This Used To Be A Blog Someone Used

Older than I was when I wrote this. Still queer, even if I’m not here. This space is only for adults. If you are under 18, leave, and I encourage you to find age appropriate places to safely learn about whatever it was you were seeking here.

[boomonster-rawr]

On fun days, it’s both.

“Returning my gender to sender ages ago was the right decision, but my presentation has always been in flux. Some mornings you want glitter on your eyes and talons long enough to claw out the heart of the world; others call for learning to walk with the biggest possible dick between your legs, jaw sharp and voice crushed low.

On fun days, it’s both.”

The devil you blow, Rien Gray. In Heckin’ Lewd: Trans and Nonbinary Erotica edited by Mx. Nilline Lore

[planetarytransformation]

so many of the transfems i know spent their time pre-transition performing a kind of lifelong exercise in self-deprivation, the goal of which was to find out exactly how little a person needed to live. they starved themselves, dressed carelessly, shunned friends, and hollowed themselves out so as not to be burdens on anyone but themselves.

i see it now, too, in the girls around me. i'll ask if they want care – a home-cooked meal, relaxed company, sex without the expectation of reciprocation – and they say no, no, thank you, i don't need it; what would you like, what do you want, because in their head they're still doing that awful calculus, still training themselves to disappear in the eyes of the people around them.

i don't think i'd have died without transition – not in the conventional sense, at least – but to take that leap, i had to stop thinking of myself as a human experiment in fuel-efficient living and start nurturing the anemic, atrophied flame of desire in my heart. i had to learn to eat well, to exercise, to style myself beautiful, but harder than that, i had to learn to ask the people around me to work on my behalf in order to enrich my life and give me the things i wanted.

and i did it; i learned. and it was agony, but courage is a muscle you can train, and every day i get better at accepting gifts with the hungry gratitude i never learned in my years and years as a sad, scared, lonely boy.

so be patient with the trans girls in your life. better than that: be proactive, attentive, generous; be forceful, if you have to, and learn to distinguish real discomfort from the terrified reflex of self-denial that so many of us once learned to rely on.

and if you are so lucky as to love a trans girl, you must insist upon her. you must insist upon her happiness, her comfort, her pleasure, and her rest, because she may still not yet know how to make those demands for herself. if you can devote any amount of energy to becoming an engine that nurtures the flame of even a single tgirl then there is a place for you in trans heaven, which as far as i'm concerned is the only one worth going to

[planetarytransformation]

i love this fucking post. just thousands of deeply and profoundly wounded people in the notes recognizing their past and present selves in a picture of self-abnegation, ignorance, and despair. some are weary, some are shocked, some are hopeful; all have tried at some point to make themselves disappear. they failed, and must now work thanklessly to undo a lifetime of shame and starvation in favor of the happiness, abundance, and pleasure which is their birthright.

so many of my siblings, especially those who are awaiting or beginning transition, step into transgender life as fragile, apathetic beings who have spent their lives being coerced, beaten, and tricked into winnowing themselves to nothing, doing the work of the murderers for them, because they have been taught to believe that trans people deserve to live suspended, half-dead lives as punishment for their abhorrence.

they do not. you do not.

if you put your thoughts in the tags or the notes on this post, whether they were hopeful, despairing, reminiscent, or terrified, know that i have read it, and i love you. keep fighting.

[anxietyproblem]

[boomonster-rawr]

[photo id: text above a picture reads “me vibing to the same song I’ve played 23 times today”, picture is of a cartoon dog wearing headphones attached to the portable cassette tape player they are holding in their hands. The dog is sitting on the roof of a structure in the dark with a forest in the background. There are pine trees in the foreground that fade into shadows of pine tree shapes in the background, giving the impression of a dark forest. The dog has a neutral expression on their face, their eyes are very big for their body and their lips are pursed. End id]

[lucybellwood]

Fucking slain in my tracks by this postcard on my friend’s dresser

[boomonster-rawr]

Can I use a spider strainer to pick up poached eggs out of hot water or will it just disintegrate in the mesh? Trying to choose between a spider strainer and a slotted spoon. (I own neither and I don’t want to buy both)

[boomonster-rawr]

people with childhood trauma of their own and also children they had on purpose, how did you know that was the right decision for you?

[itsshinycollectordestinyworld]

depends on what you mean by having children on purpose. ie: purposefully deciding to fuck a new life into being or purposefully accepting the reality of being unexpectedly presented with one.

did i choose - deliberately, before having them - to have kids? no. in fact i was told i couldn't have them. which suited me fine because based on the childhood i had endured & the state of the world in general, even just the thought of hypothetical children was a hard no for me.

upon being presented with them however, despite not having chosen that 'life goal' and having been assured that even if i had i was incapable of fulfilling it, i very purposefully, deliberately and absolutely chose them with every fibre in my being.

and i knew that was the right choice because anything less than my absolute & complete devotion to the lives entrusted into my care was not an option.

parenthood is a choice, make no mistake. just less from the perspective of "should/can/do i want this (despite being scarred & broken & possibly not up to the job)?" and more from the perspective of "if i choose this, am i prepared to do it to the very best of my ability, even if it means rebuilding myself from the ground up every single day in order to be the parent they need for the rest of my/their lives?".

and if the answer to that is no, then it's probably not the right choice.

ymmv. as it should.

[boomonster-rawr]

the “on purpose” language was absolutely supposed to be left open for interpretation, with the intention just being to draw focus to that element of decision making.

thanks so much for this response my beloved friend—i really appreciated hearing both the no and the yes to your decision here … and, also, how clearly you were able to articulate the deciding factor. ♥️

if you’re open to chatting with me about this sometime i might like to think a bit more about the no and what it was like to set those things aside to be the parent they need.

[willabee]

new creature discovered. how to proceed?

[willabee]

impressive

[willabee]

hmm

[itsshinycollectordestinyworld]

listen, the cat loves you. adores you even. to the point that nothing but what is yours will ever be good enough for them.

your keyboard, no sunbeam nor bed draped in the softest of coverings could ever compare to the absolute bliss of a few stolen-directly-from-the-talons-of-a-busy-dragon-qwerty-shaped-sleep-like-the-king-you-know-yourself-to-be moments

your food, carefully hooked & surreptitiously dragged from your plate (bowls are enemy#1 because sides) desperate attempts to thwart such acts of thievery stalled in their tracks by a mere flick of The Tail

your water out of your glass (bottles disdainfully toppled from even less than lofty heights however because, enemy#2 duh) despite having been covered by any number of makeshift lids - who needs opposable thumbs when claws and a swift boff of a head get the job done

your chair - preferably still warm from your arse which, having been skilfully (not artfully, mind just with a certain level of undeniable skill wrought from years of gainful practise) ejected has no choice but to Sit Elsewhere

your hair ties which, once in the paws of mr whiskers metamorphosise into Things Which Must Die Sad, Painful, Untold Deaths Under The Couch never to be seen again (until mr vacuum chokes on their battered remains ofc)

also, any work you thought you were doing. it's theirs now.

was all along really. silly dragon.

[boomonster-rawr]

people with childhood trauma of their own and also children they had on purpose, how did you know that was the right decision for you?

[sandersstudies]

The older you get the more you will realize that your friends are people who have made mistakes and bad decisions and even just fucked up and hurt people.

And obviously your boundaries with your friends are completely up to you but you do need to recognize that if you cut off everyone who has done something wrong, you’re going to end up with no friends (and you yourself will have also fucked up in your life, and not lived up to those impossible standards either).

I’ve found it’s much more constructive to learn how to say “hey dude, that was massively fucked up of you,” because most people are really willing to say “yeah, it was, I need to work on it/not do it again/apologize and make things right” ESPECIALLY if they are hearing it from you as their friend.

[sandersstudies]

Sometimes the kindest thing you can do for another person is to tell them that they’ve done something wrong, help them fix it, and stay their friend because it’s what we would want from them if we did something wrong.

[timemachineyeah]

We don’t talk enough about the systemic health effects of casual fatphobia and how much they fucking skew the data to the point where we literally cannot know how much outcomes are actually related to fatness and how much they are related to society not being designed for fat people, like literal design.

My best friend cannot find a bra.

She’s fat. We won’t get into the ~why~ here because it honestly wouldn’t matter whether it was “all her fault” or whether it was a result of outside forces like genes and such, she still deserves a goddamn fucking bra that fits.

And she cannot find a bra.

She’s short and fat, and Fat Bras are usually full cup, but because she’s short the full cups are usually too tall, or the armbands around them are too tall, to the point where what’ll fit around her chest and over her boobs will also dig up into her arms or have such high coverage that she literally cannot wear a shirt with a neckline high enough. Any bra that goes out enough goes too high.

This affects her ability to find clothing, impacting her ability to go outside sometimes, because she has this tiny selection of bras and she constantly has to wash them and when they’re gone she has no idea when she’ll next be able to find another unicorn bra. They appear in a flash usually in startups that die soon after, and COVID has killed most the small businesses remaining where she had even a hint of a chance of finding a fitting bra.

So she wears bras that don’t fit. Or she doesn’t leave the house. One gives her back pain. The other is, obviously, not very active. She likes to be active.

If she brings it up, people suggest breast reduction surgery.

But the thing is, with a good bra, she does not get back pain.

But if it’s that hard to find a good bra, they say, wouldn’t a reduction just be easier?

Wouldn’t it be easier for you to chop off part of your flesh, they say, then for us to cut fabric and underwire to more sizes? As if that is normal. As if that isn’t horrifying.

It’s not just bras. It’s chairs. It’s benches. It’s goddamn shoes. It’s seatbelts. It’s exercise equipment - I just got an exercise bike for Christmas. I had to shop around to find an affordable one that was also rated to take my level of fat. If I were 100 pounds heavier, which some people are? I don’t think any equipment would have existed in a price range that any working person could expect to afford. I don’t think most people even look at the weight ratings on chairs and couches and furniture. Once you start? They are lower than you think. There are absolutely 100% people you love in your life - whether really tall men or just average kinda overweight fat people - who should not be using the things they are using. Who are not getting support from their mattress, their footwear, their office chair. It might be you! You might be thinking “but I am average size!”, but the amount of furniture out there that’s only weighted to about 200lbs? Or 175??? It’s SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU REALIZE. Get into the Proper Fat? The 350lb, 400lb, 500lb fat? There’s virtually nothing.

Seatbelts are not tested for fat bodies and seatbelt extenders aren’t regulated.

We know about the problems with too small a blood pressure cuff. With too low a medicine dose. With no MRI a really fat body can fit in for a thousand miles.

We know, from multiple studies on multiple oppressed communities, that social bias by itself, with zero other compounding factors, can give people worse health outcomes.

Now add up

+ one of the social biases with the least pushback even from the educated liberal set with

+ having a world that is literally not made for you. Where you cannot get clothes, furniture, or transportation in a way that will actually accommodate you,

+ where society is constantly blaming you for this. And even if you somehow (and if you know how, please tell me) manage to retain some sense of self worth and optimism and determination despite all that

+ that’s not gonna magically give you access to the daily supplies a person needs in their home and out in public that’ll make living safe and healthy life literally physically possible.

If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health start a bra company. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health mandate changes to seatbelt requirements. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health have a variety of chairs in your waiting room with at least some being properly Fat Rated. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, make it easier for fat people to be active by making exercise equipment that fits them, swimwear that’ll actually stay on them, athletic shoes that can bear them. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health ask they be included in more medical trials. If you’re really so concerned about fat people’s health, promote fat visibility and fat people loving their bodies - because hating yourself has literally never been good for anyone’s health.

If you’re using “concern for health” as a shield to allow you to judge and criticize strangers, you don’t give a fuck about anyone’s health. You’re just an asshole who prefers a veneer of respectability when you bully people. You’re hateful and we can see right through you.

But fatphobia isn’t just bullying. It isn’t just judgment from strangers. It isn’t just medical neglect and medical bias. Even if we could wave a wand and make all that go away, my best friend still wouldn’t have a bra that fits, people still wouldn’t have a chair that supports them, a seatbelt that protects them. It’s literally engineered in. And it slowly kills people day by day by day.

[genderkoolaid]

people who think that their dehumanization of other people is justified and safe because they are a marginalized group need to read more on the Rwandan genocide. You Are Not Immune To The Genocidal Mindset No Matter How Justified It Feels.

nothing will save you from being a human monster except yourself. there is no identity, no social status, no experience, nothing that will give you some immutably upright moral standing. all that stands between any of us and horrific acts of violence is our choice not to do that. of course some of us have more access to greater acts of violence than others. but NEVER start thinking that you are exempt from making deliberately ethical choices, because your mission is just so so pure and good that anything done in its name must be justifiable. that is the devil talking. no one is that damn special

[itsshinycollectordestinyworld]

i love that people are writing more books featuring trans characters.

i hate that so many stories featuring trans characters are written by cis (almost always white) people who, in their rush to be "hip with the kids" or whatever (read: sell books), couldn't be arsed to research what it means to be trans - beyond what their social media feed has told them (which, lets be honest is usually just thinly veiled prejudice, disrespect, contempt and/or misinformation out the wazoo) - or even bothered to like, you know, talk to an actual trans person before setting pen to paper and absolutely bollocking the whole fucking thing.

sucks warty troll sac tbh, to get all excited about representation! finally! and find that actually, no. it's just more recycled, rebranded, nauseatingly prejudiced, radfem rhetoric slapped with a "we stan trans" label.

like no susan, you're just a fucking bigot in a rainbow-ish trenchcoat, fuck all the way off.

[boomonster-rawr]

[gaytanic-panic]

It says a lot about our society that vaccines are controversial but an injectable diabetes drug being used off label for weight loss was immediately accepted by everyone without a second thought

[boomonster-rawr]

not-really-related but ish rant.

yesterday, my mom sent me a (recently published) article from a medical journal about a 16 year old who was identified as a boy who had been kinda defiant lately and had also been paranoid at a restaurant after smoking pot. the teen was also a little silly. these behaviours were identified by the mom and doctor as a sign of (dangerous—implied but not said) psychosis. they went on to repeatedly state that it could put him at risk of future schizophrenia and since there isn’t much research yet on cannibos use in teens they elected to give him a long acting injection of an antipsychotic.

Because long acting injections of antipsychotics are clearly much safer, which much less harmful side effects, and much more well researched in teens, are they? (No.)

[homunculus-argument]

Hey I know I'm not that much of a punk circles kind of guy, but just in case you kids don't have anyone more credible to tell you this: do not put endangering badges on your back.

Yes, your battle jacket should consist exclusively of whatever the fuck you want to put on it, but if you've got political badges, rainbow pins, or anything advertising yourself as a member of a vulnerable group (whether that's trans, disabled, any kind of ethnic or refugee background, you probably know what yours are better than I do), only put them in places where you can see everyone who can see them. I'm not joking this is a safety measure. Punk scenes can be rough and sketchy places and not everyone who attends them is safe to be around.

You don't need to come tell me that this is unfair, because you're right. You don't need to come tell me that I shouldn't be telling you not to put a target on your back, but that I should be telling people who assault people to not assault people, because you're wrong. Yeah no shit it sucks but unfortunately if nazis gave a single fuck about who is morally correct, they wouldn't be nazis in the first place.

Be yourself by any means necessary, but protect yourself by any means necessary. Rainbows go in the front of the jacket.

[rakdos-dogdyke]

Crop top that says "i love biting" paired with booty shorts that say "i love biting" paired with a baseball cap that says "i love biting" paired with long socks that each say "i love biting" paired with some flip flops

[rakdos-dogdyke]

YOU'RE THE ONLY PERSON WHO GETS ME

[boomonster-rawr]

image id: screen shot of a tag that reads “#this and a muzzle”. end ID

[itsshinycollectordestinyworld]

something that really gets my wtf sense what-the-fucking is the weird - and imo, very juvenile - expectations that some folks have regarding a romantic partner.

expectations along the line of:

- they must make me laugh

- they must take my side even if i'm wrong

- they must take care of me when i'm sad/sick

- they must buy me things

- they must know what i want/need without me having to say anything

- they must always be available to me whenever i want/need them

- they must always be patient

- they must always be calm

- they must always do what i ask of them, even if they don't want to

you get the picture i'm sure. and maybe you're thinking "well yeah shiny, but those things are mostly reasonable". they're not though. and here's why:

love is not indentured servitude.

love is not about getting what you want, when you want it, delivered exactly how you want it.

love is not about having someone to fill the empty gaps you carry inside you.

love is respect. for yourself & your partner/s.

love is responsibility. to & for yourself, as well as your partner/s.

love is collaboration. choosing to work with (a) partner/s in order to create something larger than the sum of what each individual could achieve on their own.

love is growth. yours & theirs.

love is knowing when to say no, as well as yes or maybe.

love is trusting someone who is not you with your life and in return, being trustworthy with theirs.

love is vulnerability. yours & theirs.

love is sharing, and knowing when not to.

love is being loyal & steadfast and receiving the same in return.

love is knowing where the line between dependable & delusional is, and not crossing it.

love is kind.

but above all, love is a choice.

there's more, because of fucking course there is, but i'm due for a coffee break, so yeah.

ymmv. as it should...

[boomonster-rawr]