Talia Bhatt Writes

@taliabhattwrites

The official Tumblr for Talia Bhatt, writer of romance, science fiction, transfeminist theory ... rather a lot of things, really.

2,756 posts

taliabhattwrites

Announcing Call Me Kimberly, the Estro Junkies... PREQUEL! Co-written with M Zakharuk!

What you can't face can't hurt you.

What awaits after the gauntlet of transition? For Kay, it’s a completed list of achievements. Top surgery, good grades, a GSA presidency, a partner. Now he’s exactly as average as he’s wished. For Tahani, it’s a hot femme’s life: a gallant butch girlfriend, five missed alarms, and poly growing pains. No doctor can keep her from being the lesbian she was meant to be.

Until the university insurance strips Tahani of access to hormones. On her girlfriend’s suggestion, she comes to the GSA’s president for help.

What starts as a quest to right an injustice pulls on a thread of concealed wounds and desires. Why, despite all his successes, does Kay never feel satisfied? Is his relationship truly that loving, or just another item on his list? Is Tahani’s girlfriend really the butch of her dreams? Which parts of herself would Tahani give up to preserve that dream?

And how much of their lives and hearts have Kay and Tahani rewritten to fit what doctors demand of trans people?

A second entry in the Ranked Competitive Breast Growth series and prequel to Estro Junkies, Call Me Kimberly is an unflinching exploration of trans lives, sexuality, and detransition in times of moral panic.

The first preview chapter will be out for Patrons mid-July. Book 2 of the RCBG novels is out November 26th! Pre-order now:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0H6WPYNDC

Itch: https://taliabhatt.itch.io/call-me-kimberly

Other: https://books2read.com/u/mgXk0K

taliabhattwrites

Chapter One of the Estro Junkies prequel is now available for preview on Patreon! In two weeks, this chapter will be made publicly available, and Chapter Two will be published as a Patreon exclusive.

Please check it out!

The first chapter of 'Call Me Kimberly' is available for preview! by Talia Bhatt, Radical Transfeminist on Patreon. Join Talia Bhatt, Radica

taliabhattwrites

The first chapter of "Call Me Kimberly" is now available for free! You can grab it from this Patreon post or download it from the Itch page.

Chapter Two is also available on Patreon and will remain a Patreon exclusive!

fuckthisshit-ugh

please read this even if you're not indian. especially if you're not indian.

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

reblog. share. don't scroll past.

standwithdaanes

The movement, which began as a satirical protest, has evolved into a nationwide challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.

Supporters of India's youth-led Cockroach movement said Tuesday they will continue their protest in New Delhi, refusing to leave their sit-in site a day after police used tear gas and batons to disperse thousands of them as they tried to march toward Parliament. Hundreds of protesters camped at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site, under heavy police presence, saying they would stay until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns over alleged failures in India's examination system. "We are going to continue our protest," said Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, which emerged just two months ago. The movement, drawing students, professionals and families, marks a rare public challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's government in its third term, reviving criticism over its handling of dissent and its use of force to respond to protests. [...] Sona Bisht, a 20-year-old student who was part of the protest, said the confrontation strengthened her resolve. "If the government thinks that doing this with Gen Z, they can stop us, then that won't happen. We are here talking about education, talking about securing our future. And till the time our demands are not met, we will not move from here," she said.

"Definitions developed thus far about youth, like the Gen Z narrative, have largely been linked to roles attributed by the dominant system. The rulers have invented a whole range of terms — rebellious, irresponsible, apolitical, extremist, consumerist — not to understand youth, but to neutralize it. They know as well as we do that whoever wins over the youth wins over society. [...] Thus the question is not whether youth is powerful, but in whose interest this power is directed. Today’s uprisings — such as those in Nepal, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, and beyond — demonstrate that youth continues to emerge as a decisive actor. Young women like Deniz Ciya have proven this with their lives. These uprisings are not expressions of generational temperament. These „Gen Z uprisings“ are expressions of a social force confronting structural crisis inherent in the current system. [...] Recent youth uprisings — whether in the form of environmental justice protests, labor movements, or uprisings against authoritarian governments — are proof that youth worldwide are not only responding to a set of circumstances; they are consciously and collectively rejecting the narratives that seek to define them. Thus, it is crucial to analyze what transpired, and draw lessons from these uprisings, particularly in the context of building a global youth democratic confederalism. For the power of youth movements is interconnected, despite being geographically distant." — "Beyond "Gen Z": Defending Revolutionary Youth Spirit" by Lêgerîn

"The youth in general, and especially the young women, are the spark of every revolution.We can’t look at the history and found a revolution without the youth. We are a fundamental factor. We should be aware of this reality, we should take conscience of our historical role. By doing this we will provide ourselves with a plan that will allow us the unity of action and objectives. The Youth should not be condemned to be a slave of the capitalist system. [...] If we reject the labels and mentalities imposed by the system, taking consciousness as Internationalist Youth in a global level and organizing ourselves, is there someone who can stop us?" — "The youth is the spark of every revolution" by Lêgerîn.

game changer should do a ranked competitive breast growth episode

taliabhattwrites

Tumblr users will say "queer history" and mean "midcentury archival records from a specific US-American city that I have extrapolated into a universal mythos" and not even blink

nikailustracion

This

Like, I understand it's good to know general history and the more the best, truly, but we're always expected to know about US history and to celebrate around that history and while those figures are of course as important as the others, it's frustrating how the rest of them are sidelined, forgotten or how both the figures and the history it's expected to be the same everywhere when the cultural contexts are very different.

Here for example, we have Lorca, writer of the Generation of 27 who was killed by a firing squad for being both republican and homosexual during the Spanish civil war in 1936. Or La Veneno, one of the most iconic trans figures of Spain, but not celebrated as much outside.

zandraxofnebulon

"Estro junkies" more like Teated Rivalry

taliabhattwrites

I'm actually mad I didn't think of this myself

Call Me Kimberly, What I expected:

-Kim gets an ovipositor for real.

-Origin of the car ear hoodie.

-Quinn shows off xer harry potter memorabilia.

-RuHani pining.

I shall complete the "What I got" part of this post once the full book comes out.

You'll probably meet Dorothy at some point.

*Spoilers for Ranked Competitive Breast Growth*

I think about a lot moments in Ranked Competitive Breast Growth pretty frequently these days but there's not a single scene in this story that sticks out at me and has had quite as much impact on me, as the scene between Nichole and Dorothy at the cafe.

In the 20th entry to the serial, an elder trans woman, Dorothy, lends an ear and many awful opinions, to Nichole. Now I hate Nichole with a passion, if you have read my previous post about RCBG you know this. This, however, is one of her few redeeming scenes, one that comes at a serious low point for her. When she is brought inside from the rain, after an absolute train wreck of an evening, she is given hot cocoa and a soft place to recover by this gentle older woman. She listens to Nichole's problems and gives some input of her own.

Now Dorothy came up during a much less tolerant time. A time where the adversity towards trans people was much worse than now. And while the circumstances we are under now still allow for such an absurd premise as the RCBG server to believably exist, despite being total satire. Her material circumstances led her to many conclusions others believe to be unnatural. At this time, Nichole still believes that Kathy is a man pretending to be a woman, for an online competition. So when Dorothy asks “What’s the boy’s problem?” Nichole is only taken aback by the surprise of such a telepathic assumption, not the assumption of heteronormativity, a term neither of them probably even know.

The conversation continues with an admission by Nichole that she is “drop dead gorgeous” since transitioning and that such progress didn’t solve her problems. Hardly a humbling concession, yes yes, poor you for winning the boob lottery. Following is a description of what, not whom, she has lost. A best friend, specifically someone who will take her side in anything, a yes-man. She claims that Kathy is hurting her and can’t keep up with the person she has changed into. A change that from the reader’s perspective is a transformation from a poorly-constructed masculine facade, to an incredibly vapid blank slate devoid of a self to even introspect upon who is taking advantage of her friend and failing to communicate in any meaningful way. I mean I could have maybe worded that less angrily but like I said, not a fan of Nichole. Anyway. Now the part where Dorothy opens her big stupid mouth.

So Dorothy opens her big stupid mouth and begins by absolving Nichole of responsibility, in possibly the most backward and derisive way imaginable.

“You’ve grown up with all this being sold as something easy, some fun new trend for kids to hop onto with multicolored highlights and atrocious fashion sense”

Really incredible! Right off the bat showing her fully ignorant, generationalist understanding of basically nothing at all. Dorothy is already full of disgusting opinions in her first breath of response. She goes on to repeat all the nasty trans-medicalist myths that have been holding back progress for years. “This is a curse, it’s a fucking disease” At this point she has done nothing at all to console Nichole emotionally, nor even relate to her ‘boy trouble’ aside from a comment about how she does not have a “hunky baker closing up,” All she has done is take up valuable oxygen while using Nichole’s problems as a platform to spout her vitriol against her own sisters and she continues doing so for a lengthy rant, before Nichole spouts “It’s so obvious now,” in response not to Dorothy’s rhetoric, but the awareness that Dorothy is “just as bad as the rest of them.” Dorothy’s life experience is not growth of conscience, she’s not better at understanding herself than Nichole’s friends, or compassionate in any meaningful way to the struggles of trans youth going as far as to invalidate their experience with every flap of her lips. Her reasoning for the coming revelation is not made obvious in the text, but her conclusion at the sight of Dorothy’s messed up views, is that Kathy is actually trans! Which she exclaims as a profound discovery to her host. Yes girl! Finally caught up with the rest of the cast!

At this new information, and the realization that she’s been insulted by a lesbian, or some kind of phantasmic man-in-woman’s-spaces thing that these weird essentiallists are so worked up about, Dorothy kicks her out back into the rain. It’s not explained which of those things is going through Dorothy’s mind, only that she shows a disgusted look on her face. It’s up to you to make that assumption in your reading of it. Honestly it doesn’t matter which is true to Dorothy because she’s no longer relevant to the story after this scene. As you’re reading this passage you think, finally Nichole is going to get some much needed guidance from an elder trans woman. She’s going to drop some wisdom and some tough love or compassionate advice, and send her towards being a better woman. Instead you are very quickly shaken up by the reality of this person’s warped thinking and realize, damn this lady sucks. Well I’m here to tell you that lady exists, you’re going to meet many trans women who believe that the way that things have progressed is less than ideal, even more so that the old ways are better. That’s okay. The ideas that she developed served her as she made her way through an unforgiving and violently transphobic world. She carved a path through a system designed to see her destroyed and came out the other end, a twisted awful woman, but a woman nonetheless. She survived worse times, and developed some pretty awful ideas because of it. Dorothy and those like her are a sign that the times really have changed for the better, a dark result of the past circumstances, and maybe some day I’ll be seen that way too. I can only hope so.

taliabhattwrites

Tumblr users will say "queer history" and mean "midcentury archival records from a specific US-American city that I have extrapolated into a universal mythos" and not even blink

taliabhattwrites

"learn your queer history" I am from fucking INDIA

taliabhattwrites

Maybe your queer elders fictional or otherwise were also influenced by the biases and contradictions of their own circumstances, time and place, and I am no more beholden to their ideas and ways of doing things than I am to any other form of tradition trying to constrain me.

Perhaps history is a conversation and not an edict.

taliabhattwrites

I fucking snortled

gossipgurlingursht

Maybe, when you see this sort of thing, you can post your own queer history? That way we all learn?

taliabhattwrites

Do you think the correct response to a reminder that US culture and history is not the universal default is to ask for history lessons

taliabhattwrites

I do actually talk about queerness through the Indian context a fair bit, is the thing. But I'm not trying to promote my work right now, I'm trying to emphasize the importance of seeking out perspectives that aren't your own and putting in the effort to engage with others whose experiences are different from yours without presuming a place of authority for knowing what the Cafe Riots were.

taliabhattwrites

Tumblr users will say "queer history" and mean "midcentury archival records from a specific US-American city that I have extrapolated into a universal mythos" and not even blink

taliabhattwrites

"learn your queer history" I am from fucking INDIA

taliabhattwrites

Maybe your queer elders fictional or otherwise were also influenced by the biases and contradictions of their own circumstances, time and place, and I am no more beholden to their ideas and ways of doing things than I am to any other form of tradition trying to constrain me.

Perhaps history is a conversation and not an edict.

taliabhattwrites

I fucking snortled

gossipgurlingursht

Maybe, when you see this sort of thing, you can post your own queer history? That way we all learn?

taliabhattwrites

Do you think the correct response to a reminder that US culture and history is not the universal default is to ask for history lessons

Annoyed with a video essay about misogyny in fandom spaces because the person making the video was saying "men" when they meant men, but they were saying "AFAB people" when they meant women. Quickly. What Demographic Are You Excluding By Saying This. This stupid fucking video essay was supposed to be about misogyny whilst excluding an entire demographic of women that does very much experience a lot of misogyny in fandom spaces (and everywhere else for that matter).

No-one wants to admit we are subject to misogyny. They would rather sweep it under the rug and misgender trans men in the process.

idk it's a bit of a recurring subject of frustration for me that when I discuss the issues with the trans healthcare system I've been through, inevitably people start talking about capitalist incentive structures in the replies like.

This bullshit was provided by the government of Norway.

There's no monetary incentive making the OUS clinicians ask patients how they masturbate, they're doing it out of sheer love of the game. The game in question being "making trans people suffer needlessly." I am not talking about an insurance company, I am talking about the government of my country deliberately hiring medical science criminals to determine how my healthcare should work.

There are, in fact, other sources of medical abuse of marginalized groups than just the horrendously broken healthcare system of the United States in particular. In fact, this approach to trans healthcare, motivated by an ideological disdain for trans people rather than an ideological commitment to making healthcare as expensive as possible, is rather common internationally.

taliabhattwrites

Announcing Call Me Kimberly, the Estro Junkies... PREQUEL! Co-written with M Zakharuk!

What you can't face can't hurt you.

What awaits after the gauntlet of transition? For Kay, it’s a completed list of achievements. Top surgery, good grades, a GSA presidency, a partner. Now he’s exactly as average as he’s wished. For Tahani, it’s a hot femme’s life: a gallant butch girlfriend, five missed alarms, and poly growing pains. No doctor can keep her from being the lesbian she was meant to be.

Until the university insurance strips Tahani of access to hormones. On her girlfriend’s suggestion, she comes to the GSA’s president for help.

What starts as a quest to right an injustice pulls on a thread of concealed wounds and desires. Why, despite all his successes, does Kay never feel satisfied? Is his relationship truly that loving, or just another item on his list? Is Tahani’s girlfriend really the butch of her dreams? Which parts of herself would Tahani give up to preserve that dream?

And how much of their lives and hearts have Kay and Tahani rewritten to fit what doctors demand of trans people?

A second entry in the Ranked Competitive Breast Growth series and prequel to Estro Junkies, Call Me Kimberly is an unflinching exploration of trans lives, sexuality, and detransition in times of moral panic.

The first preview chapter will be out for Patrons mid-July. Book 2 of the RCBG novels is out November 26th! Pre-order now:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0H6WPYNDC

Itch: https://taliabhatt.itch.io/call-me-kimberly

Other: https://books2read.com/u/mgXk0K

taliabhattwrites

Chapter One of the Estro Junkies prequel is now available for preview on Patreon! In two weeks, this chapter will be made publicly available, and Chapter Two will be published as a Patreon exclusive.

Please check it out!

The first chapter of 'Call Me Kimberly' is available for preview! by Talia Bhatt, Radical Transfeminist on Patreon. Join Talia Bhatt, Radica

happy pride to my favourite post on reddit

rashmi isnt the normal roommate that's mona "rashmi is normal" that woman had like zero friends and was on track to kill herself...if she hadn't had her series of canon events (evil femboy discord server but the resident gender studies major affirms hijra as trans women, coming out as being attracted to twinks who are actually just white women, a girl who'd otherwise treated her like shit reaching out a hand to affirm her gender to her by giving her a dress to wear/helping her with makeup) that played out exactly the way they did, im not convinced she would still be alive by the end of the book or hypothetically after her wedding. mona is definitely wormed but she has like. friends. and is social. unfortunately if anyone is winning the "normal person" awards its her. and to clarify here i'm not ascribing any moral value to "normal person" here it's just that rashmi really isn't that "normal" compared to katherine or nichole. rashmi's hobbies were like. meal prep, homework, cleaning up after her roommates who treat her like the maid, and dissociation. maybe she wasn't throwing around the "bro dude my guy" in a very painfully obviously stilted way but i have to imagine that any shit talking/snark conversation she had with nichole back in the day pre-story was like, basically a very pared down version of "yeah bro, our other two roommates are dumbass fruits" and that's not the power of having social skills that's just the power of bitch eating crackers and casually attempting to affirm masculinity getting slipped into the crackers. like sure you can say rashmi has a more "normal" cadence in that she didn't learn how to narrative her internal dialogue from TV (no shade to kathy on this particular thing, like..........mood) but like that's not a high bar. she's not normal she's just suicidal and not chuuni.

mercymorn-the-saint-of-joy

“Mona was the most normal”

“Hey, she was pretty racist”

“Yeah, unfortunately, that’s pretty normal.”

prognostichannya

Everyone go read The Third Sex by @taliabhattwrites right now.

What if you’re bad at making mats? Do you just get called AGP?

taliabhattwrites

I don't remember whether this was in Nanda's or Reddy's book, but I remember reading this amusing bit where a hijra woman called another a man (light-heartedly) for not doing the dishes on time, and I just cracked up. "Why didn't you do the dishes? Are you AGP?". We really are the same everywhere.

taliabhattwrites

And that's kind of the whole ball game, isn't it

Suppose these precolonial histories are as pristine as we assert

What about the patriarchal miasma we're mired in right now

cooler lesbian comix than the one youre probably talking about

as a girl who pushes the people who care about her away and is trying desperately to change, that ending was devastating in a way i needed so bad

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