the horrors persist but so do i

QR | Adult | Black + Queer + & | any/all

[oldmanhorseface]

Hello! We're Quantum Realm, or QR. We're a traumagenic DID system. Pronouns vary by fronter but most of us don't care unless we're being referred to specifically.

-Bodily adult, African-American, trans masc -If you approach me with any online discourse I will explode you with my brain powers -Common fixations include literature, media analysis, art, & writing. Also Inception, Leverage, Flight Rising, and we're currently getting into a couple of comics (Moon Knight, Morbius, Doom Patrol) -Content includes anything I feel like, though I rarely post or engage.

[oldmanhorseface]

I've got a very complicated relationship to womanhood as a transmasc system, and Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde fixed me.

It's an essay that I highly recommend discussing uses of the erotic. Though, in Lorde's definition, it isn't just sexual material. In fact, there is little focus on sex at all. Rather, it focuses on reclaiming pleasure, physical and not, for ourselves, and to embrace this as fuel to better our lives.

And in the beginning, Lorde discusses the nature of white patriachy, and how this system uses the pornographic - pleasure without feeling - to oppress. Women are viewed as as objects for the pleasure of men, who cannot have any pleasure for their own. The ideal is set at a woman who is ultimately an object, who is fully disconnected from herself and from her needs.

And she argued this is the overall goal because once you connect to the erotic - to the intimacy within yourself found in pleasures of all shapes and sizes - you can demand absolutely nothing less from all that you do. And that is extremely detrimental to white patriarchy, to have women who are dedicated to their self-fulfillment, and who demand from others to be treated in ways that suit them and not the patriarchy. (This is a terrible summary, please read the essay!)

I think very often about the concept of the cop in your head. The colonizer, the misogynist, whatever. The internalized structure of oppression you use to oppress yourself. Your expectations for yourself - what you want, who you think you should be, what future you think the world should have - are so tied to further that on such base levels, from gendering your body parts to what you even think it means to be a man or a woman. To have her call that out and to invite a framework outside of it fucking rattled my brain into being normal. Like, genuinely, I do not think I've ever felt like a man until then, specifically because like… yeah, no, my body is not a woman's body. My body is a man's body, because I am a man. The idea that it's a woman's body is what is fed to me by white patriarchy, because every barrier they can place between me and my inner peace is a method of keeping me under control.

Further, as a black transmasc - black women are generally very masculinized under white patriarchy, so much of black womanhood and black femininity becomes about reclaiming this. The first 20 years of my life were spent wrenching womanhood from white patriarchy, in learning how to find the feminine through that forced masculinization. That isn't something you can just leave. I would not know how to be a man if I had not been a woman first and the idea of these two things being opposed is, once again, the work of white patriarchy. Who does it serve to set these parts of myself at odds? To hate the woman who spent years trying to feel herself in the face of being made a non-person. Certainly not me.

I am a man, I'd like SRS, I love the way my body looks and feels on testosterone. But I also know womanhood; I know gathering together, i know finding alternative solutions, I know demanding and making waves because you're expected to be quiet. Those are just as much part of how I navigate life as they were before I started HRT.

I do not know how to view the world like a cis man because I'm not one, and I frankly don't want to be one. I only know life as an act of creation - making something for yourself in face of being marginalized. And so, too, my manhood is best expressed as an act of creation. I would never want to have been born a man, to that end, because there is so much core to me that could only be obtained from being a woman that I just wouldn't even be the same person anymore.

[oldmanhorseface]

I'm also reading Pleasure Activism which is a collection of essays and some writing by adrienne maree brown, and her essay Love as Political Resistance also sat well with me. Not quite as impactful, but her idea of needing to love in ways that truly connect us, as opposed to the way white patriarchy perfers, or we will wither and fall fit in well with this. Particularly in building communities of care, and encouraging healing not as an individual, but as a member of a broader community, and [and this maybe isn't in the text, I think this is me] developing some level of self intwined with that.

In general, our gender these days has grown much more abstract, and a lot more tied to these ideas around liberation and forgiveness and community. Jordan has a whole write up where I think her gender is slurs and liberation. Personally, I'm quite content as a man, but I no longer know how to understand gender outside of those ideas, in the same way I can't really understand any inherently social concepts without them.

[oldmanhorseface]

I've got a very complicated relationship to womanhood as a transmasc system, and Uses of the Erotic by Audre Lorde fixed me.

It's an essay that I highly recommend discussing uses of the erotic. Though, in Lorde's definition, it isn't just sexual material. In fact, there is little focus on sex at all. Rather, it focuses on reclaiming pleasure, physical and not, for ourselves, and to embrace this as fuel to better our lives.

And in the beginning, Lorde discusses the nature of white patriachy, and how this system uses the pornographic - pleasure without feeling - to oppress. Women are viewed as as objects for the pleasure of men, who cannot have any pleasure for their own. The ideal is set at a woman who is ultimately an object, who is fully disconnected from herself and from her needs.

And she argued this is the overall goal because once you connect to the erotic - to the intimacy within yourself found in pleasures of all shapes and sizes - you can demand absolutely nothing less from all that you do. And that is extremely detrimental to white patriarchy, to have women who are dedicated to their self-fulfillment, and who demand from others to be treated in ways that suit them and not the patriarchy. (This is a terrible summary, please read the essay!)

I think very often about the concept of the cop in your head. The colonizer, the misogynist, whatever. The internalized structure of oppression you use to oppress yourself. Your expectations for yourself - what you want, who you think you should be, what future you think the world should have - are so tied to further that on such base levels, from gendering your body parts to what you even think it means to be a man or a woman. To have her call that out and to invite a framework outside of it fucking rattled my brain into being normal. Like, genuinely, I do not think I've ever felt like a man until then, specifically because like… yeah, no, my body is not a woman's body. My body is a man's body, because I am a man. The idea that it's a woman's body is what is fed to me by white patriarchy, because every barrier they can place between me and my inner peace is a method of keeping me under control.

Further, as a black transmasc - black women are generally very masculinized under white patriarchy, so much of black womanhood and black femininity becomes about reclaiming this. The first 20 years of my life were spent wrenching womanhood from white patriarchy, in learning how to find the feminine through that forced masculinization. That isn't something you can just leave. I would not know how to be a man if I had not been a woman first and the idea of these two things being opposed is, once again, the work of white patriarchy. Who does it serve to set these parts of myself at odds? To hate the woman who spent years trying to feel herself in the face of being made a non-person. Certainly not me.

I am a man, I'd like SRS, I love the way my body looks and feels on testosterone. But I also know womanhood; I know gathering together, i know finding alternative solutions, I know demanding and making waves because you're expected to be quiet. Those are just as much part of how I navigate life as they were before I started HRT.

I do not know how to view the world like a cis man because I'm not one, and I frankly don't want to be one. I only know life as an act of creation - making something for yourself in face of being marginalized. And so, too, my manhood is best expressed as an act of creation. I would never want to have been born a man, to that end, because there is so much core to me that could only be obtained from being a woman that I just wouldn't even be the same person anymore.

[hiiragi7]

Over the years, I have noticed a troubling conflict in the way people speak about disorders and disabilities which are different from their own.

"You don't have tics, you have Munchausen's"

"You don't have DID, you have schizophrenia"

"You're not chronically ill, you're just a narcissist"

This sentiment that you cannot have xyz disorder, are lying or "insane", and must truly have this other disorder instead.

It is as if there are the Good Disorders; those which are Morally Correct to have; those which you are subjected to; those which make your life harder, and the Bad Disorders; those which are Morally Wrong to have; those which you deserve to have; those which make other peoples' lives harder. And so, there is this idea that those with the Bad Disorders attempt to trick others into believing they actually have the Good Disorders, and that this must be called out and these people shamed and exorcised so as to not taint the purity of those with the Good Disorders.

It is what is behind this common demand of "You must acknowledge you have The Bad Disorder and seperate yourself from those of us with The Good Disorder, or else you will further our oppression, harm us, steal our resources, and spread lies about our disorder."

And then I realized, it is that a lot of people believe that Good People have Good Disorders and Bad People have Bad Disorders.

Good People have disorders such as PTSD, anxiety, depression; Bad People have disorders such as personality disorders, bipolar, schizophrenia.

And so, Bad People cannot have Good Disorders. I feel that this also ties into ideas of what "victims of disability/abuse" look like, and the idea of the Good Victim; this idea that in order to be truly victimized, you must be entirely and wholly pure behaviorally, emotionally, physically, racially, and sexually, or else you are considered to be deceitful and deserving of abuse and disability. Those who are "truly" victims are those who are deemed to fully reject their abuse and disability, and who are also deemed to be wholly pure and good.

For those who are held up as Good Victims [of disability/abuse], it is said that they deserve support, justice, and healing. For those who are decided to be Bad Victims [of disability/abuse], it is said they deserve isolation, institionalization, violence, and perhaps even death.

Even within communities for specific disorders, there are the Good Symptoms and the Bad Symptoms, and it is a common sentiment that those with the Bad Symptoms must not truly have the disorder; to imply otherwise would risk the purity of the disorder (or, if it is a "Bad Disorder", it damages the possibility of the disorder someday moving into a Good Disorder status).

This entire structure relies on deeply ingrained ableist ideals and concepts of morality, purity, and dis/ability. It keeps us divided from each other and damages attempts at community.

Dismantling ableism requires supporting each other; when we perpetuate the idea that other disabled people are lying about their disability, that they are not who or what they claim to be, and that they require immediate curative interventions in order to not harm others, we reinforce ableist ideas and stereotypes about disabled people within our communities.

[cainternn]

introducing the brand new existential crisis barbie!

[karlovycross]

Daisy Fleabane 🌼

[blueumbriel]

Miguel O'Hara

[melonnabar]

MIGUEL

[eamlav]

claws require brain power

[enetriss]

I haven’t watched spiderverse yet, but he 🛐🛐🛐

[frishbi]

I NEED HIM

[brokensocialscone]

Here’s the thing about Hobie

And I say this from a place of love.

Hobie is a dork.

Is he the coolest Spiderperson in the movie? Yes, by 1000%. Am I obsessed with him? Also 1000%. But he’s very, very Spider-dork. 

Punk is an extremely flexible identity/philosopohy/belief system, and living it out is very different from being perceived as “punk.” To convince others you are “punk” you have to perform it effectively. Hobie’s world is a post capitalist hellscape, an anarchist dystopia, like the garbage strike in the 1970s that birthed punk in the first place, and he’s a punk because that’s an important and necessary way to be resiliant in his own universe. 

But when he’s with the other spiders? He’s just playing. He’s funny. He’s inconsistant. He’s a goofball. He goes for obvious punchlines about Mayday. He’s just as much of a science nerd as any of them, but he lets them underestimate his scientific abilities so that he can rip shit off the wall and repurpose it while they all ignore the disruptor because that’s just Hobie, wrecking the place. 

He realizes Miguel is dangerously full of rage before anyone else in HQ and as he watches what Miles goes through he is creating and evolving his escape plan. He uses the persona to convince everyone that he’s just obstinate and stupid, but his smart little spider mind is humming away under that fabulous head of hair, breaking everything down.

He’s also extremely community minded, which isn’t part of what outsiders see as punk but is absolutely what being an effective Spider is all about. (it’s also what real world punks are like but nvm.) Even though he seems like he’s not interested in being part of the squad, he shows up to help. He gives Gwen a place to crash (and i think it was platonically). His first words to Miles are advice to empower him (”use the whole hand”) because he’s the friendly neighbourhood Spider Man still. He’s got his cool jacket and his cool guitar and his cool hair and he uses all of those to hide. He watches all of them carefully and decides in advance who is worthy of his loyalty, and then he’s all in.

Like all the Spiders, he’s going to save everyone and he’s going to do both and he’s going to think of something no one has ever done before. Because that’s punk rock, bb.

[doktor-monty]

Saw spiderverse last Friday...

[ingapotejtoo]

silly little guy

[kkremii]

mr. o'hara sir give me a chance

[pistashxo]

i am not immune to miguel o’hara

[spaceraceart]

wanted to get a feel for his design heheheh