A Reintroduction

Years ago, when I was a woman, I was a somewhat-prolific writer on “rationalist Facebook”. Then I stepped away from public writing for about four years. During those years I completely transformed my life and transitioned to be a man. This is the reintroduction I shared to my Facebook audience after returning, on January 1, 2026.

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𝐀 𝐑𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Hi guys! I’ll be writing more. I have a lot to say.

I spent the last few years learning the language of a culture that was new to me, which now feels like home. I transitioned from woman to man, and in the process I found hubs of gay male culture that are compatible with real, classical liberal values in a way I had never experienced before. This was the second real ideological home I’ve found – the first being rationalism. I now feel bilingual, having spent a few years pouring my heart into each of these cultures, which gives me this wonderful sense of “bigness” and groundedness and perspective. With that knowledge in hand, I plan on putting more of my focus back into the rationalist community now.

I made the biggest achievement of my life in 2024: I determined and proved that it was possible to do full-scale, modern FTM top surgery fully awake.

As far as I’ve been able to tell, I’m the first person in the world to get this type of surgery. I spent about two years to achieve it. First I had to make myself an amateur expert on local anesthesia to determine whether it was possible, and figure out what anesthesia technique would make it work. Then I had to search the globe for a researcher willing to do it. Doctors repeatedly told me it was medically impossible. (Sometimes they STILL tell me it’s impossible, and refuse to believe me until I show them the video of it happening!) They were wrong, of course, and they’re wrong about many other such things. I’ve learned a lot about how far clinical practice can lag behind the research. The surgery worked perfectly. I watched the surgery as it happened, and filmed the entire thing on my phone and camcorder. It was so much fun. Coolest experience of my life.

I will be writing a bunch of essays over the coming months on surgery-related topics, both about the science of it all and the personal blow-by-blow descriptions of what it’s like to watch your own surgery. I’ll also release the entire 4.5 hour footage at some point (with an accompanying highlight reel, in case you don’t have 4.5 hours to kill, lol). I might do a virtual watch party to answer questions. Condensing all the important info into an essay series is a huge project, hence my idea to start with an AMA/watchparty. Let me know if you’re interested in that and what your big questions are. I tend to answer a lot of the same questions over and over (which I love, don’t get me wrong), and I want to make sure the general public gets access to all those questions and answers. Applications of this technique go far beyond trans surgeries – the case offers important evidence about the improvements we can make in tons of routine fat-based surgeries.

If you would like to stay updated, please follow me on Substack or Twitter, which will be my main platforms now. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞: linktr.ee/tommyjoancrow

I will be talking primarily about surgery, inefficiencies in medicine, gay male culture, and topics broadly related to enlightenment values and classical liberalism. I may also talk about abundance-related ideas (looking for my “healthcare abundance” people – where are you? message me plz), and other topics related to economics and industrialization.

I’ll be using social media to do amateur journalism now (and hopefully professional journalism soon). I made a nice career in private wealth management for the last 3.5 years, but I think I was born to be a writer, so I quit finance to make time for pursuing journalism seriously as a career. Because I am now intending to use social media to do journalism, and because the topics I have expertise in are either connected to hot-button political issues or like, medical gore, lol, I have unfriended a bunch of family members and family-type friends. They will be added to a family-friendly account.

This was a bit agonizing for me, because I cling to the “marketplace of ideas” fantasy of the internet, which makes blocking/unfriending people repulsive to me. Since childhood, my image of a virtuous person is a truth-seeker who shares their ideas unrestrictedly with the world, unafraid of who might think ill. I learned the hard way that this is not how things work. You will get seriously harmed if you make a habit of saying true things without regard to the audience, and then you won’t be able to say true things anymore. So I’m taking a more balanced approach now, and have attempted to make my work more opt-in for some people, rather than opt-out. If you notice that you’ve been unfriended, but you WANT to hear about surgery, sex, and politics, please re-add me! I would love to have you, as long as you know what you’re getting into, and can stomach it in a civil manner. And 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬, 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐃𝐎𝐍’𝐓 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐲, 𝐬𝐞𝐱, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬, 𝐩𝐥𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳𝐳 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐦𝐞 rather than like, stalking me and messaging my loved ones about how obnoxious you think I am lmao. Appreciate it.

Lately I spend much of my time reading/writing about the topics already mentioned (or fighting DaVinci Resolve to edit huge surgery footage files), and I’m also into various biohacking topics, the gym, and big machines, cranes especially. One of the greatest joys of 2024-2025 was being fully able-bodied for the first time since puberty, and experiencing the sheer joy of being able to run, and jump, and dance again with no pain. Nothing slams down onto my ligaments, no dead weight has to be carefully managed - I no longer have the constant engineering problem I’ve dealt with since about 13 years old, where I rotate the placement of dead weight to different spots on my body to minimize the damage, one day placing the bulk of the mass on my shoulders where it eventually sends shooting nerve pain down my arms, the next day placing it onto my ribcage where it eventually breaks into the skin or puts my sternum in enough pain that I can’t take full breaths, much less exercise. Now that I’m fixed, I’ve been trying everything – I’m learning to do handstands, I’m teaching myself lots of different types of dance (badly), I did my first pull-up, I stretch (I can stretch my arms any which way, without it hurting!), I lift, I go to gym classes that involve lots of jumping (that would have absolutely destroyed me before) and I RUN. Oh god, RUNNING. It’s amazing. I was desperate to run again. I will never take running for granted. And I can sit up for 8 hours a day with zero pain. And I can wear a seatbelt without pain. Anyway, I could go on and on. I put my hand to my chest very often just to marvel that there is zero pain there. I hadn’t experienced that in close to fifteen years. Given that I don’t do general anesthesia, I didn’t know if I would ever be able-bodied again. Being able-bodied feels like the greatest blessing in the world. I’m so happy.

I’ve had the good fortune to cultivate an amazing apartment with a beautiful, curated collection of construction/machinery/industrialization-related objects, which have almost all been gifted to me by my two favorite and beloved men, David and Sebastian. I’m constantly grateful to have such a cool and safe home base to do my work from, such wonderful loved ones who are brave and smart and who understand me, and hard but useful work to do. The direction our country is headed is a pretty serious everyday worry, and I’m taking some big calculated risks career-wise, which is stressful, but I feel good about the actions I’m taking to make strategic trade-offs and contribute value to society. On the whole, life is very, very good.

When Sebastian parodies me he holds up a finger and says “If nature is unjust, change nature! Youth liberations now!”, so I’ll close this the same way – if nature is unjust, change nature, and youth liberation now. 🙂 Here’s what I look like lately. As always: new font, same substance.