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here is a zine called "helping your friends who sometimes wanna die maybe not die," a recent, excellent find of mine. perfect for those interested in harm reduction + community care in relation to suicide and other forms of mental/emotional crisis.

"helping your friends who sometimes wanna die maybe not die" by carly boyce is available for free download here. read and share.

and here is a webinar on anti-carceral crisis intervention, presented by the author!

trans-axolotl

ID: [A drawing of three people sitting around a table. Text reads: Helping your friends who sometimes wanna die maybe not die. here is a list of affirmations/validations that might be helpful in a conversation with someone who is feeling suicidal. I love you. I care about you. thanks for trusting me with this. I believe you. that sounds really hard. it's so fucked up that you have to deal with this. if there are ways that I can have your back, I want to. you are not a burden. you matter to me. you're easy to love. I love you at your worst. I see you. I'm here. I signed up for this. Thank you for naming that. that's so real. That sucks. it makes sense that you're upset. oof, ouch. that's brutal. I see how much you're managing.]

#i think this changed me (in the best way possible)

creature-wizard

I think every spiritual person who intends to keep on being a spiritual person should sit down and think up some reasons why they would and should continue being a good person if they found out that their spirituality was wrong. The purpose isn't to weaken your conviction in your faith, but to strengthen your conviction in being a good person.

persianmom-deactivated20260602

getting tired of punishing myself 4 nothing 🫩

#the horrors are unending

winged-thinged

maybe God is perfectly just and kind and loving, but I was brought up to believe that if I ever knowingly masturbated and then didn't immediately tell a priest about it, He would sentence me to suffer in a lake of fire for all eternity. so y'know. who can say

#the horrors are unending

winged-thinged

fromthemouthofkings

i want to talk about how being catholic (and likely other forms of religious fundamentalism work similarly too, but my experience is with catholicism) encouraged my suicidal ideation and self-harm but i can't. get words around it

fromthemouthofkings

it's like this. from the time you're born and your parents take you to church to sit in the pew and eat gushers and scribble on the worship aid in your little LL Bean dresses and tights, you're told over and over again that to love is to die for something. or someone. to love is to have nails driven through your wrists. and ankles. to be holy is to starve and hallucinate and deny yourself medical attention, to suffer like a saint. to die like a martyr. to die, always to die. and then you're a depressed teenager, and it's not just that you want your suffering to end--you don't want your suffering to end. you want to suffer. what feels holy? what feels more holy than starving, than cutting your wrists and ankles open and bleeding like the stigmata? what feels more holy than death?

fromthemouthofkings

it's like this: my wrists still itch when i think about it too hard. my ankles are still scarred. i don't do it anymore ("do it": is the "it" christianity or cutting?) but the urge has never fully gone away.

i studied theology in college because i thought it was the only thing that would still be useful to me after i died. do you understand? i still fight the urge to genuflect.

#the horrors are unending

choosetheleft

Accidentally stumbled onto active Mormon tumblr and it was… weird. I’ve been exmo long enough that it was hard to wrap my brain around some things.

There were people professing things that, to me, seem deeply and irreconcilably contradictory.

Like… saying they’re anti-Zionist AND Mormon. Mormonism is deeply Zionist (what did they name southern Utah? What did they do to the native population of the land they claimed god gave them?) and I personally don’t see a way to reconcile that.

Same with being queer and Mormon—Mormonism is queerphobic on a doctrinal level. My brain couldn’t even open up to the idea of being queer until I was out of the church for a good while. A huge part of Mormon doctrine is getting straight married and making lots of (preferably white straight able bodied) babies.

Also saw some acknowledging that Brigham Young was a deeply awful person and Mormons just have to learn to be ok with that…. Like. What?? I can’t worship a god who chooses incredibly awful people to be his supposed mouthpiece on earth. (I notice that Brigham Young is the one who always gets thrown under the bus by Mormons who are trying to occupy a nuanced place but Joseph Smith still seems untouchable. Joseph Smith was also an awful person. He’s the one who set the stage for Brigham Young.)

Most life philosophies are contradictory on some level but to me these are incredibly huge contradictions that are several steps too far. Mormons have to live with lots of contradictions I guess, so it’s just a few more things to add to the list.

So glad I don’t have to do that anymore.

winged-thinged

Never mormon but former Catholic (originally pretty trad, then liberal on my way out) and this frustrates me so much.

I was taught to silence my doubts over contradictions like these because, oh, god bigger than us, he is infinite, he’s mysterious, he can hold seeming-contradictions inside himself and it’s fine, you can hold these things in tension, it’s both-and.

Which is just such a load of horseshit, for many reasons, not the least of which being that well, it’s awfully convenient if you never have to actually grapple with any of the problematic parts of your religion and just handwave them away as “a mystery.” But also, it puts a strain on you, trying to live and be queer in that kind of environment. It requires you to constantly perform Biles-level mental gymnastics, constantly, just to justify existing as you are. To live in faith, to live in waiting, to live in hope (foolish hope) that one day, the rest of the church is going to change, that one day god will open up the sky and say, “I’ve loved gay people all along,” and everybody will realize that you were right, and it will all be okay. (Never mind, never mind the years and years and years of needless suffering and pain that preceded you.)

My current values and philosophy do not demand such strain, such cognitive dissonance from me.

#the horrors are unending

winged-thinged

Not trying to vague anyone in particular, but it always confuses me when religious queer folks talk like they're incredibly ill-used by ex-religious and non-religious queer folks, like they are doing something completely radical and transgressive by being religious and queer at the same time, like they don't feel like they're welcome in the queer community, because like. I can only speak to my own experiences as a former Catholic queer, but I am very aware that you can be queer and religious at the same time? I was, for years. And in all that time, I can't think of a single time when I felt like I wasn't welcome in the queer community because of my religion. I knew there were some folks who had complaints about my religion—many of them I shared, and for many of them, even if I didn't exactly share them, I felt that given the history of the Church, other people's feelings about it were probably pretty fair. I knew there were some folks in the community who had been hurt by my religion and didn't want to hear about it, so I just...didn't try to proselytize to them, and they respected me, and we were fine? Sometimes I got annoyed by criticisms that I felt simply weren't fair or accurate to my experiences of Christianity—but disagreeing with others in a community and holding different opinions and beliefs from them is not the same thing as not being welcomed.

Any pressure I got to view my queerness and my religion as irreconcilable came not from the queer community...but from my religious community. It was my Catholic family that, when I came out to them, immediately assumed I must not be a Catholic anymore and started aggressively trying to "convert" me back to their faith—a faith that, at the time, I still shared. It was my religious community that made me feel not welcome, to the point that I eventually had to step away, because trying to exist in that Catholic space as an openly queer person was hurting me, like a constant friction, a constant battle where I fought just to stand there plainly and openly as I am and everybody around me tried to shear a half of my very self away from me.

But it was not the queer community that forced my hand like that. The queer community made no assumptions, no ultimatums and no threats, and there was no eternal punishment waiting for me with the queers if I came to a different conclusion than everybody else.

Now, as one of Those Ex-Religious Queers, I admit I do privately cringe a little bit when I hear other folks talking about how they fight so hard to remain both queer and faithful—because I remember how much it hurt me, constantly fighting for an equal place in the Catholic community all that time. But I wish them well—about as much as I can do when I see someone going on and on about how much they love a community that was largely abusive towards me—because I know that my life is not their story. Of course, the number of criticisms I have about the Catholic Church (and the number I feel are fair and justified) has grown, but I think a free and healthy community has room for disagreement and respectful debate. I don't think plurality and diversity of belief are a bad thing.

#the horrors are unending

winged-thinged

As someone who works in an activism-adjacent space professionally, I have no fucking patience left for the strain of thought that treats social injustice as primarily a set of Internal Biases You Have to Unlearn (but which you can never fully unlearn) rather than like, a set of sociopolitical structures that can be changed with concrete action.

The corollary to thought crime not being real is that thought heroism also is not real, and though your beliefs obviously have an impact on how you choose to act, making sure to Believe All The Right Things will never be any kind of substitute for actually getting off your ass and doing something to make the everyday lives of the real living people around you a little bit easier. As a queer person, trying to get every person on Earth to do deep self-reflection on their heteronormative biases is both a fool's errand and a waste of my time compared to making sure that I have access to a safe place to live that can't legally evict me for being trans.

But the problem isn't just that this model is kind of ineffectual. It's also a shit tactic that relies on shame, on convincing people that they're fundamentally wrong and perpetuating harm in a way they can never fully fix, on trapping people in a neverending cycle of guilt and repentance, and people who have decent boundaries are rightly going to be put on the defensive by it, no matter how true and beautiful your values are.

And proponents can spend all day saying "oh no no no I didn't say that having internalized bias makes you a bad person! We all have internalized biases that we have to spend our whole lives perpetually trying and failing to correct and can never fully leave behind, even me!" until they're blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that in essence what they're spending all their time working and arguing for is a world where we must all live in a perpetual state of repentance for our imperfect ability to believe The Right Thing. Rather than like. A world where everybody gets to eat.

I've been accused of projecting my religious trauma where it doesn't belong, and reading shame into this model when it isn't there, but I think the purpose of a system is what it does, and telling people who disagree with you that "well you're just understanding it wrong! It's very loving, actually! And you would know that, if you were A Good Person who Believes the Right Things" is exactly what the Catholic Church said to me when I raised this point with them. Don't tell me I'm bad in a way I can never fully escape from and then blame me for feeling shame in response to that.

Spiritual abuse is still spiritual abuse, even if you're doing it for a good cause.

brofisting

While headlines were giving the Catholic church hierarchy plaudits for symbolic gestures in support of immigrants and a papal lunch with tra

Missing hormones. Canceled surgeries. Bureaucratic denials. Late last year the Catholic Church banned all trans healthcare across its sprawl

Quick summary on why this is significant:

There are many states (including states with progressive governments) where over 1/3 of all total available hospital beds/clinics/doctor office practices are in Catholic institutions (map here from 2020).

The ban is for all transgender healthcare: HRT, surgery, adults as well as children.

It is a new ban; many of these places previously provided trans healthcare and people have lost their coverage, often the only available coverage in their area.

The ban voted on by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was passed with 206 in favor and 7 against, and they specifically quoted Pope Francis saying, "I want you to fight gender ideology, which is repugnant to the Bible and our tradition," as the reason why it was necessary.

More information on the Catholic Church being a huge driver of international transphobia can be found in Judith Butler's "Who's Afraid Of Gender?", chapter 2, "Vatican Views".

wheelie-sick

the minute someone is noticeably psychotic people's social skills fly out the window because they don't see psychotic people as people

"what do I do if I shouldn't call 911?"

well "I'm sorry I'm in a rush" is a pretty good option or "I can't talk right now, sorry" and then move on.

psychotic people, ultimately, are people. they are just as human as you are and the vast vast vast majority of the time they're not interested in hurting you.

when you're approached by a psychotic person ranting about delusions or hallucinations (and possibly speaking with disorganized speech) they are just looking for human connection, that's all. they might not have many people around to talk to and it gets lonely. when someone talks to you about a secret society of mind readers out to kill them they are just trying to connect with people and sometimes process the fear they're experiencing (because a secret society of mind readers out to kill you is rather scary!)

things like mania can also make you very talkative and very social.

someone coming up to you to talk about being the second coming of Jesus isn't trying to hurt you. they just want to talk. if you have time then have a conversation, most of the time you don't even need to say much. you can politely nod and go "wow that's crazy" and "that's so scary" and it might be one of the kindest things someone does for them that day. if you don't have time just say you're in a rush and leave.

it's that simple

hungry-skeleton

Fucked up that if you make a minor social blunder you can't ask the person if they hate you forever now because that within itself is another social blunder

why-the-heck-not

and that u can’t ask if a thing u did was a social blunder bc then it for sure is one

ryan-sometimes

I think a lot of the time, people ignore the fact that someone being closeted and someone not coming out explicitly are two different things. Just because a public figure hasn’t screamed their queerness from the rooftops, that doesn’t mean they’re hiding or in denial. Simply existing as a queer person is an option too. Cishets do it all the time without being questioned

kaninchen-reblogs

Be kind to trans women or die by my sword

kaninchen-reblogs

Respect trans men or die by my axe

kaninchen-reblogs

Include nonbinary people or die by my morningstar

kaninchen-reblogs

listen to intersex people or die by my longbow

kaninchen-reblogs

love he/him butches and she/her femboys and neopronoun queers and all kinds of gnc folks or die by my arquebus

kaninchen-reblogs

don’t just see multi-gender and two spirit and third gender and agender people as “gotchas” in your debates or die by my trebuchet

kaninchen-reblogs

“Kanny where did you get all these medieval weapons” well you see I defeated the Duke of Worsestkingshireton-upon-avon in glorious battle and claimed his lands as my own and I broke into his castle armory and now I’ve got all these cool toys to use on bigots. I do this every Monday.

greelin

actually that’s fine. i didn’t want the verification code anyway

greelin

well now that you mention it i may have wanted it a little bit. Thank you for sending it fifteen separate times

rimonoroni2

it is of course fine not to undergo medical transition if thats genuinely what you want. however due to Society it can be difficult to tell if not medically transitioning is a decision of your own will or one you've made as a result of conditioned transphobia. essentially one must consider if you don't want to medically transition or if you're in the middle of doing a "the stages of not going on t" by daniel m. lavery. it's entirely possible you aren't doing a "the stages of not going on t" by daniel m. lavery! but i implore you to consider the possibility

rimonoroni2

i'll link the whole thing here if you want to read it in it's entirety (its very good and not super long) but the bottom line is that if this excerpt right here is ever reminiscent of your internal monologue on the subject of medical transition:

If someone were to drop a little bit of leftover testosterone on the ground, and I couldn’t find the owner and there weren’t any trans people around, and it was about to go bad, I would probably take it, in the interest of preventing waste. That would just be sensible. Stand to reason. If for some reason I were forced to take testosterone — I don’t know why someone would, but it might happen — I would of course make the best of a bad situation and comply with good cheer. There’s no point in complaining, when someone comes to your house and forces you to take testosterone. I’d be remarkably sanguine about the whole thing, a model of radical acceptance. These things happen sometimes, for any number of reasons. One reads about it. Yes, I’m quite prepared to be forced to take hormones, if it ever comes to that, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.

maybe you do actually want to medically transition, because i too once vehemently insisted i would never go on t because i felt exactly the way lavery describes for a few years, and as of now i've been on t for like six months and don't regret it at all. just btw.

In a recent newsletter entry, Danny Lavery wrote, “The art of masculine withholding is designed to collapse; the collapse is the point.” Per

pastimperfection

You can't protect yourself from unhappiness in the future by ignoring unhappiness in the present. The point of "are you sure? are you really sure? are you really really sure? you could ruin your life" is learned helplessness.

tiktoks-for-dead-pope

mossdftba

Clip 1: This is my voice 1 day on T.

Clip 2: It's been a while since I've done a voice update. So, this is my voice. 16 months on testosterone... Keep moving forward.

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