Minds Like Maria @mindslikemaria - Tumblr Blog

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There is not one future of games. The goal should be to foster diversification of genres, aesthetics, and audiences, to open gamers to the broadest possible range of experiences.

(Jenkins 2)

It’s amazing how games can be a platform for self-representation. I want to create a game of my own where people can play out my life (how boring but awesome!) The digital gaming platform opens up amazing opportunities for storytelling. In The Rise of Videogame Zinesters, Anna Anthropy says, “the format of a video game—which lets rules be changed and introduced over the course of the experience and which lets the author hide the causes for events and show only the effects—lends itself more easily to an overt, sustained narrative than any physical game format” (52). Video games offer a narrative that is visual and interactive. Anthropy suggests that games can be an alternative to novel storytelling and can be a platform for people whose voices are marginalized by the publishing industry and the mainstream media. I love the advancement of technology, games, narratives, storytelling and brilliant people such as Jenkins and Anthropy!!!!!!

#gamechanger

Spend a day in a transgendered character's shoes, based on the developer's experiences.

Guys, play this game!!! ^^^^^ Mainichi is a game that conveys the social struggles transgender woman face on a daily basis. Instead of a specific game objective, the developer welcomes you to explore a day in her life as a trans woman. As you complete simple activities such as going for a coffee, or meeting up with a friend, you begin to understand the stigma,discrimination and frustration trans women face on a daily basis. ( FINALLY A GAME I CAN RELATE TO!!) The developer used this game as a platform to express her frustration, and to illustrate the trauma/oppression. It’s crazy how this is so REAL. The player can assume an active role that allows you to identify with the characters, figure out “the rules” and explore the dynamic relationships between actions and consequences. Finally, a video game that isn’t so constricted and developed within the ideas of dominant norms in society. Mainichi is a game changer. There needs to be more games that highlight these type of personal experiences! I’m so tired of the basic games you see everyday. I wish there was a way for this game to be massively distributed. I really this everyone needs to play it so they can understand. SHARE! SHARE! SHARE!

#gamesforchange

So I came across this post the other day...

and thought it was fucking great. It was written a long time ago…1993 I think. This girl was in high school when she wrote this. Kind of cool how all the shit she writes about is still relevant today. Coming of age, sex, depression, female stereotyping… the list goes on. It’s so different now, us millennia’s spend so much time blogging our life stories for other people to read, “we are internet fiends” (Binnie 61). But she wrote this in a private diary, just for herself…which also makes me wonder what asshole took her diary and published it on the Internet. Whatever. I wanted to share it cause even though it’s not dealing with trans stuff, I think there are some valid lessons here about living life as queer person. As I’ve said many times, when I was a teenager, I had no idea what was going on with me, didn’t realize I was trans. I just felt weird, but thought it was no big deal to feel that way, because all teenagers feel weird right? Anyways, this girl was clearly an outsider, different than me of course… but fighting the same kind of battle. Trying to find her place amongst other people in this word, all while trying to figure herself out. I guess everyone has their own shit to deal with. I also like this whole Wicca, tarot card thing she had going on. Maybe I should start that. -Maria

Dear Diary,

I think this card means I should accept that Lisa and I are no longer best friends. For a while now we have been growing apart, I barely see her anymore. She’s always with her boyfriend or Anna Canard, and honestly I don’t really even miss her. I’d be more then happy to never see her again. But that doesn’t mean much.

(Tamaki, pg. 89)

I don’t even care that she likes to spend all her time hanging out with Anna, that girl has a bigmouth.

(pg, 116)

Besides, Lisa always spews negative comments about everyone, and makes me seem like the idiot. She also consistently tries to shove her opinions down my throat. She’s full of crap. Most of what she says contradicts her actions, so of course I’ve been trying to avoid her. She’s all about being empowered, and an independent person, but she’s notorious for calling people names like idiot or sluts.

(pg, 12).

Being called a slut, is most definitely supposed to be derogatory…but maybe in high school being a slut is not a bad thing? She’s basically obsessed with Anna, and my new friend Katie told me she’s a slut.

(pg,139)

So who knows, it seems as though being a slut can sometimes be considered a good thing, depending who you are I guess. I didn’t like it much though. There was that one time when I was called a slut for a whole week. “Scott Bouffant marked me in grade nine with a disgusting hickey that didn’t go away for a week… he never even called me afterwards because I wouldn’t give him a hand job- BECAUSE I JUST MET HIM!” (Tamaki 124). Ugh.

(Pg,103)

I find it ironic, that people are always stereotyping women as overemotional, but with my parents it’s totally opposite. My mom doesn’t even believe in broken hearts, she says they can’t be broken because “Your heart is a muscle” (10). She also doesn’t believe in love, she thinks “love is no paycheck” (65). My dad is opposite. He believes in love. I guess the conventional gender roles are reversed when it comes to my parents. I kinda like it though. “The only time my mother cries is when she is watching Sisters. That is totally bizarre” (110). I don’t really cry either, I find other ways to handle my emotions.

(pg, 76)

I guess you could say I have pretty strong female role models in my life. My mom may be a pain, but at least she’s not some pushover wife. I guess it’s technically weird that she’s like that, but everyone is weird. Right?

(pg,13)

Ben Carson is ready to dictate which restrooms transgender people can use.

“It is not fair for them to make everyone else uncomfortable,” he explained. “It’s one of the things that I don’t particularly like about the movement. I think everybody has equal rights, but I’m not sure that anybody should have extra rights — extra rights when it comes to redefining everything for everybody else and imposing your view on everybody else. The way that this country was designed, it was ‘live and let live,’ and that’s the way I feel.” If Ben Carson is president I’m roadtrippin’ to Canada and never coming back.

transitiontransmission

mindslikemaria

YES OBAMA!

New Era Of Videogames

“Games are a kind of theater in which the audience is an actor and takes on a role—and experiences the circumstances and consequences of that role. It’s hard to imagine a more effective way to characterize something than to allow a player to experience life as that person” (Anthropy 20). I found Anna Anthopy’s book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters to be a game changer for society (literally). “Mostly, video games are about men shooting men in the face”. Seriously! I cannot agree more with Anna! What video games need is a sense of REAL LIFE ISSUES! The creation of these violent shooting games teach the message of violence! But that’s a whole other story we can deal with in another post. What I found incredible in her book was how the internet has made self-publishing and distributing games possible and easy for anyone to make! Game creators - which could be YOU - now have the ability to create and share their games online. This pushes the boundaries of the violent shooting games you are forced to buy at EBgames. This pushes the boundaries of stereotypic games that confine gender. Video games nowadays are not diverse and personal enough. These hobbyist online games engage in themes such as queer identities, objectification/alienation and complex life questions AND I FIND THIS TO BE SO FREAKIN’ AMAZING! The mainstream gamer culture doesn’t seem to care about real life issues (hopefully soon they will). Searching for video games online that suit our interest and give us the power to tell our own story sheds a news light for gamer culture. These new games can also be a form of story telling! “Story telling venues for people whose voices are marginalized by the publishing industry and the mainstream media”, as Anna academically put it. There are games out there now that challenge norms and constraints on gender and showcase gender empowerment. Hobbyist online games can engage in moral concepts that go beyond the video game format and into the form of educating others on a particular life circumstance (such as being queer). As technology advances with more diverse, authentic and personal video games on the rise... Dominant norms will slowly be crushed (or less “dominant” let’s hope). Anna Anthropy’s Rise of the Videogame Zinester book left me wanting to create a video game that is based on my own life! HOW COOL!

#NewEraOfVideogames

genderallyspeakings

SAY IT WITH ME

CIS BOYS CAN WEAR SKIRTS

TRANS BOYS CAN WEAR SKIRTS

GENDERQUEER CAN WEAR SKIRT

AGENDER PEOPLE CAN WEAR SKIRTS

NONBINARY PEOPLE CAN WEAR SKIRTS

AND IT DOESNT MAKE THEIR IDENTITY ANY LESS VALID

mindslikemaria

YES YES YESSSS

#changingthenorm

casutama

Ehe-gleich

Attention fellow Austrians!

This a national petition to legalise same-sex marriage in Austria. So far, 45,000 people have signed it.

But come on, Austria, we can do better than that. Let’s get this to 100,000, or 1,000,000, to a number that even our parliament can’t ignore any longer.

So sign and spread the word!!

mindslikemaria

EVERYONE!! We are a community!! SIGN THIS!

#equality #same sex marriage

raquelwillis

19 Trans Teens Who Ruled Their Schools

Being prom queen or king may not seem like a big deal to everyone, but when trans students are affirmed by their peers and schools it provides a glimmer of progress. For a long time, trans students who vied for these positions or won the popular votes at their school were denounced by their school’s administration or stripped of their titles under bogus reasoning like not having their legal gender markers changed. In recent years, the tide changed and a number of trans students have stood firm in their identities with the support of their families and other classmates. Some of these amazing trans royals didn’t grab the title easily, but somehow they all managed to come out on top. We salute them! Check out the list here!

mindslikemaria

Hell yeah, love reading articles like this

transstudent

The next Genderbread? Image by Alice Neary.

mindslikemaria

LOL !!! Can someone get this made on a shirt for me?

landyn-pan

Trans people have unique histories, cultures, and experiences. Our sexualities are constructed in media as heteronormative and monogamous, contrary to the lived experiences of most trans people. As a community, we need to be represented fairly and accurately. Queerness and trans identities are inseparable. Our collective accomplishments as a queer and trans community have been revolutionary and have the potential to change the world. Assistant & 2nd Photographer: Katie Nishida Backgrounds painted by: Rose Mackenzie, Tessa Lowe, Jesse Herb, and me.

Hey Maria! So I don’t know if this is gonna sound weird but I’m ‘new’ to the whole trans world- I’m still trying to find my place/voice here! I always come to your blog and use your rants as like words of encouragement, but I wanted to ask how you got so good at writing. I assume writing about your struggles and frustrations really lets your release them in a healthy way. Right now all I can do to release emotions is punch a wall... Help, how do i get it from my head to the pen!!!

Hey there :) writing about your deepest darkest emotions can be one of the hardest things to do, but it can also be one of the most gratifying.

I was the same as you, before I even knew I was trans, I came online and researched high and low to find answers to this thing I thought was a ‘problem’. It wasn’t until I discovered blogging and reading other peoples blogs that I realized this wasn’t a ‘problem’ with a ‘solution’, it’s life and it’s mine. But the thing about blogging was, at the beginning at least, I couldn’t put my emotions into sentences. I guess suppressing your emotions all your life kind of keeps them at bay. All i could muster to write was "everything sucks and I am totally sad, just over and over and over and over, with minor variations and the occasional cuss word.” (BInne, 91).

Eventually I noticed patterns, when i would get upset and feel the need to vent, when I was happy and wouldn’t think of blogging, and with that I started to develop my trans identity. I started to hone in on my emotions and really be in control of my brain, no more ‘this sucks,’ instead, why does it suck.

I hope this helps, feel free to come off anon if you ever want to talk :)

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of questions about female empowerment,

more specifically, how I came to feel ‘empowered’ as a woman. For me I think it was when I finally accepted my authentic self and realized that I can actually help people, by just telling my story. But this topic of conversation got me thinking of something I stumbled upon the other day…

So one night a few weeks back, my insomnia hit hard and I decided to turn on a porno to help put me to sleep. Weird thing was, I somehow ended up on this weird fetish site for this queer femmegimp porn star. I mean have you ever heard of that? I definitely haven’t and I’ve seen some dark parts of the Internet… so anyways, this Loree Erickson chick, y’know the femmegimp, she seems pretty cool, I guess there wasn't enough representation for people with disabilities and she knew that this was a perfect platform to abolish any stigmas surrounding disabled people.

After surfing through her site I wanted to know more about her, something about her was so interesting to me, like I’ve never met or seen anyone like this. A sexually empowered disabled woman. I found this article she wrote called ‘Revealing Femmegimp: A Sex-positive Reflection on Sites of Shame as Sites of Resistance for People with Disabilities’. In this article she shares why she thought it was so important for proper representation on that specific platform,

“Sex-positive pornography from a feminist and disability liberation perspective would open up the circulation of information and new possibilities. The relationship between pornography and censorship is fundamentally an issue of access.”( Erickson, pg 6).

I mean, yeah, I have my struggles and my oppressions, but i’ve never stopped and thought about the struggles that people with disabilities must face, forget if you’re queer. I mean, they literally have segregated schools for disabled kids, that alone stop them from having a ‘normal’ childhood. Simple things like public transport and housing is inaccessible, plus, they are constantly desexualized- dare I say dehumanized? And just try to think of the emotions you must be feeling like isolation, shame, and neglect. That’s where our girl Loree comes in, to eliminate those stigmas. She’s putting her authentic self out there and taking the power back from society when they told her whats acceptable and wants not. Femmegimp empowerment for the win!

P.S.

Before I go, I wanted to share an interesting fact that a lot of us LGBT community members know: People like Loree and I (anyone who breaks societal norms) we terrify gender normative people, they take one look at us breaking all their little societal standards and they get scared. Wait, how did Loree put it, “the fear arises when the hegemony of normative discourse is disrupted” (Erickson, pg 3). Keep that fear distilled in you, I’ll be over here watching Loree do her thing, I linked her website if you want to come join us on the dark side.. DUN DUN DUNN.

Magical Cyberspace

The internet changed my life. Writing a blog is so liberating in the sense I can talk about whatever the fuck I want. I can’t express my feelings to my friends and family the same way I can express my feelings to the cyber world.”When you come out as trans, it’s hard to tell your wife, or your het bros, or your dad, or your, I don’t know, bookstore coworkers. For whatever reason though, it’s pretty easy to tell some person from Alaska or California or y’know, England”. Here I can finally “exist without this problematic body” I’m stuck with when I’m offline” ( 61, Binnie). I’ve been blogging since I was a little baby, like eighteen or nineteen years old. You could say I’m pretty popular or “famous” on the internet, “but so is everybody, so it’s not very interesting” (91, Binnie). It’s kinda cool that I figured out I was trans through blogging. Fucking weird, but cool at the same time. Even cooler - kids who are figuring out that they’re trans look up to me. This “Magical Cyberspace” - I like to call it - is a platform where people can spill their deepest darkest secrets and meet like-minded people (or trans people in my case). Blogging introduced me to the trans world. Through connecting with other people from around the world, I realized who I was, why I felt so different. It allowed me to begin to come to terms with my gender identity. I have spent hours blogging about life, and through my writing I have been able to better understand myself, the transitioning process, trans people. It’s been a roller-coaster of emotions. Life outside of this “Magical Cyberspace” can be intimidating and uninviting. Online I can continue to challenge dominant narratives of how girls and boys should act or present their genders. The internet is nothing but the most brilliant digital platform in the world because:

1. The people I connect with finally get me. (yay for being understood!)

2. Content is shared around the world, picking up thousands of views, allowing everyone to speak their mind on topics important to them. Of course dealing with the internet trolls of the world suck, but whatever. It happens.

3. I am the author of my own trans life.

#opposingthenorm

There is this dumb thing where trans women feel like we all have to prove that we’re totally trans as fuck and there is no doubt in our minds that we’re Really Truly Trans. It comes from the fact that you have to prove that you’re trans to psychologists and doctors… …and there are these…boxes you need to check: I have only ever been attracted to men, I have never fetishized women’s clothes or done anything remotely kinky, I have never been sexual with the junk I was born with. Pretty much you have to prove that you’re totally normal and straight and not queer at all, so that if they let you transition you will be a normal het woman who doesn’t freak anybody out, and so we often, as individuals, internalize these things, and then we, as a community, often reinforce them. All of which is relevant specifically because you are supposed to have known you were trans since you were a tiny little baby. Maria didn’t though.

(Binnie 69-70) *screams* I am a trans woman and I am tired of having to explain myself over and over again to people. I am tired of having to prove to be someone I AM! The more I try to prove myself, the more I begin to loose myself - and trust me, I’m already very lost. All trans people encounter a battle with their gender identity and now we have to show beyond doubt that we are 110% trans? Fuck that.

#transgender problems

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