There are SIX questions total in reblogs, the end will be marked by large green text. If you don’t see all six, check reblogs and grab the version with the ending note.
1/6 - Do you identify as some flavor of white?
White
Non-white
Only considered white outside of imperial core
Insecure Mixed Person externalizing my family racial issues here
Remaining time: 5 days 22 hours
Answers amended from the 2025 census based on feedback. If you’re mixed, choose what feels right to you I’m not here to do phrenology or paper bag test you but don’t make it my problem either. When in doubt, ask yourself: would the whites kill you too in the race war?
This census is US-centric because so is tumblr, unfortunately. This poll is also starting with a heavy Black/racialized bias due to my personal followers. The main point of this census is to see how white-dominant the site is currently compared to prior years, as well
For the purpose of this census, Imperial Core will be defined as the following: United States, Canada, Australia, Aotearoa, basically all of Western Europe, Japan, and Israel. If you want to argue about any of these designations, too bad maybe they should stop colonizing.
Otherwise cultural gender (please share I wanna know!!)
Other not listed
Cisgender
Remaining time: 5 days 23 hours
Note for clarification:
*For those who don’t know, TMA means transmisogyny affected (such as trans women, some non-binary people, etc.) whereas TME means transmisogyny exempt (Cis men, cis women, transmasculine individuals, etc). If you want to ask for clarification for which applies to you for the purposes of this poll, feel free to ask and I’ll try to reply, but if you try to argue or quibble about the terms themselves, I’ll block you.
6/6! How many TMA* (Transfemme, some non-binary, etc.) people would *actually* call YOU their friend?
I’m TME, 0
I’m TME, 1-2
I’m TME, 1-2 but I have <8 friends
I’m TME, 3-6
I’m TME, 7+
I’m TMA, 0
I’m TMA, 1-2
I’m TMA, 1-2 but I have <8 friends
I’m TMA, 3-6
I’m TMA, 7+
I have less than 3 friends total
Remaining time: 5 days 23 hours
*For those who don’t know, TMA means transmisogyny affected (such as trans women, some non-binary people, etc.) whereas TME means transmisogyny exempt (Cis men, cis women, transmasculine individuals, etc). If you want to ask for clarification for which applies to you for the purposes of this poll, feel free to ask and I’ll try to reply, but if you try to argue or quibble about the terms themselves, I’ll block you.
THIS IS THE END! Please reblog for bigger sample pool 💖🙏🏽
One of my hottest transfeminist takes that I have is regarding drag and ballroom actually. Read the whole thing in depth instead of skimming it then getting mad at me.
I think that the US transfemme desire to disown drag/ballroom is a symptom of both white culture’s destruction of ancestral ties and the importance of cultural continuity, and of the predominantly white ignorance of it as a gentrified Black art form similar to how whites treat other Black art. They want a destruction of it because they see the effects and results of the gentrified version and assume that’s all there is/was.
In particular it’s frustrating because while some drag queens are cis, a lot are trans women, non-binary, or otherwise transmisogynized and drag/ballroom and the tipping culture associated with it existed in part because the transmisogynized are so fucking unemployable and it provided/s a method beyond mutual aid for the redistribution of money, through the labor of performance.
In relation to trans women, I view drag queens as a pathway to transness similar to crossdressers, femboys, (unfortunately) sissies, and similar - where although the perception of them currently may cause harm to the perception of trans women at large due to the ways they compromise with predominantly white cishetero society to allow transfemmes to explore their gender, they are, in fact, still functionally people within the spectrum of transfemininity even if they haven’t fully accepted their gender expansiveness for themselves. Harm they cause to the perception of transfemmes does not lessen them from that societal assignment, any less than we can say Caitlyn Jenner, Blair White, or Kelly Cadigan are less trans women because of the harm they’ve done to the perception of trans women. They are all, in effect, varying levels of transmisogynized whether they realize it or not.
When I was in DC I knew a lot of drag kings/queens and literally 95% of them are trans and either came to drag/ballroom as a way to explore their gender through art and/or make money bc poor, or started it and it was a gateway to unlocking their gender. Not counting the cis performers elevated by stuff like RuPaul, who is explicitly transphobic, I think I can count on my hands how many cis performers I’ve met. Hell, even with RuPaul shit a number of drag artists who have been on his shows later come out as trans (such as Bosco, who I literally grew up with), in part because they suppressed their transness publicly to maintain their career until they reached a point the blowback of coming out wound impact them less. Pulling a F1NNSTER to keep cash flowing for survival, if you will.
Iunno like. The earliest Balls we have records of were literally 1880-90s, predominantly Black (the oldest drag/ballroom performer we have records of was a Black trans woman from DC), and was one of the only safe places for trans people to exist as themselves. So I find the idea of writing it off due to a much more recent gentrification and commercialization of it as ignorant as how people often treat other demonizes or commercialized Black art.
“I just don’t like the spectacle it makes of transness and harm it causes-“
Baby all Blackness is spectacle to crackers and An Amount of modern drag is white people doing minstrelsy of all Black women - not in the sense of gender at all but in the sense of race.
Like. A lot of Black culture in the US specifically is Big and Loud *because* of the repression of it we’ve faced and the force towards respectability politics, which has echoed to queer culture because queer culture in the US is made vast majority from Black culture. Our existence is a spectacle so why not make a show out of why they hate us and try to erase us so that they can’t get rid of even more.
Hating “the spectacle” of an actual performance art form is solidly rooted in white supremacy and white cultural notions of propriety/respectability. Many aspects of “spectacle” seen in drag are directly taken from Ballroom or adapted from it/vogueing.
In summary: traditions are meant to change with situational, cultural, and environmental need but still be sustained as part of a culture. Gentrification is a poison to this that makes it harder for those the culture belongs to to practice it as it should. White ancestral shame is a poison that makes them think they should nuke everything historic/cultural that makes them uncomfortable regardless of whether it’s theirs or whether it’s something they stole and gentrified. Also yeag like,,, it’s a job/gig income predominantly for societal “undesirables” to make money when they’re under/unemployed due to marginalization. And it’s also been gentrified to *gestures at RuPaul, et al.*
No matter what you think about drag or ballroom, poor predominantly racialized trans folks still gon be doing it because it is part of our culture no matter what tv shows and big names and people who have only seen those do to it, and it’s always going to be seen as one of the “disreputable” pathways to transness that makes other trans people look down on them because of the complicated ties to transmisogyny, because until someone publicly says the words “Im also a trans woman”, WE also view them as a personification of what we fear the world sees us as—a man in a dress—rather than an egg finding their way to gender in a way we deem unacceptable because it doesn’t align with how we think it “should” be done.
And I think that’s on us honestly, not on them. If we say it can take as long or as quickly and as easily or messily for someone to sort out their gender as needed, this also has to be extended to the transmisogynized we view as “disreputable” regardless of if/when they reach a conclusion we deem acceptable or whether they die in the shell, never able to remove their masks fully.
Also as a clarification, I am not saying that you, personally, must enjoy/like/do drag or ballroom. Im saying that drag, crossies, sissies, femboys, etc. are all transmisogyny paradoxes because of the way they interface gender exploration with surviving doing so in a transmisogynistic system by compromising for safety or a degree of acceptance within spaces they’ve found accept it.
Like, as an example, I *hate* sissies because of the racism endemic to sissy culture, but I still recognize they’re transmisogynized regardless of the harm they do or the disgust I feel towards them.
I also had someone comment on it as a facet of US cultural imperialism, of which I do want to note - drag/ballroom based on Black origins was spreading outside the US back in the 1800s/early 1900s too, there’s photos from other countries of balls explicitly influenced by Black Balls mainly started by Black folks in said countries, an example being early 1900s photos from France of both transmasculine and transfeminine Black people. While modern gentrified drag is 100% exported as part of US cultural imperialism, its original spreads outside of the US were via Black diaspora in-culture. I honestly couldn’t tell you definitively where it stuck and where it didn’t from that original wave, but it’s important to know it existed that way.
I have some physical books on this I might see if I can add to the archive tbh, if I can I’ll reblog this again with links.
I love lying to my landlord. “We’re currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease here” and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, I’m gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that I’m not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlord—I’m just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease I’ve ever signed. (Also, I’ve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether they’re corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their asset—the property—is a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time it’s sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goal—and because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent money—they’re almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, it’s actually in their best interest to give you a better price.
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an “AVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAY” sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says “First month free”? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says “call for availability”? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.
You have the least leverage if you’re a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that aren’t even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if you’ve already signed a lease and you’re in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so you’re stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if you’re a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and you’re being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, they’re also probably going to have to put in some work to “turn” the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, it’s still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. They’re probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know it’ll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if you’re a prospective new tenant—if they can’t get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, that’s $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and they’ll never get it back. It’s a perishable item about to spoil.
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number they’ll quote you for the rent—the sticker price that you’ve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, they’ve built some buffer into that number. There’s almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people don’t!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Don’t reply to their initial offer right away—unless there’s a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you aren’t desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when we’re talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when it’s time to send out renewal offers didn’t get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they could’ve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)
Here’s the tricky part. You need to write an email—always negotiate over email if you can, it’s too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isn’t in writing means nothing—which simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, you’d delete those other hoes’ numbers forever! Here’s the rough script I use every time:
“ Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I should’ve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number that’s higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; you’ve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and they’re likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firm—in which case, guess what? You still didn’t lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didn’t mention it above because I just couldn’t fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically “price firm :(”, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, “actually, nvm, how’s $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?”
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
Don't date thirty-year-olds until you are at least 25.
Having a glass of water for every glass of alcohol will give you a 50% reduction in hangover viciousness.
Bad people will use your willingness to be quiet as a weapon against you. If someone's being awful to you and trusting you'll be quiet to keep from making waves, surprise them.
There is no physical object in the world that is worth as much as your honor.
Honor is not the same as dignity. Retaining one sometimes means leaving the other aside.
Don't have any sex you don't want to have; have as much as you want of the sex that you do, whether that's a lot, a little, or none at all. Nothing you can do to your own body is immoral, unless you're doing it as an act of self-punishment.
Food is morally neutral. You do not have to earn the right to eat calories. Fat and sugar keep your brain from eating itself.
Learning to sit still and breathe--in, in, in, hold, hold, hold, out, out, out, out, out, out--can give you five feet of clear space around yourself in a maelstrom.
Find out how to make three good meals: A comfort meal you can make for just yourself relatively easily, a fancy meal you can use to wow a date, and a meal you can feed a bunch of people. All the other cooking can come later, but you can build a community on those three meals.
If you ever get to the point that things are so bleak you can see no other way forward but to die, make any other choice. If that means leaving everything you own and being a beach bum, or quitting your career, or taking up or leaving a religion, or deciding to bicycle across the country, so be it; living means more chances, dying means everything stops and you don't get to see any more interesting things. As you have not yet seen all the things that can interest you, it is better to live.
OpenGateLabs is shutting down unfortunately. They're clearing out stock, so if you need estradiol vials for cheap (upto 50 dollars off for some), now is probably the time before they close up
The reblog chain is one of the things that makes Tumblr unlike anywhere else. All the notes on reblogs are attributed to the original post, no matter which branch people actually liked or reblogged. We want to keep encouraging conversations, and give contributors the recognition they deserve.
Soon, you'll be able to like, reblog, or reply to any part of a reblog chain, and that note will go to that reblog's author. Each reblog will have its own counts, instead of one aggregated number from every version of the post. And yes, you’ll be able to like multiple posts in one chain.
If a reblog doesn't add anything, the love flows up to the last person in the chain who did. Your post doesn't lose notes just because people spread it quietly.
Past notes will stay on the original post — we're only changing what happens from here on out. Retroactively re-attributing all of them would be... a lot.
This is just the beginning. More changes are coming as we keep building this out – stay tuned!
It’s very clear that you all have strong feelings about Tumblr and about this change. We hear you. The passion people have for how Tumblr works is one of the things that makes this place special.
As this rolls out over the next few days and you explore it, we’ll keep reading your replies and reblogs, so please keep sharing your questions, concerns, and ideas.
Your creativity has always been the heart of Tumblr, whether you’re the original poster or adding something brilliant in the reblogs, and nothing about this change is meant to limit that.
If you’d like to talk directly beyond the comments, leave a reply and we’ll follow up with as many of you as we can. We want to work with you to make Tumblr better.
The "Block AI Enhancements" toggle was originally introduced in Firefox 148 Nightly in January following significant community backlash afte
The Firefox "AI kill switch" is here.
Go to Settings > AI controls. There, you can toggle the "master kill switch" on to fully block all the features, which means two things:
you won't see them,
you can't even be asked about them.
The default state is, like before, "available". This means the features are NOT on by default (they never were), but Firefox will let you know about them where they exist (e.g. when you create your first tab group) so that you can choose to opt in.
Please note that Firefox for Android or iOS have never included AI features, so you won't see these settings on your smartphones or tablets.
Please also note that, unlike popular belief here on Tumblr, besides "chatbot in sidebar" (which is simply embedding the same page you'd have normally browsed to), none of these features have ever interacted with anything outside your PC, because they download a small model to your computer, to do everything locally. These small models have never been and are not downloaded until you explicitly agree to turn on one of the features.
the deadline passed and we couldn't make it. it's fucked. my girlfriend has started working, but it won't mean anything if we don't have a home to live in.
the electric and internet bills went through for december and january combined all at the same time. it's so fucked. we have a bunch of hospital bills from last month, i got so sick i lost 20lbs in 5 days and the doctors kept telling me it was just the flu until i temporarily lost my hearing and they FINALLY identified the bacterial infection. 3 hospital visits for me, 2 for my girlfriend for the same issue. all costing between $150-700.
so we need to make $1170 in rent, from $-418. a little under $1600 to stay off the street. many hundreds more if we are to pay our medical bills, phone bill, etc.
please, if anyone can help, even by reblogging, ill put my links below. im sorry we have to ask all the time, but our backs have been against the wall consistently for so long now.
My recommended Spanish learning routine: 1-2 lessons of duolingo. Watch TV in Spanish with no English subtitles (something like Destinos or perhaps a show you watched already but in a Spanish dub), then write some sentences on your own from scratch. Some days I add in some video games or YouTube videos as well. This works pretty well for me, what I learned is that all of these methods work best when combined with each other rather than focusing too much on one. It's better to do a little of each. Also, you must have a LOT of patience. This will take a loooong time but you gotta stick to it.
We've done a solid amount of digging on the internet over the past couple years and found scans of a bunch of important leatherdyke-related magazines, zines, books, etc. in a bunch of different places, in addition to our own work at collecting, cataloging, and scanning whatever materials we've been able to get our hands on. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but we wanted to post some links for people to find a lot of the materials we've tracked down. We do archival work to keep our history and culture alive and accessible. We highly encourage everyone who sees this to share this post widely, share the links around, send them to friends off tumblr, download all of these materials, repost them elsewhere (every online archive is at risk of being taken down without notice, so the more places things are, the better!), and just generally spread it far and wide!
So, here's a bunch of links:
Our archive, which we're continuously updating as we scan and prepare materials we've collected. If you tab over to "Lists", we've made a bunch of lists of other materials we think are important - including scans of Quim, Venus Infers, On Our Backs, a bunch of important leatherdyke books, and a full run of TransSisters!
Carta Monir's archive, with a couple things we put in our lists, and a bunch of cool trans materials
Digital Transgender Archive's Internet Archive page, where we found the full run of TransSisters. It's got a ton of trans fetish magazines, which can be tough to read at times but there's a lot of stuff to be found in there if you're willing to wade through it all. If you've seen chastity's Trans Leatherdyke History talk, a lot of that research came from these kinds of magazines
Middle and Ring has an extensive archive of lesbian materials sorted by topic, including a lot of important books, 12 issues of On Our Backs, etc.
A couple Flickr albums with incomplete scans of two issues of Quim
We have not been able to track down any scans of the original run of the BIPOC leather magazine Black Leather in Color (BLIC), but there is a revived version of the magazine first launched in 2024, available exclusively online on their website. At the time of this post, they've put out 4 issues
Fat Girl has been publicly archived in full (save for some images of people who have not consented to be included in the archived versions) on the Fat Lib Archive, with a wide range of accessible options to view its contents
The first 3 issues of DaemonumX's FIST zine are available for free download
Not a digital archive, but if you're interested in physical copies, the long-running leather shop ASWGT produced issues 18-39 of the leather periodical SandMUtopia Guardian, and you can order a full run of the issues they produced from their website. The website looks ancient and you might be nervous to order from them, but we can confirm they're still active - we ordered and received all of those issues! You can also order single issues from them. And while you're at it, order some gear from them! They've got really cool looking impact toys!
We'll try to update this periodically! There's certainly other places to find things - if you know of any we didn't post there, we'd love to hear about them! Put links in the comments or send them to us over DM - we'll add them to the list, or if for whatever reason you don't want them added we'd love to at least have access to it for internal archival purposes!
My suffering is not what makes me Black but goddamn if I ever had any doubts about my positionality in the first place the exact Flavor of suffering I experience would put me right so fast
“Historically, Black women have not had permission to decide to create those kinds of boundaries”
My life has been defined by it never truly being my own - not just through to adulthood, but through to the present day. Shaping myself by what I need to be to survive, not what I am.
I’ve rarely had the freedom to say “No” without fear of reprisal, especially when I was living in my home state of Montana, a 90% white state. The choice to was, and is, often taken from me by fear of what will be done to me if I don’t. My body is not my own. My spirit is mine now, but that wasn’t the case for most of my adult life.
In the most abusive relationship I was in, I was functionally enslaved because she knew that as a Black person, once she had me alone, she had total control over me in my home state because “who would believe you? I’m a 5’5” white woman and you’re a 6’4” Black man.”
I tried to run once. with nothing but what I had on me after she beat me in public and I managed to sneak away from her and get back home without her. She came back and grabbed my keys while I was packing, so I made a break out the side door and just started running.
She hunted me down in her car. I was on foot running through fields and suburbs while she tried to cut me off or herd me to somewhere she could trap me. I remember hiding in tall grass as I watched her bright red car circle a field she knew I was in, waiting for me to make a break for it.
She caught me because I made a wrong turn into a culdesac with no real other way out. She made me go back with her. And it broke me, because if I couldn’t escape when being willing to give up everything to get out, how else could I escape?
Through that relationship she controlled and exploited me in every aspect of my life. Job, finances, sexually, emotionally, physically. I was a husk going through the moves of a life I had resigned myself to.
When I finally did escape her, my life remained not my own. I was stuck with the results and trauma of that entire relationship and trying to make the best of where it landed me. I thought I could reclaim at least some of my life, my existence.
The first time people tried to exile me fully from my in person communities, it was two exes that openly spoke about wanting to lynch me.
The second time, it was at the behest of several people, including someone who’s now known as a literal nazi, and a white woman I wouldn’t give sexual access to my body. I was told that “(white) people are afraid you’ll accuse them of being racist if they tell you about problems” among other things.
Third time, I got sexually assaulted by a white woman, after a year of not doing anything with anyone but partners, after being told by my roommate and others that I was “somewhere safe” and repeatedly reassured that I’d be ok despite my worries based on my prior experiences. She then went on to claim I had assaulted her instead, and I not only got told once again that I couldn’t possibly be a victim because of my “pattern of behavior”, but also repeatedly got treated like a “man” while she got to be treated as a woman still.
I’m so tired of my body being a commodity for others to extract value from, instead of it being mine with which to do what I please.
I’m so tired of others using my Blackness as a tool to harm me when I just want to live in the joy of being Black.
I’m so tired of my boundaries and my autonomy being seen as lesser because I’m a Black trans woman. Because we, historically, do not get to decide what our boundaries are. I deserve to live as I am without it being a license to harm me - but we live in a white supremacist society so until that is dismantled, I have to keep living afraid of what the next white will use my Blackness to do to me.
Doll you 18 the fact that you already been through this as a Black & Indigenous trans woman is horrific and I’m so fucking sorry you have been. But it does help to be not alone, it truly does.
I think, as Black people, we grow afraid to name things for what they are just because it’s been modernized.
We weren’t bought outright but white supremacy and capitalism combine to put us in situations where white partners, even trans ones *can* functionally own us, especially if marriage or other legal ties get involved and we have to choose between losing literally everything for freedom or staying out of fear for what’ll happen if we fail.
My most abusive ex would threaten to falsely call the police on me if I didn’t have sex with her or do sexual things she wanted because “they won’t believe you anyway”, knowing it was likely a death sentence for me. She chose my jobs/career, controlled how and what money I spent, what I did socially, everything. Any time I got higher pay she found a way to increase our costs alongside it so I couldn’t afford to escape.
It was functionally slavery where she exploited my labor to survive while beating me and raping me and abusing me. She didn’t own me on a contract but she owned me in every other conceivable way and I *wasn’t permitted to leave*. If I tried, it made things worse.
When I say those exes or others want to lynch me, sometimes people say those exact words based on the same lies and excuses (harming white wimminz) they have to kill our grandparents and further back:
Other times they do the same thing but call it “kill your abusers” while they stir a white mob into a frenzy over it because they don’t care whether you’re actually an abuser or not, they just want blood.
Honey, if Black folks killed every person that abused us, white genocide would be damn real. Maybe we deserve to do that. Maybe nobody deserves to take another’s life and lynching someone is just evil. Maybe we *should* take our revenge on y’all.
Maybe y’all should have to feel the same fear we do every single day.
Or maybe we should strive for something better that isnt just a cascade of suffering. A world where you couldn’t have done this to us in the first place.
This is genuinely the truth. Me and my ex would do "cnc roleplay" except she'd initiate it without talking to me so she just decided my no's and stop's didn't really mean that. It happened for a long time until I couldn't ignore it because she raped me the worst a couple months ago and it broke down my psyche (twas similar to my childhood abuse). She says it was just a misunderstanding but this was in the context of a relationship extremely similar to yours. She didn't beat me but she controlled me, isolated me from friends, insulted me when I told her I didn't like what she was doing and made me EXTRAordinarily paranoid over my actions. I'd cut friends off and isolate myself from communities because I feared what would happen if she found out about them. She YELLED at me for normal interactions with them and I didn't tell anyone because I thought I was insane and overreacting.
I thought it was my responsibility to fix her and make our relationship better because clearly she couldn't (she wouldn't. She just wanted to own me. I know that now).
She was trans too. Just extremely white (AND BLONDE.), skinny, and delicate looking. Didja know a (mixed black & white) trans guy commented on our year and two month age gap saying it was so weird how I was that much older? I'M the creep for that. Okay.
Only now do I realize how much that toxic stress has impacted by ability to have relationships. I haven't been able to keep up anything long term with anyone because I'm scared that they'll hurt me or disappoint me or leave me or use me like most people do. I probably clock a lot of false positives because I'm just very paranoid. I'm even more avoidant than I used to be.
This shit sticks with you for the rest of your life, I don't think people understand how much that fear is the context for your ENTIRE life. It doesn't stop when you're with your friends, your community, anyone. They all can and have turned on me and hurt me on a whim. You're the only one you can trust. I'm almost glad I got abused so badly in childhood there are dozens of other people in my head to make a family with instead.
oh damn Tara Knight's writing is crucial. no wonder the FBI is after her. as well as the one linked just a bit ago (I'll rb again), I DEMAND you all read these.
This is not about mismanagement, confusion, or people needing more education.
What Trans Gentrification Looks Like.
I’ve been calling it transfeminine cultural nationalism trans feminine grievance politics, and trans feminist life styleism.
hi!! maybe you know me or maybe you don't. i'm an aging, disabled genderqueer who has been living in the pits of this hellspace for a while! i've shat posts, written poems, made music & videos too!
i have a book club, i've offered music commissions for a few years, & i recently made a bandcamp where my first album is up for sale.
i have been unable to work for a while & am surviving in a low income apartment with help from my familys support, commission orders, selling plasma every week & pawning things off on ebay to make rent/grocery money, that kind of thing. recent stays in the hospital threw a big wrench in these efforts & i am in a tighter spot than ever now with little help from assisted living services so far. (ty to everyone who has offered advice, links, numbers, it means a lot. i promise i am trying)
you might relate to living on that cusp of stability where you're a grown adult who is capable of taking care of themselves but who would sure have a much easier time with someones help. at worst i'll have no consistent home, & i'd like to keep being here for as long as i can.
so since i've never made an outright asking post before without trying to give something in return, i'm doing that now. i really need help.
my KOFI. this is the easiest way to support me.
my venmo: FlowersForJean
or buy my album.
thank you. here is a picture of my cat socrates (sock for short)
Y'all for real please do these. Even if you're certain your posture doesn't suck. One day you will wake up with impinged shoulder pain like I did and let me tell you it fucking HURTS. Do these exercises even just once a week and it will make such a difference. Especially my fellow creatives out there, stop shrimping over your work and go do these right now. RIGHT NOW.
Also, if you’re even a little concerned about getting a hump or having trouble standing fully upright in your old age, this is how you prevent that. If you want to be up and about when you’re old you have to start when you’re younger. And keep in mind there is no bad time to start and it’s never too late. Starting today is way better than never starting at all.
a bizarre and strange little woman @mutatedsheepskull - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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