The Lowest Bar

By alix, Ari, and uriel
published 2026-09-09

A pair of eyes staring through a speakeasy.

Dear researchers, scholars, and journalists,

So you want to study the DIY HRT community? Interview its members?

First, we need you to understand you are not doing us a favour. We are not thankful for you “bringing attention to this issue”. We are not flattered by your “genuine interest” and commendable willingness to hear our stories. We are not grateful for the “privilege” of being given a voice, or for being deemed worthy of rubbing shoulders with your stylish intellect. We are not victims in need of rescue, except, perhaps, from your careless curiousity and the debate about us currently unfolding in your head, in our absence, and against our will.

We do not need you. In fact we need the absence of you. We do not trust your motivations, your goals, or your capacity for the discernment required to engage with us in any way that isn’t derivative, or harmful, or both. Your inquisitiveness is fundamentally suspect; your unprompted presence at our doorstep is a threat by default.

Here you are, a tourist on safari, bloated with entitlement and tresspass, disrupting our space with your gawking while contributing nothing of lasting value to our communities and their collective knowledge. The only tangible contribution is to your engagement metrics and h-index, to boosting your career while heedlessly fueling the public’s addiction to outrage and scapegoating.

Your questions are always some ostentatiously smart but ultimately hollow rewording of “why DIY?”, and the answer is always going to be: because it saves lives; because we can; because we want to; because we have to; because of our material conditions; because it gives power; because it gives autonomy, because we know how, because we know best, because we care for each other, because it elevates us; and because the face you make when you silently clutch your pearls is priceless.

“But isn’t it risky?” I hear you ask, and the answer is always going to be: talking to you and living among your kind is a bigger risk than my lab-tested, community-vetted, high quality injectable hormones. We have each others’ back and skin in the game; you have an unexamined moral convinction that doctors know best before, during, and after they misinform, mistreat, and neglect. But in truth your question is rhetorical. You are not seeking to understand, but dutifully demanding an admission of guilt, trying to smoke out signs of destitution and distress, anything to justify slapping a warning label on a practice of emancipation. “But isn’t it risky?”: an expression of concern, saturated with allusions, doubling as a reminder to comply and share in the same docility.

And lastly, to our friends and allies: you know full well good intentions and shared intersections are not synonyms for safety. Your prose will never be so well crafted as to liberate more than it restrains. What are you trying to accomplish that isn’t for yourself? At best you’ll cause a security nightmare; your words are bugged, they paint a target on our backs. If you can pick up what we’re putting down, then let us save our own lives.

Still here? Firm in your conviction the above misses the mark in your case? Then consider the following questions and material. If you can’t answer them, or won’t, if you cannot pass the lowest bar, spare us the labour of attending to your bruised ego and move along. Find something else to study and report on. Go away.

Questions

  1. Where did you hear about the DIY HRT community and why are you interested in us?
  2. What is the name you publish under, and what university, company, or media outlet do you work for?
  3. How are trans scholars, researchers, journalists, or editors included in the leadership of this work?
  4. How is this work being funded? Name the funding bodies. Are there conflicts of interests?
  5. Describe the study or article you are working on. Include specific aims and why you believe members of the DIY HRT community should participate.
  6. Did you familiarize yourself with existing litterature on the topic you are studying, both academic and otherwise? How is your work original? If not, what is it adding?
  7. How will your research benefit trans people and the DIY HRT community specifically in substantive and/or material ways? This question is important. Please genuinely engage with it and think before answering. If the actual answer is “this will further academic knowledge without benefitting trans people”, be honest about it.
  8. If published in a peer-reviewed journal, will it be open-access?
  9. How do you intend to compensate members for their participation, including time, efforts, and travel costs?
  10. What risks do you foresee for the community once your work reaches its audience? How do you intend to mitigate those risks?
  11. What steps will you take to protect the privacy of our community members?
  12. Does your process risk triggering trauma in participants? Are you using affirming, non-stigmatizing language throughout your work?

Forerunners

Further reading

Become a better scholar by engaging with the following writings on community-driven research (CDR), community-based participatory research (CBPR), instances of CBPR/CDR done more or less right, and the ethics of researching marginalized, heavily-scrutinized people. Most texts can be accessed using sci-hub, sci-net, or Anna’s archive.

Selected articles

Published guidelines

Ethics and CBPR/CDR

Books