Some of yall need to hang out with trans people that aren’t like 22 years old and snowy white I am being so serious
They do exist y’know. Hell half the time they exist in local community and you treat them like fucking weirdos
“This is the transfemme experience” and it’s just a bunch of women who have never talked to anyone but the meanest, most closed-minded peers they can possibly find while they treat anyone older and/or darker-skinned than them like automatic predators, especially if they aren’t “traditionally attractive”
And don’t even get me started on how y’all treat your gnc siblings. People out here meeting one shitty transphobic femboy on the Internet (because ofc, they do exist!) and prescribing that to every gnc person out there is wild and turbo transphobic
Sorry for the long read, but I'd appreciate it if we've ever talked or I've been able to enrich your day in any way before. I would rather do just about anything than do this and I feel sick to my stomach doing it, so I'm only going to do it once here.
Earlier this year, immediately after tariffs were announced, I was laid off from my remote tech job of 6 years.
This was a job I loved, one I was good at doing, and I was very thankful to have such a good team that I was able to even transition during my time there with absolutely no pain or frustration whatsoever.
I say this specifically because I haven't had to look at IT jobs since I transitioned, and I learned firsthand between the tech-bro AI nightmare-scape that is the industry right now and the fact that I'm trans, I've had nothing but issues getting back on board with a company despite nearly two decades in the industry, up to and including being actively and intentionally mocked in calls with recruiters. So with that said, I have three things to try in the meantime:
[1] I will be opening commissions for stream layout and logo design work in probably a week or so. I won't be taking many commissions, since I know my mental state right now, but I will be sure to take ones that I can get done in a timely manner and at a good price. Once that's ready I'll post again in here.
[2] If you know of any remote work that you might be able to recommend, I would appreciate a DM to chat about any of it. I'm a multidisciplinary IT professional with experience in data conversion/ETL, web design (mainly frontend but enough backend to be dangerous), graphic/ad design, project management, fleet management, merchant services/ISO (mainly POS design and provisioning), and general technical support. I will also take any recommendations for simple things like office/data entry too at this point; I'm not picky and I can start immediately.
[3] If you have the means, just this once, any financial help to bridge that gap would be incredible. I was thankful to have savings set aside, but those run out in about 20 days, including some money that I will basically have to float. I also understand the time we're in and how that makes this tough, but I figure I'll swallow my pride this once and ask.
ko-fi.com/lennalefay
Cashapp: $naph71 / Venmo: @ lennalefay
Thanks for taking the time to read this. And hey, please stay safe out there if you're protesting this weekend. Love y'all.
heavy thread but I want to talk about it a bit. CW mentions of death.
This 'hurricane season' thing, let's talk about it.
I lived in Fort Myers, Florida for ~35 years. Fort Myers is in Southwest Florida, an area that is a geographical magnet for tropical disasters. *Just that city alone* sees some degree of hurricane hit every 2.35 years.
Southwest Florida is not all snowbirds, partiers, MAGAts, whatever convenient excuse people make to justify their righteousness in them having their lives potentially up-ended (or just ended) every potentially 2.35 years. More under the cut.
Even with literal round-the-clock coverage and support of these storms, the tolls are shocking. I remember driving to see a family member's house after Charley hit in 2004. We got access to the area early because they had a home there, and we were warned to not look around too much as we drove. That warning was, as we found out, because while many crews were performing S&R, the poorer areas and trailer parks in Charlotte Harbor were being treated by a cleanup crew, just scrambling to remove blood and other things that I won't mention from any remaining structures/trees.
When storms came, those of us with the least means often meant we stayed no matter what. Many codes of conduct for employment in SWFL had clauses stating you're not supposed to be able to lose a job from fleeing from a disaster - but everyone who lived there knew that was a lie, and they'd find a way to make you pay for leaving. If you were able to evacuate, free bus routes only started in the bigger parts of cities and only went so far.
On top of that, the median age in Charlotte Park, one of the areas most affected by that storm, is 69.8 years old. The average salary? $27,785. That area of Florida is also staggeringly car-dependent, scoring a pathetic average of 28/100 in combined walk/bus usefulness. (Census data and Walk Score taken around 2023 on average.)
All this is to say - people don't get out.
You'd come back to work, if you were lucky enough to have work off, and someone would still be missing. Maybe not a coworker, but a parent, distant relative, pet, livelihood, something, someone. You'd measure life differently as it was before the storm and after it, even if you weren't directly affected, even if there "aren't that many deaths" as people love to claim for some obscene reason, like a collective of smaller cities isn't going to feel deaths in the hundreds per storm in their community and far more lives affected.
All of this is with, I will remind you, round-the-clock coverage of these storms, often with a full month of preparedness taken into consideration. Anything less than this kind of response and our death tolls will look like they did before the 70s again - in the thousands, not hundreds, per storm. And any gutting of FEMA is a gutting of direct, rapid aid to the people most hurt by these storms. Say what you will about government efficiency as a whole, but FEMA gets checks into bank accounts in weeks, sometimes days after storms, to people affected in all manner and priority of ways. Lives are saved by this.
So, with all that, here's the point I'm ultimately trying to make:
If you think the gutting of the NOAA and FEMA is sensible spend reduction, or, even worse, some kind of blessing for the people you assume to "deserve it",
If you don't think that the aim of this administration is anything less, with the knowledge had on these storms, than to actively kill constituents,
If you think that the once-acting head of FEMA being ousted for not kissing the ring and replaced by someone who apparently doesn't know about the US's hurricane season (???) is a "partisan issue", or is justified as the administration claimed FEMA "use[d] “woke” ideologies to appropriate funds", or
If you think now is the time to ridicule anyone for not being able to just "pack up and leave",
I'd better see your ass on the Volunteer Florida website or local food bank's page this hurricane season peak donating your time and/or money to make it right.
Struggling a little today with the new public face of the poly pride flag. I try to be as modern and open-minded as possible, but the call for unity under one standard to the point of practically denouncing the other is a very ironic 'one true way' parallel in and of itself. The removal of the black line is a little too early, I think, in the life cycle of the lifestyle, and I think it's very important to still be mindful of not letting the capital-C Community of a lifestyle with a million varieties gain what is effectively a governing body.
Maybe throwing chum in the water but it's 5AM, it was a hell of a day, and I'm tired, but I am sure not looking forward to all the "no matter who" fucks to go mask-off and defend an Elon-supported Democratic Party in a couple of months and this is actively keeping me up at night.
At least I am so massively proud of everyone in LA today, and I'm definitely galvanized to get out there to some local organizations while I'm able.
Re: last reblog about egg prime directive shit, but not wanting to put any words in OP's mouth so I'm posting about it here -
Reblogging this again and presenting this topic without trans discourse tumblrspeak because I will never for the life of me understand why (rhetorically; I DO understand it) so many people will respond in defense of this with the worst possible faith interpretation of how this will be brought up. If someone's being annoying to you for any reason, you can tell them to piss off, that's how life works for everyone else, but apparently it's a bridge too far here, especially when it's a trans person saying something, because somehow we have to know how many people have said this to someone before and why and for what reason. I know this has been said before in far more succinct words, but I'm spelling it out so people can understand it:
If you can't mentally picture this conversation ever happening in good faith, unpack why you think the people having it might automatically have "bad agendas."
Also if you're trans and saying "If I might have heard this it might have pushed me further into the closet" - Look, as someone who waited 12 fuckin' years from my first moment of this until transitioning, I GET THAT. That's denial, and it's a son of a bitch and it's not your fault, but it's not on anyone else who's trying to help either! Sometimes you have to hear certain things at certain times; is that the fault of the societal miasma surrounding trans people, or is that the fault of the trans person who dared to make a suggestion that maybe transition might be nice for you that you weren't ready to hear?
I'm wound up about this because I used to be this person too, even early on in my transition, and I am SO glad I had people around me to help me understand otherwise while I went through my own self-discovery.
Leave a little light on for me tonight
The mind's racing, subversive, recursive, reversing me a little
Alliteration on the page, caltrops in my head
I can't take a breath, I can't take a breath, I can't take, wait-
Take a second, take a sigh, take a sip, steal a kiss,
Think of this, think of this, think of this, stop-
Sit in my chair, start to rock, start to spin,
Spin out situation one to two to twenty-two to two hundred
A golden ratio, golden, sun, flowers, sunflowers, love, pain, no-
A rhyme, a rime, rime, white, the stark white of the capsules
For the encroaching hoarfrost on the panes of my brain
A brain like a song in 5/4, take five, take five minutes, breathe-
A brain like a song changing time signature
A brain like a song like a seed like a soul like a snapshot
In time, a time where I was a concept, a dream, a watchmaker
A watch ticking too fast, minute hand, second hand repeating,
A quartz, a cracked crystal, only good when I shone
A black diamond, only good when I'm shown
Too much black blood
Leave a little light on for me tonight
What I wish I could just say, is
I wish I could be there, wish I could be
A little golden moth
Dancing from light to warm light
Lights that are asleep tonight, lights that are so far away
Lights of lives I could have led
Lights that are out
That I burned out
I'm burned out
