genderTruckery

My name's Chloe! Games Designer, 31 year old trans woman, probably angry about something, somehow still cute. Poly but not looking rn, Queer, probably typically homoromantic pansexual but I know I have exceptions. I like my identity to flow with me as I learn about myself. Married to my wonderful wife.

[srnear]

A commission for @gendertruckery ^^ I had so much fun working on this redesign!

[gendertruckery]

This has come out so nicely and I'm suuuuuuper happy with it! 💖💖💖 The design was expanded on in a really fun way and it helped bring character to something that had started out much more neutral and given her a life I didn't see coming but loved when it showed up!

Thank you!!

[hotleafbeverage-deactivated2024]

Tories 'could be reduced to less than 100 seats for first time in 345 years'

A new Calculus poll suggests that any gains made by the PM after Liz Truss's disastrous spell in charge have been wiped out, with Labour rec

Like to Charge, Reblog to Cast

[srnear]

I need Assistance

New post! Here's the old one.

My grandma was denied coverage for the services that would pay me to help take care of her, so I'm to the point where I am starting to worry about bills and stuff. She's recovering seady, So I think things will be okay within the next month or so. But for now, not so much.

I set up a gofundme. Alternatively, my commissions are open but Very slow.

Reblogs appreciated, thank you guys.

[neil-gaiman]

Just thinking about the @guardian Tumblr. Untouched since 2019, like the tomb of the pharaohs. Did the person with the password leave? Did the person at the Guardian who knew that the Guardian had a Tumblr get sent off on a journalistic mission from which they never returned? In years to come will people on Tumblr examine the @Guardian site to try and reconstruct how mainstream media outlets existed on social media in the trump years?

[gendertruckery]

I has a sudden feeling that this was around when The Guardian got into its own internal anti-trans schizm.

No proof that it's related but certainly lines up better than I'd like, timeframe wise.

[shotgunheart]

which new feature did I get first?

community labels (from a while ago)

polls

vanilla extract

Voting ended onFeb 12, 2023

[shotgunheart]

Face!

[gendertruckery]

Wife!

[thetroublesofbeingtrans]

I remember in middle school and high school before I went on HRT I would have bouts of depression over the idea of leaving the house and being perceived as a gender I wasn’t or of being misgendered/outed to other people (as I was still stealth at the time). So yeah, I agree. I never see people talking about it and it’s a very real and alienating experience. 

[rosalarian]

I spent ten years building up a following on Tumblr. I had 30k+ followers, great engagement, it helped my career thrive like nothing else. I could quit my day job and live off the fan base I’d accrued.

Then, their policies changed. Half my work was no longer allowed. People left the site in droves. I left too, for awhile. I came back to a ghost town. I still have 25k followers, but I don’t think more than 10% are active anymore. I’m followed by ghosts. Same with DeviantArt, although I was never quite as big there, and I’ve been gone so much longer.

This disallowed half of my work was never allowed on Facebook in the first place, or Instagram, but their algorithms are such that my stuff rarely makes it to anyone’s feeds, and if I post a link to where people could actually pay me for my content, it’s hidden unless I pay for it. Patreon swept my work away to a dark corner where no one could see it unless I personally guided them there. Twitch is so strict you can’t even show bare feet. The death of Google Reader means nobody follows RSS feeds anymore, so I can’t direct people to my own site.

So there’s Twitter I guess, where I can post whatever I want, but again, algorithms. But more than that, I don’t have the energy to build up a following once again on a site I don’t own that can delete my career on a whim. The thought of spending time jumping around through hoops for attention just to have it taken away again has stripped any motivation I had to try.

The internet has been gentrified. All the small cute houses and mom & pop shops have been shut down and replaced by big corporations that control everything. I’ve been making webcomics for twenty years, and at the start, the internet was a beautiful wild place. Everyone had a home page. It was like having a house and people came to visit you and you would visit other people in their houses. Now, we don’t visit each other in personal spaces anymore. It’s like we have to visit each other in the aisles of a megamart. Everything is clean and sanitized and the weirdos who made the internet what it was are no longer welcome. No space for freaks anymore.

People still ask me for advice on how to break into comics, and I don’t have any wisdom because I don’t recognize the internet anymore. I don’t feel comfortable working within its boundaries which seems to be getting smaller and smaller and smaller. None of the tools I used when I started exist anymore. They’ve been replaced by things I don’t know how to use. I don’t think I could break into comics today. 2002 had so few barriers compared to now. You might have started on Keenspace, but you could reach a point where you could break away to your own site and people would go to it. Now, you start on Webtoon or Patreon and I guess you just stay there? It feels so much like owning a hardware store for years and then having to go work as a cashier at the Home Depot that put you out of business. I’m looking at my career trajectory and it all points to being a Wal-Mart greeter with uncontrolled arthritis.

I don’t want to make “content,” I want to make comics, I want to make art, and I want to do it in a space that is mine. I’m not sure there’s a place for that anymore.

[rosalarian]

So there’s been a bunch of replies to this to the effect of “Boo hoo you can’t draw porn anymore, cry me a river.” They’re so perfectly proving the points I wanna make that I couldn’t possibly try to invent a strawman argument more perfect than the real people in the replies.

Here’s the thing: censorship always starts with a group of people whose ideas make others uncomfortable in some way. Sluts are an easy target. It’s the kind of censorship you can easily sell to middle America. It’s sinful, dangerous, harmful. You get to frame it as “for the children’s sake!!!” (as if our government cares about protecting children when it lets the police murder them on the reg). Even people who don’t see sexual content as bad per se still don’t see it as worthy of defending. It’s frivolous, rude, unnecessary, silly.

So the censorship laws pass. Two things happen. First, we discover that these laws are targeting people with a very broad brush. The laws never tend to define pornography, as Supreme Court Justice Stewart’s famous “I know it when I see it” statement shows. It’s up to others’ discretion, with many people getting swept up in it who tried to follow the rules, or who even undeniably did follow the rules, but with little to no appeals process, the accusation, even if mistaken, might as well be a guilty verdict.

Secondly, we have just moved the goalposts from “the government must not censor freedom of speech or expression” to “the government can sometimes censor freedom of speech or expression.” Now the precedent of censorship has been introduced and accepted. Now it’s easier to censor other things. Things that you may hold dear.

Because again, these sites aren’t just banning sexual content because they want to. They’re not just doing it because of advertiser pressure or app store pressure or financial company pressure (although we must also assign some of the blame there). This stuff started really ramping up after the government passed FOSTA/SESTA, barely over 3 years ago. These laws, under the guise of stopping sex trafficking, harmed sex workers in countless ways while driving actual sex trafficking deeper underground where it’s harder to find now. There have been so many studies about how FOSTA/SESTA had the opposite impact on helping trafficking victims, but again, this was never about protecting people. This was about introducing censorship in a palatable way.

“But there’s still porn on the internet. Just go there.” Ah, yes. There is still porn on the internet. As someone making adult content, who knows more sex workers than most people, these giant corporate megasites are a very similar experience to working for Wal-Mart or Amazon. They take a huge cut of your earnings, upwards of half. Onlyfans “only” taking 20% is pretty low, but again, in the wild west early days of the internet, you could have your own site and keep 100%. And yeah, there’s free porn everywhere. Fuck you for not paying the sex workers who get you off. Pay sex workers and tip them well!

It also means porn becomes more homogenized. It’s marginalized people who have the hardest time competing within/against big porn companies, and marginalized people deserve to see their sexuality portrayed the way cis, het, white, able bodied, fit people get to see theirs. Tumblr was host to a lot of queer, trans, poc, disabled, and fat people making erotic content featuring people like themselves. It was host to a large audience of people grateful to see people like themselves. It is so much harder to find that now. Nobody cares about protecting marginalized people, and nobody cares about defending porn. That combination means the sexualities of marginalized people gets even more stigmatized, secretive, fetishized, demonized. TERFs are usually SWERFs, and both have a lot more in common with the far right than they do with feminism or progressive justice.

You’ve been duped good and hard if you get up here in 2021 on Al Gore’s internet defending censorship when it’s a steamroller two inches away from your own heels. You’re can’t wait until your life gets fucked up by it to say something. The sluts have long been the canaries in the coal mine.

If you enjoyed my words and want to support my adult work, I am on a shadowbanned Patreon at patreon.com/RosalarianXXX and a pretty decent OnlyFans at Onlyfans.com/RosalarianXXX. I post 3 different adult comic series on Patreon, and I post both comics and surreal nudes on OF.

[lesbianpeachs]

Like, people who identify as Queer know the word is used like a slur. Trust me, we know.

So when we say “queer is a slur” was started by terfs, maybe use some critical thinking and try to understand what we mean. That is, if you actually care about queer people and the damage terfs do, rather that just screaming “queer is a slur!” and ignoring the actual point.

Terfs did not like that queer was reclaimed. End of. This is a fact. Queer was too broad, too accepting, and embraced all the people they wanted gone. And I know y'all exclusionists feel the same but get pissed when we point it out so you deny it, but sit down and listen for a minute.

Queer was the preferred term for poc. For bisexuals. For trans people. For people with multiple identities. It neatly encapsulated everything, and was a friendly community to those who felt thrown under the bus by mainstream LGBT activism. It was a political and social statement, “you treated my like I was different and weird, and guess what? I am and that’s something to be proud of.”

So the response? “You can’t use that word. Its bad. Its a slur.”

And at the time, a lot of people rolled their eyes. Everyone knew why they didn’t like the word and brushed that off. It was fine.

So they started more subtly. “Just so you know this word is very harmful and is a slur so be careful how you use it :))) in case you didn’t know :)))) its a slur :))) friendly reminder :))) for the sake of other people of course :))))” type shit on every post involving the word, including and especially posts simply mentioning self identification.

Always worded in friendly, concerned ways, like the derailment was meant to be nice and considerate, and not about normalizing their rhetoric.

And what happened because of that was a younger generation of community kids growing up with these statements being thrown at them and absorbed on every. Single. Post. That. Mentionioned. Queer.

The result? That same generation of kids cutting it all short, removing the meant-to-be-palatable niceness, to just say “queer is a slur.”

Exactly how it was originally intended. “Queer is a slur.” People drop on posts where young queer people talk about it being a self identifier that actually fits them. “Its a slur,” they comment, with nothing else, on posts they clearly didn’t read past that word, written by people twice their age who had reclaimed it before they were even born.

Its nasty. Its disgusting. It’s plain old bigotry, whether the people saying know it or not. It is a terf tactic, plain and simple.

And no one wants to deny that it is indeed used as a slur (right along with all the rest of our identities.) No one wants to be insensitive and force it on people who haven’t reclaimed it.

But invading queer people’s posts to spit “queer is a slur” is flat out queerphobic. You do the dirty work of terfs, of cis straight oppressors, by saying in one simple sentence: “its a dirty word, there is no pride in it, you haven’t/can’t reclaim(ed) it.”

And regardless of your actual intentions, when you do this, that is EXACTLY what you are communicating and doing.

“Queer is a slur” is a terf movement. Stop fucking supporting terfs just because you want to pretend like it isn’t.

[oodlenoodleroodle]

This is why I block people who say ‘Queer is a slur.’ 

You quack like a terf, I block you like a terf. 

[aristoteliancomplacency]

This thing was so weird to me when I first encountered it on tumblr, because like… in academia

queer studies

 is a thing. Queer Theory is a thing. If I search my Uni’s library for ‘queer’ I get 138,481 results. Here are some of them: 

Queer in Europe : contemporary case studies / edited by Lisa Downing and Robert Gillett.

Queer Phenomenology, Sexual Orientation, and Health Care Spaces: Learning From the Narratives of Queer Women and Nurses in Primary Health Care, / Cressida Heyes, Megan Dean, Lisa Goldberg.

Playing With Time: Gay Intergenerational Performance Work and the Productive Possibilities of Queer Temporalities / Stephen Farrier

Postcolonial and queer theories : intersections and essays / edited by John C. Hawley.

Queer Dickens : erotics, families, masculinities / Holly Furneaux.

Showing Your Pride: A National Survey of Queer Student Centres in Canadian Colleges and Universities / John Ecker, Jennifer Rae, Amandeep Bassi

Mad for Foucault : rethinking the foundations of queer theory / Lynne Huffer.

Do those look like queerphobic texts? And do you think that most of the writers writing about queer theory are straight? Lols. If you don’t want to be personally be called queer, that’s cool. You don’t get to stop other people using the word though. It’s ours now and we’re keeping it.

[akamine-chan]

Did I reblog this already? If I did, doesn’t hurt to blog it again. I usually unfollow people who use the tag (or the equilivant) q-slur. Because fuck you, I’m queer. Have been since like 1986.

[anarchistettin]

queer was mlm slang/code in the 18th and 19th centuries, turned into a slur in the 20th century

when we say it was reclaimed, we mean it was reclaimed 

[beckrl]

in the wake of all this JK Rowling terf shit, I'm just gonna say cis LGB people have a responsibility to confront people using gay relationships as a reason for why trans people can't exist. if somebody says "sex has to exist for same-sex relationships exist" you come in and say "I'm a gay person and don't use me for your transphobic argument". you owe it to your community members to step in.

[crossdreamers]

Gender Dysphoria Isn’t What You Think

Cassie LaBelle has an interesting take on gender dysphoria over at Medium.

She argues that the traditional descriptions of gender dysphoria may not make sense to trans people who are still in denial or exploring their sense of self:

The more I read, the more certain I became that I wasn’t trans. I had only cross-dressed a few times as an adolescent, and never as an adult. I didn’t feel intense distress about having a penis. I didn’t even feel like I was “trapped in the wrong body.” I didn’t exactly LIKE my body, but it’s not like I looked in the mirror every morning and thought to myself, “hmm, this should be a girl!” And if that wasn’t at the heart of being trans, then what was?

Telling a trans person that they aren’t trans — or aren’t “trans enough” — serves no purpose other than cruelty, Cassie argues.  She also points out that lot of “unhatched or newly-hatched” trans people suffer from gender dysphoria without actually realizing it. 

Gender dysphoria appears as a different experience once you fully accept the fact that you are transgender.  Mirrors were distressing for Cassie, but she did not understand why. “..early on, you can come up with an alternate explanation for almost every symptom,” she writes.

Talk to trans women about their pre-transition experiences with women’s clothing, or with playing female characters in video games, and you’ll get a similar range of answers. Some trans people gravitate toward expressing their true selves using clothing or digital avatars early on, perhaps not even realizing why. Others (like me) felt too much frenetic energy bound up in these things, and shied away from them — not because I didn’t want to be seen as more feminine, but because I had a lot of shame and confusion and anxiety bound up in these things, and I wasn’t ready to face it yet.

Read the whole article including “Cassie’s Incomplete List of Things That Were Actually Gender Dysphoria The Whole Time!” here!

Illustration: Ponomariova_Maria

[stargazing-enby]

THIS SO MUCH.

Stop telling people they need dysphoria to be trans. Most of us don’t realise the things we are experiencing are actually dysphoria until we are ready to acknowledge the fact that we might be trans. All you’re doing is making actual trans people who are still figuring things out believe that they must be intruders in their own community.

[captainsnoop-deactivated2020041]

i hate it when game devs put “fixed several issues” in patch notes 

no. tell me what you fixed. i wanna know what the glitch was.

you know those patch notes that are like “fixed an issue where if the player sat in a bush for too long, they’d become the size of a skyscraper” 

i wanna read those. tell me those. 

[necroesque666]

[sindri42]

[sindri42]

[ahdok]

Adjusted value of Bees. Now that was a special one… because every item in the game had a minimum value, and a beehive was a container for bees, which each had a minimum value… which meant the moment one of your dwarves picked up a beehive, your entire fortress’ net worth skyrocketed… a value used in determining how powerful the foes that visit and try to murder you are.

[prokopetz]

Reblogging for the explanation of what “adjusted value of bees” actually means, because I know several folks following this blog have been wondering.

[gendertruckery]

I also love really detailed patch notes but GUARANTEE you that in a lot of those cases, the devs forgot what they fixed and that set a precedent for not doing proper patch notes going forward. >___>

[myourenjinja-deactivated2018120]

I don’t think he’s ok

[atrociousfubear]

Um

[kreuzader]

he’ll be fine

[southpauz]

Glitch space baby

[somarysueme]

Where do I catch a Voideon?

[crazyguy20076]

@inprogresspokemon

[inprogresspokemon]

I love Voideon!

[omghotmemes]

[champagnemanagement]

i need some victory today!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[hoursgoneby]

Some days you just need a velociraptor on your side.

[jordisstigander]

“It might be nice, it might be nice,

To have a velociraptor on your side”

[taraljc]

I envoke the angry prehistoric chicken of victory!!!! I will need all the help I can get, getting everything ready for a con I leave for at crack of dawn, We’d.

[k3rryberry]

we’re the same

[ayellowbirds]

HELP A TRANS GIRL STAY ON THE ROAD

My beautiful blue Bibi got busted up this week—i’m okay, though. Fortunately, it seems like the insurance will cover most of the very costly repairs. But there’s still a deductible, and i’m still only employed part-time. There’s a duckton of cosmetic damage, the hood won’t stay in place, and at the very least, the radiator took a hit (it isn’t leaking yet). I just left the car at a shop for the insurance agency’s assessment, and won’t even hear back about it until early next week (9/30 at the earliest). In the meanwhile, i’m going to have to rely on a mix of hoofing it, our shitty local bus system, and getting rides from my dad.

I rely on my car for work, making it to medical appointments, and visiting partners and friends. While i do have funds that will cover the immediate cost of the deductible and any other expenses, i don’t have any means of recovering that. I’m already stuck in the middle of dealing with health insurance issues, so this is a whole heaping pile of stress and expense on top of everything else.

Any donations or signal boosts will be greatly appreciated!

http://paypal.me/ayellowbirds

https://ko-fi.com/ayellowbirds

If, by some miracle, i wind up with more funds than i need to cover the cost of this, it will be redistributed to trans folx in need.

[apersnicketylemon]

Jewish people: Never Again means now Jewish people: When we say Never Again we don’t mean just us Jewish people: This is the same exact way this started for us last time Jewish people: We’re being arrested for trying to do something and they aren’t letting people know what’s happening or how many have died Jewish people: These are concentration camps, start calling them that. Goy, repeatedly: Uhhh, calling them that diminishes the suffering of The Jews, so you shouldn’t make those comparisons!!

Goy can (and should) reblog but don’t comment.