name, wrote in saying he spotted me out in the wild and had a question about it. He wrote, “I saw Lex working at the Detroit airport between flights. I hesitated and ultimately decided not to interrupt since he was in focus mode. Lex had his headphones/earbuds on, listening to brown noise, Microsoft’s Surface propped up at eye level, Kinesis Advantage keyboard on the table. The use of Microsoft Windows is surprising, but it has been discussed in the past. The ergonomics of the setup—Surface at eye level—means that Lex cares about his health. But the anomalously large Kinesis Advantage keyboard seems like such a burden to lug around airports. I cannot help but ask, why is it that Lex is going through the hassle to bring this absolutely large keyboard with him as carry-on? It barely fits in a backpack. Carrying it around must be necessary for Lex for some reason. I love the puzzle of this that you’re trying to think that is. The pain of vlogging is still around; it must be much smaller than the problem it solves for him. What problem does this keyboard solve? What makes it necessary at the airport—productivity, health, RSI?”
Good questions, Delian. Great question! It made me smile, so I thought I’d answer. I remember that day. There’s something else about that day from the keyboard that I miss. I feel a melancholy feeling—appropriate for the holiday season. So let me try to set the melancholy feeling aside and answer a question about my computer setup when I’m traveling. So whether I’m going to SF, Boston, Austin, London, or the front in Ukraine, I am always bringing the Kinesis keyboard. I don’t have RSI or any other health issues of that kind that I’m aware of, even though I’ve been programming, playing guitar, and doing all kinds of combat sports my whole life. My hands and fingers have been in a lot of precarious positions and situations. There isn’t—and in general, ergonomics have never been a big concern for me. I can work in a crappy chair and table, sleep on the floor; it’s all great. I’m happy with all of it.
So why Kinesis, which by the way is right here? I had to think about it; your question actually made me reflect. And I was hoping as I’m answering it, the truth will come off. On many levels, it is true that I’m more productive with it. I can type and correct mistakes very fast compared to a regular keyboard, both in natural language typing and in programming. So fast enough, I think, where it feels like I can think freely without the physical bottlenecks and constraints of fingers moving. The bitrate in New York pilots is high enough for me to not feel like there is cognitive friction of any kind. But the real answer, the deeper, more honest answer, is something else. I’ve used the Kinesis keyboard for over 20 years, so maybe it’s like one of those love stories where a guy and a girl love each other, and you try to quit because it doesn’t quite work, but every time you leave, you ask yourself why. And then you realize that when you’re together, your life is just full of simple joys. So what’s the point of leaving? What’s the point of life if not to keep close to you the things that bring you joy? Like this keyboard; it brings me joy. It’s a bad metaphor—over-anthropomorphized, perhaps—but I never promised the good one. I’m like a cheap motel on a road trip; low quality is part of the charm. I do have some good motel stories for another time; this does not feel like the appropriate time.
All that said, to disagree with myself, I did use Emacs also for over 20 years, and in a single week recently switched to VS Code and then Cursor and never looked back. So take my romantic nature with a grain of salt. So yes, eventually, I’ll have to leave, but for now, you’ll keep finding me on occasion in a random airport somewhere, listening to brown noise, riding away the hours on the Kinesis keyboard.
Now, if you see me without it, maybe you’ll give the same change of melancholy feeling I feel now in looking back to that airport in Detroit. Anyway, more about my travel setup if anyone’s curious. I usually do travel with a Windows laptop, but I am mostly using Linux on it through WSL—Windows Subsystem for Linux. I’m, in some cases, dual-booting Linux and Windows. I also need to be able to video edit, so on longer trips, I have a bigger laptop with a bigger screen, lots of memory, good CPU, good GPU—all of that helps with video editing on Adobe Premiere. In general, I’m extremely minimalist, except for the few, let’s call them sentimental things. Like all my podcast recording equipment fits into a small suitcase. I try to keep it as simple as possible. Thank you for the question, and I’ll see you at the next airport.
Lex Fridman: All right, I think it’s time to bring things to a close. I’d like to give a big thanks to you for giving me your time and your support over the years; it means the world. If you want to get in touch with me, go to lexfreeman.com/contact. There you can get feedback, ask questions, request guests for the podcast, or submit the coffee with Lex form if you just want to chat with me over a cup of coffee. I’ll be traveling across the world a bunch this year, from Europe to South America and more, so it would be cool to do some small meetups and meet some interesting people. This has been a journey of a lifetime. Thank you for everything. On to the next adventure! I love you all.
Transmaxxing
There are many potential benefits from transitioning from male to female
0. sexual excitement from having a feminine body.
1. the superiority of female aesthetics.
2. access to the transbian dating pool.
3. full-body orgasms.
4. multiple orgasms from penile stimulation.
5. you will feel emotions stronger and be happier on estrogen.
6. your breasts will become sensitive.
7. being able to attract cis lesbians (if you become attractive enough).
8. being able to attract high-quality males for sex.
9. softer skin and less/no acne.
10. Live longer https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.12170
11. being able to extract resources from males.
12. you will no longer be driven to do dangerous and idiotic things due to testosterone
13. stop and reverse hair loss.
14. people will treat you better if they think you are female.
15. less likely to get killed https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5551594/
16. access to female spaces (males are disgusting).
17. cheaper car insurance.
How medical transition affects mating options
Since females have the upper hand on the dating market transitioning from male to female will usually
improve your options when it comes to getting sex. In addition the sex you enjoy as a female will be of
higher quality. The opposite is true for females transitioning to male.
Your sexuality may switch on hormone replacement therapy 0 if your sexuality stays the same you
always have the option of dating trans girls, there are also plenty of cis girls willing to date trans girls.
You also have the option of dating other trans girls.
Becoming MtF transsexual is a way better option than being involuntarily celibate as a male 1 2 if you
do not have autogynephilia as an incel you can try to induce it. You can watch porn and imagine
yourself as the female, there is also female POV porn you can try.
Many AFAB individuals who transition to male regret it due to the social implications 3
How to transition
If you do not currently feel like living as a female you might have to work on fixing that. Identifying as
male or being emotionally attached to a male body is bad for you if being male results in you living a
bad life.
step0: Begin voice-training so you will get a 'female' voice.
Step1: watch Yamada-kun to 7-nin no Majo.
step1: watch Tatsuwan birdy decode.
step2: watch Kashimashi girl meets girl.
step3: watch Kämpfer.
step4: watch Interspecies Reviewers Episode 3
step5: If you still don't feel like becoming a girl watch tsf monogatari and residence.
step6: As a last resort you can try sissy hypno porn 4
step7: Go to a gender clinic if you need an official diagnosis at some point.
step8: Bank your sperm.
step9: Start hormone replacement therapy 5
step10: Removal of unwanted hair.
step11: Facial feminization surgery (if needed).
step12: Social transition 6
If you have been a sissy/similar in the past it's time to stop now, you can do better than that. This will
be significantly easier on female hormones which is part of the reason sissies often benefit from them.
You need to know your value as a female, it's important that you adapt mentally to the new situation.
If you have been a sissy/similar in the past it's time to stop now, you can do better than that.
Other great anime with MTF elements are Kimi no na wa (your name), Kenja no Deshi wo Nanoru
Kenja, youjo senki, Ranma 1/2, Cheeky angel, When i woke up i became a bagel girl.
The experience of becoming female
The following individual was able to massively improve his life by transitioning.
Honestly this was even harder to decide to post than my attempt to be gay 8+ months ago. Because the
implications and outcomes have been completely different, the experience has been completely
different.
Disclaimer: Before all of this i 100% completely identified as a man, a man's man type of internal
mindset. Very heterosexual. And gay stuff just did nothing for me. It was only out of desperation and
having the right features that i attempted this gender transition. By right features i mean i was only 5'8
starting out and had a 2.7 inches erect penis. Plus all my facial features are feminine and i was pretty
cute even as a guy. With 4 inches to my height and dick i could have been a normie or even chad lite.
Yet reality is cruel sometimes. Since being on hormones i have lost some height, so i'm closer to 5'7
now, a true manlet if i ever decide to return to manhood.
I have been on estrogen for about 6 months now. It all started when i got my new therapist three
months before that, who referred me to a new general practitioner he knows. Obviously i told him
nothing about being incel or hating females. only that i always felt like a girl, which was a massive lie.
I just wanted to get hormones to attempt a gender transition and hopefully become attracted to dudes
like the other trans on reddit, who so ironically betray themselves and their cause by casually posting
truth.
I just want to say for the record i don't believe in any of the trans bullshit about being born that way.
Maybe an exceptionally small amount of them are. Yet if you read their forums or subs it's so extremely
common how many of them are just guys who wank to shemale porn and have autogynephilia. The vast
majority almost always speak about how their brains get changed by hormones. Further proving they
are truly male in the brain. Basically they are mostly cross-dressing fetishists. Maybe a very few of
them really were born with a fucked up brain but it's hard to weed out the liars. Since the fake trans just
copy what the real trans say. Yet they let it slip in their posts how
much they love tranny porn or wanking their she cocks. Not that
it matters, more trans is always a good thing. Less beta orbiters
and sometimes even trans that are hot.
The first injection my doctor did for me. After that i did the rest
myself. My hormones were tested before i started estradiol and at
the 3-month mark. My testosterone was exceptionally low so he
said i did not need an anti-androgen. I started out injecting every
2 weeks but moved to once per week after 3 months because i
was getting hot flashes due to low spots in between.
The changes seemed slow at first. The first week i got sick to my
stomach after the injection. I just felt awful, almost like someone was flicking my balls with their
finger. Not as painful as being kicked in the nuts though. This lasted for about 3 or 4 days. Then it
happened again after the next injection. It mostly stopped after the 3rd one. By which time i already
had breast buds. Just a short while after that i started getting serious breast tissue. I had already been
out in public dressed several times even in the first month. But i got a binder so i could delay social
transition, because i needed more time to master my female voice.
Mastering a female voice was actually pretty tough. It took me about a month and a half to really sound
like a girl. And i was practicing every day at least 30 minutes. I spent so much time looking up how to
do this and incorporating the advice into my sessions. I would record myself and play it back to see if i
sounded like a girl.
It was about 4 months in when things really started to twist my reality into all sorts of fucked. One day
when i was wanking i realized i was still hard after cumming, which was mostly clear at this point. i
felt as if i was not fully satisfied, as if i could keep going. So i kept wanking and i came again. Then i
came again, and again. With no orgasm declining in quality. I came so many times i wasn't horny for 4
days afterwards. At which point i came over 10 times. A week after that i came 40+ times in less than
an hour. I actually lost count of how many times i came. The first orgasm had the most clear cum. Then
the first few after had plenty. Then i would rotate between ejaculating anywhere from a teaspoon, to a
few drops, to a dry orgasm. As my body just kept making more.
During this same time my emotions were becoming far more intense. I would cry at stupid and random
stuff. But crying does not feel bad, it feels good to release emotions. I would care about stuff that didn't
even matter. It was almost like the hormones were dumbing me down. Dumbing me down enough to
where i could enjoy life. I was starting to get a feeling, almost like being continually a little bit high. It
was euphoric to say the least.
I only had a bit of feeling in my phantom vagina area, which was more than a bit disappointing, so i
decided to try to encourage the feelings. I had phone sex with a couple of guys i met on the net. I
role-played the part of the girl perfectly, even moaned like i was loving it. The next day after the 3rd
guy i experienced a massive change. After peeing i felt this intense surge of energy from my phantom
vagina to my chest. An absolute nuclear pleasure reaction and i thought about the night before when i
had phone sex with that guy. It wasn't long after i realized what men could do to me, that i started
craving to kiss them. Craving them inside me as i cuddled my pillow while falling asleep. Craving to be
held by a big and strong man.
The month after that things got even more intense. It was clear
to me that females experienced sex with far more joy than men.
It's like having a dick with sensory feelings that reaches all
through up the body and hooks in the heart. My first experience
with a guy was a non-chad friend, who knew i had started a
transition and thinks i am actually trans. We didn't have sex or
even oral but we kissed a few times and cuddled for a few
hours. It was magical, the cuddles were even better than the
endless orgasms. Waves upon waves of mental emotion mixed
with sexual waves of pleasure. It's so extremely addicting.
I'm beyond words enjoying my experience on female
hormones. I still hate females, cucks, and chads. This is the
turning point for me. If i don't quit now i will probably end up
sterile and unable to break this intense addiction to female
hormones and to men. Finishing transition will take work but
leads to a life of happiness. Not finishing means going back to a
hell after experiencing a heavenly paradise the likes of which i
could have never imagined.
I feel like any choice i make is life-wrecking but i was already totally fucked to begin with. It's so
fucked up to crave men, to think of being dominated by them. My brain is so fucked up on female
hormones it's telling me it would feel amazing to swallow semen and get creampied. I only have one
cuddle buddy right now but i think about cuddling other guys too.
I have not had sex yet, not even oral but i feel like if a dude mounts me and creams me while i'm
hopped up on estrogen there may be no return. Because i can already tell getting fucked is another level
of pleasure. Maybe even greater than the endless orgasms or even the cuddling. Orgasms are just a
sprinkle on the icing for female bodies. Things are so much more intense and amazing in all areas of
life. Going from before transition to right now was like going from black & white reality in low
definition to 4k ultra HD with perfect sound. Even more than that, it's like life is even more colorful
now and things are so much more intense. The sky even looks brighter, stars shine more intensely to
me. It's like hormones grew a lens of happiness in my brain that i now perceive reality through and it's
a much more positive experience.
Things look potentially so good, at least better than when it was hopeless. I don't know if i can ever go
through with having my genitals cut off. I just have like a mental block over such a barbaric surgery. I
think i could live fine with just having male parts. I partially identify as female but know deep down I'll
always be a man because men are awesome.
I could see this as being the best cope for manlets who are cute. As long as their face isn't too
masculine. I'm not saying it's perfect, it has downsides like having to pee more. It's still a lot better than
being incel forever. A lot of males suffer because the value their pride over their happiness, destroying
your male pride is an important step in your transition process.
http://archive.is/oge4A#selection-1481.0-1541.227
The male gender role is broken
Let's face it, if you present as male, there's exactly one personality that will earn you social approval:
Chad. Assertive, dominant, successful. Nobody will be impressed by a male that is meek, submissive
and struggling. Such males are not considered gender trailblazers; they're just derided as incel NEETs.
Nobody is offering an actual solution to this. Tradcons tell you to just man up. TERFs tell you to just
abolish gender. Liberals deny this reality altogether.
By embracing girlmode, you actually become free to be your authentic self without shame. Society at
large requires men to keep grinding and struggling to keep the lights on, so obviously no serious and
respectable person will encourage you to just drop down the pink vortex, but it's possibly the only thing
that will actually help you if you're stuck being a shitty male with no prospects.
Life outcomes of people that transition
Trans-women that are supported by their parents have good life outcomes 7 as society becomes more
accepting of trans-women the outcomes of people that transition from male to female will improve.
A large number of observational studies on medical transition have already been done and results are
good. Hormone replacement therapy has been found to be beneficial for trans people.
https://vintologi.com/threads/science-regarding-transexualism.566/#post-3632
In some of these trials trans people reported the same quality of life as non-trans people, this was only
the case for trans people who had already started medical transition.
Already today people that transition male to female seem to do better than female to male 8
Trans-women will benefit from the increasing female privilege, thus in the future more males will
benefit from transitioning while it becomes less beneficial for females to transition to male despite
trans-men becoming more accepted by society. Transitioning from male to female can be a very good
experience.
Who actually benefit from medical transition?
The following study found that MtF transition improved quality of life while FtM transition had no
statistically significant QoL benefit.
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2014.899174
MtF prior to transitioning
Body Image scale, 43.25
Quality of Life scale, 62.50
Quality of Sexual Life scale, 56.25
Interpersonal Relation-ship scale, 50.25
MtF after transition
Body Image subscale average score was 68.75 (p<0.05)
Quality of Life score was 72.2 (p<0.05)
Quality of Sexual Life scale score was 62.05(p<0.05)
The Interpersonal Relationship scale reported an average score of 75 (p<0.05)
FtM comparison
Despite being significantly more dysphoric prior to transitioning they did not improve as much in terms
of quality of life. It seems like AFAB individuals were more reluctant to transition (less of them in the
study, more dysphoric) but the ones that actually transitioned were very happy with the physical results
regarding their bodies.
MtF Body image: +25.5
FtM body image: +41.4
MtF quality of life: +9.7
FtM quality of life: +5.5
FtM prior to transitioning
Body Image scale, 21.85;
Quality of Life scale, 63.25
Quality of Sexual Life scale, 50.25
Interpersonal Relationship scale, 50.02.
FtM after transition
Body Image subscale score was 63.25 (p<0.05)
the average Quality of Life score was 68.75 (p=ns)
the average Quality of Sexual Life scale score was 56.25 (p=ns)
the Interpersonal Relationship scale average score was 81.25(p<0.05).
Most MtF individuals in the study probably didn't pass
This explains why their social relationships did not improve as much as FtM individuals, it was
difficult for them to pass as the opposite sex.
Age: 32.7±8.8 yr
Height: 172±7.38 cm
Long-term outcomes
The study above only lasted a year. We do however have the following study showing the yearly
suicide attempt rate to drastically drop from 27% to 1% after medical transition.
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/ss/2013-v59-n1-ss0746/1017478ar/
We also have the following study showing the rate of hospitalization to drastically drop over time after
transgender surgery further indicating that long-term outcomes are better than short-term outcomes.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20050599
People are required to be screened for mental health problems before gender-affirming surgery and
might therefore have particularly high odds of mental health treatment in the perioperative year because
of their perhaps involuntary receipt of mental health services. These individuals might be less likely to
voluntarily seek treatment for mental health problems with greater time since surgery.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20050599
The study itself says "hospitalization for suicide attempt" and it's unclear if or how many of these
"hospitalizations" (worse than jail) was due to the fact that these people were forced into psychotherapy
and psychiatric screening which would expose them to the predatory and unethical mental health
industry.
5-year follow up survey : transition is beneficial for AMAB people
Clinicians did report improvement less often than the patients but MtF
transition was still found to be beneficial even when judged by judging
by the clinician.
https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1007/s10508-009-9551-1
Only MtF transition had a statistically significant benefit when judged
by the clinicians.
Here homosexual and heterosexual refers to sexual orientation relative to the birth-sex which is
somewhat transphobic.
As we see sexual orientation does not seem to be an important factor when it comes to whether or not
the transition will be beneficial.
The MtF transsexuals of this study all started at age 21 or later.
10-year follow up survey: people do better after transitioning
The sample comprised 71 participants (35 MtF and 36 FtM). The follow-up period was 10–24 years
with a mean of 13.8 years (SD = 2.78)
https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1007/s10508-014-0453-5
None of the participants expressed a desire for genderrole reversal (n = 69), and when asked about how often
they had doubts about their present gender role,
participants answered with a mean of 4.70 (SD = 0.71;
n = 70) on a rating scale from 1 (‘‘continuously’’) to 5
(‘‘never’’).
Satisfaction with one’s own appearance was again
rated on a 5-point scale and was 4.46 (SD = 0.86; n =
70) on average.
Multivariate regression: HRT is beneficial
HRT has been found to be beneficial after adjusting for potential confounding factors in multiple
studies. People who got access to HRT before 18 also did better than the one who got HRT later after
adjusting for various confounding factors
Statistically significant difference was found with regard to "past-year suicidal ideation" which was
adjusted for gender identity, sex assigned at birth, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, famility support of
gender identity, educational attainment, total household income.
Statistically significant difference with regard to "past-month severe psychological distress" was found
after adjusting for gender identity, sex assigned at birth, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, familily
support of gender identity, educational attainment, total household income, having recieved pubertal
suppression.
In both cases the statistical significance was p<0.0001 when compared to people who never started
HRT, you will only find a difference (in either direction) that large less than once in 10000.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0261039#sec013
After adjusting for demographic and potential confounding variables, access to GAH during
adolescence (ages 14–17) was associated with lower odds of past-month severe psychological distress
(aOR = 0.6, 95% CI = 0.5–0.8, p < .0001), past-year suicidal ideation (aOR = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.6–0.9, p
= .0007), past-month binge drinking (aOR = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.5–0.9, p = .001), and lifetime illicit drug
use (aOR = 0.7, 95% CI = 0.5–0.8, p = .0003) when compared to access to GAH during adulthood.
In the following study trans people on HRT reported higher quality of life than cis people (Was
statistically significant in terms of "Mental health"" and "General health", see figure 3) While 'trans'
people not on HRT reported worse quality of life than cis controls (was statistically significant in terms
of "Role emotional, see Figure 2).
https://sci-hub.st/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02564.x
This of course is not enough to demonstrate that HRT itself is beneficial, to do that we need control for
potentially confounding factors, this can be done via multivariate regression.
Of all the factors analyzed only "Hormone Therapy" and "Depression" had a statistically significant
benefit in terms of mental health.
This is not the only study showing HRT by itself to be beneficial
https://sci-hub.st/https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-013-0497-3
Why some people regret transitioning
A recent study found that 98% of detransitioners had gender dysphoria and that 88% where AFAB
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2021.1919479
The following study above is outdated (done 1998) and it did not study transsexuals who did not opt for
SRS, there is a very large (probably majority) who do not want SRS in the first place. It did show lack
of social support to be the main cause of regret (not lack of gender dysphoria prior to transitioning).
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0447.1998.tb10001.x
We found transsexuals to be more at risk for dropping out of treatment when they were MFs, showed
more psychopathology, more GID symptoms in childhood, yet less gender dysphoria at application
So if you were more dysphoric as a child but it's getting better now you might not be the best candidate
for medical transition. It is worth noting that childhood gender identity disorder is largely defined as
being gender-nonconformative 9 10 it's not surprising that many of these will later realize medical
transition isn't for them.
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291704002776
Only non-homosexuals reported some regrets during treatment, and two during and after SR, which
they all related to a lack of acceptance and support from others.
This is a general pattern we are seeing in these studies, social factors are the biggest factor when it
comes to regrets and worse outcomes.
Overall, adolescents with poorer peer relations, poorer general family functioning, advanced age, and a
female sex assigned at birth showed more behavioral and emotional problems, or lower psychosocial
functioning. Thus, the present study confirms the important role the social environment - both peers
and family support - play with regard to the mental health outcomes in this group. Consequently,
incorporating the family and social environment into Transgender Healthcare seems crucial in order to
adequately tend to the needs of adolescents with GD 11
https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s10508-014-0300-8
As we see the regret rate is dropping despite more
people transitioning.
The FMs who applied for reversal were younger at
application than those who did not(median 22 years
compared to 27 years for the whole FM group).
Conversely, the MFs who later applied for reversal were older when they applied for sex reassignment
than those who did not (median 35 years vs. 32 years for the whole MF group). Since the group is
small, these data must, however, be interpreted cautiously.
What many people ignore is that surgeries are more or less a requirement for AFAB individuals, you
will not be taken seriously as a male if you do not have a penis or if your penis is very small. There is
less need for surgery if you are AMAB and can pass facially without FFS. It is worth nothing that
surgeries (especially mastectomy) can/will leave visible scars which can out people as transgender.
Eleven FMs (28.9%) were satisfied with their breast removal, 5 (13.2%) were dissatisfied due to the
visibility of the scars, and 22 (57.9%) were not completely satisfied. Four FMs were satisfied with their
metaidoio-plasty or phalloplasty. One FM was dissatisfied because of urinary problems, while four
were not completely satisfied.
Avoiding social difficulties while transitioning
The focus of transitioning should be on changing your secondary sexual characteristics (hormones,
surgery, etc.). You should regard it as a body modification similar to “bodybuilding”. This is the only
sensible approach if you value your social life, integrity, and self-respect.
If you believe that there is an “innate gender” which is unrelated to biology or society then you will
inevitably create social problems for yourself. People might understand that one might want to be (or
look like) a woman, but almost everyone takes “born in the wrong body” as a joke, especially if you
were not previously flamboyant.
You do not have to conform to female gender stereotypes to be valid as a woman, it’s about having
female secondary sexual characteristics. You functional socially like a female after transitioning is
simply about convenience since you look like one and it’s not just looks, your biological characteristics
(hormones, breasts, brain, etc) will be more on the female side too.
You might think that you are a girl trapped in a male body but this will be scientifically incorrect prior
to HRT 12 13 14 you having a feminine personality doesn't make you a girl 15
You do not have to come out in any way to your family or other people who know your real identity.
If you do not look and are socially regarded as a woman, claiming that you are a woman in the inside
and that people should respect your innate gender regardless of how you look is meaningless and futile.
This at best makes people pity you and at worst makes them mock and bully you. The situation
worsens if you dress in women's clothing but still look like a man. This should be avoided first and
foremost out of self-respect, and second out of respect for fellow trannies. You will also hurt yourself
for thinking that people do not treat you the way you should be treated.
Whether or not you should transition isn't something you should discuss with people who have not
properly researched these topics, most people including your family will be utterly ignorant and thus
they will not be able to give you any real help. If you announce that you plan or think about
transitioning people around you may push or outright coerce you into not doing so even though it
would be beneficial for you.
If you currently live in a transphobic environment you may want to relocate before socially
transitioning. You may want to just leave everything behind to start a new better life somewhere else, if
you cannot move to a tolerant area you may have to delay social transition until you can fully pass as a
female and then hide your sex as birth from as many people as possible. Going for a nonbinary gender
presentation is not really that great if your environment is transphobic forcing you to boymode instead.
Thus the solution is to start medication without telling anyone about it that knows your real identity,
later if/when they start noticing changes you can tell them that you are transitioning. If they find out
they will probably realize it’s too late and thus not intervene in an attempt to make you detransition.
About "real-life tests"
Some gender clinics recommend or even try to outright coerce people into presenting as the opposite
sex for years before they are given access to HRT. The obvious issue with that is that without any
surgery or HRT you will probably not pass well at all as female and thus you will become a public
clown, that will not be the experience you have if you actually transition medically and are able to pass
as female in social situations.
Delaying HRT is insanity
As you age testosterone will make you more masculine and it will become increasingly difficult to ever
pass, especially as MTF, thus if you already think "maybe i should transition" as a male just do it now
before it's too late. You don't really have time to figure out your identity or what causes your dysphoria
(if you experience any) or whether or not transition is for you.
It will be easier to tell whether or not you really should transition medically once you have already felt
the effects of estrogen, if you stop it quickly there will not be any issues and you will lose hardly
anything. if you refrain from transitioning when you should have done so the cost will be very high.
One criticism against letting minors or kids transition is that most will grow out of it as they go through
puberty, this does not however mean they wouldn't have benefited from early transition (MtF) sperm
can be banked before a child has gone through the full puberty. When you have gone through the full
puberty transition will be a lot more difficult and thus a large portion of individuals who would have
benefited from medical transition before will no longer do so when puberty is fully over.
13 year old children born males are absolutely capable of making these decisions with the support of
adults, their issue is mostly impulsivity and lack of knowledge, not lack of intelligence.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-teen-brain-2007-06/
Medical transition and reproduction
You can still impregnate females by donating sperm if you have it backed up, sure it will be less
convenient but if you are currently involuntarily celibate the chance of you reproducing is so abysmal
it's unlikely to go down further if you make the transition.
A lot of homosexual women still like dick and some of these women prefer sex with shemales over the
total humiliation of having sex with males.
Azoospermia caused by HRT is usually reversible provided you still have your testicles. Thus even if
you are unable to access sperm you have banked you might still be able to have biological children by
halting HRT for at 75 days or longer.
The same is not true for FtM, if you are born female transitioning will instead make reproduction a lot
more difficult, especially if you want to do it with a male of high quality.
Estrogenized male vs trans female
Often when people transition from male to female their goal is to become as feminine as possible and
this may include surgery to replace a functional penis with something that looks like a vagina but isn't
actually capable of giving birth. The ability to produce sperm is lost but no ability to produce eggs is
gained. The brain itself will be feminized over time shrunken to female proportions 16
https://genderanalysis.net/2018/03/your-mileage-may-vary-trans-women-and-erectile-function/
HRT will negatively affect athletic performance making it harder for you to build or even maintain
your male strength 17 the longer you stay on HRT the weaker you become 18
Trying to be just like a cis female is a futile exercise, even if you transition early you will still never be
able to get pregnant and give birth, breastfeeding will be possible but difficult 19 If your bones are
already masculine there will not be any easy way to 'fix' that if it can be fixed at all.
But there is another way, rather than trying to be like a cis dyadic female why look at what's actually
best for you given your biology and personal circumstances. What if you do not have to give up your
fertility and male brain?
The feminizing effect of HRT on appearance will have diminishing returns over time, therefore you
need to ask yourself if continuing it is worth the price, what are you actually gaining from that?
Other reasons to stop HRT
By returning to your natural male hormones you will be able to restore your male abilities such as
having a fully functioning male penis (rather than girl-dick) you will be able to become physically
strong again, your brain will start becoming masculine again.
Your breasts and other feminine traits will be retained and thus you might to a large extent get the best
of both worlds.
You need to ask yourself if having a mostly female biological sex is really beneficial for you.
Facial Feminization Surgery
Unfortunately HRT alone is often very ineffective in
feminizing the face, especially if it's only temporary.
Therefore we need something more powerful and it's
here surgery comes into play.
FFS unlike HRT will not feminize your entire biology,
instead the change will be purely cosmetic meaning you
could in theory rely mostly on FFS to pass as a female
without having to constantly be on medication.
Many surgeons will only make minor alterations to the
face but there are doctors who are willing to make a lot
more radical intervention to archive facial feminization.
Good surgeons in the US are Keojampa, Deschamps-Braly, Mardirossian, Jumaily and Harrison Lee.
Good Korean clinics are EverM, EUdental, JK, and The Face Dental. They all do double jaw and are
good with genioplasty
How society benefits from people transitioning
People that wish to transition usually have comorbid mental disorders 20 21 thus future generations are
likely to benefit from letting these women transition and sterilize themselves in the process, this comes
with the cost of using tax-money for these medical expenses and losing women that could provide
sexual satisfaction to other people.
Males transitioning to female is beneficial for society since it would allow people to have fun fucking
them. Incels transitioning to female is good for society since they will become less likely to develop or
maintain problematic political beliefs or become violent, they will instead benefit from accelerated
hypergamy and gynocentrism.
Less incels trying to force females to waste themselves on losers is a good thing.
It has been proven safe to allow trans-women inside spaces reserved for women 22 23 trying to exclude
them would harm natal women too 24 25 26
Not using tax-money to pay for medical transition would be dysgenic since it would make it more
difficult for poor people to transition.
People improving their lives by transitioning is a beautiful thing
Usually when someone lives a shit life as a male he will just complain about how women are unfair to
him or he will spend his time on various copes such as videogames and anime.
It's very rare for miserable males to actually improve themselves via medical transition, it usually takes
pretty bad gender dysphoria for them to actually take action and even then many fail to act in time.
0. Males transitioning to female makes the world more beautiful (less disgusting males).
1. People that transition and become beautiful benefit from it
2. People around them will see them improve instead of suffering or killing themselves.
3. Males that transition are politically useful for my goals (maybe also your goals).
4. Trans girls are high in demand and can allow cis lesbians to have biological children with a partner
they find attractive.
5. Voluntary chemical castration makes a male less likely to hurt other (and himself in the process).
I find it strange that people rarely object to psychiatry that outright harms people and costs billions of
dollars each year but they complain about the government helping trans individuals transition even
though it's one of the few mental health interventions that actually work.
Forced feminization
A lot of individuals cannot make it as males and will thus be forced to live as female or suffer the brutal
social consequences of being male, this is especially true for females with gender dysphoria, they might
not like their female bodies but medical transition would still be a disaster for them.
Most males are no longer needed in our modern society, technology has made name strength mostly
obsolete and most males do not have any mental abilities not commonly found in females.
Less than 10% of males are needed for sex and reproduction, most males are just a burden to society
and thus we need to increase the number of males that transition to female, especially individuals who
would clearly benefit from changing their biological sex.
Most males hold into their male pride but that will soon crash down as females raise their standards
(because they can) and even more males lose their jobs to automation.
Currently forced treatments are justified by "danger to themselves and others", you do not need to be
convicted of an actual crime. If we are going to treat people against their will that shall include HRT.
A nurse will regularly visit your home. Your pants will be pulled down and soon you will feel a needle
inside your muscle and soon the injection, estradiol valerate, it will be slowly absorbed by your body.
At first it was just pills given orally, now it's injections and at this point hiding the breasts is very
difficult. The estrogen will make you more emotional and thus you will probably start crying due to the
intense humiliation you received by the new government controlled by believers of vintologi. You
crying and begging will of course not stop the nurse from doing the injection.
After a while you will stop resisting and accept your face as a girl. It will become increasingly difficult
to hide what's happening to you, your breasts getting bigger, face feminized, brain feminized.
Once you have been forced to be on HRT long enough there will not be much left of your old self, the
hormones have changed your brain beyond recognition and now there is no longer any going back, not
only do you look like a girl now, you are now also like a girl mentally.
There are a lot of males who would benefit from transitioning but they are not willing or able to
actually transition, this can be due to social factors but in most cases the issue is ignorance, people
simply don't know what's best for them. It's a difficult and scary decision to make to start HRT and this
is why a lot of people fantasize about forced feminization, often they try to brainwash themselves via
sissy hypno porn.
The overwhelming majority of the prison population are men 27 this is very likely biological and
therefore it is worth giving people drugs that feminize the brain 28 to see if that would make them less
of a problem for society. This does not have to involve any form of social transition to the other gender.
Research already suggests that lowering testosterone will make males less violent/aggressive 29 30
Step1: do Randomized Controlled Trials on people choosing to participate in the study rather than
getting some other sentence, then 50% will be given active ingredients and 50% will be given placebo.
Step2: do Randomized Controlled Trials on problematic
individuals where they are forced to participate in the trial, 50%
will be given active ingredients while 50% will be given placebo.
Step3: do a forced HRT Randomized Controlled Trial on
individuals where medical transition seems to be beneficial but
they are unwilling to transition for various reasons.
This will allow us to better understand which individuals who
actually benefit from HRT/transition since we will be able to use
proper control groups. Doing step3 will be more difficult if we give
non-criminals full medical autonomy but this is currently not a
right non-criminals are given.
Even if it turns out not to be beneficial for society or the
individuals subjected to it in Community Treatment Order setting
forced HRT in a more controlling setting may still provide value.
Males can be reduced to property and then given HRT by the ones
owning them so they will become useful when it comes to sexual slavery. There are a lot of fun things
you can do to a male reduced to property.
Currently just being suicidal alone can warrant forced treatments by harmful and dangerous psychiatric
drugs, forcing some males to take hormone replacement therapy can thus be justified in an attempt to
prevent them from killing themselves using the same standard (even if it doesn't actually work).
Innate gender identity?
Studies on intersex children show that about 40% will identify as female when raised as one, thus
gender identity is only partly due to genetics
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421518/
This tells us that a lot of people are able to adapt to living as either sex, the brain is flexible and we can
adapt to a lot of things. Whether or not an individual will transition is only partly determined by
genetics (33% in the case of MtF)
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2013-transsexuality.html
Direct vs indirect gender dysphoria
Body dysphoria is direct discomfort (it doesn't feel right) with your body, this goes from mild to
extreme and generally this is difficult or impossible to alleviate without transitioning medically.
Even if you are ok with your current body you might still be a lot happier with a female body.
But you can also suffer in other ways due to being male such as being forced into military service,
being rejected by females you desire, in other ways being treated in ways you don't like because you
are male. Maybe you prefer female clothing but putting on female clothing and wanting to be treated
like a female when you have a male body is a recipe for disaster.
Sure you can try crossdressing in private but that's a rather pathetic cope for not being a girl, just take
your estrogen and you will soon be able to wear female clothing 24/7 without any problems.
Alternatives to medical transition
Conversion therapy with regard to gender identity has been tried and it has bad outcomes
Sometimes moving to another place can work for specific gender issues (you may want to avoid getting
drafted, having an easier time dating, etc) but this is not a general solution since some gender roles are
rather universal and thus difficult to avoid.
There is no evidence-based alternative to medical transition and the limited data we do have on
individuals unwilling/unable to transition show that they are not doing too well. Conversion therapy is
associated with higher reported suicide attempt rate (bad methodology unfortunately).
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/article-abstract/2749479
Therapists and psychiatrists cannot be trusted
Talk therapy in general is questionable, therapist will put effort into making you conform to society,
they will typically not actually look out for your own best interest and usually you will not actually be
given any legitimate advice. Instead the goal with therapy is typically to make the individual think
his/her situation is better than it actually is rather than putting effort into changing it.
https://vintologi.com/threads/therapy-brainwashing.314/
Psychiatry is outright harmful and very dangerous, especially considering how bad mental health laws
are, despite attempts to rig trial no Randomized Controlled Trial has demonstrated any benefit from
psychiatric drugs so far and other treatments like electroconvulsive therapy are also very questionable
https://vintologi.com/threads/studies-on-psychiatric-drugs.591/
https://vintologi.com/threads/psychiatry-horror-stories.267
https://vintologi.com/threads/psychiatry.737/
http://cepuk.org
Drugs will at best work as a temporary bandage. They will often make you think your situation is better
than it actually is and you may think the drug is helping you when in reality it isn't and you are just
developing addiction/dependence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3813924/
If you are suffocating to death from covid-19 due to having a weak/incompetent government being
given morphine will make you feel better but it will not actually prevent you from dying and thus you
will be more complacent when your government is in effect killing you 31
Why you cannot trust doctors in general
Regulators are there to please politicians and lobbyists, it's not actually in their own best interest to
follow enforce actual evidence-based medicine. Politicians are mostly interested in pleasing their voters
and donors and can absolutely not be trusted with any medical decision whatsoever.
If someone is democratically elected or appointed by people that are then clearly they cannot be trusted
any more than you can trust your neighbor with medical advice.
People who are not democratically elected instead have their own special interests which will conflict
with your interests as a potential patient.
The interests of doctors does not align with the interests of their potential patients, a doctor does not
actually make money from people being healthy, they make money when people are sick. They have a
vested interest in people pursuing their treatment even if these treatments are harmful to their patients.
Most medical treatments are not based on good evidence https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27032875/
Harmful puberty blockers were given to children for decades but didn't come under scrutiny until they
started being used widely for trans children (who don't need them and don't benefit from them).
https://vintologi.com/threads/why-puberty-blockers-is-a-bad-idea.975
Instead of criticizing these harmful drugs most people who at least claims to be there to support trans
people defended the usage of these drugs that harm trans children while provided zero real benefits for
them (in addition to all the damage done to cis children).
In most countries you are not the one paying for the treatment so you are not even the customer,
therefore there isn't any real incentive for the doctor to actually do what's best for you, instead doctors
will be incentives to please regulators and politicians.
Even if you pay for it them pleasing regulators will still be more important since they have far more
power than you have with your money. Furthermore since a lot of people blindly trust doctors there will
not actually be a particularly strong incentive for them to do a good job since they will get a lot of
patients anyway.
A lot of people spend money going to chiropractors even though it's very likely to do more harm than
good 32 this is far from the only example of quacks having no difficulty getting patients 33
How to do your own research
In order to do research properly you need to look up the actual original data instead of trusting other
people to interpret it correctly for you. The more steps there are between the data and what you hear the
more opportunity there is for other people to manipulate information for the sake of some agenda.
When it comes to medical topics you need to look at the actual full text, especially their actual results,
not their way to interpret the results which often does not actually agree with the data.
You can use https://sci-hub.st or sci-hub.se to gain access to the full text, use tor/proxy if it doesn't load.
You need to be very critical when appraising studies, you cannot just rely on peer review.
If the study is a meta-analysis you need to find the full text of all individual studies and also read that,
otherwise you will have to trust both the individual studies as a whole and that the authors of the metaanalysis actually did the analysis correctly which they often have an economic incentive not to.
Do not let anyone gatekeep you from transitioning
You may be in doubt and thus ask people close to you or a gender clinic you should transition are
allowed to his is not a good idea.
It's very unlikely anyone close to you has a proper understanding of the consequences that come with
transitioning, what the pros and cons will be for you. If your family of origin is transphobic just
boymode and leave, you don't need them in your life if they become a negative for you.
You have the right to rule over your own body, do not let any doctor or parent take that right away from
you. If you cannot get an official prescription in time just order online 34 it's actually rather cheap. DIY
HRT can be safer and more effective that official prescription 35
You can be honest when you talk with people online and properly hide your real identity but you
probably should not tell people close to you or any gatekeeping doctor that you get aroused by using
female clothing if that is the case for you.
Gender therapists are not basing their recommendations on proper science, instead they will base it on
their (sometimes narrow) views on what it means to be transgender and this will depend on the
therapist.
If you need an official gender identity diagnosis you probably shouldn’t be honest with any therapist
you are forced to talk to, instead just say you suffer from significant gender dysphoria and feel trapped
in the wrong body, say you felt like this as long as you can remember but that you was afraid to talk
about it because you didn’t know how people would react.
HRT reduces distress
Both percieved stress and measured cortisol levels were reduced with Hormone Replacement Theraoy.
https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1111/jsm.12155
Trapped in the wrong body?
One prevalent trans stereotype is “a girl trapped in a male body” and often people justify their
transition by them fitting into that stereotype to some degree. Is there any scientific truth to this?
Brainscans do show that prior to transitioning and after male puberty MTF individuals have brains
somewhere between male and female (average) 12
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25720349
This is not surprising considering the male socialization and male hormones these individuals have
been subjected to. Studies on trans children do however show
that they develop like the sex they identify is psychologically
https://www.pnas.org/content/116/49/24480
How well you fit into the “female trapped in a male body”
stereotype does not tell you whether or not you would
actually benefit from transitioning. You do not have to
conform to female stereotypes to be valid as a trans girl.
There are many other factors to consider such as how well
you would pass.
Female sexuality?
There are a lot of similarities between cis and trans girls in
terms of sexuality and it’s difficult to detect any clear difference, different studies have different results.
Similar to cis females trans females typically exhibit female embodiment sexual fantasies.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Who-Is-This-About-An-Exploratory-Study-of-Erotic-Fertel/
21205f4733a13460b8ca34c7312deb3eede51f28
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918360903005212
R. B. posited that all transsexuals that are not androphilic are autogynephilic. This has been thoroughly
debunked, starting with his own data. Some transsexual fits into his “AGP” and “HSTS” categories, but
it is not all of them. He handwaved that away by saying that counter-examples to his hypothesis are
either liars or that their androphilia is “meta-attraction”. By using an unfalsifiable reasoning, he put his
hypothesis within the realm of not science but pseudoscience.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2010.486241
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/
339738869_Sexual_Behavior_Desire_and_Psychosexual_Experience_in_Gynephilic_and_Androphilic
_Trans_Women_A_Cross-Sectional_Multicenter_Study
https://www.juliaserano.com/av/Serano-CaseAgainstAutogynephilia.pdf
https://archive.is/v9MI9 https://archive.is/XVt6o
https://archive.is/JiAVq https://archive.is/KXaQd
This of course has not stopped transphobes and a few naive or self-hating trans girls from believing in
that pseudoscience, a lot of people repress thinking they are “not really transgender” because of that,
this is very harmful.
Denial and paranoia among repressors
I have noticed that a lot of individuals unwilling to transition become paranoid thinking everyone is
trying to manipulate them into transitioning.
If you have transitioned yourself they will think "she is just trying to recruit me to the trans cult" (in
reality there are several factions among transgender individuals, people have different views).
If you have not transitioned yourself they will think "why isn't he following his own advice" even
though he isn't in the same situation as you, he might be married with children and thus would never
come close to passing while you would become a cute girl and drastically improve your life.
When people give you bad advice it's usually because they are simply mistaken, it's not due to them
intentionally trying to hurt you, if someone states "i think you should transition" he and she probably
believe you would benefit from it.
Repressors often listen to transphobes telling them "it's just a fetish" but that is very rarely true, almost
always it’s far deeper than that, it's not like the typical fetish you can just ignore.
While you repress and listen to what transphobes tell you your body will become destroyed over time
by testosterone often to the point where it's too late for them to ever pass as a girl.
https://transsubstantiation.com/a-letter-to-anne-lawrence-709fac0af75e?gi=2765e278afe3
The fact that you destroyed your life by not transitioning when you were young can be very painful and
because of that a lot of people are in denial and tell themselves "i am doing the right thing by
repressing" which typically do not work out too well.
Factors to consider before transitioning
There are many factors to consider. How functional is your life now as a male?
How is your sex-life?
Is there any real hope for you improving your situation while not transitioning and would it be a level
of improvement you would be satisfied with?
When was the last time you got sex without outright paying for it?
Then you compare that to how your life would be as a trans girl, would that be an improvement for
you?
Are you willing and able to have children if you stay male?
Would you be able to pass as a female?
Ideal height as a female
If you are taller than 6.1 feet (185.4cm) you will probably not be able to ever pass as a female even if
you start HRT early in life. The ideal female length is 168 to 176cm but being a short female is still far
better than being a short male.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-ideal-height-for-a-woman-to-have-%E2%80%94-in-terms-ofbeing-happy-with-her-own-height
You can expect to lose about 1 inch (2.54cm) after starting HRT.
The dating market is changing
Old studies are misleading since what was true 10 years ago no longer holds
0. A lot of people today begin transition early making it far easier to integrate with the other sex.
1. Now it's significantly harder to date as heterosexual male
2. the transbian dating pools is a lot bigger making it easier to date as gynephilic trans female.
3. Being transgender is now far more accepted socially.
4. Dating as androphilic female is now a lot easier.
Because of these factors we can expect trans-females to have better outcomes when they transition
while gynephilic trans-males will have significantly worse outcomes.
Dating as trans female
If you become attractive as trans girl you will be able to date cis and trans individuals of both genders.
Some trans girls that improve their dating lives believe this is just because they are happier now being
the gender they want to be and while this may be a small factor a far bigger factor is the overall dating
situation for males and females.
Having to compete just to get sex at all is a heterosexual male thing, it’s not really a thing among trans
girls, then instead loads of males are going to outdo each other trying to get into your pants and there
will not be any shortage of guys wanting to date you even if you are not attractive at all. The fact that
you will now be able to at least get sex does of course not guarantee that you will be able to find a
partner that's actually good for you, it's especially hard to find good males.
If you instead just date other trans girls you will be able to find someone of similar attractiveness, if
you live in a highly-populated area the transbian dating pool will be big enough for you to find a
matching partner close to you, otherwise you might have to travel or have it online only.
This can be compared to the FtM dating situation (disaster)
This illustrates that while you do have to deal with a lot of nonsense because of your gender as a female
it’s still far better than the typical life you live as a male in a functional modern society.
About gender identity
For some people their gender (current or desired) is an important part of their identity. This however is
far from universal, for most people their gender is not something their focus on, they just go along with
natural biology and focus on other things instead, most people are not really cis in a strict sense.
Gender identity politics is focused on identity (that there isn't any objective test for) rather than the
biological characteristics of your body. Some people like to think "i am a girl trapped in a male body"
but this is simply false prior to hormone replacement therapy 12 13 (after male puberty).
The following study on intersex children showed that gender identity is not completely innate, instead
it was partly determined by environment.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421518/
The group raised as female identified as such 40% of the time.
The group raised as male identified as such 100% of the time.
In most cases where one identical twin transition the other twin didn't transition 36
For some people their gender (current or desired) is an important part of their identity. This however is
far from universal, for most people their gender is not something their focus on, they just go along with
natural biology and focus on other things instead, most people are not really cis in a strict sense.
About gender identity politics
Gender identity politics is often used against trans individuals, it is claimed that males will pretend to
be transgender to get access to female spaces, this is of course extremely rare but it's still an effective
scare tactic. One potential issue with downplaying the importance of biological characteristics such as
ability to breastfeed is that then it will be more difficult to push for early medical transition, then
society can easier get away with not allowing teens to transition "you can just identify as female, you
do not need to medically transition".
It is a fact that the later you start your transition the more you will end up being different from the
average cis female, hip bones fuse at age 25, other bones finish masculinization even earlier 37 38
Pushing for the notion that sex-characteristics shouldn't matter is harmful for trans people since that
would undermine the importance of access to medical transition. Rather than coping with "i can
identity as a women" why not make sure people can become female for real?
The gender abolitionist, gender identity crowd are lesbians and radfems who are attempting to claw
back from trans women the title of “most oppressed body.” they also reject being women out of
internalized misogyny and to distance themselves from trans women. if gender is just an identity, then
trans women are just males who identify as women, and everything reverts back to genitalia at birth.
it’s genius, really.
Intersex people are also affected by these things, often they are surgically mutilated to fit into either
gender category and sometimes it turns out the gender that were assigned to them didn't fit them
particularly well. Them then being able to just identify as the sex they want to be will not solve the
issue of them having been mutilated.
Detrans people may identity as the sex they were born as even though biologically they are not there
and they will never truly be there again, often gender transitions are partly irreversible. While pointing
this out may seem cruel it's important to recognize biological reality.
Rather than focusing on arbitrary categories like race and gender we need to focus on what actually
matters for a given situation. For ordinary social interactions what really matters is how you appear, if
you look as a female people will treat you based on that. A male looking to molest females will not
base that decision on chromosomes or sex at birth.
About women's sports
Your performance in sports will depend largely on the physical characteristics of your body, not which
gender you identity as. It makes no sense to segregate sports based on gender identity and it also
doesn't make sense to segregate based on sex at birth since allowing FtM individuals in the female
category would be very unfair to females not ruining their bodies with testosterone.
Depending on the sport and what rules there are for trans females you may or may not be able to
quality for the female category and maintain an advantage over cis females.
HRT will of course make you weaker and diminish your performance in physical sports
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/06/bjsports-2020-102329.full?
ijkey=yjlCzZVZFRDZzHz&keytype=ref
The 15–31% athletic advantage that transwomen displayed over their female counterparts prior to
starting gender affirming hormones declined with feminising therapy. However, transwomen still had a
9% faster mean run speed after the 1 year period of testosterone suppression that is recommended by
World Athletics for inclusion in women’s events.
https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/55/11/577.full?ijkey=yjlCzZVZFRDZzHz&keytype=ref
Not a single trans female were able to win a medal in the 2020 olympics, Laurel Hubbard were the only
one to even quality but 2 of 3 judges disapproved of her 125 Kg lift and after failing her final attempt
she was out of the tournament.
It is worth nothing that the weight-class system used for female weight-lifting would be unfair to cis
females even if there were no trans females since the highest class that limit the body weight has a
cutoff at 93kg which effectively screw over females weighting a bit more than that. Trans females
having an advantage in weight-lifting could be rectified by adding adjustment parameters such as age
where the transition was started and deducting the breast-weight from the total weight of the female
(otherwise female with smaller breasts would get an unfair advantage).
While sports if often painted as a fair and equal playing field the reality is very different from that in
the more athletic competitions, it's about cheating as and getting away with it.
https://www.sportscasting.com/how-exactly-did-lance-armstrong-cheat/
So while attempts are made to catch cheaters many are never found out and by getting away with that
you can get a huge advantage, this is how you actually win and it's arguably a far greater factor then
whether or not you can get an advantage via gender-transition.
Athletic sports like it exists today arguably should even be a thing. It does not promote health, it does
not promote beauty. You would for example benefit from removing any body-part that does not benefit
you in said sport (such as breasts if you are female) and if nobody is willing to do that females with
naturally small breasts should be at an advantage in most athletic competitions.
Sports based on precision or intellectual ability (such as snooker) are less problematic but it's arguably
still not the best usage of your time to focus heavily on that, in order to compete on a high level you
will need to invest a huge amount of time into it's unlikely that will actually pay off.
It's far better to focus on things that are actually likely to make a real improvement for your quality of
life, being good at sports or video-games is very unlikely to be particularly helpful for you in the real
world you live in.
It would be great if trans females killed women's sports (like many conservatives have predicted) but
sadly that is very unlikely to actually happen, instead they will just change the rules if trans females
start doing too well by banning them completely or making it harder for them to compete (such as
adjusting the weight-class system in the case of weightlifting).
It was believed that high T would provide an advantage and this ended up implicating intersex females.
Some intersex females are now fighting back against this:
https://www.news24.com/sport/othersport/athletics/caster-semenya-files-lawsuit-in-european-courtthis-fight-is-not-just-about-me-20210225
If they actually have an advantage that would just be one of many natural advantages some people can
have. Where do we draw the line?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiCftTLUzCI
Self-ID as a tool for egalitarianism
Self-ID can actually be useful for circumventing discrimination based on legal sex.
If your state doesn't recognize same-sex marriage self-ID would allow you to go around that.
If there are gender quotas people disingenuously self-identifying as the other sex can allow the most
qualified people to get positions instead of picking someone less qualified based on their sex. This will
of course upset some feminists but it's of a beneficial for society since you get better governance.
In many of these cases where self-ID is 'abused' it's arguably a good thing since having laws depend on
some arbitrary definition of sex doesn't really make sense anyway.
In general self-id can be weaponized to push for gender egalitarianism by making legal sex near
meaningless, abolishing discrimination based on legal sex isn't always politically viable.
Woman = Adult Human Female
Some people have suggested to divorce the concept of woman from sex such as wanting to define
womanhood based on some gender identity or by defining it based on what roles you perform on
society. Is there really value in classifying male crossdressers as women?
Why not instead define womanhood based on whether or not someone is an 18+ human female?
When trans people medically transition with HRT the transition itself will be biological, all the
hormones does is signaling to the body what to do, you already have the genes needed to grow fully
functioning breasts capable of breastfeeding. Trans females are female and thus women when 18+.
Breastfeeding
In 2018 the medical journal Transgender Health published a case study that grabbed headlines
everywhere from the New York Times to the Guardian, documenting how a New York transgender
woman was able to use a regimen of drugs to induce lactation and become her child’s only source of
nutrition for six weeks. It was hailed as the “first formal report in the medical literature of induced
lactation in a transgender woman,” as authors Zil Goldstein and Dr. Tamar Reisman told the Times.
Yet this was no news to many within the transfeminine community, where it has been widely
understood that trans women can breastfeed for years. In online forums and on social media, trans
women have long shared anecdotal accounts of methods used and success achieved in lactating and
feeding their children. As far back as 2010, Dr. Christine McGinn, a trans surgeon who specializes in
gender reassignment surgery, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show in a sensationalized segment that
revealed she had both fathered her children and was the sole parent to breastfed them. What’s more
surprising is that it took this long for a medical journal to document the process.
In order to breastfeed you first need to have fully developed female breasts which you will get from
Hormone Replacement Therapy, next you will have to trigger the lactation and there are multiple ways
to do that.
One commonly-used method for non-gestational cisgender and transgender women to induce lactation
is called the Newman Goldfarb protocol. It relies on the anti-nausea drug domperidone, which is
banned by the FDA due to heart health risks (but widely used in Europe and Canada). Dr. Molly
Moravek, a reproductive endocrinologist at the University of Michigan, praised the fact that more
people are now talking about how trans women can breastfeed in the same way as cisgender women
but worries that people will “miss the part where the very last thing they say in the study is that we still
need to do more research to figure out the right doses of these medications.” And indeed, induced
lactation in trans women is still highly experimental.
Kaia, 30, Toronto, ON
My wife and I have a really nice basis for comparison, because we went from two boobs to four boobs
when I transitioned. There’s a lot more sleep this time around, and a lot more ability for my wife to be
able to go out and know that you’re not going to have a baby freakout. I remember back when we had
our first child, five years ago, she had to go somewhere for an hour, and the baby’s sitting there
screaming, and we hadn’t pumped milk before that. We were first-time parents, we were 24, didn’t
know what we were doing, and i was just freaking out. I texted her and said “I don’t know what to do, i
can’t feed the baby, what do i do?” We just wound up having a baby scream for a half hour, and she
came back and felt really horrible.
Stuff like that doesn’t happen anymore. We’ve had two people to get a baby to sleep, two people to
feed it, and I don’t know if this is in any way correlated, but we’ve never had a baby grow this fast
before. They gained back their birth weight in a week, and they’re gaining an average of 1.1 ounces a
day, and have maintained that consistently.
Brettany, 56, Texas
My body will never allow me to conceive and bear a child, and I've always wanted to at least be able to
nurse one. That was the main motivation for this. The secondary motivation was that i wanted to bring
my breasts to full maturity. At that time i was comfortably into stage four on the Tanner scale [a system
used to medically qualify the development of secondary sex characteristics], and from my research i
realized most cis women do not even make it to Tanner stage five unless they've gone through
pregnancy or a lactation protocol, because it requires that extra bit of development that prepares you for
breastfeeding in order to finish the development of your breasts.
I did some research about lactation and tried to dig up whatever i could on it, and came across a
protocol called Newman Goldfarb.
With a fairly long session, i could produce about an ounce. It was kind of funny because my spouse has
really struggled with my breasts growing and at that point she was giving me tips on how to stimulate
more milk production. I think that i would have done quite a bit more, except at about that time we
found out we had to move to move to another city, and then we’ve had to move again since. I've stayed
away from the progesterone in hopes that at some point i can re-lactate and get into donation.
It was a very satisfying experience, but it was also very taxing. If you get into donating, you have to
keep the kind of schedule that a new mother needs to keep. It's really, really intense.
Dr. Laura Arrowsmith D.O., 68, Tulsa, OK
When I was in my late 50s, i decided that i was going to try this to see if i could do it. I underwent a
drug regimen and used a breast pump fairly regularly. And gosh, within about a month, i guess, i was
producing milk!
After i got to the point where i understood that i could lactate, i didn’t pursue it further — i didn’t have
any need to maintain lactation. It’s a supply and demand sort of thing, so i stopped the medication and
the pumping and of course I dried up. It was just super, super neat.
I think it strongly reinforced my sense of womanhood. I had some great inner satisfaction in knowing
that i could do what a cisgender woman could. It was very important to me, and i’m proud and happy
that i did that.
My main career was as a radiologist. I retired from that about a year ago; I’ve seen my own
mammograms and there’s absolutely no way that a radiologist could look at my mammogram and say
“Oh, that person’s trans.” Breast tissue is breast tissue. Looks identically, works identically.
The lactation thing for me just affirmed my womanhood, I think that was the most important part.
Individual who transitioned due to social dysphoria
I've lactated small amounts due to hormonal changes or other factors.
I have no doubt I could in larger amounts if it was a goal.
What does it mean to be female?
There are several competing definitions for this depending on ideology
0. it's all about chromosomes
1. it's about your brain
2. It's about gamete production.
3. it's about genitals.
4. it's about your gender identity
5. you need to feel like you are a female or have dysphoria
6. it's about having female secondary sex characteristics
7. it's about looking like a female.
What actually works in the real world is 6 or 7, if someone look like a female you let her use female
changing rooms or bathrooms.
1 and 4 and 5 will set you up for social difficulties and there isn't actually any way to test this
scientifically, anyone can claim to have gender dysphoria or that they identity as female, there isn't
even any way to test whether or not someone has a "female brain" with current technology and the
notion of male and female brains are a misnomer.
1 would result in women with androgen insensitivity syndrome being classified as male, should we
force them to use male bathrooms?
Of course we can discuss exactly where to draw the line but so far rather inclusive policies haven't
caused any real-world issues besides some people having a moral panic over a non-issue 22
Biological sex is bimodal, not binary
Some people want to look at just hormones which don't make biological sense
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24313430
These individuals are inconvenient for transphobes which is why they don't want to talk about them,
they just throw them under the bus and accuse people defending them of "dragging intersex individuals
into this".
The fact that sex is bimodal means that some people are more biologically female than others, some
people can get pregnant and give birth while other individuals are incapable of that despite having an
overall feminine body, maybe it will be possible for them in the future with a womb transplant.
Some trans women have been able to breastfeed, the breasts you get from HRT are real female breasts.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5779241/
If we are going to look at just fertility we end up with 4 categories
0. People that can get pregnant (cannot impregnate).
1. people that can impregnate (cannot get pregnant).
2. Hermaphrodites (so far hasn't been observed when it comes to humans).
3. people who are infertile.
But there is no clear way to divide people into these categories. A more accurate model is to look at the
male and female reproductive potential where you look at how many biological children someone
would have naturally given max breeding but this is not really relevant today in social interactions.
From a darwinian perspective people of category 1 are the most valuable while people in category 3 are
the least valuable, this is not however how people are valued in our modern society, instead it's mostly
about looks and your ability to be productive under capitalism.
If we insist on a strict binary we will have to draw the line somewhere as we force everyone into two
categories, some people will get kinda fucked over by this and this is impossible to avoid. It's better to
look at each person individually rather than trying to group people arbitrarily together.
I can see where some individuals gravitate towards the gender identity concept where it's about feelings
"i feel like a girl" rather than your physical features, i view that as nonsense and it will create social
problems trying to make everyone pretend you are a girl.
HRT will affect all aspects of your body, the transition is biological and very real.
How a girldick differ from a male penis
Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) will also affect your penis
1. making them softer
2. better smelling
3. you will be able to get multiple orgasms
4. Change in coloration
5. Little to no spontaneous erections
6. Less aroused by visual stimuli
7. your dick will become a lot more sensitive to touch.
8. you will be able to get full-body orgasms from penile stimulation.
Transwomen have way better sex than 'chad'
If you want to have some carefree kinky fun, you should look to date other trans girls. They'll be as
horny and fucked-up as you are; just take a look at the various NSFW trans subreddits to get a glimpse.
If you want to get free stuff out of your relationship, look for a chaser, but make sure to find one who
isn't cheapskate. They love to spoil their dickgirl princesses. If you want love and stability, look for a bi
guy. Some chasers are also keepers, but only the ones who are out to everyone, including their families.
If they aren't, you will always be a side bitch to them.
Male hormones are responsible in part for the refractory period and making orgasms localized in the
penis. You know how it feels, because you are on them. It feels like a distortion of going to urinate,
then semen comes out. There is no real pleasure to be had from penis stimulation on testosterone.
It is also way better to get fucked in the ass than to fuck someone yourself, you will get multiple fullbody orgasms, nothing like the lame unfulfilling orgasm you get from P in V sex.
You will find out that all expectations about how awesome it is to get fucked are true. You can already
try it out via dildo and just ask yourself how much better it will be once you start on female hormones
and get fucked by a real pulsating dick.
Some natal women are willing to try sex with transgirls but most likely you will not be close to
sexually compatible and she may not accept you enjoying yourself with other transwomen
Imagine finally giving up your remaining dignity as his penis is about to enter your body, you will
eventually start moaning as he fucks you but estrogen has made you weaker and you are now powerless
to resist. Your prostate will be pounded and you will experience multiple full-body orgasms.
Why SRS is a bad idea
A girl with a penis is exotic and may thus have an easier time dating than a trans girl with a vagina, at
least unless the bottom surgery results ware very good.
It’s difficult to find any good MtF bottom surgery results, most are really bad. SOme are ok in terms of
appearance but most are not
http://www.supornclinic.com/restricted/SRS/Results.aspx
https://www.mozaiccare.net/photos-1-year-postop
Natural vaginas look much better
http://www.labialibrary.org.au/photo-gallery/ #
Reproductive function
While a neovagina could allow for natural impregnation (if functional wombs and ovaries were added,
etc) no current neovagina option would allow for child-birth, they cannot expand enough to support
that, not even close.
While SRS doesn't add any female reproductive abilities it will remove valuable male reproductive
abilities usually leaving the patient permanently infertile besides any sperm that may or may not have
been banked. Just relying on banked sperm is probably not a good idea if you want children. If you
keep your testicles you might be able to restore your fertility by temporarily stopping HRT.
Sexual function
SRS does not add much if any sexual function.
Anal sex works just fine and it does not require any dilation or surgery. Thanks to the prostate you will
be able to enjoy very powerful orgasms from that and here is a problem, with SRS the neovagina will
be created between the anus and the prostate which is very likely to make anal sex less pleasurable.
With SRS you will also lose the ability to put a dick inside someone else which will limit your options
when it comes to sexual activities.
By having a penis as a girl you are exotic, if you have SRS you lose the thing that make you stand out
compared to cis females you will then have a hard time competing with people born female (who
usually are fertile and have more attractive genitals).
What if you have genital dysphoria?
It's not clear to me that having surgery to construct something that doesn't look anything close to a
natural vagina would be particularly helpful for that. Sure you can tell yourself "i like they way it
looks" but i do not think living in a state of constant delusion is good for you.
Maybe it's just me but i do not like the idea of removing parts of your body because they make you
uncomfortable or whatever. Should people with Body Integrity Identity Disorder cut off their leg/arm?
Physical health should come first, mental health will be a function of you in general living a good life.
The issue with how mental health is currently addressed is that short-term gain comes at the price of
long-term pain, this is a general issue with psychiatry.
Study results
If you look at actual studies you will find that it's not surgeries trans people benefit from. Only HRT
has a significant positive association with quality of life in multivariate regression.
The following study did found that the "mental health" metric increased temporarily after SRS only to
fall back to the level it was prior to the surgery.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5440516/
As see here there was no statistically significant short-term benefit and control group.
Limitations of the study include incomplete follow-up and the inability to adjust results for clinical
factors such as comorbidities, sociodemographic factors, and hormonal treatment.
I tried finding the data regarding the response-rate for the follow-ups but i failed to find that, it may
have been intentionally hidden by the study authors. It might be the case that people unhappy with their
results just disappeared and that only the ones somewhat satisfied continued to participate.
The study authors did point out that the quality of life will decrease over time also among the general
population but that's not a proper control group, we need to compare it to trans females people who did
not undergo that surgery.
It will probably ruin anal sex since the neo-vagina will be created between the prostate and anus.
It's very likely that your bottom surgery options will be far better in the future if you just wait.
Maybe in the future it will be possible for transwomen to get pregnant.
If your SRS is a failure there will probably not be any way to fix it later, it's irreversible.
Trans females who had surgery had better mental health than cis females
This is self-reported, in this study trans females who hadn't had any surgery had worse mental health
than cis females while trans females who had FFS or SRS scored slightly higher on average.
https://sci-hub.se/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20461468/
This however does not mean their surgeries are beneficial since there were confounding factors
skewing these results. The people who had surgery as a group also had been in treatment for longer and
all of them were taking hormones compared to 66% of the no-surgery group.
For some insane reason they didn't separate out the people who were not on HRT which might explain
why the group who had SRS but not FFS did better than the no-surgery group.
Participants were asked to complete the survey if they identified themselves as a transgender woman.
While there is a potential for individuals to falsify their identity, we believe this likelihood is low. It
should be remembered that the term transgender is an all-encompassing term that includes individuals
in a variety of points in their transition. As a result of recruitment efforts, only individuals who either
received care from an FFS surgeon or clinic or were involved with transgender support groups or
organizations were asked to complete the survey. This is an important point because transgender
women who are early in their transition may not be well connected to support groups or physicians who
specialize in transgender services. The quality of life of these transwomen is not well-represented by
this study. We also did not collect data on the medical co-morbidities of our participants.
Thai SRS surgeons
The situation with SRS in Thailand is however a big mess with surgeons replacing each other and it’s
unclear if the end result will actually be good for you.
Suporn creates more depth. He guarantees at least 6 inches. Other surgeons come closer to 4 or 5
inches. 2) Suporn makes meshes from the scrotal skin and uses the scrotal meshes to lign '' the
neovagina''. Other surgeons use penile skin primarily to lign the neovagina. 3) Suporn uses penile skin
to create the '' labia ''. Westearn surgeons use scrotal skin to create the '' labia''. 4) Only Suporn and
Chettawut perform the Chonburri method. All other surgeons perform penile inversion. 5) It's called the
Chonburri method because Suporn creates an organ that doesn't exist in a real vagina, in an attempt to
create a homologous structure to the G-spot in real women. This Chonburri organ is a lump of nerves
bundled together that he burries deep down in the neovagina to extend the feeling to the vaginal canal
instead of just '' the clitoris ''. 6) Suporn discourages hair removal prior to surgery. He scrapes the hair
follicles himself. 7) The Suporn method was invented by Suporn himself and presented early 2000s to
the world. 8) The Suporn method is much harder to recover from than the penile inversion method. The
SRS patients have to dilate 3 times daily for 45 minutes during the first year. So almost 3 hours of
dilation a day for at least a year, not included preparation of the instruments,... To dilate. 9) Suporn
makes the prostate accessible through the neovagina during surgery by constructing the vaginal canal
face to face with the prostate. 10) Suporn's prices go up 500$ every 6 months. He currently charges
almost 20 000$. 11) Suporn is soon retiring and has trained an apprentice to take over his clinic. This
new doctor is named Dr Bank. 12) SRS patients claim to be able to get wet with Suporn's technique.
13) Dr Suporn trained Dr Chettawut and they were both trained by Dr Preecha Tiewtranon, the master
of SRS surgery in Thailand. 14) transwomen who go to Thailand get poor aftercare once they left the
country. They can only email these doctors and can't telephonically contact them. They are required to
stay in Thailand for 1 month after their surgery.
The other Thai surgeons are:
1. Dr Thep who charges 2500$ and performs an SRS in 2 hours. First come first serve base. He
gives them a bamboo stick to dilate with and they can go home the same day after the operation
if they want. The biggest complaint with Thep is according to himself : '' hole is not deep
enough ''. Dr Thep performs sex-changes under local anesthesia and he offered a journalist who
wanted to know more about the surgical process to talk with a patient who was under anesthesia
on the operation table at that moment. He offered to pause the anesthesia so that the guy could
talk to the press about his sex change operation.
2. Dr Nara who charges 3500$. Has only pictures with closed legs on his website. Jeesh, i wonder
why lol
3. Dr Kuldech who charges the same prices as Nara from his website judging. This Dr Kuldech
had a US patient who almost bled to death on his way back from Thailand to the US because
stitches had dissolved prematurely. This TIM had gender euphoria because the ER team was
impressed by his '' vagina'' and how the ' 'vulva' ' looked so natural.
4. Dr Preecha from PAI. He gives the patients a wax candle to dilate with. He is 86 now and only
supervises surgeries. Dr Burin and Dr Sutin do the surgeries. PAI charges 8000$ for SRS and
this clinic is famous for it's quote that gynos can't tell the difference.
5. Dr Kamol. Charges 10 000$ and has mixed results.
6. Dr Saran charges 8000$ and he butchers western MTF individuals and blocks their email and
Facebook once they complain.
7. Dr Pichet who charges 10 000$ and has created bloody messes by performing SRS surgeries
with a graft from their colon. Many of his patients kept digestive problems and had to wear pads
all the time because their colon graft leaks in their '' vaginas''.
8. Dr Sanguan Kunaporn charges 13000$ for SRS and generally has satisfied MtF clients but most
of his clients are autogynephiles of older age.
Preecha Aesthetic institute
The pictures posted on the website do look good but only 2 pictures are provided so it’s very likely they
are cherry-picked.
http://pai.co.th/srs-penile-skin-inversion/
A trans girl wrote the following regarding her experience with their vaginoplasty. It’s unclear if this is a
common result, did she got lucky? is she lying about it? Delusional?
Being a post-op trans girl comes with a lot of privilege:
• If you pass as a cis woman and you don't have to tell your dates you are a trans woman, they
will treat you like a real woman in the bedroom. Trans women who still have the penis are often
treated like a cum rag, sadly.
• If you can keep your trans status hidden and all your documents are updated, you could marry
an upper-class man and then ask a divorce after a few years and cash out half of his fortune.
• Anal sex comes with a lot of loosening of the colon. That way you will shit your pants easily if
you are an androphilic trans girl who regularly has anal sex. If you have a pussy, you won't have
to deal with that. He could just fuck your pussy.
• You can train for sport competitions and actually be better at it than cis women. Your androgen
receptors are more sensitive to testosterone so even with low doses of endogenous testosterone
produced by the adrenals, you could put on a lot more muscle than a cis woman could. Rachel
McKinnon is winning every competition against cis women. She's post-op MtF. You could
seriously cash out on prizes and scholarships like that. There's nothing cis women could do
about it, since you have a pussy pass.
• As a post-op trans woman you have easier access to cis lesbians too. You are not obligated to
tell them. Contrary to what TERFs tell you cis lesbians wouldn't as easily know that your
neovagina is a neovagina and not a cisgender vagina. I'm post-op after visiting Preecha
Aesthetic Institute and at 9 months i had a cis woman licking my pussy without having a clue.
• If you ever commit a crime you will be placed in a women's prison. You will have an easier life
than if you were put in a man's prison where you could be subjected to rape.
• People will see you as a real woman more easily. As a pre-op / non-op woman people will to
some extend still see you as a man.
SRS if done by a good surgeon can look okay and neat.
Your sex-life as trans female
Maybe being a truecel isn't so bad if you are willing to swallow the pinkpill? you may end up having
way better sex than a top-tier male.
A trans girl wrote the following:
I just had my first orgasm in a while, and I'm a sweaty, sticky mess.
This story is kinda detailed i guess? Sorry if it's not the normal kind of post for here.
I've been streaming video games a lot lately (mainly Overwatch) and
my Friday and Saturday streams were always the one where i have
someone, usually a follower, control my vibrator while i play. They
turn my vibrator up when I'm doing good, turn it down when I'm
doing bad, etc. Sometimes they'll dirty talk to me while I'm playing,
and it's super hot. It has lead to some very good times. They all know
i'm trans, i get treated 100% like a woman, it's great!
I told my discord that I'm not going to be streaming for the rest of
the month earlier today, and one of my fans (it's so weird to think i
have fans) sent me a dm telling me about how he enjoyed my
streams, and he's going to miss them, and we chatted for a while
today. It started out innocent, but didn't stay there.
Fast forward to an hour or two ago, and i just got home, and i'm
pretty horny from our conversation, and he asks for permission to send me a dick pic. I say yes, he
sends the picture, and...holy shit, i didn't know i was talking to a horse this whole time. Well, he's at
least part horse.
Before i continue, i just figured i'd say that i'm comfortable with everything that was said and done.
Some trans women may not like the same wording that was being used on me, but i do, and i was
comfortable with everything he was saying. He was a total gentleman regarding what I was and wasn't
cool with. I don't think anything he said would offend anyone, but I don't some people don't like using
some words to describe their genitals.
So i decide to grab my bluetooth vibrator and pass the controls over to
the guy i've been talking to. He'd never controlled it before. Where
both starting to feel good, and he asks if he can voice call me. I say
yes, he gives me a call, and at this point we're both really into it. He
has a very seductive voice, and he's talking about how he wants to use
my pony tail for leverage while he pounds my ass and rubs my clit.
We're both breathing heavy, moaning, he's dirty talking some more.
I'm feeling great, but i feel like I've hit a wall and i'm not getting any
closer to orgasm, and he clearly is. Soon he tells me that he's going to
cum.
I tell him to cum for me, and i'm pretty sure i could hear the sound of
his cum hitting his chest. It was so hot. I absolutely love the feeling of
accomplishment i feel while i know i got someone off. Nothing makes
me feel sexier. And i'm totally a sub.
So, he came, and he's breathing heavy, and encouraging me to cum for him too. Telling me what to do,
and what he'd like to do while perfectly controlling my vibrator. But I'm still stuck on that wall and not
getting closer. After a while he says he needs to get ready for work soon. He's still encouraging me
though. I practically beg him to say for a few more minutes.
He lets out the sexiest laugh and says "you're just a little slut aren't you?" Oh, that's definitely working.
"You just want me to bend you over the edge of the couch, lift up your skirt, and fuck you til I'm dry,
wouldn't you?" It's definitely working. I'm right on the edge of orgasm and he turns the vibrator all the
way up as he says "cum for me bitch."
And holy fuck did i cum. I let out a high pitch squeak as my eyes cross, my toes curl up, my legs start
twitching, and i practically fall out of my chair. This was no normal orgasm. I was a twitching panting
mess for a good 45 seconds to a minute and a half. May 5 minutes. I don't know. I've lost all concept of
time. I finally come down from my orgasm. He's turned off the vibe and i'm catching my breath. He
says. "We have to do this again some time." i reply with "yes sir."
"Good girl." Oh, and here comes wave two. I have a little bit of an orgasm after shock. After that, we
said our good bye as he finished getting ready for work.
So, my Friday is going pretty great! How's everyone else's Friday going?
Benefits of transmaxxing as sissy
Males with a humiliation fetish may benefit from going trans. The 'alpha males' sissies desire are
actually rather rare and they tend to be into fucking females, you may need to transition to attract these
males.
Hormone Replacement Therapy will also have additional benefits
0. Orgasms will become far more powerful, you will feel it in your entire body.
1. multiple orgasms just from penile stimulation.
2. reduced sex-drive allowing you to gain control over your sexuality.
If you like dick but also like female aesthetics transwomen are your best option but you may need to go
trans yourself to get access to that dating market (trans escorts is not a good option).
When you are male you are a slave your sex-drive but the actual sex will not be that good, after you
transition you have sex because it actually feels really good and not because you are driven insane by
testosterone. The reduction in libido from HRT is only temporary 39
A trans girl replied
This is exactly how i feel. Sex is better (hell, i didn’t even have a sex life pre-transition) and i can’t help
but view the reduced libido as a good thing because i feel more in control. Also, i'm just so much
happier with my life all around now because my love of self-feminization is so much more than just a
kink and now i can appreciate the nonsexual side of femininity a lot more. I was already a small, skinny
twink and it made me easier to feminize and i love what a cute tranny i'm becoming. Pre-transition, I
looked pretty much exactly like the virgin character from the Chad memes. Anyone else here who was
a skinny guy with glasses and short dark hair has probably had that same thought lol. Now my hair is
getting longer, and i've been on HRT for about a year. My skin is getting softer and smoother, my acne
and facial hair has mostly disappeared, my boobs are growing and my 34A bras are getting a little tight
in the cups, my butt is getting softer and more full, my thighs and hips are getting a little thicker, and
entire body is just so much softer and more feminized. I love it so much when my boyfriend caresses
me and calls me “soft girl”. I don’t know how it took me until college to realize I was better off femme.
Transitioning made me a very happy person and i love my life so much!!!!
I know i don't fit the classic AGP stereotype because i'm young (21 currently), primarily date men, and
I'm shockingly passable. All that being said, i am still very much autogynephilic but that doesn't mean
I'm not also dysphoric and genuinely transgender. I may not have known i was a transsexual until i was
almost 20 years old, but i knew i was a transvestite as young as 14.
I have had a similar experience to the other people in this thread when it comes to seeing the decreased
libido resulting from HRT as more of a blessing than a curse, and living my entire life in girl-mode
24/7 has also gotten me more used to it so i don't get uncontrollably horny all the time, but there is still
some fetishization there. HRT didn't kill my AGP, it just put a damper on it along with all my other, less
powerful sexual interests.
I still feel aroused by my own feminization sometimes and it's hard not to when the estrogen has been
so effective at doing it's job. It makes me horny sometimes when i see myself in the mirror applying
makeup and it's not because i see a hot girl, it's because i know that i am her and she is me. Sometimes
i'll be wearing really cute girly outfits in public and get so turned on by it that i end up wetting my
panties with precum. Sorry if that sounds gross, i just felt it was an important detail to really describe
my situation with AGP.
So overall, how do i feel about my decision to transition? I think it was the best decision i've ever
made! I feel at peace with myself. I am probably the happiest transsexual you will ever meet.
I feel truly content with my life and cherish every day! I love the beautiful young woman i am
blossoming into, and my parents have been very accepting and supportive, they still love me and even
call me their daughter now. I am 16 months into HRT, have had my name legally changed, and almost a
year into living socially as a woman full-time, and most of my dysphoria has disappeared.
No longer do i struggle with anxiety and insomnia as well. A lot of what i feel now is just gender
euphoria, quite the opposite of before. Now, it's usually not inherently sexual to me, but when it is, i'm
not ashamed of it, i still embrace it. It just feels so blissful, so comforting to me that i can live my life
as a very girly, very feminine young lady now. I feel like such a pretty princess and i never want to go
back! I never knew life could be so beautiful. I never knew i could be so beautiful. Everything is
wonderful now!
Data Regarding suicide mortality
The following study on people who started transitioning before July 1, 1997 found that out of 966 MtF
transexuals No suicides occurred within the first 2 years of hormone treatment, while there were six
suicides after 2–5 years, seven after 5–10 years, and four after more than 10 years of cross-sex
hormone treatment at a mean age of 41.5 years (range 21–73 years).
https://eje.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/eje/164/4/635.xml
The study followed these individuals until 2017 meaning all participants alive by then had been
followed for over 20 years.
From this we get that while suicide mortality was a big issue in the past over time that has become less
and less of an issue which is to be expected with transgenderism becoming more and more socially
accepted.
The following study also found reduction in suicide mortality rate over time
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/acps.13164
They found that overall suicide mortality has gone down over time, this is the case both for new people
who just start transition and also people who started transitioning some time ago.
Unfortunately they did not separate people based on whether or not they were on HRT so we cannot
really use the study to properly evaluate whether or not HRT reduces suicide mortality (the study did
not even try to do this).
3 people out of 8265 died from suicide in 2017 giving a
early suicide attempt of 36.3 per 100000.
Data from the tavistock clinic
The data above is mostly for older transsexuals, what
about young people?
https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk/about-us/contact-us/
freedom-of-information/foi-disclosure-log/
People have done freedom of information requests from
the UK tavistock clinic and there were very few deaths
from suicide and also few recorded suicide attempts. They
do not unfortunately provide much details regarding these
few (not enough for statistical analysis regarding risk-factors) cases.
The clinic had 7287 referrals 2016 to 2018 https://gids.nhs.uk/number-referrals
Depression comparison
Let's compare to people being treated for depression
https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a009428
So the suicide mortality of trans people 2017 was similar to the suicide mortality of insured people
treated for depression in united states 1992 to 1994 (any treatment).
Unsurprisingly the people who got treated had higher suicide mortality rate. This is to be expected
given the fact that their treatments don't work any better than placebo 40
Transmaxxing works even if you do not improve your personality
There was a horrifying post i saw ages ago about a cis lesbian cohabilitating with their LT trans girl
girlfriend and snooped their computer(apologizing profusely for invading the privacy etc, sweet kinda
girl) literally found their not so old incel posts about how they were dating an ugly lesbian but were
looking forward to leveling up to a hotter one. She was horrified and blaming herself i couldn’t believe
what i was reading she was already forgiving ‘her’. If anyone knows the post i’m talking about please
post it. It still keeps me up some nights.
When you have a higher SMV than your partner you end up with power over your partner, you always
have the option of leaving for someone more attractive while your partner would end up with someone
less attractive if anyone at all. Your personality is just one of many factors, you can get away with
having an unattractive personality if other traits are desired.
When you potentially offer things of great value (such as a really nice body to have sex with) other
people will be the one needing to improve their personalities and social skills to get you.
You should ask yourself if you really want to adopt a fake personality in an attempt to attract females,
it's not even clear what the ideal personality is and constantly playing a role you don't want to play is
not good for your mental health. In reality you probably want to change your personality to what most
people view as something worse, become more selfish instead of the other way around.
A lot of males that struggle with dating due to mental illness would be able to get a good dating life via
medical transition, it's a lot easier to make the body more attractive than trying to cure mental illness,
don't expect too much from psychiatry and therapists.
When you are too mentally unfit to function in society and take care of yourself you need to rely on
other people for that. If you are female (cis or trans) you can probably find a male that will take care of
you and of course also fuck you.
Some people need a male to take care of them
Not everyone can be successful and independent, some individuals need to just be subservient to a
master, they exist to be used and give pleasure to other people. This will be the end station for some
individuals that transitioned from male to female, better than homelessness i suppose.
You will be spanked when you have been a bad girl and rewarded when you have been a good girl.
Some people just need to give up their useless pride, the thing with self-respect and making your own
money didn't work out, the only thing you have left now is your body that will be used by someone
else, you better get used to having sex with a male because this is all you will get now.
How to extract resources from men
You need to go through divorce legislation in your country to examine what's required to divorce rape
him 41 prenups written can be invalidated 42
Make him think you two are a team together, manipulate him into taking actions that will be good for
you later once you dump that loser. Make him put you as an owner to a house he paid for alone with his
money, ask him to pay off any debt you have, manipulate him into giving you expensive gifts.
If you want a free meal you can make him pay for everything. A key part in making this work is to look
as good as you can. Wear a dress to all of your dates, heels, use makeup if it makes you prettier. You
need to emphasize the difference between you and your date; you are a woman and he is a man. Wear
earrings and put on a sexy perfume!
Be a good listener and a good conversationalist. Be interested in them as a person, ask questions, speak
softly and in a girly voice, laugh softly, and don't interrupt them. You need to be fun to be around with
so that they think that they won't ever think of making you pay the bill because they had a bad time.
Even if you feel like the connection isn't there, still be nice to them and treat them well.
If the man you're going out with asks you to split the bill simply tell him that you'll take care of the bill
the next time you go out since you prefer taking turns since that's more romantic. Don't appear bitter.
Smile as you say this and act feminine! Be sweet, confident, and show him that you desire him nonverbally. 99% of men won't insist that you pay the bill during that time. Of course, there won't be
another date. Delete him from the dating app and block his number. You don't need to say anything
more to them.
Don't feel guilty about blocking a cheap man. Just remember that men don't feel guilty about using
women and playing with their emotions. It's only fair that we reserve the right to block cheap men who
won't add value to our lives.
One issue with relying on men for resources is that this may decentivize you from taking action that
will allow you to make money in other ways that don't depend on your fading attractiveness, this is
similar to the government welfare trap where you used to getting easy money and thus don't take steps
to improve your life long term.
Generally males that are useful when it comes to extracting resources are not actually men you should
consider as a sexual partner, thus you may want to use other males for sex/reproduction.
By successfully extracting resources for men you will end up with more freedom when it comes to
selecting a sexual partner while still being able to properly support all your children financially, the
well-being of your children is more important than what's currently viewed as moral by society.
Sex work
Why work a boring job when you can get paid to be sexually humiliated in many ways?
Sex work allows you to turn a humiliation fetish into a profession.
The advantage with the clear honest exchange is that it gives the male far more power over her via his
money, she will have to participate in his sick perversions or she will not get any money, the more
money he offers the harder it will be for her to resist.
While it is humiliating to participate in porn or prostitution other forms of works are more disgusting
and pays far less.
Long-term relationships are often just glorified prostitution where the female gets resources in
exchange for sex, sex that she may still enjoy. Generally prostitution goes against social norms which is
why the nature of the exchange is hidden behind marriage sermons and romance bullshit.
Sex work that involves you physically meeting other individuals do however come with risks, in
addition to the possibility of being harmed due to violence you also risk getting infected with Sexually
Transmitted Diseases. The risks of sex work can be minimized by sticking to online works (cam-sex) or
by instead becoming a sugar baby for a male you have verified are safe.
Another issue with sex-work is that often it’s illegal to outright buy sex making it more difficult to find
clients, in some countries you are not even legally allowed to directly sell sex. If you have real potential
you may benefit from being irrationally hostile to selling your body.
How to attract chad
What's true when interacting with normal males stops being true when you try to attract elite males in
terms of attractiveness, these males have other options and thus you need to treat them well or they will
go for someone else. Yes you should probably fake your personality, most males cannot tell.
Wear sexy outfits in public and take good photos of yourself to use for online dating. Your strategy
should be to hook him by being submissive and letting him use you as a toy, he is the one having power
over you by virtue of just being really attractive, it doesn't matter that you don't need his money. Figure
out what he is into and let him get that.
Do not expect or demand that he provide resources to you, if you need money that badly you should
focus on other males that lack better options.
The only reason not to let a chad fuck you when you are androphilic is the STI risk, anal sex is the most
risky form of sex and it's also a bit messy, he needs to be tested regularly if he is also having sex with
other girls. You can still please him by giving him a handjob. You might also want to give him some
gifts, not before getting his BWC of course.
As you become more attractive by taking hormones and having the right surgeries you will be able to
attract males of higher quality. You might think you will never attract the male of your dreams but one
year later you might have his dick in your ass.
Transmaxxing success stories
“When I was an egg the envy got so bad that I started hating women just on principle ‘Like why should
they be pretty and cute and I am stuck in hell!’. It caused me to troll women online and act like an
MGTOW/Incel/Nice Guy/POS.” Source / Archive
“If I hadn’t of come out and transitioned I would have likely become the exact epitome of the kind of
person that I hate the most right now. I was a straight white neckbeardy 'Why aren’t there straight/white
pride parades’ misogynist douchebag. If I hadn’t of come out I’d likely have been the type of guy to
bitch about being an incel and *shudders*” Source / Archive
“I’m a literal Ex-Nazi Trans Female so I can relate.” Source / Archive
“Solidarity comrade. Trust me, I used to be a Nazi even as I was discovering I was trans” Source /
Archive
“I’ve seen a lot of people go from fascist mra to trans girl on their journeys” Source / Archive
“I wonder what percentage of incels are iron-shelled eggs” Source / Archive
“I wasn't a brony. Back then, I was closer to just your run-of-the-mill incel.” Source / Archive
“Former incel, current happy trans girl.” Archive
“A huge amount of the reason I was an incel was
because I was a closeted trans girl.” Archive
“Me in high school. Also was pretty much a nazi.
Hated the world. Etc. Now I am a very cheerful and
loving trans girl uwu” Source / Archive
“Seems like anyone who went to 4chan either grows
up to be trans or a white supremacist and there’s zero
middle ground.” Source / Archive
“i was a fash-adjascent man in my early 20s. 5 years
later i’m an anarcho-communist enby.” Source / Archive
“Big mood. 4 years ago I was an edgy, right-wing, anti-SJW teen who was borderline MGTOW. Now
I’m a gay catgirl dating an anarchist transgirl.” Source / Archive
“I’m really obsessed with incels. So many of them are actually repressed trans women it’s impressive.”
Source / Archive
“Oh hey same. I used to run in neckbeard 4chan incel circles. Now my name is Rebecca and I’m a girl.
When did that happen?” Source / Archive
“Oh shit, I just realized I went through a Neo-Nazi phase.” Source / Archive
“I was more an incel-ish transphobe than anything. Looking back at my past kinda disgusts me, but
now I’m good with myself. Honestly makes me wonder how many incels are in trans denial.” Source /
Archive
“Honestly I think that most incels are transgenders in denial. I never came across a group of men who
are so jealous and envious of women. All they ever do is talk about how women are lucky and
fortunate. Also most have body dysphoria and hate how they look. If that isn’t an egg about to crack
then I don’t know what is.” Source / Archive
“the pipeline from nazi to commie trans girl is real” Source / Archive
“I honestly don’t know how I escaped my Nazi phase. Anyone with half of a brain would’ve thought I
was past the point of no return, but clearly I wasn’t since I escaped.” Source / Archive
“Former incel here, looking for help” Archive
“As the old saying goes: 30% of TERFs are closeted trans men and 30% of incels are closeted trans
women.” Source / Archive
“went from browing /pol/ for 2 years then /lgbt/ for a while before just deciding to transition. Shits
possible man, but personally I think I was just browsing to help repress any sort of AGP related
feelings. I told myself I shouldn’t transition because I had to pass on my white genes lol!” Source /
Archive
“tfw i went from right wing incel to communist catgirl in the matter of just about a year” Archive
“Can I really do Transmaxxing?” Source / Archive
“Trannymaxxing to get lesbians is my idea and I hope it spreads.” Archive
“amab questioning thoughts: 'am I really trans, or am I just a particularly creative incel?’” Source /
Archive
“I was a borderline ultra manipulative incel before I first realized I’m trans.” Source / Archive
“I’ve physically harmed people just like us before I cracked” Source / Archive
“i was a raging misogynist for years.” Source / Archive
Not only did transitioning save my life, it got me out of inceldom
I'm so so so thankful i was blessed with gender dysphoria. When i was living as a man, i was basically
hopeless. I had horrible anxiety, i was ugly, i had only one relationship under my belt that lasted 3
months, and we never even had sex, we only kissed before she dumped me.
I started transitioning 8 months ago taking hormones and getting laser hair removal. Since then, i've
had 5 sexual encounters with 3 different women. Know why? because i'm a cute girl and not an ugly
"man". They were all women who were out of my league when i was living as male, but women these
days are super into me.
In short, gender dysphoria saved me. It gave me a life-or-death need to transition, and i was pleasantly
surprised to see that being a girl made me more desirable to women.
I'm not a woman trapped in a man's body. I'm just a man with bad genetics and childhood
traumas
I just hate being a guy, hated myself, and decided to gender transition as soon as i realized it was an
option. Saw it as an escape from myself.
Didn't 'always know' and didn't play dress up as a kid nor had especially feminine interests. Sure i hate
sports and being competitive but that's just because i'm weak and passive. Prior to transition i was
mostly into escapism fantasy because life sucked and i wish i wasn't born. This is just another
distraction and escapism. Planned to check out early then transitioned instead. Still here and in the best
shape of my life. Transition has caused me to take much better care of my body, diet, exercise, and
improved my social life. Has been a total win going from a 2/10 male to 4/10 trans woman.
I don't recommend transition to anyone if they can make their life as a guy work but if your life is total
shit and you think you might be happier with existing it's something to consider.
Never wore or had any women's clothing until my early 30s. When i was in high school i dreamed
about having a girlfriend but never dated nor masturbated. In my 20s i started to worry it wouldn't 'just
happen' so i tried to meet women and date without much success. Dated women and i thought they
were attractive but i didn't want to have sex, only cuddle. Had sex a few times in my late 20s but didn't
enjoy it and didn't orgasm. I also never had an orgasm from masturbating until my late 20s when i
finally figured out how to. Unsure why. My penis always felt sort of numb, disconnected, and scared
me a little so i didn't play with it. After all the trouble dating and with sex i thought I'd be single
forever. Dating and sex wasn't any fun, just stressful and gross even tho i felt lonely and wanted a
relationship. Later on i discover transgenderism and start crossdressing.
Like how i looked a lot, feel much better about myself and appearance. Decided i hated being a guy
and liked the 'woman' me more so i transitioned. Didn't think much about dating guys because that was
gay and i grew up with homophobic Jehovah witness parents and i just wanted to have a normal hetero
relationship. Despite trying and failing to find a girl friend/wife in all my 20s i found a boyfriend nearly
effortlessly in my early 30s living as a woman. Dating and sex is fun and enjoyable.
I pass fairly well and never get hassled or misgendered in public. Have trouble thinking of myself as
'gay' being a male with a male, i like having a boyfriend and getting fucked by him but i only see
myself as a woman with a man? Is that the AGP? I feel some attraction to women but i don't want to
have sex with them, i just admire them and want to be more like them?
All the trans people i meet talk about knowing from a young age and dressing up and what not. I had no
idea, stumbled into it by accident well into adulthood and decided i hated the guy thing and wanted to
be a woman. Anyone relate? I feel like such a weirdo even within a tiny fringe community.
I love being a cute girl
It was like going from watching a movie without colors and sound to watch a 4K movie with nice
audio. I love how orgasms feel now when i am a girl, i didn't think sex would be this good.
I went from being depressed and taking drugs to now only taking estrogen and cypro. I cannot wait to
up my dosage.
I love wearing panties and lingerie, i am so much happier now when i can be myself and use the
clothing i love.
I was always meant to be a girl, this is why everything felt wrong and nothing really worked out in the
past, my brain was meant for female hormones. I didn't realize how much testosterone made me suffer
until i finally switched to correct hormones.
I have wanted a female body for a long time and now i am making that dream reality.
I didn't feel like i was a girl until i was on estrogen
Now when i think back i remember wanting to be a girl a long time but i never really felt like i already
was one, like i wasn't really transgender, i though it was just a fetish or that i was doing it to get a
girlfriend.
Once i have started estrogen i started to feel differently and i started to view my self as a girl, it wasn't
really that my body changed. I think it was the testosterone that messed up my brain, once i had the
right hormones things because clearer and i started to understand that i had been a girl trapped in a
male body all along.
I used to just imagine being a girl but i discarded it as just a fetish even when it was other stuff like
using a girl character in game, i now see how stupid that was, i was in denial for a very long time.
Getting a girlfriend was nice but the main benefit was feeling better mentally, i was able to stop taking
antidepressants. I also found a girlfriend and now we have been together for 7 months, we have been
transitioning together and it has been amazing. I love how my body is changing, each day i become
more like my true self.
I used to have trouble socializing (got diagnosed with autism) but now that's a lot easier, i think it's
because i am more comfortable with my body and no longer depressed.
Testosterone really confused me, it changed me into something else than the real me, i was always
meant to be a girl.
Leslie’s story
Although Leslie was born male, she began to try to pass as a female, initially by tucking, using a gaff
(device that hides the mooseknuckle), cleavage enhancement, hip and buttock padding, crossdressing
and using breast prostheses; later by going through a physical transition.
Leslie felt that her penis and balls were useless body parts that served no purpose. The pointlessness of
her male genitalia is what triggered gender dysphoria in her. Leslie did this because she struggled to
gain the attention of women.
She believed it wouldn't be too difficult to change gender identity as she already had a small frame, and
had minimal secondary sexual characteristics. She specifically said that being male "sucked" because
of the prolonged sexlessness. She also said that if she had not altered his/her gender identity, the trauma
of inceldom was so bad she considered going to Belgium or Switzerland as these two countries are
considered the easiest places for entering a "mercy killing" or "suicide tourism" arrangement. In
Leslie's words, the research they had done suggested both countries were considered the "euthanasia
capitals" of the western world. Transitioning made Leslie change her mind.
She began to understand why prostitution is usually a 1-way street of men buying sex from women; not
the other way around. It's because of the mismatch in demand, Leslie posited. Becoming a woman she
learned first-hand that the ease of access to sex was as different as night and day between men and
women. Women are stupendously privileged in this regard as Leslie soon found out. Leslie decided to
transition because she wanted to experience this female-specific privilege for herself. After changing
gender identity, she had no difficulties attracting partners of either sex. Leslie was no longer lonely.
She specifically said, and emphasized, that she would have never transitioned had it not been for the
inexhaustibility of male inceldom. Leslie felt that some her earlier traits as a male, which made her
repulsive or off-putting to potential suitors, such as shyness and awkwardness, suddenly were seen as
tenable traits in the dating scene. Leslie's transition according to her e-mail has been successful and she
now happily lives as an allosexual sex-having passing transwoman. According to Leslie, from her
tweens, to her teens and during early adulthood she was completely a cisgender man. Only once Lesli
reached their tricenarian years did they begin doubting the viability of their gender with regards to
prolonged loneliness, thus subsequently decided that transitioning to a woman was the right choice.
Stereotypical masculinity = being dumb
If you look at masculine stereotypes it's basically being dumb such as dying for vladimir putin in
Ukraine. This is not something that's innate male, it's something societies instill in males to make them
act against their self-interest (such as dying in a war for zero benefits to people close to you).
Regardless of your sex/gender you should use your own brain. You should admire the smart Russian
soldiers who abandoned their tanks in Ukraine knowing that the russian regime no longer could reach
them once they were there.
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1497891974275383296?s=20&t=hECEahpLL2FgiWFu9VjuNQ
Generally when it comes to gender roles it's fine to go along with it as long as it doesn't cause serious
harm but if people try to use a gender role to make you do something really dumb you have to push
back against that.
For males detrimental gender roles are often state-enforced, this illustrate that dying in some war might
not actually be something that comes naturally to males in the first place, its something males have to
be forced/indoctrinated into. Governments have historically acted very brutally against males unwilling
to fight in dumb wars (often outright executing them).
Both Trump and Biden got elected as president even though they dodged the draft. This illustrate how
society will not actually punish you for being smart when it comes to these things, you can still get
elected to the most powerful position in America if not the world.
Nationalism
Of course nationalist societies will often outperform societies that are not nationalistic, this creates an
evolutionary pressure on societies towards self-preservation even if it isn't to the benefit of the people.
Logically even defending a good government will not benefit you personally typically, instead people
are expected to defend their country out of altruism.The current Ukrainian government isn't even
particularly great, it's probably better than the russian government but that doesn't make it worth it
risking your life when it isn't likely to change the outcome of the war in the first place.
Ukraine banned males between 18 and 60 to leave the country when their country got invaded by
russia. Very few people with male legal sex were given permission to leave.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3ng45/males-banned-from-leaving-ukraine
The Ukranian also stopped people who looked to masculine from leaving, even people with a female
legal sex were often barred from leaving. In addition the Ukrainian government earlier made it very
difficult to change your legal sex in the first place thus screwing over most trans people 43 44
Of course you could have left before this war started and be just fine but many Ukrainians were naive
and engaged in wishful thinking and this even included their president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Being
smart was more important than being female in this case (it was pretty obvious they would get
invaded).
Obviously you do not want to die or get hurt in some war, you should just flee, your life is more
important than the expected benefit you would provide as a low-level soldier. Don't let nationalism
cloud your judgement.
It's very likely that most people killed/mamed/tortured in this war will be male. This makes it better to
be female if you are Ukrainian but what about other countries?
Having many males die is not really good for females since it reduces their mating options. That
however does not mean that it will be easier for males to date since females are likely to resort to
polygamous dating rather that settling for males they are not attracted to or remaining single.
Of course this war wouldn't have happened if Ukraine hadn't been dumb enough to give up their
nuclear weapons in exchange for empty security guarantees.
Most males are already obsolete
With the technological advancement the majority of males are becoming increasingly useless and even
a burden on society as a whole. Their Bodies are no longer needed for physical work and males as a
group do not have any major mental advantages over females.
https://trustyourperceptions.wordpress.com/2013/09/01/dudesaredoomed1/
Reproduction
Most males are genetically ill-suited for reproduction and 1% of the male population is enough to
impregnate all females that want kids 45 The fact that most males reproduce today is due to culture and
this end up ruining upcoming generations genetically and results in bad males becoming legal parents
giving them authority over children they shouldn't have authority over.
https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success
It may seem unfair to have a system where bad males are being rejected from parenthood while females
unsuitable for motherhood are easily able to get pregnant even but in these cases having her reproduce
with a bad male would be even worse. Already a big portion of the male population is being rejected.
https://sciencenorway.no/childlessness-fathers-forskningno/a-quarter-of-norwegian-men-never-fatherchildren/1401047
Work
Most males do not do work that cannot be done by females, there are a few areas where males are
difficult to replace but less than 5% of the male population is needed to do these jobs.
Why pay a male to do a job when you can have a machine do the job cheaper and better?
A lot of males today are not even net tax-payers, they end up using more resources from the
government than they provide in taxes. Many males find themselves alone without any real purpose in
life, they just exist and when they die nobody will miss them.
Sex
Males have far higher sex drive than females partly due to higher testosterone, if males on average
want sex once per day while females want it once per week 85% of males would be obsolete when it
comes to sex if it wasn't for the monogamy norm (which may be collapsing as i write this).
The solution
There are a number of options, many of these do not properly replace the male need for a female and
non of them allow for reproduction. From best to worst:
1. medical transition from male to female
2. porn, masturbation, sex toys.
3. escorts
4. going gay
5. zoophilia
6. raping females
7. suicide
Option 2,3 and 6 do not offer any real validation, not sure about 4 and 5. Escorts are expensive and in
many areas buying sex isn't legal and you may put yourself in legal danger by using these services.
Most males prefer human females and thus 4 and 5 are not a good option for most people, zoophilia is
also against the law in a lot of countries.
If we do not want males to go for 4 to 7 we should encourage option 1 to 3, not doing so would be
highly irrational.
The biggest issue with solution 1 is that it stops being a good option as you get older, it's great when
you are young (12 to 23 mostly) but at 30 it will be very difficult to ever pass and you may not become
that attractive as a transwoman.
Involuntary Celibacy
Incel is/was short for "involuntary celibate" but it's not clear when it's "involuntary" and what counts as
"celibacy" ? What if you hire an escort?
The word "incel" is also very problematic since a lot of self-identified incels have very toxic views. We
are still willing to help individuals who hold these problematic beliefs, it is possible that many of them
would change their personalities for the better after correcting their hormones (higher E, lower T).
In a lot of cases males that are unsuccessful sexually have not yet developed toxic views associated
with incels and then if they transition in time they will remain nice people instead of becoming hateful.
You don't need to be a kissless virgin to benefit from medical transition, how functional your sex-life is
as a male is just one of the factors to consider.
How much sex do you want?
How much sex did you actually get?
How was the quality of the sex you got?
How much did the sex cost you? (direct and indirect expenses).
Significant improvement from plastic surgery is rare when it's one on males and it will not fix any of
the mental issues incels often suffer from, there is no surgery for the brain.
Dysfunctional sex life can have other origins than simply being unable to attract a partner you like for
sex, some people find out that they cannot properly enjoy the sex when they are male.
Sexual reasons to transition are valid
Sex is a basic human need and if you cannot have a good sex life because you are male you need to
consider medical transition as a solution. Not being sexually satisfied is bad for your mental health, it's
even bad for your physical health.
https://www.healthline.com/health/healthy-sex-health-benefits
You not being sexually satisfied as a male can be due to several factors
1. failure to attract females (cis/trans)
2. testosterone ruining your orgasms (only a single weak orgasm from penile stimulation).
3. you not properly enjoying sex when your body look like a disgusting male.
If you get aroused by the thought or image of yourself as a female you should absolutely consider
transition just for sexual reasons even if you don't have any other form of gender dysphoria.
Why suffer as a male when you can be a cute girl?
Transition due to mental illness?
First we need to recognize that a diagnosis with a mental disorder is not evidence of anything being
wrong with the brain, the disorders outlined in dsm-5 are not scientific and no objective test is done
prior to giving a diagnosis.
http://cepuk.org/unrecognised-facts/diagnostic-system-lacks-validity/
Because of that we cannot blame gender dysphoria on things like “autism” when there isn’t any
objective test to determine if someone actually suffers from autism and even if we would discover a
such test (which cannot exist since the disorder itself isn’t valid as used now) it would be difficult to
establish a causal relationship.
People who are diagnosed with narcissism are more likely to transition
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4301205/
Being cis can be a mental illness
Being unwilling to transition even though it would be beneficial for you is a mental illness since it
significantly affect your life in a negative manner.
It's not clear why so many people are so unwilling to transition even though they would clearly benefit
from it. One explanation for this is people having their gender as an important part of their identity and
then changing your sex becomes almost unthinkable.
The degeneracy factor
Gay males are already degenerate in the sense that they are not
really into reproductive sex. This degeneracy factor explains why
they are more likely to transition, it's not that they have more
gender issues than the average male (the opposite is probably true).
If you are rejected constantly by straight guys because you are
male that may cause body dysphoria and there is no denying that
many of these guys would be willing to have sex with you if you
actually transitioned.
If they transition early their dating pool will widen and increase in
attractiveness due to the female dating advantage and the fact that
the gay male dating pool is more limited in numbers.
One risk is "autoandrophilia", if they are directly attracted to men they might prefer having a male
body, it's likely that these individuals mostly do not transition in the first place. Autoandrophilia could
be a reason for why many gay males with gender issues desist at puberty, they start finding male bodies
(including their own) sexually attractive.
If you have internalized homophobia you might feel like it's wrong for you to have sex with men when
you are a male yourself.
It's also likely that many gay males who want to transition lie about having gender dysphoria to be
viewed as valid, they might also lie to themselves.
If a gay male is less attractive he might view him not finding himself attractive as dysphoria and thus
transition, once female she will get a lot of male attention and validation and thus feel better about her
body.
Failed heterosexual males often have no real chance of reproduction and this will make it more prone
to transitioning since they are about to die childless anyway. If you instead have a wife and want to
have children you might instead repress despite severe gender dysphoria.
If you have a wife you are happy with you might feel like it’s wrong for you to transition and ruin a
relationship (if it’s working). Even if your wife claim to support your transition she might still end up
leaving you if you do because she is simply not attracted to females.
If you instead are a loser male with no real purpose in life there isn’t any wife that would leave if you
decide to become a girl and you might not have any friends to lose either. Thus we can expect that
people are less likely to repress when their lives are really bad as males.
How to do Hormone Replacement therapy
First off you need to raise your estrogen levels, there are several options for this (0 to 5). A high
estradiol dosage will by itself suppress testosterone enough such that you do not need an anti-androgen,
you may however need an anti-androgen if your estradiol dosage is low.
You do not need official prescription to start on hormones in most countries, typically it's easy and safe
to simply buy it at an online store https://hrt.caf e/
https://transit.org.uk/hrt-internet.html
https://moderntranshormones.com/
https://diyhrt.github.io/
0. Estradiol injections.
https://otokonokopharma.com/
http://lena.kiev.ua/EV/
1. Oral estradiol (take daily)
https://favskinhouse.com/product-280458-progynova-2-mg.html
https://www.goodstuffstore.net/store/search?keyword=progynova
https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-1109-progynova-tablets-1mg.aspx
https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-1120-progynova-2mg-3x28s.aspx
https://www.alldaychemist.com/progynova-2mg-tablet.html
https://www.unitedpharmacies.md/Estrofem-Oestradiol.html
https://otc-online-store.com/proginova-estradiol-valerate
https://www.4nrx.md/womens-health/progynova-estradiol-valerate.html
2. Oral Estradiol (take daily)
https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-165-estrofem-1mg-tablets.aspx
3. Ethinyl-estradiol (take daily, less safe than other options).
https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-962-diane-35-21s.aspx
60μg/day is enough to alone suppress testosterone enough to achieve chemical castration.
Anti-androgens
If your testosterone is too high you need an additional anti-androgen to lower it. There are cheap and
effective options such as "cyproterone Acatate" (up to 12.5mg/day) and bicalutamide (up to 50mg/day).
https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-131-siterone-tablets-50mg.aspx
https://www.inhousepharmacy.vu/p-98-calutide-50.aspx
https://www.4nrx.md/mens-health/calutide-bicalutamide.html
Unfortunately "Goserelin Acetate" which also go by the names lupron, Zoladex is expensive and
difficult to get if you do not have an official prescription.
Another more expensive option is Enzalutamide but i have not yet been able to find any way to easily
buy it even if you have the money for it.
Month Valerate Cypionate Enanthate If you start on pills Anti-androgen options
Injection
every
3.5 days
Injection
Every 5
days
Injection
every 7
days
Injection
every 10
days
Injection
every 14
days
daily
Ethinyl
Estradiol
Daily oral
Estradiol
Valerate
Daily
oral
Estradiol
Bicalutamide
Average daily
dosage
Cyproterone
Acetate
average
daily dosage
0 0.7 mg 1 mg 1.4 mg 2 mg 2.8 mg 17.5 μg 2mg 2mg 50 mg 12.5 mg
1 0.8 mg 1.1 mg 1.6 mg 2.2 mg 3.1 mg 17.5 μg 3mg 3mg 50 mg 12.5 mg
2 0.9 mg 1.2 mg 1.8 mg 2.5 mg 3.5 mg 35 μg 4mg 3mg 37.5 mg 10 mg
3 1 mg 1.4 mg 2 mg 2.9 mg 4 mg 35 μg 5mg 4mg 25 mg 7.1 mg
4 1.1 mg 1.6 mg 2.3 mg 3.3 mg 4.5 mg 42.5 μg 6mg 4mg 25 mg 7.1 mg
5 1.3 mg 1.8 mg 2.6 mg 3.7 mg 5 mg 42.5 μg 7mg 5mg 20 mg 5 mg
6 1.4 mg 2 mg 2.9 mg 4.1 mg 5.5 mg 70 μg 8mg 5mg 20 mg 5 mg
7 1.6 mg 2.2 mg 3.2 mg 4.5 mg 6 mg 70 μg 9mg 6mg 12.5 mg 2.5 mg
8 1.7 mg 2.5 mg 3.5 mg 5 mg 7 mg 10mg 7mg 10 mg 2.5 mg
9 1.9 mg 2.7 mg 3.8 mg 5.5 mg 7.5 mg 11mg 8mg 10 mg 2.5 mg
10 2.1 mg 3 mg 4.2 mg 6 mg 8 mg
11 2.2 mg 3.2 mg 4.5 mg 6.5 mg 9 mg
12 2.4 mg 3.5 mg 4.9 mg 7 mg 10 mg
13 2.6 mg 3.7 mg 5.2 mg 7.5 mg 10.5 mg
14 2.8 mg 4 mg 5.6 mg 8 mg 11 mg
15 3 mg 4.2 mg 5.9 mg 8.5 mg 12 mg
16 3.2 mg 4.5 mg 6.3 mg 9 mg 12.5 mg
17 3.3 mg 4.7 mg 6.6 mg 9.5 mg 13 mg
18 3.5 mg 5 mg 7 mg 10 mg 14 mg Increasing the dose further should not
be needed for testosterone suppression
but it may give you more breast
growth, this however comes with
higher blood-clotting risk potentially
causing deep vein thrombosis.
19 3.7 mg 5.2 mg 7.3 mg 10.5 mg 15 mg
20 3.9 mg 5.5 mg 7.7 mg 11 mg 15.5 mg
21 4.1 mg 5.8 mg 8.1 mg 11.5 mg 16 mg
22 4.3 mg 6.1 mg 8.5 mg 12.2 mg 17 mg
23 4.5 mg 6.4 mg 9 mg 12.9 mg 18 mg
24 4.7 mg 6.8 mg 9.5 mg 13.6 mg 19 mg
25 5 mg 7.2 mg 10 mg 14.3 mg 20 mg
26 5.2 mg 7.5 mg 10.5 mg 15 mg 21 mg
27 5.5 mg 7.8 mg 11 mg 15.7 mg 22 mg
28 5.7 mg 8.1 mg 11.5 mg 16.4 mg 23 mg
29 6 mg 8.4 mg 12 mg 17.1 mg 24 mg
30 6.2 mg 8.8 mg 12.5 mg 17.8 mg 25 mg
31 6.5 mg 9.2 mg 13 mg 18.5 mg 26 mg
32 6.7 mg 9.6 13.5 mg 19.2 mg 27 mg
33 7 mg 10 mg 14 mg 20 mg 28 mg
Here (Enanthate, cypionate, enanthate) refers to different types of estradiol, choose one of the column
below that type if you want stable blood-levels of estradiol.
https://transfemscience.org/misc/injectable-e2-simulator/
It's however not clear that less stable estradiol levels would be worse so you could try injecting less
often (and highest dosage) to see if it works out better for you 46
Emulating pregnancy
During pregnancy increases from about 300pg/mL to 17000pg/mL, this would require a dosage of
about 350mg Estradiol Valerate every 5 days which would be overly expensive, it's unclear how this
will affect your overall mortality risk, will it reduce breast-cancer risk? 47 Cis females grow bigger
breasts during pregnancy and therefore higher dosage may also be beneficial for trans females.
https://sci-hub.se/ https://doi.org/10.1097/cej.0b013e3283651ccb
You could just keep increasing the dosage assuming you do not get any health issues from it and you
can afford it assuming and if it results in your body changing in a way you like as a response.
Since your body will think you are pregnant your blood will become more coagulant in order to
prepare for the child-birth and thus the blood clotting risk will be much higher.
Breast growth
Local topical administration can be used to archive breast growth without subjecting your entire body
to pregnancy levels.
https://vintologi.com/attachments/cernea-1944-pdf.508/
Vandenberg (2006) found a non-monotonic response of size of breasts developed as a function of the
dose of exogenous estrogen administered to ovariectomized female mice. Size of breasts was smaller in
mice administered the highest dose of estradiol than mice administered an intermediate dose. The
optimum dose for breast growth in humans can not be extrapolated from this study because
metabolization of pharmaceuticals does not scale linearily with body mass and the growth of the human
body is slower than that of mice. This result suggests the hypothesis that to maximize breast growth in
transsex people it can be appropriate to use a lower dose of the estrogen or increase the dose slowly.
However many HRT regimes rely on the estrogen to suppress endogenous androgens; therefore,
starting with low dose of an estrogen potentially risks some degree of continued masculinization and
sub-optimal feminization.
https://sci-hub.se/10.1210/endo-28-1-53
https://tilde.club/~acz/male-to-female.org/en/psychopharmacology.html
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/97/12/4422/2536439
There is also some anecdotal support for this but having to use an anti-androgen is far from ideal since
these are expensive and come with side effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0&t=1830s
https://powersfamilymedicine.com/s/Healthcare-of-the-Transgender-Patient-V60.pptx
Dr will powers is not really trustworthy when it comes to medical conclusions/decisions
https://vintologi.com/threads/doctors-cannot-be-trusted.799/#post-4783
Should you emulate cis female puberty?
Normal female puberty involve a slow increase of estradiol over a period of 6 years.
This however does not mean emulating cis female puberty is ideal, unless you specifically want to
experience something similar to what cis females go through (requiring you to start early).
There are plenty of cis females with small breasts and you probably do not want that. We can do better
than what's ‘natural’.
If your estradiol dosage is low then it will be harder to suppress testosterone, if are still able to
successfully suppress your testosterone levels (such as via Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone
Antagonist) your health may suffer because you didn’t replace the missing testosterone with estrogen.
Progesterone
You may want to take Micronized Oral Progesterone if you are not on Cyproterone Acatate. The
current recommendation is to add progesterone after 1 to 2 years.
dosage: 200mg Sublingual (under the tongue) or rectal QHS at bedtime
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/104/4/1181/5270376
Estrogen and mental health/abilities
Estrogen is neuroprotective and can be used as an anti-psychotic in both men and women
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0920996410015847
The current 14-day randomized placebo-controlled trial in 53 men with schizophrenia was conducted to
evaluate the efficacy of 2 mg oral estradiol valerate as an adjunct to atypical antipsychotic treatment.
Results demonstrated for estradiol participants a more rapid reduction in general psychopathology that
occurred in the context of greater increases in serum estrogen levels and reductions in FSH and
testosterone levels.
Hormone therapy for trans people will likely have a small/insignificant impact on cognitive
performance towards the mental abilities of the sex they transition to. MtF transition will improve
linguistic intelligence and diminish spatial intelligence. The opposite is the case for FtM transition.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0018506X14001846
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0018506X98914787
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306453098000912
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0018506X06001413
https://eje.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/eje/155/suppl_1/1550107.xml
This is in line with the small observed difference between male and female mental abilities 48 49
Some people may get aroused at the thought of becoming physically and emotionally weak and thus
tell themselves they are getting dumber when they are not. Other individuals were mentally weak long
before they started on hormones, they transitioned because they cannot really make it as males (the
difficulty will keep going up).
You can keep it doing exercise or complement your HRT with stanozolol or oxandrolone (like cis
female bodybuilders).
Safety
The blood clotting risk relative to the effective dosage is higher for oral administration but it's still safer
than taking birth control as cis female.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/studies-find-that-transgender-hormone-therapy-is-lessrisky-than-birth-control-pills-300770439.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/well/live/hormone-replacement-skin-patches-dont-raise-risk-forblood-clots.html
It’s not possible to overdose on HRT, nobody has died from injecting too much estrogen.
The stop & go method
The effect of hormones will lessen over time as your receptors become desensitized.
One strategy for more breast broth is to abruptly stop estrogen for some time to re-sensitize your
receptors. This is of course very experimental but some people have had good results with it. A trans
female wrote:
I am 33 years old (started HRT at 29) and i live in Germany. My body has been below average with not
much fat. This is because of my mother who is very thin, too.
On Juni 21th 2017 i started my HRT with 2mg Estreva Gel per day. For 3 months i keep this regimen
until i changed to 3mg. My T has been very low almost not measurable ( < 0.1 pg/ml) as my blood test
showed. My E2 was at 362 pg/ml.
I saw quite some changes, but my breasts were only very small, almost not existent. So i spoke with my
gyn and asked him, if raising would be an option for this problem. I even read about progesteron,
maybe this might help with it. He told me to take same E2 dosage and use 100mg P4 oral every night. I
did it as he told me and nothing really happened.
After 2 months my breasts started to look pointy like a cone. they haven't changed a lot for the next two
years. I changed my regimen and dosages a lot but always without an AA. I made up my mind that i
would need an augmentation for them. My last hope has been a post where someone wrote that she
stopped HRT for a whole month but with an AA as suppressor for re-masculinization. I wrote with her
in private and she told me her way and steps.
After a week i made my preparations and stopped from 1mg oral E2 to zero. At first I had the feeling
my body changes into female shape became stronger and that my HRT has been blocked my too much
E2. But without the help of an AA i saw my light body hair became a little darker and thicker again.
This is why i asked my gyn for an AA. At first he gave me Drospirenon which did nothing in particular.
After some time he finally prescriped me Cyproteron acetate 10mg which stopped everything in terms
of re-masculinisation.
Then i started E2 again with 1mg per day. I felt some hot flushes in the night at the start but it was not a
true problem. But then happened something i had never imagined: I started to produce milk as my
breasts grew larger. How my breasts became very beautiful and rounded up themselves and i produce a
little milk. The amount grew with every day i milked myself and the enlargement of the breasts is still
not finished.
I surely read that Galaktorrhea is quite common after interrupting HRT and in most terms it is not a bad
sign. But this experience could save me from a breast augmentation. And maybe there is someone
outside who asked herself how to lactate.
Are blood tests needed?
Blood tests do not give you that much in terms of useful information, the main issue is you not
suppressing testosterone sufficiently or you using a needlessly high anti-androgen dosage, even if your
remain too high however that is still far better than not taking HRT at all.
Puberty blockers (bad idea)
Puberty blockers are sometimes used to medically 'treat' precocious puberty in cis people, this is
however very questionable
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00044/full#B8
There is no good medical reason for delaying puberty (cis or trans), its done for social reasons. It's
against christian moral dogma for young teens to be sexually active and people having early puberty
may also be teased by peers.
It was only when puberty blockers started to be used to delay puberty in trans people (for no good
reason) that they finally came under scrutiny and results are bad.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5694455/
If children could get on HRT earlier there wouldn't be any need to use puberty blockers at all. Instead
we would have the following 3 option
A: start full HRT before puberty. This has the advantage of allowing the individual to pass better as a
female but the price is very high, the child will become sterilized for life and SRS will be significantly
more difficult since there isn't enough tissue to work with.
B: have the child undergo enough male puberty such that sperm can be banked, after that full HRT is
quickly introduced.
C: have the child undergo puberty and delay HRT.
The following study (very poor methodology) does seem to show puberty blockers to be better than C
but even then it can be strongly argued A or B would have been a far better option.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7073269/
It is worth noting that it's very rare for children that started on puberty blockers to desist, almost
without exception they will proceed with cross-sex hormones meaning they will be infertile for life
unless some medical advancement is made allowing them to somehow have biological children.
Spack has, he says, put “about 200 children” on to hormone blockers at the onset of puberty. Of these,
100% have gone on to take cross-sex hormones.
theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/13/transgender-children-the-parents-and-doctors-on-the-frontline
No adolescent withdrew from puberty suppression, and all started cross-sex hormone treatment, the
first step of actual gender reassignment.” These were out of 70 children put on hormone blockers.
pinktherapy.com/Portals/0/CourseResources/
de_Vries_Puberty_Suppression_in_Adolescents_with_GD.pdf
What was the point in delaying puberty if they all ended up on cross-sex hormones anyway?
Puberty blockers will not even be effective when it comes to preventing bone-masculinization
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRhdWNwOQAg
A trans female wrote:
I would go for B. The puberty blocking route sometimes lead to awkward situations. Like having to use
a breast prosthesis to keep up with the other girls in the class. And also change it regularly for correct
size for the age. Kinda weird and fake and feel horrible to wear. But you have to do it as it's just too
important to not miss out on teen years.
4. Sublingual estradiol administration
Instead of swallowing the estradiol pills you can
let them be absorbed under the tongue, this will
bypass the liver resulting in higher effective
dosage. The issue with this is that it will result in
a sharp spike so you will have to take it every
4:th hour to get even close to a stable estradiol
blood level.
The obvious issue is that while you can take
estradiol every 2nd hour when you are awake the
level will drop severely when you are asleep
unless you are woken up during the night (or
wake up on your own). One potential way around
it is having it slowly absorbed via buccal (in the
cheek) administration while you are sleeping.
It's simply too unpractical and it doesn't
really provide any real benefit over
injections.
5. Estradiol patches
A general advantage with transdermal
(through the skin) administration is that while
estradiol will be absorbed the skin will act as
a protective barrier against many harmful
substances.
From the graph to the right we see that a
50μg/day patch is equivalent to 2mg oral estradiol/day.
You can start on 50μg/day and then add another patch @ 25μg/day for each month
https://eu-aibolit.com/home/24548-dermestril-dermestril-25-25mcg24h-tdr-emp-8-estradiol-.html
https://www.aphrodites.shop/product/CLIM%20100/climaraforte(estradiol-100mcg)
Replace different patches at different days for more stable estradiol levels.
It's fine to have masculine facial characteristics as female
Many cis females models have masculine facial characteristics. This is
actually attractive even though it may give some trans females dysphoria.
Instead of trying to be just like a cis female you need to actually play at your
strength and use the differences you have to cis females to your advantage.
Being more female is not always better, you need to figure out what is
actually beneficial for you. Why try to be exactly like a cis female when you
can be something even better?
Intersex studies: gender identity is not innate
One common misconception is that most/all people have some innate sense of gender. The typical
belief is that the brain has some fixed innate sex that has to match the body.
What we see with intersex people however is the obvious. For most people their sex is not some
important part of their identity, it's just what they happened to be born into and it's more convenient for
them to follow that path than to try to transition (with the difficulties that come with that).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421518/
5 of 5 people born with micropenis identified as female when raised as such
This is an interesting forced transition experiment and it did not go bad for the reason many people
would assume. The issue was that they were subjected to very questionable genital surgeries causing 4
of 5 to be dissatisfied with their neo-vagina.
https://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20020125/baby-boys-with-micropenis-happier-as-males
This does still refute the notion of gender identity being innate.
Due to the genitalia not looking like a normal male baby,
infants born with micropenis are sometimes raised as
females. This involves reconstructive surgery to form a
vagina and hormone treatments.
Although all of the 13 men and 5 women born with
micropenis who participated in the study identified closely
with their gender, only 20% of the babies raised as females
were satisfied with their genitalia, compared to 50% of the
males.
"Patients reared male considered themselves to be masculine, and those raised female considered
themselves to be feminine," said study author Amy Wisniewski, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Children's
Center, in a news release. "Our recommendation that babies be raised male is based not on problems
with gender identity but on the difficulties associated with the surgical construction of a vagina and
subsequent hormone treatment."
web.archive.org/web/20060909211109id_/http://facstaff.l3.drake.edu/abwisniewski/papers/13.pdf
While 4 of 5 had doubt regarding their gender they were all
satisfied with their female role
The ones raised as male largely viewed themselves as
masculine while the ones raised as female largely viewed
themselves as feminine.
This is an obvious alternative that hasn't been tried. Instead
of trying to force people into some sex-binary we need to
look at what medical interventions people actually benefit
from.
We shouldn't subject children to surgeries that are not
medically necessary.
It's very difficult to construct a decent neo-vagina even in
the case of adults who started HRT after puberty (it's very
hard to find any good results) and of course the situation is
much worse for children, this simply shouldn't be done.
There is also some ethnical issues with regard to the lack of
consent
Intersex study: 7 of 9 who was raised as female identified as such
All patients raised as male had a normal male gender identity, displayed masculine gender role
behaviour in childhood, and had a heterosexual sexual orientation. Seven of the 10 male patients had
experienced heterosexual intercourse. Two out of nine women did not identify with the female gender.
The majority had masculine gender role interests in childhood. The female patients were significantly
less likely to have experienced sexual activity with a partner than the male patients.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1083318807001660
Gender Identity Outcome in Female-Raised 46,XY Persons with Penile Agenesis, Cloacal
Exstrophy of the Bladder, or Penile Ablation
https://sci-hub.hkvisa.net/10.1007/s10508-005-4342-9
Raised as female (penile Agenesis):
Only one case had information regarding dysphoria (she had none).
All subjects with penile agenesis identified as male when the were raised
as such. None (of 3 with data regarding this) had gender dysphoria.
Raised as female (Cloacal or Bladder Extrophy):
6 got no gender dysphoria
2 "likely" got dysphoria
2 did get dysphoric
no information for 15
None of the patients who were raised as male got dysphoric.
0 of 2 who had catastrophic loss of penis as a child became
dysphoric when re-assigned as female.
In total from the data we have we see that 2 of 11 became
dysphoric from being reassigned as female with an additional 2
likely became dysphoric. No information for 30 unfortunately.
The general conclusion we can draw from this is that most people are not actually "cis" in the strict
sense (strongly identifying with their birth-sex) and that most would probably not become dysphoric
from having to change sex for whatever reason.
Many people would be able to adapt neurologically to living as the other sex/gender.
It is worth remembering that HRT will also change the brain, not just the body.
5 of 16 children with Cloacal Exstrophy identified as female when raised as such
For 3 it was unclear what gender identity they had (1 refused to discuss) and 8 identified as male.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa022236
They were all fairly masculine in terms of their behavior
As we see many of the subjects here did express that they would have liked to
be a boy but that does is not the same as developing gender dysphoria. It's
more likely about many of them wanting to be male due to their interests and
natural behavior.
It is worth noting that the study did not regard Cloacal Exstrophy as an
intersex condition. This is might explain why only 5 of 16 identified as female
when raised as such, they were not actually born with any intersex condition
that made their brains more feminine than males on average. You can expect a
similar result if you transition random males early.
We can not however extrapolate this to forced teen/adult transitions. Someone
might do better adapting as a teen/adult (different social situation. etc).
Replacing the Y chromosome with something better
We really need to ask ourselves if we really want a future were males are reduced to mere sperm donors
and are otherwise not needed. This will be relevant once we have
One issue with the Y chromosome is that since it doesn't duplicate important genetic info encoded in
the X chromosome resulting in males being at higher risk for disorders such as color blindness 50
Males also tend to die earlier, get bald, etc. Currently the only effective way to mitigate that is via HRT
which may impact fertility.
What if we instead created a Z chromosome allowing people with XZ chromosomes to both become
pregnant and produce sperm? (not necessarily simultaneously)
People with XZ chromosomes would create eggs with X chromosomes and sperm with Z chromosomes
allowing for backwards compatibility with XX and XY humans.
The system of having mostly 2 distinct sexes is resulting in a lot of societal tension and unhappiness,
people are bitter due to being confined by the sex they were born into, some people try to medically
change their sex but even then you will never be able to escape the reproductive role. Instead today
medical transition will make you infertile if you take it too far and you end up having to rely on freezed
sperm/eggs.
Preventing self-impregnation
There are multiple ways to reduce the viability of self-impregnation among hermaphrodite humans.
0. Have some genetic lock making it impossible naturally.
1. Kill of castrate people who engaged in self-impregnation. Destroying/removing the testicles of the
parents and the child might be enough since that will prevent them from engaging in further inbreeding.
2. Only enable one reproductive mode at one time.
3. Make it so hermaphrodites will not ejaculate unless their penis is inside someone.
One way to do 1 is to have everyone start out as female and then have people start becoming male after
the end of their female fertility (which will trigger the male fertility) alternatively people could
temporarily gain male fertility (and lose female fertility) via injections with testosterone. This has the
advantage of allowing everyone to grow up as girls and still get the benefit of being able to live as a
male when older and maybe more powerful/rich.
Neurology
Being successful would now pay off greatly in terms of reproduction since most people would be able
to impregnate a lot of females eventually when successful. Thus there would be a strong evolutionary
pressure towards risk-taking.
Even when subjected to estrogen and low testosterone (female state) most people would still display
masculine behavior traits. People would likely behave as 'males trapped in female bodies'. People
would likely get turned on by their own feminine bodies and other humans they meet.
It is worth noting that even today a lot of females are highly willing to take big risk for little/no
potential payoff in terms of survival and reproduction, this is likely a bi-product of male evolution
where the same trait evolved in both sexes when it was only really beneficial in one.
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