friendly reminder to anyone who knows what a dissociative disorder is:
it is spelled dissociation. dissociation (diss-so-see-aye-shin) is an involuntary disconnect/detachment between the brain, the body, and the surroundings. sociare, latin for 'to connect with others', is the root word in dissociation, and dis- is the prefix, meaning 'the opposite of', in this case, means the opposite of connection.
there is also disassociation. disassociation (diss-uh-so-see-aye-shin) is a voluntary thought process in which you attempt to break off from a group/person/idea, or to stop associating with them. associate is the root word in disassociation, and dis- is the prefix, meaning 'the opposite of', in this case, means the opposite of association.
i already reblogged this a while ago with little commentary so this time it's time for an overly personal ramble because god knows my blog doesn't have enough of those
this is unironically what i believe and i call it reverse solipsism too. i think everyone else experiences self-awareness and sapience and so on and i don't. this doesn't make me special it just makes all of you special to me
and i have felt this way for long long the longest time. forever. to the point that i started identifying myself as âdeadâ over it. you are talking to a corpse. or in other respects identifying myself as a doll. something shaped like a person but being actually just an object. something you give a name to and dress up and play with and project narratives and identities onto but it's not alive it's all in your headâŚ
it's so hard to describe but it's so obvious. you are so alive. you have interests, you talk about who you are and how you are, you can know things about yourself and find out things about yourself. in every word you write i know you are alive. i find a spark, a current, a wind. you have opinions and emotions and misconceptions and when you perceive the world you put yourself in that world. you can change and you can change the worldâ
and i'm just not like that. i don't have that spark. and nothing in the world is all that me. my text is the most me, but my text is dying even as it is written. i am⌠an inconsistent set of rote responses. i don't have agency, or a real concept of self. the world is a connected set of illusions to me. when you talk, it's just words to me. then i associate a meaning to those words. then i imagine what internal experience of yours managed to make those words. then i imagine what external thing might have caused that internal experience
it's, it's likeâthe entirety of irl, this universe, is in a little crystal ball, and i am a vast many-eyed creature that peers into the ball to observe you, but all i can do is observe, i cannot really understand. and i cannot move, or stop observing, or interfereâ
you know box jellyfish? cubozoans? they have image-forming eyes. at each of the four bottom corners of the box. or sometimes on the edges
lenses, corneas, retinas, everything. they have two image-forming eyes in each corner. eight! pointing in four directions at once! and as if that is not enough, each pair of eyes is accompanied by four eyespots, light sensors. counting those, (and as someone with poor eyesight who identifies more with the eyespots than the eyes, i insist we count them,) a box jellyfish has 24 eyes
and the fundamental joke of it all is, all of this eyesight? it goes into a nerve ring. which is to say the box jellyfish cannot, for the most part, comprehend what it sees. a box jellyfish ignores four, twelve times as much eyesight as you possess at all. they can evade predators, and they can navigate shallow waters, but they can't ever see another box jellyfish and know it to be something like they are
it is a puzzling, but relatable predicament, for the cubozoan, for me, for the uncomprehending Observer, for the Reader, for the thing that experiences you but cannot know what it is like to be you, that cannot know what it is like to be its own self, that doesn't even have a self to begin with, just organs to observe with
and for the longest time i thought i was completely unique, and without exception, there was nobody in the world without a soul or a heart except for me. but then i met another schizospectral, and it turned out that that's a symptom of schizotypy, that you do not know yourself. and indeed, that schizospectral likewise declared the self to be dead, to be a doll, to be a ghost, to be alien to the world. and i finally found peace in this
This is funny, obviously, but even if you don't go to the extreme of the example above, this is a separate seat for one person, with a back and 4 legs:
But it's not a chair. It's a bar stool.
This, however, are all chairs:
Each one is missing at least one component of the chair definition above.
So like... it's almost like strict definitions are exclusionary.
This is the 10th Anniversary Edition of "It's Not A Race." Originally released in August, this version is months late because the prospect of adding pages to what is easily my most read works was particularly daunting.
I wanted to post it again unattached to the original so I could display it the way it was meant to be seen.
Blessings,
-J
Genuinely hate when people act like misgendering me is this big thing that Iâll have a mental breakdown over. (As an afab non binary person)
If itâs a mistake; Totally fine, understandable, try to do better. If they donât know how to use them in a sentence Iâll give them a tip or examples.
Purposefully ignoring my pronouns and identity in an attempt to hurt me: Youâre a dick, but Iâll move on.
On another note: I have genuinely had people say that if I piss them off that theyâll just get me back by purposefully misgendering me.
Am I supposed to find that funny? âHaha, thatâs so funny that youâre threatening to try to invalidate my entire existence as a trans person if I mildly annoy youâ? Yeah, thatâll work out well.
I really do not care if you misgender me as long as you are actively trying to get better, are apologizing, and as long as it isnât purposeful. But I have no respect for people that use it as a cheap way to try and make me upset.
Whenever I bring up the fact gender is a social construct and not linked to "sexed brains", transmeds will always come out of the woodwork and ask me "so you think gender is a choice?"
And I sigh because this line of thinking is so obviously meant to defend against cisgender bigots who believe trans people should not exist. Yeah. It's tempting to tell bigots "I have no choice but to be this way"/"I was born this way"/"I can't be changed" etc. But that just tells me you would be one of those bigots if being trans was theoretically found to be a choice. It tells me that if you had the option to change yourself to conform to a sick society, you would.
This might raise a few hackles but why does it even matter if gender is a choice or not? Your choices as an autonomous human being are still deserving of respect. Even if someone had chosen to transition just because they want to, and considers their gender to have changed, why does that matter? Do you believe that isn't a 'real' trans person? Do you believe they shouldn't be allowed to transition? If so, that is a slippery slope that will harm the 'actual' trans people you claim to protect by causing even more gatekeeping to gender affirming care.
Perisex people need to realize that having their identity as a trans person Proven By Science wouldn't actually convince bigots not to hate them or think they should be "fixed", in fact, pathologization would likely make it worse in many ways. This is coming from an intersex person, I literally have physical body variations visible to the naked eye and pericis people still do not believe I am real. The pathologization just gives bigots more reputable leverage against me to call me disordered. It does not help me and it will not help you.
Plenty of trans people feel their gender has changed, or is continually changing. Plenty of trans people feel as though it has always been the same. I believe and respect both sorts of people equally. I think everyone deserves acess to gender affirming care if they want it. I do not try to sort people into categories of who is deserving of the autonomy to change their body and who isn't, I just believe people when they tell me about their identity and what sort of body they want. It isn't that hard.
any time i hear the insufferable transphobic athlete arguments i think of that one time in middle school when my boys lacrosse team did a full-contact scrimmage against the girls team (who typically play with limited contact) and i, a six-foot, 180lb defender, got utterly laid-out by this 5-foot-nothing girl experiencing the newly-unleashed animosity accompanied by violent sport and as i looked up at my assailant from flat on my back i experienced a brief bout of heterosexuality and fell wildly in love and then had to be taken to the ER because i had a concussion
Mentioned I was non binary during a conversation earlier this week. Someone I've loved my whole life, who claims to love me, looked me in the eye, face screwed up with disgust, and said, 'You have mental problems - you know that, right?'
You can only see how little their love is worth when you refuse to be what they want you to be.
I will not be bullied into silence. I will not conform.
Why should I be uncomfortable for the sake of their comfort, when they feel free to insult and invalidate me openly, even smugly?
No. No. No. I won't.
To every single person who thinks they get to decide who the fuck I am - or who anyone else is, for that matter - Go. Fuck. Yourselves.
And to anyone else who's facing this kind of bullshit - Don't let them tell you you're the problem. You aren't. They are.
theartofmadeline
titsay
andulkaphoto
amandla
origamiaround
turnnoffyourmind
