Ria's SJW Thoughts and Fandom Squees

I am a a social worker in training and I am determined to make the world a better place. I hope you enjoy my diary. 📢 Pronouns she/her trans bisexual queer woman ;)

[riarosellasjw]

Politics as Team Sport

"Let's turn Georgia/Florida/Texas Blue again!"

I have a frustration with my fellow open minded white progressive liberals or those like myself that are further left. It seems that some of us, including me in the past, are more concerned with winning than actually making substantive change in the lives of people. Let me be clear I mean working to challenge racism, sexism, cissexism, homophobia, ableism and classism.

My feel is when you say something like the above quote you are treating politics like a team sport than a vehicle for social change. It is like people are more interested in the spectacle of change but they really are comfortable with the status quo as long as it has a liberal veneer. Turning somewhere blue in and of itself does not necessarily mean changes happening. Barack Obama was president when BLM started, or Bill Clinton signed Don't Ask Don't Tell. Democrats in power does not mean a better life but it does allow liberals to FEEL like something is being done.

Leftists are not immune it just manifests differently. Usually with the focus on telling people why capitalism is bad or debunking right wing trolls than trying to actively build something.

I am not sure the way to fix this but I wanted to write this out to start the discussion.

[itsyrgirl]

filtering for june on ao3

yo if you’re frustrated with the fact that the june egbert tag on ao3 just redirects you to john, a friend of mine hooked me up with a link that filters within the john tag for june fics. it’s kind of a janky solution but it seems to work pretty well relative to just trawling the john tag at large.

according to my buddy, most of the HS tag wranglers in the specific are in favor of june being a separate tag, but someone in AO3′s powers that be (who apparently isn’t even into homestuck :/) decided that they can’t be separated for…honestly pretty arbitrary reasons. apparently those head powers might okay the change “when june becomes canon?” which like, canon is kind of a nonsense concept in homestuck at this point but them’s the 8r8ks, i guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

until then, check out that link, and if you want you can also add a filter to exclude stargate so you don’t have to read a million chapters’ worth of that stargate fic to get like very little june

[tomatograter]

clarifying new developments! Where did “June is canon!” come from?

if you’re confused where June Egbert came from on the first place, click here.

1) Andrew hussie releases a letter about the meaning of the epilogues and the future of homestuck, which i’ll link with spaces so tumblr doesn’t shadowban this post: ( https: //perfectlygeneric.fandom. com  /wiki/   Episode_52:_Semiotics,_Bridges,_and_Off-Ramps ) that concluded with this, to signify the change of homestuck to an one man project to a team construct of new ideas and new writers.

2) The next day is AH’s birthday, and to commemorate he hides a box with a bunch of Toblerones (yes, the chocolate) for the fans in a cave. the origin of this idea are old pictures of him in said cave eating toblerones that used to be a meme. they’re signed and the spot is marked in a map, where people are supposed to find them. the first person to do so commemorates on twitter and adds that since they’ve proven to be conscious and invested, they wish for june egbert to be canon.

3) The day after that, after months of indirect social media silence (and stating on the pgenpod release that he doesn’t like to directly engage with the community) AH logs on to confirm said wish.

4*) while the comment reads as humorous, members of the WhatPumpkin writing team have previously commented in how AH likes this particular headcanon, and a good deal of them are supportive of the idea themselves- plus, a lot of the writers are trans. Thus, ‘june egbert IS canon’ is a pretty solid positive affirmation of authorial support. (and the reason why so many people came together to celebrate)

[riarosellasjw]

Therapy and PTSD

content warning: mental health, child abuse,Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, and death

This blog has been a long time coming. I restarted therapy about two months ago because I was having a bad time dealing with one of my partners reactions to being upset, among other things. They freeze and turn inward. At the time I saw this as a threat to my survival. I realized that it was because my mom would freeze before either hitting me or lashing out at me and hurting me emotionally. Additionally she would often reject me and withhold love from me too.  

I knew what I was doing was a trauma reaction, and I finally wanted to do something about it. I looked up a therapist that was polyam, kink, and lgbtqia+ friendly and made an appointment. 

It went really well and when I told my therapist about my experience she provisionally, and eventually did, diagnosis me with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. That feeling I was feeling when I thought my partner’s reaction was a threat to my survival was hyperarousal. The anxiety that anytime I even made a small misstep that I would loose my partners was also part of it. My mother would be set off anytime I “messed up” (usually this was arbitrary and not my fault) so I feared making a mistake no mater how small.

I have also remembered that my really strong fear of death came from my mother. When I was a small child I was over weight. My mother shamed me for it, and told me that everyone assigned male at birth in her family died at 40. In my mind she essentially shortened my lifespan by over half. I am almost 30 and have been having panic attacks over existential dread about death for over a decade. So death became a trigger for me, and that is super uncommon for someone as young as me, so thanks mom.

Another thing I am struggling with is I feel like I am not allowed to have emotions. This problem comes from two places my mother and father. My mom would hit or yell at me for having emotions. Basically my emotions were inconvenient for her. My dad also treated my emotions like they were inconvenient, but also he berated me for having emotions. He told me not to “cry like a girl” guess he was wrong on that one, but the message still affected me.

So I have been unpacking these issues with my therapist and I have made progress with my reaction to the freezing thing. I seem to not have trauma reactions to it anymore, so yay :) We are currently preparing to with the death thing. I am nervous about it but optimistic.  

So ultimately this has been a really good experience for me.

[peridotite]

so can you give us a try?

‘cause i’d be your wife ♥

[riarosellasjw]

I feel this way about all my partners :)

[riarosellasjw]

Am I the Woman I’ve Become?

CW: Transphobia, gender dysphoria, impostor syndrome

I look into the mirror and I see a woman with long, flowing hair, a DD bust, and flawless makeup.  She is wearing a skin-tight, white top that says “rebel girl” and her favorite ripped up jeans with her hair styled in her signature pigtails.  She has such a cute, mischievous grin with round cheeks and smiling eyes.  Everything about her is beautiful, from the way she carries herself to her inner light that shines through as I look at her.  That woman is mostly me.

I have actively been trying to become this woman for two and a half years, but I don’t know if I’m truly her.  I just look around and notice that people stare at me sometimes.  Like when I’m out in public and someone gives me a dirty look. I’ve even had people follow me into the bathroom and look at me through the crack of the stall door because they wanted to check my genitals: just one of the ways that other women send me this message that I don’t belong there.  When people address me, sometimes they slip in the word “sir” so quickly that I can’t tell for sure if they said it.  It just makes me think that there’s no way that I could be the woman that I think I am.  Because if I was that woman, would my presence really cause such a strong reaction?

But let me back up.  Before the bathrooms, before the pills, before both puberties I’ve been through, I was a child, a child assigned male at birth.  But unlike other children assigned male at birth, I wore my mother’s underwear to check and see if I was a girl.  Unlike other children assigned male, I painfully tried to push my penis back inside myself, wishing it could simply go away.  I didn’t want to be perceived as a boy.  I desperately tried to tell myself that I could be a girl.  And as puberty came, it got harder.  When all the excessive hair appeared, I was mortified.  And worse, my mother believed and passed on the myth that if you shaved the hair, it came back thicker.  My brain was constantly screaming about this patchy, itchy, ugly mess on my face that shouldn’t be there.  And I couldn’t exist inside myself.  It got to a point where everyone knew that I was uncomfortable, and they could tell that I was different, even if they didn’t know exactly how.  The boys I grew up with were so aggressive, so focused on violence and war, and they saw girls as objects to possess and control.  I rejected it all—I was gentle, sensitive, caring.  They teased me for crying “like a girl.”  They called me “effeminate,” but I wanted to be feminine.  They knew I was queer before I knew I was queer.  Hell, I was voted “most likely to be in a horror movie” in my seventh-grade yearbook—because I was supposed to be the monster.

What made my journey even more difficult was how easily I lied to myself.  Once I came to terms with the fact that I was queer when I was in high school, I was like, “Okay, I figured it out.  I’m done, right?  Right?  Right?”  But there was just this feeling of being incomplete.  I had the desire to transition, but I thought it wasn’t for me.  I thought it was impossible.  My shoulders were too wide, my hands were too big, my head was too large, and I told myself that I could never be a woman: another lie, but one I told myself for a different reason.

I was terrified of transitioning and somehow failing to live up to my expectations, to the woman I always envisioned in my head. Eventually, the pain got to be too much.  I knew that if I didn’t transition I would kill myself by languishing in a numb existence.  I took my first dose of hormones, and then my whole world changed.  At first the changes were rapid, and I was filled with hope.  After many burns from laser hair removal and growing a relatively large bust I felt surely I would been seen, and seen I was—but not in the way I hoped.  When I shared my concerns, I was frequently met with the sickeningly-sweet compliment of, “You look fine, hon.” Presently, I believe that every single trans woman really does look fine, except the one between my ears.

So, when I look at the women in the mirror and I KNOW that she is me, but that is different from FEELING like she is me. Every single time someone misgenders me it is like my womanhood is taken and she goes back to being a fantasy instead of my reality. Sometimes I’m in a space where I’m fully accepted, and people really see me, particularly two people, my partners, who love me most. In those moments, I feel like I have made it and I will never be smacked back to that sad little girl who is afraid to exist, but it seems like that isn’t meant to be. I have to struggle just to be treated like the woman I am. I still feel like I’m trapped in the dark.  I just have to hope that my internal identity can just shine out of me like a light.

A performance of this monologue can be viewed here.

[slidingonwoodfloors]

I told y’all you weren’t ready #adventuretime #princessbubblegum #marceline #bubbline #20gayteen (at Cobb County, Georgia) https://www.instagram.com/p/BpxridTHKWH/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1m2xkpru7z7e5

[riarosellasjw]

I love everything thing about this.

[riarosellasjw]

Rocky Horror Picture Show is Important and Trash

I know for many Rocky Horror Picture Show (RHPS) is an amazing thing, but to me, as a trans women, it has always been a violence. It was a violence that was culturally used as, and probably was, my largest gatekeeper. I was so scared that I would be seen not as a women but as Frank N Furter because other than some trans women on Jerry Springer that was it for close to transgender representation. A reminder that cisgender society would always see me as an other. Key words cisgender society. Queer people can love the RHPS, and it can be a tool that helps or helped them, but let's not pretend that cisgender society didn't use that tool as a weapon. Ultimately, that weapon has a larger impact because of it's ability to set narratives about a marginalized people. The movie had every negative trope of trans women rapped in a bow, especially the one of being a rapist or sexual predator. I have literally had a cisgender person ask me, when explaining what being transgender means, “So like Rocky Horror?”

Considering that many trans women have said time and time again RHPS has hurt them, it is really frustrating that so many cisgender queer people seem to dig in their heals and tell us to fuck off. You can love something and it could be amazing for you but make room for someone else to acknowledge it's problematic tendencies. Just because something is problematic doesn't mean you can't like it, but you have to accept that aspect and don't attack people who are hurt by those problems. If anything direct your anger at cisgender hetero people that have hurt transgender women with RHPS, instead of getting mad at us for rejecting it. 

We know it was important to a number of queer people, including transgender women, that got to shadow cast Fank N Furter, but that has been ruined just like Ru Pal ruined drag spaces for transgender women. Your liking of RHPS is important but not more important than our oppression.

[riarosellasjw]

Voting and Social Justice

Let me be clear voting in the short term is really important. It really affects the daily life of marginalized people. Even if voting in and of itself cannot create social change, voting can ensure rights are not lost, in the short term, if the candidate makes at least lip service to social justice they usually don’t change anything. 

That said, ultimately voting can never change anything. Voting does not protect rights gained. This is apparent by the actions of  the Trump administration and state administrations across the country. They were voted in and now they are attempting to roll back rights for marginalized people. Voting, sadly, has sense of impermanence. Trusting the authority of the government is the problem because the government can always change. The possible repeal of the transgender discrimination rights in Massachusetts is a great example.

So you may be wondering what can make social justice causes stick? The answer is multi-faceted, but in this entry I am going to focus on exposure and hearts and minds. In a nutshell, we must shift public support and acceptance of marginalized groups so far that it would become unthinkable to discriminate against them. That way we do not have to rely on fickle “authority” to maintain our rights but our societal moral compass instead, and to accomplish that we have to get majority groups to see us as people and not others. 

We cannot allow tyrants be they big or everyday to slam us into a nonperson category. The only trans person a person knows cannot be Caitlyn Jenner for example. I know that it is not easy for us to put ourselves out there, and really it could even be potentially dangerous, but research has shone that interaction with marginalized people can diminish bias. Those that feel comfortable should make themselves seen and no shame if are someone who cannot. 

That said marginalized people cannot be the only ones that do this work. We need our majority allies doing hard work too, and by that I mean standing up to hate from the people around you. Do not let casual bigotry go and it will help us make the world safer. You can model appropriate behavior to impressionable people. The fight is slow but it is the only way. Once the social hierarchies are truly dismantled we will be free.

[aesthetics-for-harry-potter]

Moodboard of a ginger haired hufflepuff girl who is in a relationship with a ravenclaw girl.

Requested by: anon.

[riarosellasjw]

This great and repsentative of my life.

[riarosellasjw]

hiiii it's Eddie from real life and your blog is coooool!

Hello Eddie from meat space! Thank you! I am trying to get my thoughts out. We live in a world that is caught in conditions. We, as trans people, are more accepted than we ever have been but at the same time there is an undercurrent that wants to drag us back I into the shadows. So I want to talk about it. That and apparently reblog cute gay shit.

[parakeet]

i just came across this article about the lesbian flag. it points out the person that originally conceived the lipstick lesbian flag that we use today (sans lipstick mark) was actually racist, biphobic and transphobic

in the past we already had issues with the flag for not being a good representation of the community as a whole, and that was just the colors, just the idea that it wasn’t made with the whole community in mind so this new information is even worse. the very person that created this flag is everything we’re not supposed to be. this needs to be addressed. this blows. i don’t want a person like this deciding how we define and represent our community wtf 

[parakeet]

reblogging today to point some more attention towards the flag the writer proposed in this article as well.

i like the meaning/thought process behind this one a lot. obviously there’s more detail in the article (!) but the short of it is it’s based on the flowers Sappho describes her lover wearing: violets, crocuses, dill and roses and their properties and how those reflect our community. it’s not what we’re used to in flags, but it’s really grown on me, it really does feel like a good representation of how different we all are.

for the record i know it would be nearly impossible to ‘re-call’ the lipstick lesbian flag… but i also know people have already been seeking out an alternative for months, so there’s no harm in pointing out another potential candidate. 

it’s worth thinking about!

[parakeet]

a lot of people are saying the flag is ugly and i understand we all have different tastes, but i do also think we have perhaps been a tad spoiled by pretty yet wholly impractical flags like the lipstick one. we keep producing flags like it too, ones with too many stripes and colors that are too similar, making it hard to produce physical copies of

this flag was chosen with the idea that producing physical copies would be easier, and it was specifically web safe so it would appear the same on all monitors. what i DO understand however is that some people find it eye straining… maybe a more pastel version might work for things like icons/its digital life but the original would work best for physical items?

here’s a pastel take on the flag:

I also wanted to point out since people are getting mad about the inclusion of ‘fragility’, if you actually read the article the reasoning for this is:

‘The yellow in the flag is strength, and the pink fragility. Both are allowed. Both are okay. You can be both. And you are not less or more for either.‘ which I think is important. people treat fragility, being sensitive, etc as a weakness. it’s not! it never has been and it’s exhausting to be expected to be pillars of strength 24/7!

[riarosellasjw]

This is really cool and I love it. I really wish the pastel flag could become mainstream.

[assignedmale]

[riarosellasjw]

I can’t help but grin. If only this would happen. Ciel’s unbridled optimism is infectious. 

[bi-trans-alliance]

(source)

[riarosellasjw]

This is scary we have to fight and part of that fight is to live our best lives. 

[ohnoafterlaughs]

“Hole to another universe“ Because… well, why not? lol (- credits idea go to @cuddlecuffs​  -)

[riarosellasjw]

I am so excited for the new life is strange comic coming out next month. THE HYPE IS REAL! I 

[riarosellasjw]

Trans Cohorts

CW: internalized transphobia and transphobia

I went to the Sarah and the Safe Word concert last Saturday, and it was amazing, hands down one of the best things I have ever seen on stage, but I need to unpack some feelings about a trans woman comic that had a set while they were setting up for Sarah and the Safe Word. I would like to acknowledge that her reality is her own and any speculation I have could be totally off base and I am publicly sharing my processing and feelings based on hearing her set to talk about a concept more generally.

If I were to quickly summarize her set it was a lot of self harm and instead of punching down, because she was a trans woman, it punching sideways at the concept of transness and trans women in general. She made comments like “when I was man” or “military wants to check your head when you want to cut off your cock and balls.” She also commented on being a boomer and it being different back then. I could not watch the whole thing because it was making me uncomfortable and slightly dysphoric, so I stepped out  but it turns out she was almost done, so I didn’t miss much. It was her comments about boomers that got my gears turning for this diary entry.

I really think that there are trans cohorts, clusters, or multiple groups of thought sharing the same space in our community. To me they are shaped by the level of solidarity of the community and the tone of the cissexism in the critical period of early transition if applicable or at least awareness of a person’s transgender feelings albeit that may not be conscious. What I mean by that is I have noticed older trans people that have transitioned 20 plus years ago talk about their transness way differently than I do. In general, I have noticed they are more likely to frame their stories in the terms of our oppressors and that trans people that are younger and are transitioning in a time where we have a stronger community with more solidarity. Part of solidarity comes from sites like this one :) and I am eternally grateful we have these spaces, so young trans (be they literally young or just finding themselves and transitioning in this era of increased solidarity) people can bloom in a space that will support them.

So to get back my example. I have never heard a trans woman under 30 refer to herself as ever being a man. They are more likely to say before I transitioned or when I was perceived as a man etc. It is almost like cishet society pushed these trans women of these earlier cohorts and they have been so slammed down by transphobia that transphobia has become part of their internal voice and that is not okay. That isn’t to say that it doesn't happen to everyone but it seems to be a trend.

With all of that said, I have found sometimes there is some tension different cohorts because of internalized transphobia and that was kind of what I was feeling on an individual level while she was doing her set. I am not saying that younger cohorts should just deal with the transphobia regardless of our own self care because older cohorts need help. However, I think we should try our best to extend our support and forgive missteps. We all have to unpack our shit and we should own that and help others unpack their shit. That said everyone is responsible for their own baggage and if a hand is offered it is up to the person if they take it. 

I guess what it boils down to is I have been in this spot before. I have been hurt by trans women of older cohorts or those that have taken the values of older cohorts and it sucks. Regardless, I have to continue to reach out to them and if they chose their inner voice over support that is on them, but my own mental health should be my priority.

[yurimother]

✿☆★☆✿ 🅣🅗🅔 🅗🅞🅛🅨 🅜🅞🅣🅗🅔🅡 🅞🅕 🅨🅤🅡🅘 ✿☆★☆✿

☆       ★       ☆      ★     ☆ Original Artwork: crazy. By Artist: +++ ★`·.·´✿`·.·´★Please support the creator★`·.·´✿`·.·´★ ★       ☆       ★      ☆     ★

[riarosellasjw]

So pretty and cute