#sam dylan finch

[graysongoal]

My friend Sam is super ill right now while recovering from MCAS. Their partner's health issues are also acting up, as a result of having to be super attentive to Sam's health.

If you can help at all, please do:

Donate to Help Sam Recover After Infusion Error and Blood Disorder, organized by Veronica Adams

Help Sam Recover After Dangerous Infusion Error and Blood Diso… Veronica Adams needs your support for Help Sam Recover After Infusion Error

V e n m o: SD-Finch

[gaywrites]

I’m not going to be a pawn in some kind of social justice credibility game. So stop introducing me as your “transgender friend” and pulling a Vanna White when we meet someone new. Real talk: You are not a better person, a better ally, or a better activist because you know or fuck a trans person. This is not proof of how radical you are or evidence of how open-minded you are. And if you ever get called out for transphobia and pull the “I can’t be transphobic, my best friend/my partner is trans” card, I will drop you so fast that you won’t know what hit you. I’m not your token, and I’m definitely not your shield from criticism.

8 Things Transgender People Do Not Owe You | Sam Dylan Finch for Everyday Feminism

[lets-read-about-feminism-blog]

Androgyny was supposed to be about diverse-gender expressions and, consequently, diverse bodies. But instead it was a whitewashed, fat-erasing, curve-hating body ideal that almost no one could live up to. Women and men weren't the only ones who needed body positivity; my community of genderqueer and androgynous folks needed a good helping of self-love too.

Sam Dylan Finch, My Trans Masculinity Has Curves, Fat, and Attitude, essay featured in “Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls”

I’m so glad this essay was included in the book!

Discussion Question: How do you feel your experience with body acceptance and love is influenced by your gender and/or other people’s perceptions or expectations of your gender?

Join our discussion at @lets-read-about-feminism

[theywear]

Burden of Proof

Let’s have some more transition talk. My psychological evaluation letter came a few days ago and I am very grateful that the evaluation that could have easily been a painful and invasive experience turned out so well. I wanted to illuminate the process here for anyone who might have similar needs as me, and also talk about some of the ways that this evaluation surprised me. 

In order to have my surgery, I need a letter from a psychologist that officially diagnoses me with gender dysphoria. It used to be called "gender identity disorder", but we are a little farther out of the middle ages now. In order to get a letter from a psychologist, one often has to undergo a "comprehensive" psych eval that can last hours and hours and cost near $1000. In this long evaluation, they will diagnose you with all sorts of things and then maybe also gender dysphoria, like buying the whole haystack to maybe also get the needle.

Instead of that ordeal, I was able to find a psychologist who actually specializes in transitions. This was not easy since many websites that allow you to search doctors by specialty (including Blue Shield) don't even have gender or transgender issues as a specialty. But the psychologist I found was immediately able to understand over the phone what I needed the letter for, and what I needed it to say. 

We met face to face for an hour

She emailed me a draft of the letter to proofread that night

She changed my pronoun and send back another draft immediately

She mailed me two signed copies of the letter the next day.

I went in prepared to explain to a stranger in articulate detail every thought I’d ever had about gender; I was a lawyer with years and years of evidence laid out that I needed to prove my case to the judge beyond a doubt. And then the psychologist said that although she understood that I needed a diagnosis of gender dysphoria to proceed in the medical system, she considered the whole idea of diagnosing it completely redundant. 

I am a different gender than the one my sex at birth dictates. The fact that I know this in the first place is what we call gender dysphoria. Just because a doctor decides that I'm telling the truth, that doesn't make it suddenly 'real'. The fact that I made the appointment with her in the first place satisfied her that I had gender dysphoria. She was not meeting me to try to figure out if my gender dysphoria was real or not. What she was actually there to figure out was whether or not I was mentally healthy enough to understand and consent to surgery. 

I never realized how heavy a burden of proof we put on people with non-binary and transgender identities until another person lifted the burden for me.

Sam Dylan Finch sums it up very well in this article by saying:

If someone told you your whole life that you were a terrible dancer and suddenly you received a first prize trophy for a dance competition, you’d probably feel like an imposter, right? Similarly, when society tells us we’re cisgender (and that being cis is the only option), it can take years and years before we feel secure in ourselves as trans.

Not only that, but trans people are often called into question for not being “trans enough,” are accused of “faking it” for dubious reasons, and are met with disbelief when we first come out.

There’s this culture of interrogation around transness – namely, that trans people have to prove that they’re trans (to get respect, to get healthcare, to find support).

We constantly have our validity called into question by cis and trans people alike. It leads us to internalize this voice of doubt and to intensely question ourselves as society at large does to us.

[vaguely-problematic]

[ID] screen shot of facebook post which reads:

Sam Dylan Finch

Yesterday at 3:29 PM

Something that's taken me a long time to learn (and fully embody) is that feeling your feelings is not the same as just talking about your feelings.

In fact, sometimes talking about your feelings is a way to intellectualize them and avoid feeling.

Tuning into my body, locating the sensations (and letting myself cry when it bubbles up), and staying with it instead of theorizing about my emotions has been really, really hard but an important part of my healing.

I think I was so worried that my emotions were unreasonable or too much that I spent my energy and focus trying to justify them to others instead of just validating them for myself and being with them. !!

You don't always have to jump to an explanation when an emotion arrives. You can actually take a moment to linger with it, knowing that you are safe, it won't overtake you, and there's plenty of time to acquaint yourself with it and uncover what it's trying to tell you.

Jumping to "why, why, why" when an emotion comes can be an implicit way of telling ourselves: we aren't allowed to feel unless we can justify those feelings to others, and emotions only exist to be fixed, not felt.

Anyway, I've been trying to give myself full permission to be with my emotions with explanation, justification, or intellectualization.

Coming back to the body. Welcoming the sensations. And holding myself through it, because I know will be okay with time, no matter what. [/ID]

X

[yournewfriendshouse]

the full thread is https://twitter.com/samdylanfinch/status/1468126373361291264?s=21 (I tried to use the hyperlink but it wasn’t working for some reason)

[emmalwrites]

Links & Pursuits 09.06.21

Links & Pursuits: researching #neurodiversity for my novel-in-progress thru fantastic sites and writers; longing for autumn get-togethers

Autumn is nearly here! After another summer without air conditioning this can only be good news in my house. I’m thinking of having a kind of mini harvest festival to celebrate the turn of the season – something involving apples and a bonfire. Recently I found… Over on Instagram, Autinelle provides tips for dealing with all kinds of overload – sensory, emotional, social, and information. (This…

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[happydaysareprecious]

Walk, Don’t Run: 4 Things that Mental Illness Recovery Taught Me

Working through bipolar disorder was not what I expected – but I’m grateful for what I learned.

My forever favorite queer, mental illness advocate/superhero, Sam Dylan Finch! This article made me rethink so many things in my life... it also gave me courage to do what I need to recover, even if it’s not at all what I want to do.

lots of love, everyone